-The Labor Lawyers Association of Japan has compiled its first report on long working hours. In the report, they recommend that Workaholic Japanese shorten their working hours before introducing a “free-time” working system.

-The Yomiuri Shinbun reports on the sicko elementary school teacher who ran a website with photos and comments on children who died in accidents.

-Japanese police have raided offices of a pro-North Korean association over suspected accounting violations, the latest crackdown as Tokyo intensifies pressure on the reclusive communist regime.

-The Japan Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (Jasrac) has asked the popular video-sharing site YouTube Inc. to implement a system to prevent users from uploading videos that would infringe copyrights. No thanks.

-Plaintiffs have filed an appeal with Japan’s Supreme Court over a lower court’s decision to throw out their lawsuit alleging that former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s 2004 visit to a Tokyo war shrine violated the constitution.

-An infant sustained minor injuries from flying pieces of glass from a window that was broken by a shock wave from a U.S. warplane that occurred during a flight drill in Hokkaido in September last year, the Sapporo Defense Facilities Administration Bureau announced yesterday. The U.S. consul general in Sapporo has apologized to the family of the baby boy, and the Japanese bureau paid damages to the family in compliance with the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement.

-Tokyo and Washington have agreed on plans for a V-shaped military runway at Nago in Okinawa Prefecture after the U.S. side accepted Japan’s demand to restrict landings away from residential areas.

-The Midnight Eye has posted a feature entitled “A History of Sex Education Films in Japan -Part 1: The Pre-War Years.”

-Ministry of the Environment teaches us eco-friendly furoshiki folding methods!

Afternoon Update:

-The Daily Yomiuri Online gives a Yoji Yamada’s “Love and Honor” a not-so-good review. (The review isn’t a big fan of Kimtaku’s acting.)

-180 sets of the popular game console PlayStation 3 were stolen from the luggage-handling area of Meitetsu Golden Air Cargo Corp during a transit in Ibaraki Prefecture on Tuesday.

-The fashionable district of Omotesando was lit up with festive lights Tuesday night for the first time in eight years. Christmas season illumination, for which Omotesando became well known, was discontinued in 1997 after local shops complained that the hordes of spectators were disrupting their businesses.

-Japan is home to a fifth of the world’s richest 10% of adults in terms of global household wealth, a United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research study released yesterday. The research showed that Japan comes second only to the United States where a quarter of the wealthiest 10% reside. Germany provides the closest rival to Japan being home to 8% of the specified elite (South Korea had 2%). The full report can be read here.

-Over half of Japanese homes “smell of pee or poo”, according to a recently translated survey at What Japan Thinks.

-Japan Airlines Corp will raise both domestic and international air fares next April despite recent falls in crude oil prices, JAL President Haruka Nishimatsu said Tuesday. Thanks guys!

-Danny Choo reviews the Nintendo Wii.

-Mari discusses What was big in Japan in 2006.

-Maid Cafes have reached North America. I repeat: Maid Cafes have reached North America. [Via Dark Diamond]

-A junior high school boy has been arrested for stabbing his father at their home here after getting into an argument over his school grades.

-A motor journalist who had refused to submit himself to police for speeding despite repeated orders has been arrested. “I wasn’t able to submit myself to police because I was too busy,” he was quoted as telling investigators.

-Celebrity economist Kazuhide Uekusa has pleaded not guilty to molesting a high school girl on a train in Tokyo in September. The fact that he was found guilty of using a mirror to look up the skirt of a school girl last year isn’t going to help his case…