Japan News for April 15, 2007

  • Profiles of the Day
    • More at Japan Probe Friends...

    Today’s Japan-related news links:

    • A group of North Korean agents working out of a Tokyo trading firm suspected of involvement in the abduction of two children acted as an intermediary for meetings between senior Self-Defense Forces officers and agents in North Korea, police sources have revealed. [Link]
    • Police confiscated about 80,000 tablets of the drug MDMA, also known as ecstasy, at Narita airport from a Japanese woman and her daughter in March, and arrested them after catching them red-handed. [Link]
    • Japan’s 12 leading life insurance companies did not pay out a combined 26.8 billion yen in 230,000 cases between fiscal 2001 and 2005, the companies announced Friday. [Link]
    • Two earthquakes shook Tokyo and northeastern Japan early Saturday, but there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage. [Link]
    • Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hosted the government’s annual cherry blossom viewing party at Shinjuku Gyoen park on Saturday and told the 11,000 invited guests that he would work hard to create a “beautiful Japan.” [Link]
    • Christina Ricci has joined Larry and Andy Wachowski’s live-action adaptation of the 1960s anime “Speed Racer” for Warner Bros. [Link]
    • A tablet given to a woman in Yokohama by a group of men posing as sewage workers who told her to swallow it if her tap water became dirty, has proven to be an chemical pipe cleaning agent, investigators said. [Link]
    • Environmentalists held a ceremony Saturday to mourn for mudskippers and other tideland creatures presumed dead in the state’s land reclamation work in Isahaya Bay in Nagasaki Prefecture. [Link]
    • Waseda University’s rookie pitcher Yuki Saito made a historic debut at the opening of the Tokyo Big6 university baseball championship on Saturday, pitching six innings to earn a win and drawing large numbers of female fans. [Link]
    • Tokyo Gov Shintaro Ishihara voiced Friday his wishes for a successful 2008 Beijing Olympics and said he would visit the venue if he is invited. [Link]
    • The Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA) has launched calls for the Japan Federation of Gyoseishoshi Lawyer’s Associations to take down posters using the term “lawyer” to describe Japan’s administrative scriveners, who are not qualified to handle lawsuits. [Link]
    • The nation’s third-year senior high school students fared dismally in the mathematics and science portions of their academic achievement test in 2005, while performing better than before in some subjects such as geography and world history, an education ministry survey showed Friday. [Link]
    • Former porn actress Kaoru Kuroki has won compensation from a major publishing house after two of its weekly magazines reported on her private life after she retired. [Link]
    • The Great Swifty Speaketh has taken a look at popular Japanese author Eimi Yamada. [Link]
    • Japanese researchers here have detected new odorous chemicals in women’s wombs, including one that is associated with elderly people, the Mainichi Shinbun has reported. [Link]
    • Japan’s space agency announced Thursday that it plans to send its first probe around the moon in August. [Link]
    • http://www.jnto.go.jp/tourism/en/, which introduces Japanese tourist spots and traditional culture in English, Korean and Chinese has received more than 25,000 hits in about a month since its launch, officials of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, which runs the site, said Saturday. [Link]
    Related Posts with Thumbnails