Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on November 2012

PARTY HARD

• A 24-year-old Sudanese man was busted with 1.7kg of coke, 38g of meth and 600g of pot at his pad in Setagaya. He told police the drugs belonged to a friend.
• The former chairman of papermaking giant Daio Corp. was sentenced to four years in prison for squandering ¥5.53 billion of company money on gambling sprees in Macao and Singapore.
• Railway operator Odakyu is organizing a machikon excursion to Enoshima for 400 singles aboard a specially chartered Romancecar train.
• Sentence of the Week: “A 60-year-old Metropolitan Police Department superintendent who had been in charge of corruption investigations allegedly misappropriated about ¥200,000 from investigation budgets to eat and drink with his subordinates, sources said.” (via The Daily Yomiuri)

RAILROADED

• A pair of junior high school students helped foil an “Ore ore” scam by using a cellphone to film two con men taking a bag containing ¥2 million in cash from a little old lady in Shirokane-Takanawa station.
• Officials at JR East hope a recently restored vintage steam locomotive will help revive tourism in earthquake-ravaged Tohoku.
• About 20 police officers and other officials in Miyazaki City spent five hours in hot pursuit of a… 50cm-long male monkey. The beast was eventually cornered and shot with a tranquilizer dart before being released into local mountains.
• Investigators believe “multiple assailants” were involved in the fatal beating of a homeless man who was found collapsed near JR Osaka station last month.

NEWS FROM THE IVORY TOWER

• A Meiji University professor offered his resignation after admitting that parts of a paper he published in an academic journal were plagiarized from a colleague’s blog.
• Research conducted by a lecturer at the Tokai University School of Medicine suggests that people who attempt suicide are much less likely to try and kill themselves again if they receive psychiatric care immediately after being admitted to a hospital.
• Among the emergency supplies that a Kobe-based disaster-preparedness institute is encouraging people to carry wherever they go are “drinking water, nutritional candies and a small flashlight.” But officials add that everyone should make their own decisions “according to your lifestyle and needs.”
• Saiichi Maruya, an Akutagawa Prize-winning novelist who translated James Joyce’s Ulysses into Japanese, died of heart failure in Tokyo at age 87.

FEELING THE ENERGY

• Forecasters at utility companies around the country are predicting that they will “secure at least 3 percent surplus power this winter.”
• Officials at Hitachi were bummed after voters in Lithuania nixed plans to build the country’s first nuclear power plant, which would have likely used the company’s technology.
• For the first time since 1933, the TMG will buy privately held land located in mountain forests. The purpose is to protect “water catchment areas upstream of rivers or near dams.”
• It was reported that a medical center which opened in Kanagawa last July to deal with “internet-related addiction” has already treated 85 patients—70 percent of whom are middle and high school students.

HERE & THERE

• It was announced that 27-year-old Japanese ballerina Kiyoka Hashimoto has been promoted to the position of solo dancer at the State Opera House in Vienna.
• Fujitsu has released a smartphone app that “that provides lifestyle and educational support to children with developmental disabilities.”
• Officials at Honda say that worldwide sales of its hybrid vehicles passed the 1 million mark in September. It took 12 years, 11 months to reach the milestone.
• Bottom Story of the Week: “Foreign Employee Named Lawson Working at Lawson” (via Japan Today)

Compiled from reports by AP, Japan Today, The Japan Times, Jiji, The Tokyo Reporter, Japan Probe, The Mainichi, Daily Yomiuri, AFP, Reuters and Kyodo