Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on November 2010

Crimes & Misdemeanors

• An 82-year-old South Korean man who was arrested for pickpocketing on a train at Tokyo station has been dubbed “the legendary Mr. Kim” by the Metropolitan Police Department. Kim Su-il, who has been committing such crimes for 50 years, said, “I always do my work while being ready to be busted any time.”
• Someone hacked the Shimane prefectural government website so that it displayed the words “Defeat Japanese demons” in Chinese.
• A car that was set on fire outside a mosque in Fukui contained a note reading, “Foreign people GET OUT.”
• A pair of hospitals in Shizuoka admitted that, not only did they conduct secret HIV tests on some 35,000 patients, but they also billed the patients for the tests.

Sic Transit

• The transport ministry said that the number of accidents involving bicycles and pedestrians has risen 370 percent in the past decade.
• Tokyo police arrested three men who are suspected of stealing 180 cars during the past year in Tokyo, Chiba and Ibaraki.
• A wild boar who bit five people in Hiroshima was finally captured by locals “using a ladder and wooden mallet.”
• It’s official: Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara approved the budget for relocating Tsukiji Fish Market to Toyosu by the end of 2014. The move will cost a whopping ¥128.1 billion.

Wimps “r” Us

• It was reported that hammocks are becoming trendy among Tokyoites, in part because lying in one “feels similar to being in the mother’s womb.”
• The number of “citizens’ farms” rented out by local governments has increased threefold during the past 15 years.
• Declaring that “the Democratic Party of Japan is in bad shape,” 63-year-old former PM Yukio Hatoyama put off retirement from the House of Representatives.
• The environment ministry said it is launching a “no-holds-barred campaign” to eradicate the Java mongoose in Okinawa. The creature has been deemed an invasive alien species that threatens local wildlife.

War stories

• A recovery team says it may have found the bodies of 51 Japanese soldiers who died in the battle for Iwo Jima during the closing days of World War II.
• A 3.6m-tall statue commemorating hundreds of Chinese laborers forcibly taken to Japan during World War II was unveiled in Hiroshima.
• The defense ministry said it plans to add six more submarines to the Maritime Self-Defense Forces fleet, bringing the total to 22.
• Headline of the Week: “Man Charged with Murdering Woman, Her Grandma Denies Lust for Young Victim” (via The Mainichi Daily News)

Slow news week

• The Asahi Shimbun apologized to Kyodo News for plagiarizing one of the wire service’s stories. Somewhat improbably, the article in question had to do with “a Kyoto University professor and other researchers confirm[ing] that a painting believed to depict Manichaean cosmology exists in Japan.”
• Ninety-one-year-old diplomat and author Eikichi Hayashiya became the first Japanese person to receive an honorary doctorate from Salamanca University in Spain.
• A 22-year-old Yamanashi man who stole the identity of more than a dozen Mixi users said he did it because he enjoyed “chatting with women.”
• Takashimaya announced that it is planning to open a shopping center in Ho Chi Minh City in 2012.

To protect and swerve

Illustration by Eparama Tuibenau

• A cop in Kyoto was given a ticket for illegally parking his patrol car on the sidewalk in front of a koban.
• Police in Ibaraki arrested a 46-year-old local man who stole a fire truck and went on a joyride at 1am.
• A 34-year-old cop in Tochigi pleaded not guilty in the shooting death of a Chinese man in 2006. The cop had stopped the man for questioning and shot him after he ran away.
• The MPD’s High Tech Crime Prevention Center swooped into action and arrested three men for “distributing Japanese TV programs on the internet without the permission of the copyright holders.”

Here & There

• Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of the original Super Mario Bros., said that flaws in the 25-year-old game are “embarrassing.”
• After a 13-year effort, researchers in Yokohama claim to have mapped the genome of a Japanese man for the first time.
• It was reported that, for the first time, more phone calls are being made with cellphones than landlines in Japan.
• Seventy-seven-year-old Yoko Ono was announced as the winner of the eighth Hiroshima Art Prize, a triennial honor recognizing people “who have contributed to peace through contemporary art.”
• Bottom Story of the Week: “Hakodate Resident Starts Jogging Tours to Help People Discover City’s Beauty” (via The Mainichi Daily News).

Compiled from reports by Bloomberg, Jiji, AP, Japan Today, The Japan Times, International Herald Tribune/The Asahi Shimbun, The Mainichi Daily News, The Tokyo Reporter, The Daily Yomiuri and Kyodo