Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on October 2011

YA DON’T SAY

• Typhoon Roke didn’t slow down testing of a new maglev high-speed train in Yamanashi Prefecture, which apparently passed with flying colors during the storm.
• Two guys who run a company in Hokkaido called alibi.com—that makes up bogus background info for people applying for loans, jobs, etc—were in trouble with Johnny Law… for making up bogus info. “Since that’s our business, we provided a false explanation,” reasoned one of the accused.
• Yakult Swallows outfielder Aaron Guiel hung up the cleats after a five-year spell in Japan that saw him belt 90 home runs. Back injuries forced the former MLB player to call it a career and head back to his native Canada.
• A story in The Asahi Shimbun said a 132-meter long ferry called the Yotei Maru 2, docked at a maritime museum in Odaiba, can be yours for the taking, provided you have a place to moor the vessel.
• Not surprisingly, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism reported that “land prices have tumbled in the three prefectures of northeastern Japan most affected by the March 11 disaster.” Some property in Miyagi Prefecture has plummeted more than 18 percent. Now that’s a toxic market.
• On the other side of the coin, a spokeswoman for the Candle House chain said that sales of candles increased about 50 percent after March 11.
• Yukio Akagariyama became the first Japanese billiards player to win the World 9-Ball Championship in 13 years when he beat Ronnie Alcano of the Philippines in the final in Doha.
• au will start selling Apple’s iPhone in Japan, and local cellphone producers fear the worst.
• In other news from the cellphone sector, NTT DoCoMo is coming out with a phone that has a cover, or jacket, capable of “measuring bad breath, body fat and even radiation.”
• A security guard working on a cash delivery truck in Saitama was shot in both knees by a man who snatched a bag from him before taking off on a motorbike. The bag reportedly contained only a few documents and no cash.

PLAYING GOD

• Japanese couples are paying about ¥1.5 million a shot in Thailand for a procedure that can ensure the sex of their baby, which is illegal in Japan because it could lead to selective breeding.
• Mongolian yokozuna Hakuho won his 20th Emperor’s Cup at the Autumn Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo with a 13-2 record.
• Kotoshogiku, meanwhile, went 12-3 at the autumn basho to secure promotion to ozeki, the only Japanese currently in the top two ranks of sumo, Japan’s national sport.
• A group of supporters of South Korean soccer club Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors hung a banner at an AFC Champions League match against Japan’s visiting Cerezo Osaka proclaiming, “We celebrate BIG EARTHQUAKE.” Mighty neighborly of them…
• In a related item, Japanese girl group AKB48 put on a free concert in Shanghai “to show their gratitude for Chinese support for Japan following the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake.” Now that’s more like it but we’re not sure what’s worse—seeing a banner that rejoices in a national tragedy or having to listen to an AKB48 concert.
• A portable brain scanner that looks like a pair of headphones worn sideways, developed by a research team from Tohoku University and Hitachi, “could provide new insights into how people think during meetings, in school classes and on sports fields.”
• Philandering golfer and former world No. 1 Tiger Woods will play a charity event here in November called “Challenge! Tiger Woods” with Japan LPGA threesome Miho Koga, Shinobu Moromizato and Rui Kitada. The real challenge will be for Woods to keep his hands off the girls for a few hours.
• According to The Tokyo Reporter, a Sapporo sex shop called Olive Garden announced on its blog “that it would not honor patrons hailing from TEPCO—in fact, it joked that the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima had sapped some of their virility in any case.”

KIDS TODAY

• Also from the files of the TR, a 56-year-old senior adviser with the Japan Pension Service was arrested for violating prostitution and pornography statutes regarding child welfare after hiring a 14-year-old junior high hooker for ¥20,000.
• A 16-year-old Sapporo girl who was arrested for using drugs told cops “she was forced into prostitution while still in elementary school to pay for her mother’s drug habit.”
• A survey by the Japanese Society of Child Health showed that the number of kids aged 1 to 6 who go to bed at 10pm or later is down 40 percent from 10 years ago.
• The wife of a Sendai high school teacher will spend 11 years in the slammer after her lover and a sushi shop owner killed her 56-year-old husband with a baseball bat. “She took part in the murder in order to obtain tranquility in her life with her second daughter and a pet dog,” said the judge who ordered the sentence.
• Researchers at Kyushu University’s Space Environment Research Center have discovered that “the frequency of mega earthquakes increases during periods when the sun has fewer sunspots,” which was the case on March 11.
• After scaling the Grand Canyon and taking part in the 24 Hours of LeMans, Panasonic’s Evolta robot will take a crack at a triathlon in Hawaii. Actually, this time there will be three robots—one that swims, another that rides a bike and one that runs—trying to cover a combined distance of 230km in a week.
• A 13-year-old girl in Kumamoto Prefecture drowned after being tied to a chair by her father and a priest and doused with water multiple times as part of an exorcism procedure.
• Bottom Story of the Week, courtesy of The Mainichi Daily News: “Princess Aiko goes to school without parents for first time in 1.5 years”

THIEVES AMONG US

• A group of four men were arrested in Aichi Prefecture for illegally catching wild falcons and other endangered birds.
• A 43-year-old jewel thief from Montenegro, who was part of the so-called “Pink Panther” gang, was sentenced to ten years in prison by a Tokyo court for his part in a daring 2007 diamond heist in Ginza.
• An exhibition of glass artwork from Russia’s State Hermitage Museum scheduled to be held in Gunma Prefecture was called off over Russian concerns about radiation contamination.
• The NHK television network won its first International Emmy Award in the current affairs category for “Back from the Brink: Inside the Chilean Mine Disaster.”
• According to a secret cable released by WikiLeaks, a senior official at Japan’s Foreign Ministry told US ambassador in Tokyo John Roos that “it would be premature for US President Barack Obama to visit the atomic-bombed city of Hiroshima during his November 2009 trip to Japan.” He didn’t.

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