Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on November 2011

GEE, THANKS FOR THAT

• As part of its Warm Biz energy-saving promotion for winter, the government is advising people to “eat root vegetables and other body-warming food.”
• Police around the country say they want to start tracking criminal suspects by GPS using data from the perps’ cellphones.
• A WWII-era “midget” submarine likely belonging to the Imperial Japanese Navy was found submerged in the seabed of a harbor in Papua New Guinea.
• Around the same time, Japanese researchers in Nagasaki discovered the remains of a Chinese military ship that is thought to have been sunk during the Battle of Koan in 1281.

LIKELY STORIES

• A 32-year-old man who was arrested on suspicion of murdering a 17-year-old girl in a love hotel in Osaka told police, “I gave her drugs in the hotel, but I didn’t strangle her.”
• After police discovered that a sword preservation society was in possession of a stash of 36 unregistered swords, a former director said, “We feared that if revealed, we would have been punished and the swords would have been confiscated.”
• A Japanese man was arrested in Manila while trying to board a flight to Tokyo with one million pesos in cash (approx. $24,000). The limit for taking money out of the Philippines is 10,000 pesos, but the man said he was “unaware of the regulation.”
• Sentence of the Week: “Japan Sumo Association chief Hanaregoma on Thursday launched an investigation into allegations by a weekly magazine that sumo elder Naruto once beat a former apprentice with a block of wood and injected Czech-born wrestler Takanoyama with insulin in an attempt to increase his body weight.” (via Kyodo)

OUR SCUZZY NEIGHBORS TO THE NORTH

• A South Korean newspaper published leaked census data from Pyongyang, revealing that 86 Japanese citizens are living in the city.
• One of the names on the list matches that of a man who is believed to have been abducted by North Korea in 1963, when he was 13 years old.
• A fraudster in Kashiwa, Chiba, has been putting flyers in local residents’ mailboxes offering to “to measure radiation for ¥5,000 and remove radioactive substances for ¥10,000.”
• Meanwhile, a 42-year-old man has pleaded guilty to posing as a doctor in quake-hit Miyagi Prefecture in June.

WILD THINGS

• Two Tokyoites were attacked and slightly injured by a rampaging monkey on the streets of Nerima-ku. The animal is thought to be a runaway pet.
• Prefectural officials in Nagasaki have appointed a “Chief of Boar Affairs” to devise ways to minimize damage caused by the wild animals.
• The head of criminal investigations for the Aomori Prefectural Police made headlines when he accidentally discharged his service pistol at a local police station.
• It was reported that five image-conscious Japanese companies participating in a trade fair in Dalian, China, decided not to put signs on their booths identifying them as being from Fukushima Prefecture.
• In response to a surge in the number of cyber-attacks directed against its IT systems, the government sent a parliamentary vice minister to an international computer security symposium—in London.

KIDS THESE DAYS

• A newspaper survey revealed that 26 percent of female high school students say using a cellphone is their favorite after-school activity, while just 11 percent of boys say so.
• On the other hand, 21 percent of guys said they devote themselves to video games, but just 6 percent of girls do.
• After a subway car in Nagoya was found covered in graffiti, an official with the local transportation bureau said it had been “decades” since such a thing had happened in the city.
• A teenager who had been hospitalized since eating tainted beef at a yakinuku restaurant in April became the fifth person to die from an E. coli outbreak in Toyama.
• Cops in Miyagi believe that a total of 89 gangsters have received quake-related welfare loans from the government despite a requirement that applicants submit a formal declaration stating they are not yakuza members.

AND THE SURVEY SAYS…

• According to newly released census figures, Japan’s population stands at 128,057,352. That’s a 0.2 percent rise from the previous survey five years ago—the slowest growth rate ever.
• The internal affairs ministry says the only reason the population hasn’t declined over the last five years is that the number of foreigners is increasing. There are about 371,000 non-Japanese living in the country.
• Also, just 13.2 percent of Japanese are now under age 15, while 23 percent are aged 65 and over.
• The number of households in the country topped 50 million for the first time—in part because there are so many people living alone. The proportion of single-member households has now risen above 30 percent.
• The population of nine prefectures (including Tokyo) showed an increase, but six other prefectures saw their population growth turn negative.
• Three-quarters of all cities and towns around the country suffered a population decline.

IT’S RAINING CASH

• One month after an anonymous donor left a bagful of cash for quake victims in a restroom at a city hall in Saitama, another nameless benefactor plopped down ¥40 million in a municipal building in Aomori.
• A note that was found with the cash requested that the money be divided equally among Miyagi, Iwate, Fukushima and Aomori prefectures.
• A fisherman in Iwate found a bag containing ¥11 million tangled up in his net, and returned it to city officials in Ofunato. It is likely that the bag was swept away by the tsunami, and if no one claims the money in six months, the fisherman will be swimming in cash.

Compiled from reports by AP, Japan Today, The Japan Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Asahi Shimbun, The Mainichi Daily News, Daily Yomiuri, AFP, Reuters and Kyodo