Metropolis Japan

March 27, 2013

This week’s required reading

Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on March 2013

THE WAGES OF SIN

A court in Aichi found the former mayor of Owase, Mie Prefecture, guilty of “touching the breasts of a 15-year-old girl at a cram school.” Kind of gives new meaning to the term “hands-on politician.”
Police in Osaka arrested a man and woman for cashing in six years’ worth of childcare allowances even though their daughter died shortly after birth. The couple is suspected of disposing of the infant’s body at sea.
Satoko Okazaki, a former gymnast who competed at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, was arrested for stimulant use—for the sixth time.
Headline of the Week: “Man Held over Misuse of Interns” (via The Yomiuri Shimbun)

Archaeologists on Shimo-koshiki Island in Kagoshima announced they discovered an 80-million-year-old tooth belonging to a ceratopsian dinosaur. It’s the first such fossil to be found in Japan.
Kamui Kobayashi will become the first Asian driver to race for Ferrari when he competes in the FIA World Endurance Championship this year.
The government is considering a proposal to designate April 29 as Sovereignty Day, in recognition of the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty on that date in 1952.
Officials in London unveiled a monument at Holland Park that’s inscribed with words from Emperor Akihito thanking the people of the UK for supporting Japan following the 3/11 disaster.

A study conducted by a professor at Chiba Meitoku College found that kids in high-income households are more likely to suffer child abuse than those in families receiving welfare.
The parents of a Pakistani junior high school student in Kagawa Prefecture say the boy must now use crutches after being stomped by bullies in a hallway.
Officials at the MPD say the amount of money lost through bank transfer scams and other types of fraud in 2012 hit ¥8.1 billion—a record high.
A team of researchers led by the Tokyo University of Science has found that a mineral called limonite—which is found in abundance in areas around Mount Aso in Kumamoto—can cut radiation levels in contaminated soil.

Statisticians at the health ministry say residents of Nagano have the highest life expectancy in Japan. The average woman in the prefecture lives to be 87.18 years old, while men average 80.88 years.
The prefecture with the lowest life expectancy is Aomori, where women are expected to live 85.34 years and men typically keel over at 77.28.
The ministry added that, since the previous survey five years ago, life expectancy has risen in every prefecture —except Tottori, where women are kicking the bucket a couple of months earlier than they used to.
Officials at a zoo in Wakayama sent four-year-old twin pandas to China in the hopes of avoiding inbreeding among the their population of the critters.

The NPA said cyber-criminals last year launched 1,009 email attacks against “companies and research organizations in the fields of defense and advanced technologies.”
Meanwhile, 1,076 kids under age 18 were victimized by crimes committed through social networking sites.
The folks at the Fire and Disaster Management Agency say they’ll allow members of the public to report emergencies through the 119 system, though they admit that “information plausibility and identifying the precise location of the victim will be challenges.”
Sentence of the Week: “The Bangladeshi government has decided to pull from TV screens the Japanese cartoon Doraemon, saying that the series, which is aired in Hindi, may obstruct the country’s children from learning its official language Bengali, local media reports said.” (via Mainichi Japan)