Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on June 2010

Well, that explains it

• A 57-year-old accountant in Hyogo who forged documents so that he could marry his ex-wife’s 16-year-old daughter said he did it “because he liked the girl.”
• One of the eight people being sued by NHK because of unpaid subscription fees was reported as saying, “It’s unfair to demand payment only from us even though there are many others who have also failed to pay the fees.”
• Firefighters in Osaka responding to a report of smoke rising from a local middle school discovered that the culprits were “four second-year male students barbecuing on the roof.”
• The DPJ’s Diet affairs chief says he dropped a ¥10 million defamation lawsuit against a weekly magazine that accused him of fiscal impropriety because he didn’t “have enough [time] to discuss the matter with [his] lawyer.”

Whatever floats your boat

• It was reported that a group of rice farmers in Gifu Prefecture who have revived a 1,000-year-old technique of planting crops in a circular pattern are wont to chant, “The rice fields here are round, not square.”
• A self-published book of poetry by a 98-year-old first-time author in Tochigi Prefecture has sold an astounding 40,000 copies. In one of the poems, the woman “confesses her hidden love for a doctor paying her house visits.”
• A team of researchers at Osaka University have discovered that “something in red wine helps rats have erections.”
• The shogi world was abuzz after former champion Naoko Hayashiba announced her return to the game following 15 years of semi-retirement.

You go, girl!

• The World Health Organization announced that Japanese women, once again, have the longest life expectancy in the world, at 86 years.
• Japanese men ranked fourth at 79 years, trailing San Marino (81), Iceland (80) and
  Switzerland (80).
• The education ministry told schools around the country that they should be more proactive in dealing with students who experience gender identity disorder. The statement comes after officials in Saitama and Kagoshima prefectures approved gender reassignment in their public schools.
• It was revealed that Shibuya’s iconic 109 shopping complex suffered a drop in sales during the past year that may have been as steep as 9 percent.

Milestones



Illustration by Shane Busato

• A toddler in Nagano Prefecture who had to endure 37 operations because he was born with two rare respiratory conditions finally left the hospital on his second birthday.
• Shunichi Suzuki, who during his tenure as governor of Tokyo from 1979-1995 was responsible for moving the city offices to their current location in Shinjuku, died at the age of 99.
• Officials at the national libraries in Japan, China and South Korea said they would build what is being described as “the first across-the-border electronic library in Asia.”
• Critics say that a recent rally against US military bases in Yomitanson, Okinawa drew as few as 11,000 protesters, despite the organizers claiming 90,000 people took part.
• Least Surprising Headline of the Week™: Education Ministry Planning to Improve Quality of Teachers (via The Yomiuri Shimbun)

The Crime Files

• A Chiba man who was arrested for selling masks closely resembling characters in the TV show Kamen Rider said he got them from an acquaintance in Thailand.
• A 28-year-old man in Ibaraki killed a woman he was having an affair with to hide the fact that he was cheating on his girlfriend. We suppose that’s a good plan, so long as the girlfriend doesn’t get curious about where the man is for the next 20 years or so.
• A jury in Yokohama slapped a 23-year sentence on a serial rapist who took photos of one of his victims and threatened to expose her identity if she went to the police.
• Police in Shibuya who were monitoring surveillance cameras arrested nine people for “conducting street solicitation for an adult entertainment business.”

Sic transit

• Police in Nagoya are investigating an incident in which a 49-year-old local man crashed his car into a highway median, got out of the vehicle, and started scattering banknotes onto the road. Although the man’s family said he left home with ¥7 million, the cops have recovered just ¥2.8 million.
• Due to severe budget cuts, the transport ministry said it will rely on taxi drivers to report road blockages.
• The foreign ministers of Japan and China agreed that they need to enact some type of hotline to “avoid problems in disputed areas.”
• A research team at Rikkyo University estimates that the number of common sparrows in Japan has decreased by 90 percent in the last 50 years. One reason for this may be “the reduction… of older wooden houses, which often have nooks and holes in which sparrows can build nests.”

Your tax dollars at work

• The sports ministry said it will reward companies that sponsor athletes who “have made remarkable achievements in international competitions such as the Olympic Games.”
• In what is being described as “one of the largest marijuana seizures by a narcotics control department,” cops in Hyogo Prefecture grabbed 1,443 pot plants worth an estimated ¥100 million. Four Vietnamese nationals were arrested for (massive) possession.
• The National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan announced that “complaints and consultations about the pet service business” had increased some 300 percent during the past six years.
• The National Police Agency said that about 25 percent of child porn images posted on the internet had not been deleted despite requests that the ISPs get rid of them.

And finally…

• Seminal music magazine Swing Journal, which is credited with playing “a central role in expanding the reach of jazz in Japan” in the postwar era, announced that it would cease publication in July due to low ad sales.
• Among the complaints NTT has received about its recently revamped Goo email service are that messages “have sometimes been treated as read… and titles and bodies have sometimes been blanked out.” Other than that, everything’s peachy.
• It was reported that 18,513 complaints of missing child support payments were filed in Japan last year, the highest ever on record and a 17 percent increase from 2008.
• Bottom Story of the Week: “Novelist’s Interest in Calendars Leads to Double Awards” (via The Daily Yomiuri Online)

Compiled from reports by Bloomberg, BBC, Japan Today, The Japan Times, International Herald Tribune/The Asahi Shimbun, The Mainichi Daily News, The Tokyo Reporter, The Daily Yomiuri, AP and Kyodo