Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on March 2010

THE LADIES’ SECTION

• Japan Airlines announced that it would disband its powerhouse women’s basketball team, known as the Rabbits, after the 2010-11 season due to its financial woes.
• A 13-year-old girl in Kagoshima diagnosed with gender identity disorder will be allowed to attend school as a boy starting in April.
• A retired Japanese diplomat was acquitted by an Athens court for the murder of his daughter in 2008, but his Greek wife was sentenced to life in prison for the crime.
• A judge in Nara tossed out a lawsuit by the family of a 32-year-old woman who died during childbirth after being turned away by 19 hospitals.
• The owner of a ryokan in Shizuoka has converted part of her facility into a museum to memorialize an incident 42 years ago in which a desperate Japanese-Korean man holed up in the inn for five days after killing two yakuza.

KIDS THESE DAYS

• “If those four hadn’t been there, who knows what would have happened,” said an Otsu fireman after four junior high students saved two small kids and an old woman from a house fire.
• After some 42,000 people signed a petition of support, 3-year-old Mina Yokohira, who has spinal muscular atrophy and needs a wheelchair and artificial respirator, was allowed to attend a public daycare center in Tokyo.
• “When I became an adult, I realized how hard it is to make money, and I remembered stealing from the box.” Those were part of the sentiments in a letter found in a donation box at an Utsunomiya shrine along with ¥30,000, left by an anonymous person who stole ¥10,000 from the box while back in primary school.
• Gamers can get back to avoiding reality ASAP after Sony fixed a software problem that was preventing up to 65 percent of its PlayStation 3 video game consoles from connecting to online networks.
• A new roller coaster was unveiled this month at Universal Studios Japan. Space Fantasy: The Ride gives passengers a chance to save the sun from potential chaos!
• Panasonic will provide about 2,000 LEDs in shades of blue and purple to light up the 634-meter Tokyo Sky Tree, to be completed next year.

Up in smoking

• The Health Ministry is “encouraging” restaurants, schools, hotels, hospitals, department stores and government buildings to ban smoking completely on their premises.
• It was reported that many Japanese manufacturing companies, including cosmetics maker Shiseido, are switching to a more environmentally friendly resin polyethylene made from sugarcane.
• A local pharmaceutical company says it has developed a new drug that has proven effective in treating mice infected with bird flu.
• Local education authorities in Nara estimated that the recently discovered remains of a chestnut grove planted by humans in the area dated back about 2,800 years.

Rodrigo Rodriguez

HE SHOOTS, HE SNORES!

• About 120 hardcore hockey fans flocked to the Hobgoblin pub in Roppongi at 5am on a Monday morning to watch Canada beat the US in the Olympic men’s hockey final. Ninety percent of the fans were Canadian, not surprisingly.
• Japan’s Ai Miyazato became just the fifth golfer to win the first two LPGA events of the season, lifting the championship trophy at the Honda tournament in Thailand and then winning the HSBC tourney in Singapore. She finished tied for seventh her next time out.
• The Chunichi Dragons banned their Dominican pitcher Maximo Nelson for three months after a live bullet was discovered in his bag at Okinawa’s Naha Airport.
• A pair of soccer boots worn by Hidetoshi Nakata in the 2006 World Cup drew a bid of ¥134 million in an online auction to help people in earthquake-hit Haiti.
• Midfielder Shunsuke Nakamura, who starred with Scotland’s Celtic for several seasons, has come home to play for the J.League’s Yokohama F Marinos after a disappointing spell in Spain.
• Showing signs that their figure skating rivalry is not about to cool off anytime soon, South Korean Olympic gold-medalist Kim Yu-na had the following to say about silver-medalist Mao Asada of Japan: “There are other excellent skaters as well, and Asada alone is not special.”
• In a related story, a research firm said the TV ratings for the women’s figure skating final in Vancouver hit over 36 percent in the Kanto area and got up to 40 percent in Nagoya, Asada’s hometown.

WARNING WAVED OFF

• Nearly 150 flights had to be canceled and several others re-routed after an eerie, dense patch of fog rolled in at Haneda Airport.
• It was reported that the manager of a prefectural housing complex in Tottori refused to rent apartments to three people because they had disabilities.
• Since March is traditionally the month with the most suicides in Japan—apparently because it is the end of the fiscal year — a suicide prevention awareness campaign was launched at the beginning of the month.
• A 51-year-old manager of the Nishonoseki sumo stable in Osaka committed suicide by hanging himself at a temple. Guess he didn’t get the memo.
• Henry Holt halted the publication of a book about the atomic bombing of Japan, The Last Train from Hiroshima, over concerns that the author played loosey-goosey with the facts. Avatar director James Cameron holds the movie rights to the work.
• During a visit to the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, Iranian politician Ali Larijani called for a ban on all nuclear weapons.

Ghouls R Us

• A 50-year-old man in Fukuoka was arrested for stealing more than 20 pieces of jewelry valued at over ¥10 million from a local grave. For some reason, a resident of Kurume decided to keep the jewels locked up in the cemetery.
• Prosecutors in a Hong Kong court said that five people involved in a multimillion-dollar jewelry store robbery in Ginza are also suspected of taking part in four other heists in Japan since 2005.
• A large manta ray is thrilling crowds at an Osaka aquarium by performing a series of acrobatic back flips.

Compiled from reports by Japan Today, International Herald Tribune/The Asahi Shimbun, The Daily Yomiuri, The Japan Times, The Mainichi Daily News, The Associated Press, AFP, Reuters and Kyodo.