Tag: Random Japan

HITTING THE ROOF

The TMG discovered that opium poppies were being sold at home improvement centers in Tokyo and 18 other prefectures.

A tanker truck spilled 18 metric tons of milk after overturning in a single-vehicle accident in Shiga Prefecture late last month. The 32-year-old driver suffered minor injuries, mostly to his ego.

The education ministry announced that the number of Japanese studying abroad has declined every year since 2004.

A collection of drawings of coal miners by artist Sakubei Yamamoto (1892-1984) are the first Japanese works that UNESCO will list as a “Memory of the World.”

Two Japanese climbers were killed-likely by an avalanche-after summiting Mt. McKinley in Alaska.

Panasonic and eight other companies have banded together to build a “sustainable smart town” in Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture. The village will feature, among other energy-saving devices, “a system for sharing electric vehicles.”

RECORD HAUL

Mongolian yokozuna Hakuho won his seventh straight grand sumo tournament with a 13-2 record, equaling the record of former sumo bad-ass Asashoryu.

A pair of masked men made off with ¥604 million after strong-arming a dozing security guard at a Tachikawa depot that handles cash deposits from the Tokyo Central Post Office. It was the biggest cash heist ever in Japan.

Sony was hit by more bad news when it was revealed that an “online intruder” accessed one if its subsidiaries and pinched over $1,200 worth of redeemable gift points.

The breach pales, of course, to an earlier one on Sony’s PlayStation Network and Online Entertainment services that “compromised the personal information” of over 100 million accounts.

Then later, Sony revealed that “personal info on 8,500 customers of its online music service in Greece may have been leaked due to a cyber attack, while similar assaults by hackers occurred in Thailand and Indonesia as well.”

So it might not come as a surprise that Sony said it was expecting to be in the red again in fiscal 2010 for the third year in a row with a group net loss of ¥260 billion, its biggest hit since 1995. They’re blaming this one on the March 11 earthquake.

As expected, the March 11 earthquake and nuclear accident resulted in a huge drop off in the number of foreign visitors to Japan in April (295,800), down a record 62.5 percent from a year earlier, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization.

BTW, April 2011 was the first month with less than 300,000 visitors since May 2003, when the SARS epidemic was all the rage in Asia.

HIGH-TECH JAPAN

The justice ministry is considering a plan to keep tabs on furloughed prisoners using “GPS-equipped cellphones and […] small devices attached to the wrist or ankle.”

Good times for keitai companies: NTT Docomo, KDDI and SoftBank all logged increases in their net profits and operating profits in fiscal 2010.

Meanwhile, NTT Docomo announced a tie-up with Twitter that will allow tweets to show up in iMode search results.

Japan and 20 other nations have adopted the Nagoya Protocol, which is “is aimed at setting rules for the use of genetic resources.”

Japan expressed its displeasure to Russia over a visit by Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov to the disputed northern islands last month.

Satoshi Furukawa, a 47-year-old former surgeon from Tokyo, will begin a five-and-a-half-month stint on the International Space Station this week.

LAKE OF SORROWS

A University of Tokyo graduate student noted that a severely quake-damaged area in Fukushima is thought to have been the same location where the very large Lake Koriyama existed 100,000 years ago. A mere coincidence? We think not.

Kids evacuated from tsunami-hit areas and evacuees staying at the Grand Prince Hotel Akasaka took part in a tug-of-war with jet airplanes at Haneda Airport, part of the “Smile! Be Happy!” campaign.

Here we go again … TEPCO said it found “an abnormality” in a valve at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata, used to pump cool water to reactors in the event of an emergency.

Meanwhile, TEPCO President Masataka Shimizu was on his knees during a trip to Fukushima, apologizing to people forced to evacuate by the nuclear crisis. Not satisfied with his apology, one guy had yelled, “Kneel on the ground!” Shimizu and his lackeys did just that.

Scientists are looking at using rape plants to extract harmful radiation out of the soil in Fukushima-something they have been trying out in areas near Chernobyl.

Speaking of which, levels of radiation found in soil near Fukushima’s plant “far exceeded the level of radiation the then-Soviet Union had used as a criterion for urging people to evacuate at the time of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster,” according to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy.

US researchers say that debris from the March 11 tsunami will hit the West Coast of North America in three years and twice be deposited in Hawaii, “leading to potential environmental and economic damage” by affecting fishing and shipping.

The International Pacific Research Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa said debris from Japan, including parts of buildings and cars, will reach Hawaiian waters in 2012 and in 2014 the floating garbage will land in “California and Alaska in the United States, British Columbia in Canada and Baja California in Mexico.”

A government study revealed that fires and the March 11 tsunami destroyed over 1,600 hectares of forest in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures.

FOREIGN INTRIGUE

The defense ministry said that the number of sorties flown by the ASDF “to intercept foreign aircraft flying near Japanese airspace” surged by 29 percent in 2010.

Ten Japanese tourists were injured when their sightseeing bus hit a wall in Seoul.

After the Japanese Embassy in France lodged a complaint with a local TV station for airing a program that mocked the March 11 disaster, the network responded by saying that its show “criticizes anything and is not a news program.”

The University of Arkansas-Fort Smith has set up a scholarship fund for “two Japanese students who want to study abroad but face financial difficulties because of the [March 11] disaster.”

Three North Koreans who had been granted asylum at a Japanese consulate in northeastern China were given permission by Beijing to leave for Japan.

Two mountain climbers died in an avalanche on Mt. Shirouma in Nagano Prefecture, but nine others escaped with their lives.

During a visit to Tokyo, the Dalai Lama warned that a “cultural genocide is taking place” inside Tibet.

A meeting of environment ministers from Japan, China and South Korea was held in Busan to discuss bird flu, yellow sandstorms and the need “to promote information-sharing” during extreme natural disasters.

Talk about dumb luck: it is now believed that the hydrogen explosion at the no. 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on March 15 might have helped prevent a meltdown “by causing a flow of water into the pool the rods are stored in.”

The Japan Business Federation announced that 80 percent of its members plan to enact some type of energy-saving program to meet government power-consumption reduction targets by this summer.

The government has also pitched in by extending its “Cool Biz” promotion for office workers to wear casual clothes by two months.

EXTREME MEASURES

A Maritime Self-Defense Force member whipped out his tool in a Yokohama video shop in a successful bid to get arrested for exposing himself in public. He was not keen on being sent to Iwate to retrieve bodies killed by the March 11 tsunami.

A Japanese fashion blogger/medical student “Tokyo Panda,” extremely popular on Chinese online shopping site Taobao, is doing her part for tsunami victims by posting photos of herself in various outfits online and then selling the clothes to raise money for charity.

Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea are “under pressure to reduce electric power consumption in anticipation of a power shortage this summer.” The theme parks reportedly use 10 times more power than the Tokyo Dome.

A fundraising effort organized by Tokyoite Gary Bremermann raised ¥100 for every beer sold with the money going to help kids in Tohoku.

Meanwhile, a new internet phenomenon known as “slacktivism” has sprung up in the wake of March 11, gaining popularity in Japan. Combining slacker and activism, the term means “to casually engage in social activism at little cost or effort … leisurely philanthropic activities.”

SEE YA!

The justice ministry put the number of “flyjin”-foreigners who left Japan after the March 11 earthquake-at 531,000. Go on, everyone, take a bow!

The government is rethinking the draconian power-saving measures it had planned for the summer after TEPCO said it could crank out 52 million kilowatts of electricity by the end of July, instead of the previously stated 46.5 million kw.

Kevin Maher, who was canned as head of the US Office of Japanese Affairs because of comments he allegedly made in December, denied he ever called Okinawans “lazy.” He also claims he never said they are “masters of manipulation and extortion.”

Not everyone was resting up during Golden Week. Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto was scheduled to go on a six-day blitz of the US, Europe and Africa starting April 29.

Surprising absolutely no one, the Japan National Tourism Organization announced that the number of foreigners who traveled to Japan in March was half the number compared to last year.

The Public Security Intelligence Agency said that the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult still has about 1,500 active members.

Nine Japanese universities have clubbed together to found a Japanese public high school in Shanghai-the first ever such school to open overseas.

In what is being described as the largest per person donation from any country since the earthquake and tsunami, Taiwan has offered Japan ¥13.9 billion, which works out to ¥600 per capita.

EASY COME, EASY GO

After taking heat for accepting a ¥1.04 million donation from a South Korean expat, Prime Minister Naoto Kan agreed to return the money. Political contributions from foreigners are a no-no in Japan.

The Osaka and Bombay stock exchanges agreed on a tie-up, paving the way for them to “develop financial products linked to their stock indexes and list them at each other’s markets.”

Toyota and Microsoft announced a joint venture to develop automotive software that will be “important for achieving the next-generation low-carbon, energy-saving society.”

The justice ministry ordered Japan’s Prosecutor General to record all interrogations of criminal suspects in an effort to “establish a new criminal justice system.”

The coast guard announced that 170 crewmembers serving on five ships were unable to vote in local elections earlier in the month because they were engaged in relief operations in quake-hit areas.

Nepal’s Ministry of Culture said it will honor the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with its inaugural Gautama Buddha International Peace Award. The prize is worth $50,000.

Japan, the US and India have announced they will begin scheduling regular minster-level talks. The rise of China is “expected to be a major topic.”

A trio of taxis in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka have been festooned with drawings of characters from hit manga and animated TV series Strawberry Marshmallow. Punters who catch these cabs will get a commemorative card designed by the series’ author.

MAKIN’ A BUCK

Police in Tokyo arrested two people for selling a drug called premium zeolite that they claimed “was effective for detoxification, including dealing with contamination from radioactive substances.” Apparently, the pair did not have proper licenses and those claims were unproven.

One good thing to come out of the quake: Japan Tobacco’s distribution bases were damaged, resulting in a “nationwide shortage of cigarettes” with only about 25 percent of the supply available compared to pre-quake levels.

Instead of the regularly scheduled Summer Grand Sumo Tournament, the scandal-plagued sport has decided instead to hold a test meet in Tokyo in May to figure out the rankings for the Nagoya basho in July.

As expected, the number of foreign visitors to Japan plummeted after the big earthquake/tsunami, with about 3,400 foreigners a day entering the country through Narita Airport from March 11-31-down 75 percent from the same period a year earlier, according to the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau.

Kaichiro Saito, a sake brewer from Miyagi whose business has dried up in the wake of March 11, has called on folks to raise a glass or two. “I hope people buy more products from northern Japan rather than restrain themselves,” said Saito, who lost 80 percent of his customers. “That would be the best way to show support.”

Meanwhile, many of the traditional hanami cherry-blossom-viewing parties were scrapped this year with some people just not in the mood to party.

AND NOW FOR SOME GOOD NEWS

A jobless man from Shinjuku was arrested for breaking into the Daini Nuclear power plant in Fukushima and driving around “for about ten minutes.”

Yasushi Nishiwaki, the biophysicist who examined crewmembers of a Japanese fishing boat who were exposed to radiation during a US hydrogen bomb test in the Bikini Atoll in 1954, died of pneumoniain Osaka at age 94.

Japan’s unemployment rate of 4.6 percent is the lowest it’s been in two years.

Meanwhile, industrial production in February surged 0.4 percent from the previous month.

At the same time, retail sales rose 0.1 percent from a year earlier, which was a lot better than the 0.5 percent drop that many economists had predicted.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

The Red Cross Society of North Korea sent $100,000 (¥8.1 million) in aid to the Japanese Red Cross Society for victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Fearless leader Kim Jong Il also kicked in another $500,000 to help pro-Pyongyang Korean residents in Japan affected by the quake/tsunami.

Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic organized a charity soccer match and dinner involving several ATP stars that raised $100,000 for the relief effort.

Yomiuri Giants baseball star Alex Ramirez, meanwhile, donated $1 million, as well as sending trucks stocked with medicine to the worst-hit areas.

One of the biggest sources of aid has come from what some might consider an unlikely source-the yakuza.

AFTERSHOCKS

A motorist in quake-hit Iwate died of carbon monoxide poisoning while waiting for gasoline in a line that stretched longer than a kilometer. The man had been trying to keep his car warm with a kerosene heater.

Billionaire US investor Warren Buffett apparently believes that the earthquake “is the kind of extraordinary event that creates a buying opportunity for shares in Japanese companies.”

It was reported that Kansai Electric Power Co. will invest up to ¥100 billion in an effort “to make its nuclear plants more resistant to earthquakes and tsunami.” Maybe they could ask Warren Buffett for some help.

The speaker of the Osaka Prefectural Assembly was forced to apologize after calling earthquake-inflicted damage at a local government office “a divine fortune.” The pol had opposed a plan to move all municipal offices to the damaged building.

It was reported that some teachers and school officials in Tohoku are holding graduation ceremonies at evacuation centers. Others are visiting their students’ homes to hand-deliver diplomas.

The central government is mulling whether to establish a full-fledged federal agency that would specifically deal with post-quake reconstruction.