Three lane bowling trick
Three lanes, four bowling pins, one awesome Japanese trick bowler:
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Categories: Japanese TV
Obama running in Osaka
This guy in a Barack Obama mask was just one of several people who wore strange costumes while running in yesterday’s Osaka Castle Relay Marathon:
[via 空]
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Categories: Odd / Strange
Group of thieves used taxis to evade Japanese police
The Yomiuri reports on how Chinese burglary gangs in Japan have abandoned the practice of hiring Japanese drivers and are now using taxis to travel to and from the destinations of their crimes:
The four burglars were quoted as saying they flagged down a taxi near JR Ichikawa Station in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, where the group was based. They then changed taxis twice at Kanamachi Station in Katsushika Ward, Tokyo, and Omiya Station in Saitama before arriving at the target house.
Investigators carrying out surveillance on the gang often saw the four burglars come home by taxi late at night with bags they did not have when they had left earlier.
Lin was quoted telling the police, “Rather than hiring a Japanese driver who might contact police, it was safer for us to use a taxi because police wouldn’t stop us for questioning.”
Asked why they changed taxis on the way to the house, Lin was quoted as saying, “We did that so the drivers wouldn’t remember our faces.”
The MPD has been investigating Lin’s gang on suspicion of committing about 100 such thefts in the metropolitan area, with a cash value of about 50 million yen.
Another group of four Chinese men, who were arrested in November on suspicion of stealing 280,000 yen in cash and other items from a house in Machida, Tokyo, took a taxi from near their base in Asahi Ward, Yokohama, to Machida Station.
Police are searching for ways to cooperate with the taxi industry in tracking down possible criminals.
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Categories: Foreigners in Japan
Pranksters dumped buckets of water on passing pedestrians
Two men have been arrested for dumping water from their 11th floor balcony onto the heads of unsuspecting pedestrians (they did it for the lulz):
Apparently the two men had been dumping bucket loads of water onto pedestrians several times a week since about 6 months ago.
One of the men says he deeply regrets having carried out the pranks.
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Categories: General Japan
Japan’s Lower House maintains post-9/11 ban on public attendance
Plenary sessions of Japan’s House of Representatives were closed to the general public as an “anti-terrorism” measure following the September 11th terror attacks in the United States. Despite the fact that there is little proof of any serious terrorist threat against Japan, the ban on public attendance has not been lifted and only those with special invitations from lawmakers can view the proceedings in person.
Reiko Oyama, a political science professor at Komazawa University in Tokyo, said enforcing restrictions on public attendance in the gallery for such a lengthy period on grounds of terrorism concerns appears to run counter to the Constitution.
Article 57 stipulates that “deliberations in each House shall be public.” The House of Councilors is still open to visitors.
The Lower House permitted members of the public to watch plenary sessions on a first-come, first-served basis in 1946, a year after Japan’s World War II defeat and before the Constitution was promulgated. That practice went uninterrupted until October 2001.
This is:
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Categories: Politics
South Korea may begin commercial whaling operations
If the International Whaling Commission grants Japan limited rights to coastal whaling in exchange for a scaling down of its antarctic whaling operations, South Korea will also want a piece of the action, according to Reuters:
“This would open the floodgates for commercial whaling,” the WSPA marine mammal programme manager told Reuters in Rome.
Nicolas Entrup, spokesman for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS), said minke whales in Korean waters already faced extinction because of “by-catching” — when whales are accidentally caught in fishing nets, then sold for eating — and would face an accelerated threat if Korea resumes whaling.
“We should be closing the loopholes that permit whaling rather than creating new loopholes,” Entrup told Reuters.
Korean whaling helped supply the Japanese market for much of the 20th century, especially during Japanese occupation. It had a “scientific” catch of about 69 whales in 1986 but has since mostly abided by the global moratorium declared that year.
Should Japan and Korea be allowed to catch a limited number of non-endangered whales?
[via ROK Drop]
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Categories: General Japan