Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on September 2011

GOOD LOVIN’ GONE BAD

• A 42-year-old man in Italy was charged with killing his 24-year-old girlfriend after binding her to her friend with rope after a night of clubbing. The trio was apparently “performing a Japanese sado-masochist technique known as shibari” when things went wrong and one of the girls suffocated.
• A jeweler in Otsu put 14 small 0.01-carat diamonds on sale for ¥100 each to try to bring people into his store. It worked—over 20 people lined up in front of the shop before it opened.
• A soccer game in the Belgian League was stopped when Japanese goalkeeper Eiji Kawashima took exception to opposing fans chanting “Kawashima, Fukushima.” An enraged Kawashima left the field in tears and later called the chants “unforgiveable.”
• The lone surviving pine tree out of thousands on tsunami-hit Takata Matsubara beach in Iwate Prefecture is in failing health with dead buds, discolored pine cones, and brown leaves. Damaged roots are thought to be the cause and a hotter-than-hell summer didn’t help.
• A small wooden boat with nine people on board was stopped by the Coast Guard in the Sea of Japan near the Noto Peninsula. One passenger told officers that the boat was from North Korea and they were trying to get to South Korea.
• A capsule house designed in the 1960s by famed “Metabolist” architect Kisho Kurokawa was put on display in Roppongi.
• Japanese teen actors Shota Sometani and Fumi Nikaido won the Marcello Mastroianni Award for best young actor and actress at the Venice International Film Festival for their work in a movie called Himizu.
• Another Japanese film, Kotoko, took home the festival’s Orizzonti award for “full-length feature films that reflect new trends in international film.”
• The 13-year-old son of a Japanese banker killed in the World Trade Center attacks in 2001 gave an emotional speech at the Ground Zero ceremony in New York honoring the victims on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
• Two Russian bombers buzzed Japanese airspace, prompting Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura to send a protest to Moscow through diplomatic channels.
• A 24-year-old Chiba man was arrested for stealing money from the bank account of a female university student and killing her by suffocating her with a plastic bag.

BEACH BLANKET SUMO

• Takuya Kagata has taken sumo wrestling to the beaches of Japan as executive director of the Nippon Beach Sumo Association. He says tourneys have already been held in Chiba, Kanagawa, and Hyogo, with up to 60 people taking part in each beach basho.
• A 27-year-old Japanese woman was found dead amongst the mangroves in Fiji, making her the fourth foreigner to die under suspicious circumstances in the South Pacific island nation since July.
• An air-traffic controller working the overnight shift at Naha airport in Okinawa dozed off on the job, just as one ANA cargo flight was ready to land and another was set to take off.
• A train on the JR Yokohama Line accidentally left Higashi-Kanagawa Station with no passengers or conductor aboard. After realizing his mistake, the driver stopped the train at the next station and waited for the conductor to arrive, who rushed to the station by taxi.
• Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa should be brought back down to Earth in November, when the Russian space agency will send a Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station to replace the crew.
• PM of the Month Yoshihiko Noda launched a blog “to explain to the public (his) views and his government’s key policies.” Sounds like good times for all. Check out “Kantei Kawaraban” at http://kawaraban.kantei.go.jp.
• The Hokkaido city of Kushiro is giving Taiwan the bird—literally. Kushiro is lending two red-crowned cranes, which have been designated a special national natural treasure here, to a Taipei zoo.

KEEP YOUR SHORTS ON, FREDDIE

• Swedish midfielder and former underwear model Freddie Ljungberg joined the J. League’s Shimizu S-Pulse. A news report said his new teammates were “gushing about the kicking motion” of the 34-year-old ex-Arsenal star.
• Three pirates attacked a Japanese-operated chemical tanker in the Strait of Malacca in a midnight raid that only netted them a life ring after someone raised the alarm.
• The president of JR Hokkaido went missing after leaving behind apparent suicide notes. Reports said he was “stressed out” from dealing with a train derailment in May.
• There are expected to be a record 45,756 people in Japan this year aged 100 or older, a health ministry survey revealed, including Jirouemon Kimura who, at 114, is deemed the world’s oldest man by the Guinness Book of Records.
• A Portuguese man was caught smuggling nearly 3kg of methamphetamines through Osaka’s airport from South Africa. He had the drugs, worth about ¥270 million, stuffed in a bag and backpack.

LIVIN’ ON A PRAYER

• The boss of a cult/company based in Yamanashi called Shinsekai was arrested for swindling people out of some ¥13 million by “pitching so-called spiritual-pressure sales” that involved exorbitant prayer fees.
• A large tortoise indigenous to central and northern Africa was found cruising the streets of Chiba before being taken away by local police. Likely an escaped pet, the big fella was still waiting for someone to claim him at press time.
• Sentence of the Week: “About 600 people visit Urakawa, Hokkaido, in late August each year to attend the two-day Bethel Festival, a hallucination and delusion competition for those suffering from alcoholism and other mental illnesses.” (via The Mainichi Daily News)
• Researchers at the Meteorological Research Institute and the Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry said radioactive cesium released into the sea in Fukushima “is likely to flow back to Japan’s coast in 20 to 30 years after circulating in the northern Pacific Ocean in a clockwise pattern.”

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.