Japan News for June 09, 2007

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    Today’s Japan-related news links:

    • The Japanese government on Friday approved a set of measures intended to cut the number of suicides by over 20 percent, a day after police announced that yearly suicide rate in 2006 had topped 30,000, making it the ninth year in a row. [Link]
    • Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to make greater efforts to get the ball rolling on negotiations over the disputed Northern Territories. [Link]
    • The Bush administration told Congress on Friday of plans to sell up to $475 million worth of missiles to Japan for use on AEGIS-class destroyers. [Link]
    • The Akihabara district of Tokyo is experiencing an increase in crime as it undergoes a change from an electronics quarter to a haven for otaku nerds. [Link]
    • Japan will become an “unprecedented” aging society in the near future if the current trend continues and needs to utilize elderly people in the labor force, according to a white paper released Friday. [Link]
    • Japan’s Justice Ministry has failed to grant a Myanmar man refugee status although nine months have passed since a court ruling ordering the ministry do so was finalized. [Link]
    • An elementary school teacher in Chiba Prefecture has hanged himself at his home after leaking personal information on some 250 students through the file-sharing software Winny. [Link]
    • Police suspect that a missing man, the tenant of a Tokyo apartment recently found covered in bloodstains, was involved in so-called “it’s me, send money” fraud cases and was heavily in debt. [Link]
    • The political projects of the two new boys in the G8 gang – Shinzo Abe and Nicolas Sarkozy – offer the intriguing possibility of a special relationship, says Andrew Stevens. [Link]
    • Mongolian wrestler Hakuho will make his debut as a yokozuna Saturday at the two-day Grand Sumo Tournament in Hawaii. [Link]
    • A baseball team comprising Kyoto municipal government officials had a violent fight with a vocational students’ soccer team over the use of a sports ground in late May, leaving one of the soccer players injured. [Link]
    • Japanese consumers are being urged to stop eating endangered bluefin tuna after a celebrity chef with restaurants in Japan decided to take it off all his menus. [Link]
    • A driver in Fukuoka who dragged a police officer along a road for 30 meters while trying to escape from an alcohol test has been arrested. [Link]
    • A series of cyber crimes has been confirmed in Japan in which a perpetrator attacks and paralyzes a company’s computer server–and then demands money to fix the problem. [Link]
    • Rakuten Inc, Japan’s largest online shopping mall operator, said Thursday it is testing a way to let people download video advertisements by snapping photos of related pages from a printed magazine. [Link]
    • Two hundred Japanese high school students are to visit China from June 12 to 18 as part of a student exchange program between the two countries. [Link]
    • Three local German newspapers in the area hosting the G-8 summit this week mistakenly published a photo of Japan’s agriculture minister Norihiko Akagi instead of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. [Link]
    • A former Kobe police officer was handed a suspended prison term Friday for paying two teenage girls to have sex with him. [Link]
    • Japan’s domestic film censorship body has slapped a R-18 restriction on the movie “Shortbus” and has blurred out around 100 assorted meats throughout the movie’s 101-minute duration. [Link]
    • What caught Japanese bloggers’ eyes last month? goo Ranking posted the top twenty outgoing links from their blogging site for the month of May 2007. [Link]
    • Japan bloggers Mari and Gab will be making a walk around Tokyo’s Yamanote Line today! Keep track of their journey live via GPS and send them text messages: [Link]
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