Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on May 2013

MILESTONES

• Break out the party hats! Convicted murderer Iwao Hakamada has been certified by Guinness as the world’s longest-serving death row inmate. The 77-year-old, who butchered a family of four in Shizuoka in 1966, has been cooling his heels at Tokyo Detention House for more than 44 years.
• It was reported that Japanese scientists have, for the second year in a row, succeeded in producing artificial rain by “spraying liquid carbonic acid onto the bottom of clouds.”
• Authorities in Shizuoka and Yamanashi say they’ll start charging fees to climbers on Mt. Fuji this summer.
• Officials from Tokyo and Taipei inked a deal allowing Taiwanese fishermen to do their thing in Japan’s exclusive economic zone around the Senkaku Islands.

HEAVY METAL

• The SDF installed a Patriot anti-missile battery at its headquarters in downtown Tokyo, aka the most densely populated place on Earth.
• A customs officer at Fukuoka Airport busted a pair of Japanese men for attempting to smuggle 8kg of gold from Thailand.
• A “natural history study group” made up of citizens dedicated to the Izu islands say that the endangered black-footed albatross is making a comeback on an uninhabited island near Hachijojima.
• Meanwhile, a strong earthquake ruined a popular rock-climbing cliff on Miyakejima that was hailed as sparking interest in free-climbing on the island.

Dept. of Ironic Disturbances

• A 65m-tall wind power generator in Mie collapsed… after being hit by strong winds.
• A Kobe University student who claimed that he accidentally fell off a river-rafting ride at Universal Studios Japan was exposed as a prankster after bragging about the feat on Twitter.
• It was later discovered that the same genius had pulled a similar stunt eight times during the past year, saying he wanted to “stand out by doing something different.”
• Heeding the advice of an advisory panel on education reform, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called on Japanese schools to make their English instruction “more suited for practical use.”

THE WAGES OF SIN

• Who says crime doesn’t pay? Officials at the NPA estimate that about 70 percent of websites providing “illegal or harmful content” are also receiving advertising revenue.
• A Saitama man was handed a suspended sentence for defrauding 15 people out of ¥11 million, which he said would be used for “developing and selling items to be used in a virtual city on the internet.”
• Officials in Kamakura are combining three local beaches—including the popular Yuigahama—into a single entity and selling the naming rights for a cool million yen.
• Meanwhile, authorities in Akita are looking for someone to “assume control” of a hot-spring hotel complex in the resort town of Yuzawa—for free.

DRAWING A CROWD

• The widow of Barefoot Gen creator Keiji Nakazawa donated a never-before-seen storyboard for the iconic manga to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
• As part of its “anime hero and heroine” series, Japan Post has announced that it will issue a set of Doraemon-themed postage stamps.
• Red-faced officials at the Japan Coast Guard admitted that they may have failed to delete sensitive navigation information on a decommissioned patrol vessel that was sold to a demolition company.
• What’s worse, the demolition company is run by a senior member of Chongryon, a pro-Pyongyang group.