March 14, 2012

March 14, 2012

March 14, 2012

This week’s required reading

By

Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on March 2012

SUFFER THE CHICKENS

  • It was reported that 4.37 million chickens in northeastern Japan died following the March 11 earthquake due to disruptions in the supply of feed from overseas.
  • A court in Aichi found that a municipal worker who committed suicide in 2002 was the victim of “power harassment.” Apparently, the guy’s boss would openly harangue his subordinates, and the poor fella couldn’t cope.
  • A 37-year-old woman in Machida killed her 65-year-old mother “following an argument over nutritional breakfasts.”
  • A research team at Tokyo University has found that people who are “surrounded by more acquaintances and tools” benefit from elevated brain functioning compared to their lonely, tool-less counterparts.

SNOW GO

  • The roof of an art museum in Yubari, Hokkaido was crushed by a massive accumulation of snow. The museum was closed at the time, and the fate of several Picassos is unknown.
  • Five teenagers who were caught throwing firecrackers at monkeys in a zoo in Kyoto made amends by cleaning the monkeys’ living area and apologizing to the animals.
  • An American manga called I Kill Giants beat out 145 comics from 30 countries to snag the gold prize at the Fifth International Manga Award in Tokyo.
  • A female junior high school teacher in Osaka was arrested for sending four letters to an acquaintance urging her “to commit suicide by jumping.”

COMING & GOING

  • A Gifu-based import company has donated 1 million packages of tofu from Paraguay to victims of the March 11 disaster.
  • Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba said it would be no big deal if Iran carried through with its threat to close off the Strait of Hormuz, as Japan has 200 days worth of oil reserves and a 70-day supply of liquefied natural gas.
  • It was reported that interest in car-sharing services in Japan has surged in the past two years, with the number of users increasing 10-fold, to about 167,700.
  • Talk about tough times: bus drivers in Osaka are faced with having their annual salary cut from an average of ¥7.39 million to ¥4.41 million. Ouch!

Flyjin by the numbers

  • The justice ministry says the number of foreign residents in Japan decreased by 55,000 in 2011.
  • The prefectures that saw the biggest drops were, unsurprisingly, the ones hit hardest by the Great East Japan Earthquake: Iwate, which lost 15.5 percent of its gaijin, Fukushima (15.1) and Miyagi (13.2).
  • The average flyjin attrition rate in prefectures nationwide was 2.6 percent.
  • The ministry also said that the three largest expat groups currently in Japan are Chinese (674,871), Koreans (545,397) and Brazilians (210,032).
  • Overall, there are 2,078,480 registered foreigners in the country.

BOOK SMARTS

  • The Mathematical Society of Japan reported—with great sadness, one assumes—that 24 percent of college students who were tested on basic math skills “gave incorrect answers to a question on the concept of averages that is taught to sixth graders.”
  • Scholars hope that the recent discovery of the earliest known published work by 20th-century literary giant Yasunari Kawabata—an account of a funeral that appeared in a magazine in 1917—will help shed light on “the way in which [he] created novels.”
  • A study panel with the infrastructure ministry advised officials in Tokyo to make sure the city can defend itself against “a huge tsunami [that’s] expected every 1,000 years or so.”
  • The University of Tokyo became the first public Japanese university to set up a student recruitment office in India.

DUMPLING DIPLOMACY

  • A group of students from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology traveled to Fukushima and cooked up a bunch of potstickers for evacuees using local ingredients.
  • An unknown perpetrator hacked the website of the Nagoya Zoo and posted a message that said, “Please acknowledge the Nanjing Massacre!”
  • A 22-year-old female exchange student in Beijing suffered cuts to her face in what police believe was a random slashing.
  • The Cabinet approved boosting the coast guard’s law enforcement abilities in territorial waters. Among the new powers is the ability “to investigate cases of illegal entry and destruction of lighthouses.”

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

  • The municipality of Nagaoka in Niigata has entered into a sister-city partnership with the Hawaiian capital of Honolulu. Which is interesting, because Nagaoka’s most famous son is Isoroku Yamamoto—commander-in-chief of the fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
  • The mother of AKB48 performer Minami Takahashi—one of the group’s most popular members—was arrested for having sex with a 15-year-old boy.
  • The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Consumer Agency will distribute 500,000 leaflets urging people to get rid of non-childproof cigarette lighters.
  • Bottom Story of the Week: “Researchers have discovered that a wooden strip unearthed at an ancient ruins site in Ibaraki Prefecture bore a ‘kanji’ Chinese character meaning the unit for a length of cloth, which had been in use in an ancient capital in western Japan.” (via Mainichi Daily News)

Compiled from reports by AP, Japan Today, The Japan Times, The Asahi Shimbun, The Tokyo Reporter, Japan Probe, The Mainichi Daily News, Daily Yomiuri, AFP, Reuters and Kyodo.