Japan News for December 10, 2006
Some news/links for today:
-Trans-Pacific Radio comments on the patriotism-related reforms to Japan’s Fundamental Law of Education and how it reflects Shinzo Abe’s disconnect with voters.
-An appeal court has revoked a lower court’s decision to grant bail to celebrity economist Kazuhide Uekusa, who is standing trial for molesting a high school girl on a train in Tokyo.
-According to a recent survey by the Cabinet Office, 34.3% of Japanese feel good about China, up 1.9 percentage points from a year earlier, and 21.7% said the bilateral ties are in good condition, up 2.0 points. In a related story, China’s People’S Daily Online has declared that China-Japan relations stand on new starting point.
-The next time a Japanese girl offers to cook for you at her apartment, it might just be an invitation to a lame party, laments Mainichi’s WaiWai.
-A Tokyo couple has been awarded 660,000 yen in compensation by the Tokyo District Court after the construction company that had sold them an apartment through advertisments that highlighted views of the Sumida River fireworks built an apartment block one year later that ruined their view of fireworks.
-Cana Story, a pink happoshu brew developed by female college students and an Ishikari microbrewer and named after the place where Jesus Christ turned water into wine, goes on sale today.
-An ethics panel under a group for Japanese obstetricians and gynecologists has come up with a draft guideline that would allow the use of frozen sperm for reproductive treatment only while its donor is still alive. The move came after the Supreme Court dismissed a woman’s request to legally recognize her child who was conceived with frozen sperm from her dead husband as the couple’s child in September, saying such parent-child relations are “not envisaged under the Civil Code.”
-A middle-aged inmate in solitary confinement has hung himself in his solitary cell in a Mie Prefecture prison. While details are slim on this particular case, these two articles offer interesting information on the severity of Japanese prisons, where prisoners could spend years in solitary confinement.
-Asia’s biggest Uniqlo store has opened in Shanghai. Only a short drive from the Uniqlo factory!
-An American high school teacher has been making a film about temple bells that the U.S. servicemen took home as war booties from areas across Japan after World War II. Sounds interesting. [Update: More details from the Japan Times]
-150 people in Nagasaki came together to join hands and create a 50-meter-long roll cake by using some 600 eggs and 50 kilograms of strawberry jam, which is the longest roll cake ever created. What a grand achievement.
-GI Korea has made an insightful post about the Koreans who are suing to have the name of every Korean who is enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine removed.
