Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on September 2010

LESSONS LEARNED

• A male teacher at a school for the blind in Saga was arrested for stealing a woman’s underwear from a Fukuoka laundromat while dressed as a “hot blonde in a miniskirt.”
• In Hokkaido, an elementary school principal was busted for using his cellphone camera to film up a woman’s skirt at a shopping mall.
• A recent spike in shoplifting by lonely old-age pensioners has led Tokyo police to “enlist first-time offenders in volunteer work and take them out for karaoke sessions and to public baths.”
• A 30-year-old hiker from Tokyo was rescued from a mountain in Saitama Prefecture after surviving for nearly two weeks on candies and water.
• Not to be outdone, a 61-year-old woman who got lost after embarking on a four-day solo mountain-climbing trip survived for over two weeks in the Kita Alps by drinking stream water.
• Climbers from Kyoto University who scaled Afghanistan’s highest peak, Mount Nowshak, 50 years ago got together with their rivals in the Polish village of Harklowa for an emotional reunion. In 1960, the Japanese and Poles were both vying to be the first to scale Nowshak. The Japan team reached the summit first, but they credit the Poles for helping them with food and equipment. (Insert Polish joke here.)

CRAZY TRAINING

Illustration by Enrique Balducci

• Ten-year-old Japanese guitar prodigy Yuto Miyazawa made such an impression on his idol Ozzy Osbourne that the rock’n’roll relic took him along on his 2010 Ozzfest tour.
• A 26-year-old bassist from Kanagawa was arrested for breaking into a musician’s home and stealing five double basses and some other stuff worth ¥53 million.
• For the first time in Japan LPGA Tour history, twin sisters played a round together when Keiko and Noriko Kubo, both 23, shared the same grouping at the Nitori Ladies tournament in Hokkaido. Unsurprisingly, the twins shot identical 2-over-par 74s in the first round.
• A Mainichi Shimbun report revealed that officials at the Tokyo Detention Center execution venue are only made aware of impending executions when the center calls them and asks, “Are you free tomorrow?”
• The Azabu Police Station in Roppongi revealed that credit-card scams targeting foreigners have been running rampant in the area over the past year.
• Eikichi Sokokurai, originally known as Enhetubuxin, became the first Chinese wrestler to reach sumo’s makuuchi division. The 26-year-old from Inner Mongolia “spent his childhood living in a yurt and tending farm animals.”
• In Matsuyama, an apparently jilted psycho stabbed his ex-girlfriend and her mom before stabbing himself in a fit of rage. He and his ex survived the ordeal, but the mother was not so lucky.
• A court in Bali sentenced a 31-year-old construction worker to 20 years behind bars for killing a Japanese woman, robbing her, then having sex with her dead body. “The defendant committed a crime forbidden by all religions,” said the judge. Ya think?

SHAKIN’ ALL OVER

• The Tokyo District Court ordered Odakyu Railway to shell out ¥11.52 million to 42 plaintiffs over “excessive noise and vibrations caused by the company’s operations.”
• Yokohama cops raided several former brothels that were being illegally sublet as mini-apartments and flophouses. “I knew I was violating the law, but I was always too busy to obtain a license,” said a 47-year-old man involved in the case.
• Two men in Nagoya pepper-sprayed a woman in the face before snatching her purse. Talk about adding injury to insult!
• In Shizuoka, monkeys running wild have been wreaking havoc with the locals, biting and scratching 43 people over a four-day period in August. A task force was set up to deal with the pesky primates.

THE HEAT IS ON

• As sumo attempts to distance itself from yakuza ties, it was revealed that part of a building lot in Osaka owned by the Japan Sumo Association was being leased by a gang affiliated with the Yamaguchi-gumi crime syndicate.
• It was reported that women working the Japan pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo 2010 “have been banned from mingling with men from other countries.”
• A travel agency in Fukuoka told the Japanese government it was sorry for organizing tours to Kunashiri, a Russian-held island claimed by Japan, and vowed not to do it again.
• It was revealed that 2,600 Koreans were forced to work for the Japanese military in World War II and then interned in Hawaii after being captured by Allied forces in the South Pacific.

HERE & THERE

• Researchers from the National Institute of Polar Research discovered grains of sand about 3.75 billion years old at the Kurobe Gorge in Toyama. They are the oldest ever found in Japan.
• Ryo Miyaichi, a 17-year-old striker from Nagoya, will join English Premier League club Arsenal after a successful tryout with the Gunners in August.
• Toshiro Igari, a 61-year-old prosecutor and lawyer who wrote books on fighting organized crime, apparently killed himself in Manila by slashing his wrists.
• TV tarento Yukina Kinoshita, 22, and 39-year-old comedian Toshifumi Fujimoto got hitched after meeting on a variety show. This matchup has “longevity” written all over it.
• Famed conductor Seiji Ozawa, 74, who recently had an operation for esophageal cancer, apologized for reducing the number of pieces he was to conduct at a festival in Nagano in September due to back pain. Geez, don’t be so tough on yourself, Seiji.
• The health ministry selected four dads as “the stars of ikumen” (child-rearing men) for their efforts in helping to raise their kids. Among them were “a disabled worker at a daycare center for the elderly… and a househusband in his 30s in Hokkaido.”

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