Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on October 2010

Foreign intrigue

• Hanshin Tigers’ carrot-topped outfielder Matt Murton has become so popular in the Kansai area that conbini chain Family Mart has named both a rice ball and a lunch box after him.
• DPJ Secretary General Katsuya Okada didn’t exactly help Japan’s strained relations with China when he called the country “undemocratic.”
• In Kagoshima, a 58-year-old man fell to his death when he climbed into his ex-wife’s apartment through an eighth-floor balcony with a can of gas to set fire to the place. His ex was unharmed.
• Line of the Week:“You now have more reason to visit Japan: Paris Hilton isn’t allowed into the country.” (via the Calgary Herald)

Your tax dollars at work

• It was learned that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government employed a female librarian for over 20 years on a series of short-term temp contracts so they wouldn’t have to pay her commuting costs or give her health insurance.
• Railroad buffs were out in force as Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko cruised around Chiba Prefecture in a special six-car train built exclusively for the Imperial Family.
• The internal affairs ministry revealed that 13 municipalities around the country are at risk of bankruptcy. That’s down from 21 a year ago.
• Ten countries, including Japan, Australia, Canada, the UAE and Chile, formed an organization “to promote nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation as a step toward eventually realizing a world without nuclear weapons.”

News from the animal kingdom

• It was so hot this summer that five Humboldt penguins at Toyama Municipal Family Park Zoo died from heatstroke. Overheard shortly thereafter at the Toyama Zoo concession stand: “Man, this fried chicken tastes a little gamey.”
• A wayward kangaroo was captured in a Shiga Prefecture rice field after it had escaped from a local petting zoo.
• A dead tropical bottlenose whale was found washed ashore on a Hokkaido beach, marking the farthest north the species has ever been observed.
• Headline of the Week: “Stewed Gizzards Win Good Food Prize” (via The Asahi Shimbun)

Sic transit

• A robot named Evolta, powered by the eponymous Panasonic batteries, set out on a trek from Nihonbashi to Kyoto along the Tokaido route—a 500km journey expected to be completed sometime around the middle of November. Four women, billed as “Evolta Sisters,” are guiding the robot with infrared equipment.
• After some horse’s ass broke it in transit, an equestrian ornament dating back to the 6th century that had been designated a national treasure was fixed and returned to the Kyushu National Museum.
• After winning his latest title, Hakuho spent the night hobnobbing with Rocky and Rambo star Sylvester Stallone and fellow-actor Dolph Lundgren, showing the pair of Hollywood boys what a real fighter looks like.

THE NAKED AND THE CRISP

• Participants in Chiba’s Ohara Hadaka Matsuri (“Ohara naked man festival”) got a jolt when lightning struck, injuring 34 people carrying shrines, two of them seriously.
• In a bid to crash Apple’s iPad party, Sharp is rolling out its new portable e-reader called Galapagos. The company says the tablet will be “adopting a unique evolutionary path of using Japanese technology and design to match the needs of the Japanese user.” (Does that mean we will now be spared grown men reading pornographic manga on the train?)
• After paying ¥17 million a year for the naming rights to Miyashita Park in Shibuya-ku, Nike came up with the catchy “Miyashita Nike Park” moniker.

The Crime Files

• A man was arrested after dumping two bodies in a forest near Chiba. The three were part of a suicide pact, but one guy got cold feet and couldn’t go through with it.
• A 29-year-old man who choked to death a young woman in a Tokyo hotel room after “an argument over money” escaped out a window and fled to Yokohama, before heading back to Shibuya to fess up at a friend’s suggestion.
• The MPD’s new “cold case” squad has made its first homicide arrest, using DNA evidence to collar a suspect in a nine-year-old murder.
• The National Police Agency said that there were 181 cases in which people were arrested for child abuse during the first six months of 2010, the highest since 2000.

The Bold & the beautiful

• After 39-year-old Japanese tennis player Kimiko Date ousted defending champion (and Russian glamour queen) Maria Sharapova, 23, at the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo last month, one reporter remarked that it was “like Mary Ann beating Ginger.” We think the Gilligan’s Island reference is apt, though we’d say it was more like Mrs. Howell knocking off the sultry Ginger.
• A high school in Iwate was getting tired of all the overgrown weeds nearby, so they brought in a bunch of hungry sheep to take care of business.
• Bottom Story of the Week: “Princess Aiko Goes Home from School on Foot for First Time this Year” (via The Mainichi Daily News)

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