Japan News for January 16, 2007
Some news/links for this morning:
- A magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck Japan early this morning at 3:17AM, rocking buildings in Tokyo but causing no tsunami. No injuries or damage were immediately reported, but Japan Probe administrator James was awakened from his slumber by the shaking of his apartment!
- Bio Ethanol Japan Kansai, a company established by Taisei, Daiei Inter Nature System, Marubeni, Sapporo Beer and Tokyo Board Industries, is set to begin commercial production of bioethanol made from wood waste.
- Japan’s space agency has recommended scrapping its first moon mission after more than a decade of delays, a spokeswoman said Monday, in the latest blow to the country’s beleaguered space program.
- Design and construction errors might have been behind the collapse of a windmill last week in Higashidorimura, Aomori Prefecture, according to the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. What are the other possible reasons for the collapse? Magic?
- Kotaku shows us the rooms of 5 hardcore gamers.
- Three Japanese and a Filipino pilot cheated death after the chopper they were riding crashed off the waters of a beach resort on Palawan Island noontime on Sunday.
- Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka said Saturday during his visit to the United States that the ministry’s certification system to support qualified Japanese restaurants overseas, which is to start in April, was “not an attempt to exclude certain restaurants [run by non-Japanese owners].” In a related story, Mainichi Shinbun has a story about cool Japanese fusion restaurants that fear that they will be excluded.
- Clint Eastwood’s “Letters from Iwo Jima” has won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. Will it also be stuck in the foreign language category when the Oscar nominations are announced?
- Twitch reports that the girl who was recently murdered and dismembered by her older brother was actually an actress in one of the many direct to video Cream Lemon films.
- Afternoon update:
