Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on September 2011

Puck Daddies

• A hockey team made up of Canadian Navy personnel whose ship, the HMCS Ottawa, was docked in Tokyo, took on local expat club the Tokyo Canadians. The locals skated to a 4-3 win, but the sailors proved they were anything but losers, donating CDN$7,000 to earthquake and tsunami relief efforts in Tohoku.

ANNALS OF BIZARRE CRIME

• A policeman in Aomori was gravely wounded after being accidentally shot by another cop during a scuffle with a man who had just slashed his mother with a samurai sword.
• Police in Chiba say a nursing home employee who attacked a pair of female coworkers with a metal bat was “venting his anger” after being spurned by one of the victims.
• A thief broke into a museum in Chiba dedicated to former PM Kantaro Suzuki (1868-1948). Among the items stolen were “a cigarette case and an inkstone case that Suzuki had prized, as well as a rabbit-shaped ornament.”
• The National Police Agency says the recent decrease in the number of loan-sharking crimes can be attributed to its “enhanced crackdown.”

BREAKTHROUGHS

• JAL’s first-ever commercial flight with an all-female crew lifted off from Osaka to Kumamoto earlier this month. The plane was operated by J-Air, a JAL subsidiary.
• Doctors in Osaka performed the world’s first lung transplant on a sufferer of a rare respiratory disorder known as Erdheim-Chester disease.
• A professor at the University of Tsukuba conducted an experiment in which he attempted to “produce oil with the use of algae.”
• The governments of Colombia and Japan have begun talks aimed at establishing a free trade agreement between the two countries.

YEAH, THANKS FOR THAT…

• At a ceremony in Boston, the president of the Japan-America Society of New Hampshire was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette. The honor was in recognition of the man’s efforts to promote “friendly Japan-US relations by raising awareness of the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth,” whatever that is.
• Reassuring absolutely no one, newly installed Defense Minister Yasuo Ichikawa labeled himself an “amateur” when it comes to national security issues.
• Meanwhile, the new justice minister “expressed reluctance” about enforcing the death penalty.
• An advisory council reporting to the culture minister recommended that Japan nominate Mt Fuji and the city of Kamakura as UNESCO World Heritage sites.
• One year after the Akatsuki planetary probe failed in its attempt to enter the orbit of Venus, JAXA says the spacecraft may be capable of making another try in 2015.

IT TAKES ALL KINDS

• A Tokyo-based organization called Japan Rainbow Aid is helping “sexual minorities” in areas affected by the March 11 disaster.
• After making a surprise donation of ¥100 million to her local city hall, a 79-year-old Saitama woman said she had saved the money from her job “little by little.”
• About 18,000 servings of potato stew were ladled out at a festival in Yamagata. The nabe used to cook the meal measured 6 meters in diameter, and a big banner assured diners “No radioactive materials found.”
• A recent survey revealed that 46 percent of Japanese people are against increased immigration, while just 23 percent are in favor.

IN HOT WATER

• It was reported that, one year after a Chinese fishing boat collided with two Japanese Coast Guard ships near the disputed Senkaku Islands, authorities in Beijing have prohibited the captain of the boat “from ever going back to sea.”
• That incident may be a motivating factor behind the recent agreement between Japan and China to establish a “a maritime information liaison system.”
• At the same time, China’s agriculture ministry has dispatched three ships to the waters around the disputed Paracel islands in the South China Sea to “protect [its] sea sovereignty and fishery interests.”
• Sentence of the Week: “South Korea’s Constitutional Court ruled Tuesday that it is unconstitutional for the South Korean government to make no specific effort to resolve a dispute with Japan over its refusal to directly compensate women for their sexual enslavement during Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.” (via Kyodo)

DOWN AND OUT

• The labor ministry announced that 2,031,587 people in Japan are on welfare, just shy of the record of 2.04 million set in the years after World War II.
• With the retirement of veteran Kaio in July, the autumn sumo basho is the first in 18 years to have no Japanese wrestlers in the top two ranks of ozeki or yokozuna.
• Relatives of Japanese abducted by North Korea in the ’70s and ’80s say they are “dismayed” by the DPJ’s constant shuffling of the minister in charge of the issue.
• Honda is recalling nearly one million Fit models worldwide after it was discovered that a power window switch “could partially melt and its cover could catch fire.”
• Meanwhile, one day after unveiling its all-new Camry in Japan, Toyota announced that it would cease exports of the car to North America. Instead, it will release only locally produced vehicles in the market.

FALLOUT

• It was reported that some Japanese Christians are being forced to choose between attending church or going to work because many companies have switched to weekend business hours as part of the nationwide energy-saving effort.
• At the same time, the government says it doesn’t expect to ask large corporations to continue their power-conservation activities this winter.
• The National Police Agency now believes that fewer than 20,000 people were killed in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The official number of dead and missing stands at 19,996 after “some people who had been listed as missing have been found to be alive.”
• Bottom Story of the Week: “Shizuoka Side of Mt. Fuji Source of More Emergency Calls Than Yamanashi Side.” (via The Mainichi Daily News)

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