GEt youR caFFEinE Fix in thE city - Metropolis

The Small Print
“
thAnks for coMing
bAck, buddY”
—Miyagi Prefecture resident Ikuo yokoyama after
his harley-davidson motorcycle washed up in West
canada one year after the 3/11 tsunami. harleydavidson
plans to clean up the machine and reunite
it with its owner
soME booZE With Your bird?
ć a new Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in
Tokyo comes complete with a fully stocked
bar called KFC Route 25, in honor of the highway
that runs past the original Sanders Café in
Kentucky. Whisky, tequila, vodka, rum all available...
name your poison.
ć The advanced Telecommunications Research
Institute International in Kyoto Prefecture—
along with some help from a nutty professor
from Osaka university—has come up with a 600gram
human-shaped pillow called a “Hugvie”
that allows cellphone users to “feel closer” to
the people they are talking to. you insert your
phone in the pillow’s head and conversations
will cause the Hugvie’s heart to beat. Really.
ć a government survey has revealed that one out
of every four Japanese adults has thought of
offing him/herself, “with young people more
prone to such thoughts than others.” a round of
Hugvies, please.
ć Researchers at the Shibaura Institute of Tech-
nology (we don’t even want to speculate on the
acronym for this one) figure that some 40 or
so dams in Japan sit above confirmed active
fault lines.
ć Meanwhile, a network of more than 150 earthquake
and water pressure detectors is in the
plans for the sea off Japan’s east coast. The
national Research Institute for Earth Science and
Disaster Prevention says the devices will help “to
more quickly and accurately predict tsunami.”
ć a Mainichi survey found that more than 2,000
bridges in at least 107 local municipalities in
Japan have never been inspected, mostly due
to “financial difficulties.”
APArtMEnts of dooM
ć a 23-year-old nurse was found stabbed to death
in a friend’s apartment in urayasu, Chiba Prefecture.
The friend said he was out with work
buddies at the time.
ć The skeleton of a 45-year-old man who died
more than two years ago was found in a
Saitama apartment when the owner of the unit
went to check on him... Probably wondering why
the rent was so late.
ć With up to 14,000 people dying annually in the
bathtub—more than three times the number
stats
killed in traffic accidents in 2011—the Ministry
of Health, Labor and Welfare will conduct
research on bathtub fatalities. at least they left
nice, clean corpses...
ć Two men in their 60s were arrested for murder
after the dead body of another sexagenarian was
found dumped in the mountains near Kobe. a
financial dispute was apparently the root of the
problem, as it so often is in these cases.
ć Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko played
a little tennis at the Imperial Palace on april 30.
It marked the first time the 78-year-old Emperor
played the sport since having heart bypass surgery
in February.
ć a bus accident in Gunma Prefecture that
claimed the lives of seven people and left
another 39 injured was being attributed to “cutthroat
competition in the bus industry and the
resulting overwork among drivers.” The driver
apparently dozed off on the overnight trip to
Tokyo Disneyland.
brAnching out
ć The uS is giving Japan 3,000 dogwood trees to
mark the 100th anniversary since this nation
gave Washington 3,000 cherry trees in 1912.
ć In a rare move, the Finance Ministry posted on
its website protest letters sent to The Asahi Shimbun
over a report detailing “relations between
key figures of the ruling Democratic Party of
Japan and senior ministry bureaucrats.” The
ministry said the story contained several
“misinterpretations of facts.”
ć around 800,000 new job recruits joined companies
on the first day of Japan’s fiscal year.
ć according to the stats, 80.5 percent of college
students found jobs ahead of their March
graduation, a 3.1 percent increase over the previous
year, which was the lowest since 2000, says
the labor ministry.
ć about 60 percent of the people polled in a Mainichi
Shimbun survey said they were opposed to
the government plan to raise the consumption
tax while 37 percent were in favor of the move.
ć The same survey found that 79 percent were in
favor of introducing “a low tax rate on daily
necessities in case the consumption tax is
raised in the future.”
AniMAL instincts
ć a mutt who failed miserably as a hunting dog got
a new lease on life when it was enlisted to keep
pesky monkeys and crows off a citrus farm in
Wakayama.
ć Meanwhile, Kotora the cat was given a few days
off during Golden Week from his job as a “station
master” in Okayama Prefecture to take
up the same position at two railway stations
in aomori Prefecture. Can a karoshi lawsuit be
far off?
ć Two small kids died and nine other family mem-
bers were hospitalized in the Philippines after
chowing down on some poisonous puffer fish, a
Japanese delicacy, for lunch.
ć a counter-terrorist drill was conducted at the
634-meter-high Tokyo Sky Tree, in which security
guards led about 1,000 people to “safety”
from the facility’s observation deck at 350
meters. The poor sods taking part in the drill
had to descend some 2,000 emergency stairs.
ć a Japanese film crew is making a movie about a
1959 incident in which a uS fighter jet taking off
from the Kadena air Base in Okinawa crashed
into an elementary school, killing 17 and injuring
over 200.
ć a landslide in Hokkaido left a set of railroad
tracks on the JR Sekisho Line hanging—literally—in
the air.
soMEbodY cALL guinnEss
ć Plumbing new depths, the Japan agency for
Marine-Earth Science and Technology said its
deep-sea scientific drilling vessel, the Chikyu,
managed to bore some 7,740 meters below the
ocean surface, a new world record for this type
of drilling.
ć actor Koji yakusho, star of such Hollywood films
as Memoirs of a Geisha and babel, was among 674
individuals and 20 groups who received spring
decorations from the Japanese government.
The 56-year-old was one of 25 people to get the
Medal with Purple Ribbon, given for contributions
to the arts, academia and sport.
compiled from reports by Ap, Japan
Today, The Japan Times, The Tokyo
Reporter, The Asahi Shimbun, The
Mainichi Daily News, Daily Yomiuri,
AFp, Reuters, Kyodo, ABc News and
cBc News.
� 25 Percent of Tokyo's foreigners who left japan temporarily following 3/11, according to a Tokyo
Metropolitan government survey � 56 Percent who did not leave Tokyo � 5 Percent who moved to
other places in japan � 75 Percent of foreigners who relied on Tv broadcasts for their post-March 11
info � 37 Percent who got their information from the internet � 7 Percent who used newspapers to
keep up-to-date after the disasters
04 • download our podcast at • podcast.metropolis.co.jp
ThIS Week’S requIred readIng, by reg dunlaP
MIWa kaneoya