Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on November 2010

Smooth moves

• Some genius at the investment firm that has taken over operations of the disgraced Nova eikaiwa chain and the bankrupt Geos has rebranded the schools “Nova X Geos.”
• A 55-year-old assistant chief on the Ibaraki police force was arrested for kicking the driver’s seat of a taxi and breaking the protective plastic shield that separates the driver from the passenger.
• A 32-year-old Kobe man who went on a 141kph joyride on a highway in Ehime was busted after posting a video of his exploits on YouTube.
• In what is being described as an “unusual” move for a Japanese corporation, Uniqlo’s parent company, Fast Retailing Co., will send 20 university students per year on an overseas internship program.

By the numbers

• A survey by the National Police Agency found that 13.7 percent of women have been victims of groping during the past year and that 89 percent of them did not report the case to the police.
• For the first time since 2004, there was a year-on-year increase in the amount of beer shipped between July and September. The record hot summer was likely a factor.
• Meanwhile, cigarette sales rose 80 percent in September compared to a year earlier thanks to last-minute buying ahead of the October 1 tax increase on tobacco.
• In a related bit of news, it was reported that Pfizer Japan Inc. is experiencing “soaring demand” for its Champix antismoking aid.

Uh-oh

• Investment guru J. Kyle Bass, who made a mint on the US subprime collapse, said that “Japan’s economy may unravel in the next two to three years” and that “investors could make 50 to 100 times their capital betting on Japanese interest rate swaps.”
• In its annual assessment of gender equality, the World Economic Forum has ranked Japan 94th out of 134 countries. That’s actually an improvement over last year, when Japan ranked 101st.
• For the 13th time since it was installed in August 2001, the “peace clock” at the atomic bomb museum in Hiroshima has been set back following a test by the US of a nuclear device in September.
• It was reported that workers at the Monju nuclear reactor in Fukui have made 24 unsuccessful attempts to remove a 12m-long, 3.3-ton piece of equipment that was accidentally dropped during maintenance work and became lodged in an opening in the reactor vessel.

Milestones

• For the first time ever in Japan, a woman who received a kidney transplant has given birth. The new mom, who is in her 40s, delivered a baby boy at Osaka University Hospital.
• Ahead of next week’s APEC summit in Yokohama, a police bomb unit conducted Japan’s first-ever antiterrorism drill on a shinkansen. The exercise took place at Shin-Osaka station.


Courtesy of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries

• Sign of the times: a mass electronics retailer will operate a shop in Ginza for the first time when Laox opens a branch inside Matsuzakaya department store.
• Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has unveiled a massive container ship that cuts CO2 emissions by 35 percent. The vessel uses an “air lubrication system” to reduce the “frictional resistance between the hull and seawater by running air bubbles along the bottom.”
• JAXA announced that it will shift the focus of its astronaut training programs to Russia ahead of NASA’s planned retiring of its space shuttle fleet next year.

Wild wildlife

• A 3-year-old female black bear weighing 58kg entered a hospital in Fukui and injured a nurse before being shot dead by a team of “local hunters and prefectural and city employees.”
• The next day, a 1.3m-tall male black bear entered a junior high school in Yamagata and injured a custodian before being shot dead by members of a local hunting club.
• It was reported that central and local governments will hold a “large-scale” deer cull on Yakushima island in Kagoshima to help preserve local plant species.
• After receiving a tip that a 24-year-old prefectural police officer was using marijuana, investigators in Hyogo found the man to be in possession of 2 grams of the evil weed.

Round & round

• It was reported that 64.62 million people have visited the Shanghai World Exposition since it began on May 1, breaking the previous record of 63 million set by the 1970 Osaka expo.
• Three people were injured when a freak tornado hit the city of Tainai in Niigata. Sixty-five buildings were damaged, and the economic toll was estimated at ¥4 million.
• Saitama Prefecture is said to be looking into a plan that would allow its emergency helicopters to charge for rescue operations.
• The US State Department lauded Inpex—Japan’s largest energy exploration firm—for withdrawing from an oil field project in Iran.
• The foreign ministry has translated into Chinese a webpage called “The Basic View on the Sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands.”

And finally…

• Inmates at a women’s prison in Yamaguchi are being asked to wash and mend children’s clothing that will then be donated to Tanzania.
• A local man was killed and a worker injured when a “massive amount of steam” erupted out of a geothermal power plant in Miyagi.
• A 17-year-old female high school student in Gifu was “killed almost instantly” after being crushed under a wall that was part of a building being demolished.
• It was reported that sales at department stores suffered their 31st consecutive year-on-year decline in September.
• Toyota has paid US-based Tesla Motors some $60 million to develop an all-electric version of its popular RAV4 SUV.
• Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group said it hopes to increase lending in China to ¥1 trillion in the next year or so, and to boost its number of Chinese affiliates to 20 from the current 12.
• Bottom Story of the Week: “Baby Monkeys Promoted to Stationmasters at Local Railway Station” (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