Random Japan

GROOVIN’ TO THE OLYMPIC BEAT

 

• Arata Fujiwara, who will represent Japan in the London Olympic marathon, credits a new dance craze with helping him qualify for the Games. “After I got some lessons from (dancer Hiromi) Kashiki and her curvy dancing, my running style dramatically improved,” said Fujiwara, after finishing second in the Tokyo Marathon.
• Hiroshi Hoketsu, 71, Japan’s oldest-ever Olympian, will compete in the equestrian dressage event at the London Games. Hoketsu first saddled up for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.
• BJ League basketball star Lynn Washington of the Osaka Evessa, a two-time league MVP, and his wife Dana were arrested for allegedly trying to smuggle a kilo of weed into Japan.
• A couple of high school runners orphaned by the March 11 tsunami were part of a tour of Dodger Stadium while in Los Angeles for the LA Marathon.
• The news just keeps getting worse for the storied Yomiuri Giants baseball club. This time, the rival Asahi Shimbun dug up dirt that the Giants paid pitcher Takahiko Nomaguchi cash under the table when he was still an amateur playing in the corporate league, which is a definite no-no.
• Osunaarashi, or “Great Sandstorm,” won his debut sumo bout at the Spring Tournament in Osaka, becoming the first African to enter the age-old sport. The 20-year-old jonokuchi hails from Egypt.

stats

• 119 Noisy bosozoku wannabe gangsters in Tokyo these days, according to a police report, well down from over 5,300 in 1980
• $34,650 Price of three melons at Tokyo’s ritzy Senbikiya fruit store, where a single apple can set you back over ¥2,000 and a dozen strawberries go for nearly ¥7,000
• 20.8 percent Chance of Japan’s World Cup-winning women’s soccer team taking the gold medal at the London Olympics this summer, according to a Tokai University math professor
• 27.3 percent Odds of the US women winning the soccer gold in London, according to the same prof
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NASTY BIDNESS

• Amazon has yanked the account of erotica publisher Digital Manga Publishing after one of its yaoi (gay romance) titles apparently crossed the line. Amazon prohibits “pornography and hardcore material that depicts graphic sexual acts.”
• The website Japan Probe reports that there is a hotel in China’s Harbin city that has urinals built to resemble Japanese soldiers, where patrons relieve themselves directly into their open mouths.
• The National Police Agency said Japan had some 70,300 gangsters in 2011, the smallest number since the Organized Crime Group Countermeasures Law was enacted in 1992. Gee, maybe crime doesn’t pay after all.
• Two doctors at the prestigious Keio University medical school were accused of extracting bone marrow from 31 patients without their permission.
• The Japanese government provided data to its Australian counterpart on 4,497 POWs from Down Under who were forced into slave labor camps during World War II.
• Japanese actress/hoofer/all around hottie Ryoko Yonekura landed a starring role in the Broadway production of the musical Chicago. She had it comin’.
• Well, at least these guys don’t mind a little radioactive contamination. Abandoned rice fields inside the 20km exclusion zone around the Fukushima nuclear reactor have become destinations of choice for hundreds of migrating swans and other water fowl.
• A nutjob in Shizuoka Prefecture was collared for writing nasty messages about two female colleagues he was pissed off with on ¥1,000 notes and depositing the bills in ATMs.
• Nagoya University and Fujitsu have teamed up to develop software technology to “analyze phone conversations to automatically detect situations in which one party might ‘over-trust’ the other party.” The system uses keywords and tone of voice to let people know when they might be getting scammed.