Random Japan

GETTING THE LARD OUT

• A government survey revealed that 25 percent of people who receive medical consultations for “metabolic syndrome” are able to overcome the condition. Metabolic syndrome is better-known in the West as “being a fat-ass.”
• A 500kg bull in Kagoshima gored a 56-year-old farmer as he tried to shield his three grandkids from the rampaging animal. The man is in serious condition.
• Pasmo halted an online service that provided details about the train-riding history of its cardholders to anyone who entered basic information about the user. Apparently, wives and husbands were using the site to check if their partners were cheating on them.
• The health ministry says Nagano has the lowest death rate of any prefecture in Japan, while Aomori is the spot most frequently visited by the Grim Reaper.

MORE Great escapes

• The justice ministry says a Chinese man who broke out of a jail in Hiroshima in January did so to call his wife’s parents, who had taken ill. The man was captured days later, but not before causing widespread anxiety among local residents.
• The former chairman of Daio Paper admitted in court that, yes, he did in fact lose ¥5.5 billion of the company’s money on gambling binges in Singapore and Macau.
• The former head of the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation was handed a 30-month prison sentence for embezzling ¥287 million from the organization. His son also got 30 months for his part in the scheme.
• A court in Fukuoka ordered new DNA tests in the case of a man who was executed for murdering two young girls in 1999. Not that it’ll do the guy any good at this point.

stats

• 21 Weather observation points across Japan that recorded record-high snow accumulation this winter, according to the meteorological agency
• 45 “Shooting incidents” in Japan in 2011, according to the National Police Agency
• 35 Number of such incidents in 2010
• 52.5 Percent of Tokyoites who “strongly worry” about a large-scale disaster hitting the capital, according to the Metropolitan Police Department

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Prime minister's office not linked to teleconference system during nuclear crisis

 Kyodo

 The prime minister's office was not linked to the government's nuclear disaster teleconference system when the crisis broke out at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant March 11, 2011, government sources said Tuesday.

 The teleconference system is designed to link the prime minister's office, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, off-site centers near nuclear power plants and local governments that host nuclear power plants, to help them share information and discuss measures to be taken.