March 21, 2012

March 21, 2012

March 21, 2012

This week’s required reading

By

Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on March 2012

AC/DC MEETS JAILHOUSE ROCK

  • Headline of the Week, courtesy of The Japan Times: “Prisons to give special consideration to inmates with gender identity issues”
  • Apparently, at least according to the Justice Ministry, “about 40 prisoners in Japan, both male and female, were believed to have gender identity disorder as of 2011.” New guidelines will let them “bathe alone and wear the underwear of the gender they identify with.”
  • Hiroki Homma, a sports reporter for the Sankei Shimbun, pulled out a jackknife after getting into a tussle with another guy near Yokohama Station. Homma, who had been out drinking, was arrested for violating a law against carrying concealed weapons.
  • Japan’s farm minister Michihiko Kano had to skip a budget committee session and the government memorial service for the March 11 victims with some severe vomiting and diarrhea, likely caused by the notorious norovirus.
  • The government asked three towns in Fukushima Prefecture—Okuma, Futaba and Naraha—to set up temporary facilities to store radioactive soil and waste. Needless to say, the three bergs were less than enthusiastic at the prospect.
  • Two people from Sendai were in California to participate in a 200-person protest calling for the permanent shutdown of the San Onofre nuclear power plant.
  • One of the protesters from Sendai, 39-year-old Kyoko Sugasawa, said, “The allowable radiation level used to be 1 milisievert and now it is 20 milisieverts for children. We feel as if our children are being experimented on.”

JUST BEAT IT

  • Porn star Minako Komukai asked comedian/director “Beat” Takeshi Kitano to direct her farewell skinflick. “Whether as an actor or director I will welcome it,” replied Kitano.
  • The upcumming porn debut of Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine nursing student Mai Yuzuki was drawing a lot of attention among smut addicts nationwide. In the adult video industry, this is what is known as the “highly educated female genre.”
  • In that same vein, 18-year-old technical college co-ed Mana Sakura’s first foray into porn, a video titled not surprisingly AV Debut, was topping the charts due to her “baby face and voluptuous body.”
  • The 44-year-old mom of AKB48 member Minami Takahashi was arrested for having sex repeatedly with a classmate of her 15-year-old son. Perhaps a birds-and-bees talk gone too far?
  • A perv in Yokohama is on the loose who likes to tackle unsuspecting women and peel off their underwear as a souvenir.

THERE’S GOOD NEWS AND THERE’S BAD NEWS…

  • Women’s World Cup titleholders Nadeshiko Japan beat the powerful Americans in soccer once again, this time 1-0 at the Algarve Cup tournament in Portugal.
  • Unfortunately, however, the Japanese women would go on to lose 4-3 to Germany in the Algarve Cup final.
  • US pop singer and 1980s icon Cyndi Lauper was in tsunami-hit Ishinomaki to cheer up local elementary school students with a few songs. Lauper was also here a year earlier, arriving on March 11, 2011. Not the greatest timing for a girl who just wanted to have…
  • A private detective agency in Japan revealed that 21.5 percent of married women with jobs that they were hired to track had been unfaithful.
  • The number of Japanese students who committed suicide in 2011 was up to 1,029, a record and over 100 higher than the previous year, according to the National Police Agency.
  • A 6m fishing boat, swept away by the March 11 tsunami from a town in Iwate Prefecture and later recovered off the coast of Hyogo Prefecture, was returned to the owner’s family. The man who owned the boat was killed by the tsunami.
  • A Buddhist temple in Nagano has made wooden Jizo statues, which spiritually protect temples, out of fallen pine trees from disaster-hit Rikuzentakata in Iwate Prefecture.
  • US Navy Admiral Robert Willard, the man who coordinated the US military’s post-March 11 relief operations in Japan—Operation Tomodachi—stepped down from his post as commander of the US Pacific Command.
  • An elderly man and woman were found dead in a Tokyo apartment. The pair apparently expired due to “illness,” according to the local police.
  • Pieces of haniwa clay figures shaped in the form of humans dating from the 5th century were found at a burial site in Shimane Prefecture, the oldest artifacts of their type ever discovered in Japan.

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