Archive for July, 2009

Freestyle football in Japan

FTV gives us a look at some Japanese freestyle football players:

The first guy shown is Yosuke Yokota, who represented Japan at last year’s freestyle football world championship. Although he had some impressive moves, including a backflip, he did not win.

The second freestyle footballer Kotaro Tokuda, a 17-year-old high school student from Ehime. Tokuda studied videos of Yokota’s previous appearances in competitions, and had prepared some moves to challenge him. When they face off at an event in Yokohama, the judges pick Tokuda over Yokota. Tokuda went on to win that competition, and will represent Japan at the world championship later this year in South Africa.

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Angry job seeker sets unemployment office worker on fire

An employee of a “Hello Work” office was set on fire by a disappointed job seeker:

Kumi Takahashi, an employment adviser at the local branch of the national jobs agency Hello Work, was covered with flames when a passerby called the police shortly after 8 a.m. and was rushed to hospital, Chiba prefectural police said.

The police arrested Fan Yuping, a 45-year-old resident of Kashiwa in the same prefecture, who was near the scene, on suspicion of attempted murder, the police said. The arrested woman says she was born in China, according to the police.

Fan was quoted as telling investigators, “I tried to scare (the victim) out of desperation as I have been looking for a job but couldn’t find one. I wanted to kill myself, too.”

As you can see from the above FTV evening news report, Fan Yuping’s name is mentioned, but nothing is said about Fan’s nationality. That is because she is a naturalized Japanese citizen. A Yomiuri article (Japanese) reveals that Fan was born in China but moved to Japan in 1993, married a Japanese man, and became a Japanese citizen a few years later (she later divorced her Japanese husband).
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• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
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Taro Aso gives the Pope a Sony video camera

Prime Minister Taro Aso presents his holiness Pope Benedict XVI with a piece of Japanese technology:

As his first stop during a trip to attend July 8-10 summit of G8 leaders in Italy, Aso went to the Vatican, gave the pope a Sony digital video camera and discussed the global economic crisis with him.

And, in case your are interested, here’s a video clip of the occasion:

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
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Update on Police policy of conducting urine tests in Roppongi

A follow up to the post from last week about Japanese police allegedly making foreigners take drug tests as they left bars and clubs in the Roppongi area of Tokyo:

Arudou Debito’s latest Just Be Cause column in the Japan Times focuses on the urine testing issue. Debito had asked on his blog for people who have been forced to take the urine tests to come forward and share their stories, but the column doesn’t have much new information. Nameless witnesses are cited as having been asked to take tests, and they say “few people who looked Japanese were detained.” In what appears to be a rephrasing of a post left on the Gaijinpot forums, we are given second account of how “those testing positive for controlled substances have been deported.”

There is, however, one piece of new information in the column. It would seem that the Japan Times had a reporter call a police PR center and ask some questions:

In a separate inquiry, The Japan Times wrung these clarifications out of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Public Relations Center: 1. Police raids on businesses only happen after a reliable tip; 2. Urine testing is not a new procedure, and has always been done whenever necessary; 3. Only those who look wasted on drugs will be asked for a urine sample; 4. Urine samples are only ever taken after persuasion, never under threat.

Interesting, but how exactly can police determine if a person looks “wasted on drugs”? It would be a pretty hard call to make, considering the huge number of heavily intoxicated Japanese people who stumble around the streets of popular nightlife areas of Tokyo on any given weekend. Questions also remain about the type of persuasion police employ, the possibility of false positive results to urine tests, and about what crime a person commits when a urine test comes back positive for controlled substances.

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• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
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Two impressive Japanese bodybuilders

A clip from TBS news introducing two Japanese bodybuilders:

The first is Kiyoshi Nakajima, a 69-year-old who recently won 3rd place in a bodybuilding competition. He started going to the gym when he was 56, and now has an impressive muscle-found physique.

The second is Yoichi Matsumoto, an 80-year-old in Tottori Prefecture who engages in a different kind of bodybuilding – he hand sculpts the bodies of small gliders. He claims that his gliders are so good, he could keep them flying indefinitely (unfortunately, his occasional need to go to the bathroom prevents this).

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• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
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Richard Gere visits Hachiko statue

Richard Gere was in Tokyo the other day to visit Shibuya’s Hachiko statue:

He seemed happy to be back in Japan for the first time in four years, and was friendly to fans who had gathered to see him.

Gere’s new movie, Hachi, will be introducing the famous true story of Hachiko to an international audience. It will hit theaters in Japan on August 8th.

Here’s the Japanese teaser/trailer for the movie:

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