Japan News for December 08, 2006

Some news/links for this morning:

-Four teenagers who beat up a 17-year-old high school student and then forced him to strip naked in a park and took photographs of him have been arrested. What’s even worse: Two times, in June and November this year, the victim approached his teacher, saying he was being harassed. One of the youths got angry and accused him of “squealing” on them. To avoid trouble the teacher reportedly contacted the youth’s guardians and explained the situation, recommending that the 17-year-old stop coming to school.

-Nintendo’s president has acknowledged that the just-launched Wii video-game machine may have a problem with a strap that secures its wandlike remote-controller to the player’s wrist. I guess they failed to have enough brutish foreigners play-test the machine?

-The Supreme Court has denied a hospital the right to use the characters for “mammary gland” in signs bearing its name, citing restrictions on medical advertising. The Yokohama Municipal Government’s restriction on use of the term has prompted the institution to register its name with spaces instead of the characters, and a sign outside the institution now reads “Yokohama [blank] to Icho no Byoin” (Yokohama [blank] and Gastrointestinal Hospital). Ridiculous.

-The US Congress will spend $38 million to restore and pay for research at 10 camps where Japanese & Japanese Americans were interned during World War II.

-Police have vowed to give a breathlizer test to every single fan leaving pop star Ken Hirai’s bar-themed concert on Dec. 19 at the Rainbow Hall in Nagoya.

-Pearl Harbor veterans from opposing meet as friends 65 years later.

-Around 3,300 people have registered their residence as a narrow plot of land only 45 square meters in size in Osaka’s Airin area where a large number of homeless people and day laborers live, although the city government believes that many of those registered do not actually live there.

-Private-sector members of the government’s Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy will propose that central government entities be completely banned from arranging post-retirement jobs for their officials. Too good to be true?

-Mainichi’s WaiWai reports on the dwindling number of traveling freak shows in Japan and how one snake-eating woman is struggling to keep the tradition alive.

-The government on Wednesday decided to dispatch three civilian police officers to East Timor for a United Nations mission aimed at quelling the renewed violence there(the UN had requested 20-30 personnel). The officers are expected to pass on information about koban (police boxes) and play a major role in establishing the system in East Timor. Great. If there’s anything that will quell violence, it’s talking about how great police boxes are.

-NTT DoCoMo Inc. and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. are recalling about 1.3 million cellphone batteries that are at risk of overheating and causing them to burst.

-Toys “R” Us Japan expects to post its biggest loss ever this business year due to charges to dispose of inventory and weaker sales than expected.

-Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, determined to bring the 2016 Summer Olympics to the capital, will run in next spring’s gubernatorial election for a third term in office.

-Trans-Pacific Radio, What Japan Thinks, and Recognize Design has picked up the story of attemped censorship of Japan Probe.

Evening update:

-Immigration authorities have denied an application from an Iranian family of four for a special residence permit to continue living in Japan. The Justice Ministry has extended the temporary permission for Amine Khalil, 43, his 39-year-old wife and their two daughters, aged 18 and 10, to stay in Japan for another month to prepare for departure. Amine first arrived in Japan on a 90-day tourist visa in 1990, and had been overstaying that visa ever since.

-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Supreme Court Chief Justice Niro Shimada have received the biggest winter bonuses among government workers on Friday, each receiving a bonus of 5.82 million yen(about 50 thousand US dollars). But Abe said he will return 1.74 million yen of his bonus in line with his earlier pledge to do so, made in a show of his resolve to carry out administrative and fiscal reform…

-Japanese adult channel/video company has hired no-name Korean actors to do an erotic version of the popular Korean drama “Dae Jang Geum.” Oh my.

-A cat was rescued from a 16-meter-tall pine tree in Hyogo Prefecture in a major operation involving 30 people including prefectural police officers and firefighters and two elevated platform vehicles.

-The U.S. Navy on has banned its men and women serving across Japan from consuming alcohol at commercial establishments and in public places between 2 and 6 a.m. seven days a week.

-Bloomberg news reports on how Japan’s growing underclass has spawned soup kitchens and welfare lines.

-Defense chief Fumio Kyuma has played down Japan’s support for the war in Iraq and has also raised questions about the special law which opened the way for the SDF to support the U.S.-led antiterrorism campaign in Afghanistan. Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s expression of Japan’s support for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq “was not made officially,” the Defense Agency director general told a House of Councillors Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense.

-Police have arrested a 70-year-old woman in Hitachi, Ibaraki Prefecture, on suspicion of stalking a 79-year-old man in the same city.

-Mainichi has two articles on actress Mariko Ishihara, who has just released a tell-all autobiography that attacks the Japan’s show business world.

-Jason Gray notes the huge success of domestic films in Japan this year, and predicts that Japanese films will surpass 50% of the market share for the first time since 1985.

-English teacher Shari comments on why she never discusses World War II with her Japanese students.

-The next ugly power pole you see could kill you: Some 800,000 concrete power poles erected across the country by electricity firms are in danger of tilting or collapsing due to corroded steel reinforcement, it has emerged. Another 860,000 telegraph poles erected by NTT East have been labeled potentially unstable.