Archive for May, 2007

Golden Bathtub Stolen From Hotel

A video report about the theft of a pretty much unguarded gold bathtub that had been stolen from a hotel in Chiba Prefecture:

A bathtub made of gold, worth 120m yen ($1m; £500,000), has disappeared from a Japanese resort hotel in circumstances that remain unclear, police said.

Staff reported the tub was missing on Wednesday at the Kominato Hotel Mikazuki, a resort overlooking the Pacific Ocean, east of Tokyo.

Police said they had no idea how it was stolen, saying they had found no sign it was dragged on the floor.

The tub weighed 80kg (175lb) and was made of 18-carat gold.

It was normally chained to the door and padlocked when the room was closed, Japanese TV reported.

“The door to the room had been locked with chains, but the chains were found cut off this morning,” a police spokesman said.

I guess the hotel didn’t pay much attention to the recent incident in Gifu Prefecture, in which a similar poorly-protected golden item was stolen. If you’ve got a million dollars of gold in your building, hire some security, folks!

Hungary vs. Japan: Who Can Click More?

Japanese netizens have been taking http://www.clickclickclick.com/, a site where users from different countries click a button to increase their country’s total points, quite seriously. After discovering the site sometime in its 2nd round, Japan’s 2-channelers took the game by storm, destroying the competition and easily winning first place for their nation. However, it would be in the third round that Japan would meet its true rival: Hungary.

Hungarians, who access the net from connections far slower than Japan’s high bandwidth lines, gave the Japanese a run for their money. Their epic battle spawned tribute artwork, which led to tribute videos (such as the one shown above). The story of the brave Hungarian clickers even made national news in their country. They overtook the Japanese for a span of several days, but the Japanese netizens fought back, creating an automated clicking software that allowed them to squeeze past the Hungarians in the last moments of round 3. The total count?

1. Japan – 502,022,187 clicks
2. Hungary – 500,803,909 clicks
3. Chile – 23,615,430 clicks

Round 4 is set to begin soon, and the friendly rivalry will begin anew…

[More pictures and video can be found at this site.]

Japanese Granny Zidane

Here’s a video from the the “How to make people angry” series, in which a Japanese grandma demonstrates the “Zidane” technique:

Star Wars [The Japanese Song]

A video that reveals the 1978 Japanese song that put lyrics to the Star Wars theme:

Japan News for May 28, 2007

This morning’s Japan-related news links:

• Farm Minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka wrote eight suicide notes apologizing for causing trouble to those close to him, it has been revealed. [Link]
• A former executive of a forerunner to the semi-governmental Japan Green Resources Agency, which is now involved in a bid-rigging scandal, was found lying on the ground of a car park on Tuesday after apparently jumping to his death. [Link]
• Shinzo Abe will become the first Japanese prime minister to address Australia’s Parliament when he visits the country for this year’s APEC meeting in September. [Link]
• The skipper of a fishing boat returns to Hokkaido four months after being taken into custody off Japanese-claimed islands held by Russia. [Link]
• Japan’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell in April to 3.8 percent, a 0.2 percentage point improvement on the previous month, according to a preliminary report by the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry released Tuesday. [Link]
• The number of measles patients aged over 15 who were reported by medical institutions from May 14 to 20 reached 68, a record high since an institute started collecting data in 1999. [Link]
• The Fukuoka High Court sentenced a former gangster Monday to eight years in prison for attempting to set fire to the home and office of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Yamaguchi Prefecture on four occasions in 2000 as well as assisting in a further arson attempt at the location in the same period. [Link]
• Japan’s opposition parties are planning to submit a no-confidence motion against health minister Hakuo Yanagisawa over the pension data fiasco. [Link]
• The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is set to bar gangsters from living in its housing complexes following an incident in which a yakuza holed himself up in his room in a metropolitan apartment block in April. [Link]
• A Hokkaido Prefectural Government official has been arrested for changing the serial number of a lottery ticket to a winning number and unsuccessfully trying to defraud a financial institution out of prize money. [Link]
• The ratio of ex-prisoners with no place to go after completing their sentences has surged in the past 30 years to over 40 percent, according to a survey by a university professor. [Link]
• Japan’s Supreme Court on Tuesday partly dismissed a damages lawsuit against aircraft noise around the U.S. Yokota Air Base, refusing to award compensation for “future noise.” [Link]
• Three performers from the popular “Muscle Musical” show filed a provisional disposition on Monday with the Tokyo District Court against the host company of the musical, demanding payment of a total of 5.12 million yen in cut wages. [Link]
• The body of a woman was found dead on bullet train tracks in Yokohama on Monday after she apparently committed suicide. [Link]
• A group of parents who have lost children to disease plan to visit the Justice Ministry on Thursday to protest a practice by which children who died prior to the digitization of the nation’s family registers are deleted from their parents’ households. [Link]
• NEC Corp. said Tuesday some of its senior employees conducted illicit trades worth a total of 2.2 billion yen in the seven business years through March 31, 2006, enabling them to amass a 500 million yen slush fund which they spent on personal wining and dining. [Link]
• A 71-year-old Japanese mountain climber has become the oldest person to reach the summit of Mount Everest. [Link]
• A women’s undergarment company has come up with a surefire way to help voters keep abreast of national politics ahead of July’s House of Councilors vote — an election bra! [Link]
• A 48-year-old primary school teacher in Otake, Hiroshima Prefecture, told an 8-year-old boy, who wanted to go to the restroom, to urinate into a bucket in the classroom, according to the local board of education. [Link]

Riyo Mori from Japan: Miss Universe 2007!!! (Pictures/Video)

Yes, that’s right. Riyo Mori, who represented Japan at the Miss Universe Contest, has just been named the winner of the pagent:

Mori, 20, the 56th winner of the title, was given her $250,000 (U.S.) diamond-and-pearl crown by last year’s winner, Zuleyka Rivera of Puerto Rico, watched by a live audience of 10,000 and some 600 million television viewers worldwide.

A lifelong ballet dancer from a village near Mount Fuji, Mori wore a striking black gown with coloured lapels for the final. Winning surpassed the ambition of her grandmother, who told her as a child she wanted her to be Miss Japan one day.

“My mind went blank,” she said of the winning moment.

I’ll be following up later today or tomorrow with more information on the Japanese media coverage of her win. You can bet it’s going to be huge news over here!

Congratulations, Riyo!

Update: Some goodies for those of you looking to see more of Riyo Mori:

Read more…