October 10, 2012

October 10, 2012

October 10, 2012

This week’s required reading

By

Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on October 2012

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS Sh*T UP

  • A 22-year-old Kanazawa man admitted that he burned down his own home in February because he feared his housebound lifestyle was turning him into a hermit.
  • A 28-year-old Tokyo Metro worker confessed to opening the doors of a moving express train on the Tobu Isesaki line—three times. “I did it because I was irritated,” he explained.
  • New Zealand Prime Minister John Key visited Tokyo to kick off a Hobbit-related tourism campaign dubbed “100% Middle-earth, 100% pure New Zealand.”
  • Headline of the Week: “Man on Trial for ¥500 Million Embezzlement Says He Did it for Love” (via The Mainichi)

YOUR TAX yen AT WORK

  • Prefectural authorities ordered a Kyoto man to destroy his collection of child porn DVDs by cutting them up with scissors.
  • Government officials say 249 municipalities failed to receive messages during a nationwide drill of the J-Alert emergency system, which is intended to “quickly [send] information on natural disasters, military attacks and other emergencies.”
  • Authorities in Osaka arrested a group of managers at a trading firm for receiving ¥10 million in employment aid despite the fact that their company “exists in name only and has no employees.”
  • A government taskforce has recommended that the definition of discrimination be expanded to include “a lack of consideration for the disabled.”

BY THE NUMBERS

  • The welfare ministry says that, for the 42nd year in a row, the number of centenarians in Japan has risen. There are now 51,376 people aged 100 or over, and 87 percent of them are women.
  • Meanwhile, the number of Japanese aged 65 or older passed the 30-million mark, and the number aged 75 and up topped 15 million.
  • The labor ministry says the number of middle-income households has dropped by 3 percentage points since 1999, while the number of low-income households has risen nearly 9 percent.
  • The TMG is hoping that “enhanced quake resistance measures” and “expanded firefighting steps” will cut deaths in the event of a major earthquake by about 30 percent.

HELPING HANDS

  • A new online forum called the Quit Smoking Marathon offers help for people who want to kick the nicotine habit. It’s staffed by 200 volunteers and costs ¥10,000 to join.
  • Eight companies, including Honda, Google and Twitter, announced an initiative to analyze internet traffic following the March 11 earthquake so that they can “support [future] disaster victims more effectively.”
  • Officials from ASEAN member states and Japan are studying the feasibility of “developing a power transmission grid throughout East Asia.”
  • Archaeologists working on a dig at a 4th century burial mound in Tainai, Niigata Prefecture, excavated a bronze mirror, lacquerware and magatama beads. The find suggests that “the ancient Yamato kingdom reached about 250 kilometers farther north than previously believed.”

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

  • After posting a job notice for 50 public school principals, the Osaka board of education was swamped with 1,282 applications from around the country.
  • Fifty-six percent of respondents to a newspaper poll say they’re in favor of amending the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution. Just 37 percent say it should be left unchanged.
  • Twenty-nine airports around the country are ready to introduce “a new screening device capable of detecting explosive material.”
  • Officials in Shizuoka decided to permanently cancel the Atami Yurakkusu Marathon, whose course winds along the coast. It’s feared that a major earthquake could cause a ten-meter tsunami to hit the area “in as little as two minutes.”

THE LONG ROAD HOME

  • A bell from Koenji Temple that was cast in 1728 and donated to the war effort in 1943 will be returned to Tokyo after spending the past 22 years at a temple in Kawaguchi.
  • A long-haired Siberian cat given by Russian President Vladimir Putin to the governor of Akita has been put in quarantine for six months while undergoing rabies checks.
  • A theater troupe from Ehime staged a musical at the Maly Theater in Moscow depicting the romance between a Russian POW and a Japanese nurse during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05).
  • A survey by the Japan Finance Corp. found that just 70.6 percent of Japanese shoppers prefer domestically produced food items—a record low.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

  • Researchers from Kinkai University have developed a patch made out of “a microscopically thin film that can coat individual teeth to prevent decay or to make them appear whiter.”
  • Prosecutors in Hyogo demanded a 42-month prison term for a former deputy police chief in connection with the deaths of 11 people who were trampled on a bridge following a fireworks show in 2001.
  • Someone hacked into the website of the Japanese Supreme Court and posted an image of a Chinese flag and a message “claiming China’s sovereignty over disputed East China Sea islands.”
  • Vicious cases of schoolyard violence have been grabbing all the headlines recently, but the education ministry says that the number of bullying cases has actually dropped by nearly 10 percent during the past year.

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