Japanese political strongman Ichiro Ozawa on Tuesday told a court he knew nothing about how money for his campaign fund was managed, as he took the stand in a closely watched trial.
Ozawa, dubbed the Shadow Shogun because of the vast behind-the-scenes power that he wields, was giving evidence for the first time since three close aides were convicted of falsifying funding reports.
"I have been concentrating on politics and have left accounting to my secretaries," Ozawa, one of Japan's most influential political powerbrokers, told the Tokyo District Court, according to local media.
"I know nothing about practical things," said Ozawa, who heads the biggest faction in the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and once lead the party. (AFP)
Japan's shadow shogun 'knew nothing' of funding
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Japan police acknowledge mistakes in Chang arrest
Japanese police yesterday admitted mistakes had occurred during the arrest of Chang Chih-yang, the primary suspect in the murder of two female Taiwanese students in Tokyo, and expressed regret for his death while in police custody.
The police said Chang committed suicide by slashing his own throat with a 21cm knife, which had been concealed in his pants, while he was sitting in a police car with officers next to him, contradicting earlier reports that he had committed suicide after getting out of the car.
Chang died shortly afterward, after being rushed to a hospital on Monday night. (Taipei Times)
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Pension cuts coming
The government plans to reduce public pensions over three years starting in fiscal 2012, saying that it has overpaid by 2.5 percent. The overpayment has resulted from the Liberal Democratic Party-Komeito government's decision.
Public pensions are supposed to decrease in accordance with falls in the price index. Although the index fell from fiscal 2000 to fiscal 2002, the LDP-Komeito government enacted a special law to stop the public pension reductions, insisting that the reductions would greatly affect people's lives. The special law was aimed at currying voters' favor.
The Democratic Party of Japan government says that because current pensions are paid out of premiums paid by the current working population, overpayment is unfair to them. (Japan Times)
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Is Japan's success of myth?
A respected Japan specialist, Eamonn Fingleton, wrote an interesting piece in the New York Times the other day.
While I do not disagree with many of his points, I think he has missed some very relevant issues in his overly optimistic assertion pertaining to Japan's future.
Take his view on life expectancy. Mr. Fingleton points to a longer life expectancy for Japanese than Americans as a sign that Japanese have a better quality of life than Americans, but he does not touch on important peripheral issues very much connected to lifestyle and happiness. Take, for instance, the financial and physical costs of work absenteeism and presenteeism related to chronic pain and mental illness in workplace in Japan. The American Chamber of Commerce in Japan estimates this costs the Japanese economy at least 3.3 trillion yen a year. (huffingtonpost.com)
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Domains with .tokyo could be available next year
From next year, Internet users may be able to have domain names ending with .tokyo, .sendai or .canon in e-mails and Web sites, according to sources.
At least five local governments and two Japanese companies--Canon Inc. and Hitachi Ltd.--have indicated they plan to register their names for top-level domains under a plan to massively increase the number of available domains on the Internet.
Domains are a set of Internet addresses that come after an "@" mark. The ones installed in the root zone of e-mail and website addresses are called top-level domains. There are only 22 top-level domain categories, including one for countries, such as Japan's .jp. Companies typically use the .com category, while .org is for nonprofit organizations.
In 2008, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a U.S. nonprofit organization that manages domains across the globe, decided to liberalize the usage of top-level domains. It will begin receiving applications for the new domains from Thursday to April and then examine whether it will allow them to be registered ahead of their expected use next year. (Yomiuri)
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Sony boasts 500,000 vitas sold in Japan
During Sony's keynote at CES, executive deputy president Kaz Hirai announced that 500,000 PS Vitas have sold since the platform was released in Japan last month.
Sales of the PS Vita have been lackluster: Just three weeks after release, it was reported that the console's weekly sales had dropped below 42,000, selling fewer units than its predecessor, the PSP. Breaking 500,000 units by CES would indicate that sales had improved in the last week.
Sony also announced that a Netflix app is in the works the PS Vita. Hirai said that Netflix is trying to have the app ready for the console's US launch at the end of February. Considering that you can get Netflix on pretty much any online-enabled device these days, it's hardly surprising.
(complex.com)
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Japanese strategy for improving teachers is catching on in Chicago
In the sunlit library at Jorge Prieto Elementary on Chicago's' northwest side, an experiment is under way.
A provisional classroom has been set up. A white board sits at the front of the room, and 20 eighth-graders are seated at library tables. Math teacher Michael Hock is giving a lesson about the distributive property.
Scattered throughout the room are some 30 other teachers. They aren't wearing lab coats-but they might as well be. They clutch clipboards and carefully monitor kids' reactions to the teacher's explanations, peering over students' shoulders as they write answers.
"What is the area of the garden?" Hock asks students as he points to an illustration on the white board. "Nestor, I haven't heard from you today." (hechingerreport.org)
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Japan railway chief not guilty in 2005 derailment
The former president of a major Japanese railway has been found not guilty of negligence in a crash that killed 107 people in 2005 and raised concerns over pressures to sacrifice safety for punctuality.
Masao Yamazaki resigned as president of West Japan Railway Co. shortly after the speeding commuter train derailed and crashed into an apartment in Amagasaki, western Japan.
He was charged in 2009 with not properly supervising company safety measures. He was found not guilty Wednesday by the Kobe District Court.
The crash was the worst in Japan since 1963, and led to improvements in braking systems. Some experts said it reflected unreasonable expectations for drivers to keep their trains on time in a system that is among the world's most punctual. (AP)
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Nikkei edges up; euro debt crisis limits gains
Japan's Nikkei stock average
edged higher on Wednesday, taking comfort from a rise on Wall
Street, though the debt turmoil in the euro zone capped gains.
Spain and Italy, which are now at the forefront of Europe's
sovereign debt crisis, will test investor appetite this week
with bond auctions, while the European Central Bank is due to
hold a rate-setting meeting later in the day.
A trader, however, said the U.S. KBW banks index,
which advanced 1.9 percent on Tuesday, was a good indicator of
risk appetite for Japanese stocks.
Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Mizuho Financial
Group and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group rose
between 0.9 and 1.6 percent.
(Reuters)
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Space invaders: seniors take over Japan's arcades
Once the preserve of rowdy teenagers, game arcades in Japan are rapidly becoming the hippest place to hang out for a whole new generation -- their grandparents.
With plenty of time on their hands and cash in their pockets, well-behaved elderly customers make up a significant and growing number of those prepared to feed coins into machines for a few hours' entertainment.
The so-called "silver market" is increasingly important for industries in Japan, where a plunging birth rate and a long life expectancy is leaving society increasingly top-heavy.
And for the elderly themselves, arcades offer a chance to find fun and friendship away from the more traditional pursuits of old age. (AFP)
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10 months on, Japan disaster toll reaches 19,300
Ten months after a massive tsunami crashed into Japan following a huge undersea earthquake, police figures show a total of 19,294 people are believed to have died.
Across the disaster zone, 15,844 people have been confirmed dead since the March 11 disaster, the national police agency said in a tally released Tuesday.
In addition, the whereabouts of 3,450 people are yet to be confirmed, the police said, as the hunt for bodies -- many of which are believed to have been washed out to sea -- continues. (Economic Times)
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Most senior foreign exec quits Japan's Nomura
The most senior foreign executive at Japanese bank Nomura has resigned, the company confirmed Wednesday, as the firm struggles to compete on the world stage.
Jasjit Bhattal, the head of Nomura's wholesale division, handed in his notice after being unable to galvanise support for a more radical shake-up of the bank's global operations, the Wall Street Journal had reported.
Nomura, in common with investment banks around the world, has struggled with yo-yoing stock and bond prices, poor merger prospects and tightening regulation in the wake of the global financial crisis.
The firm posted a net loss of 46.1 billion yen ($590 million) in the July-September 2011 quarter and said it would make $1.2 billion in cuts, through reduced staffing and smaller bonuses. (AFP)
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No. 1 plant radioactive water leak kept ashore
Tokyo Electric Power Co. says it found that about 10 liters of water containing radioactive strontium leaked from a water processing facility at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant but it did not flow into the Pacific Ocean.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency ordered Tepco on Tuesday to take measures to prevent a recurrence and consider moving up the schedule for installing a facility for removing radioactive substances such as strontium from water, a difficult process for the existing facility.
Tepco said earlier it plans to install the "multi-nuclide removal facility" sometime in 2012. (Japan Times)
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Convict flees from Hiroshima Prison clad in skivvies
A man convicted of attempted murder escaped from Hiroshima Prison on Wednesday dressed only in his underwear, and police have launched a manhunt.
The fugitive, Chinese national Li Guolin, 40, is thought to have escaped from the prison, situated in Naka Ward in the city of Hiroshima, by scaling a 5-meter-high outer wall, police said.
Footholds were recently attached to the outer wall because of construction work. The sensors and alarms on the wall also had been switched off, police said. (Japan Times)
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Hiroshima 'peace clock' gets reset
The counter on a "peace clock" monument in the city of Hiroshima showing the number of days since the world's last nuclear test has been reset following revelations last week that the U.S. conducted two tests using plutonium last year to examine the capabilities of its nuclear arsenal.
On Tuesday, in the 15th reset since the clock was installed at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in August 2001, the digital number was changed to 55 from 285, indicating the number of days since Nov. 16, when the United States conducted its latest nuclear weapons capability test.
The clock was last reset on May 24, 2011, following similar U.S. tests with the use of plutonium to examine the effectiveness of its nuclear weapons. (Japan Times)
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Job creation key to postdisaster recovery
Following a decline in the populations of areas hit hard by the March 11 disaster, special reconstruction zones have launched job-creation initiatives to curb a potential mass exodus of residents, as seen in previous disasters.
In the wake of the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995, Kobe City's population of about 1.52 million fell by about 100,000 in nine months. It took nine years and 10 months for the city's population to return to its prequake level.
In the city's Nagata Ward, the synthetic shoe industry suffered greatly after its factories were burned in fires caused by the earthquake. The population, a large percentage of which are elderly, is still about 29,000 lower than it was before the quake. (Yomiuri)
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Number of suicides in Japan exceeds 30,000 for 14th year in 2011
The number of people who committed suicide in Japan in 2011 stood at 30,513, surpassing 30,000 for the 14th straight year but down 3.7 percent from the previous year, the National Police Agency said Tuesday in a preliminary report.
The figure was the lowest since the number of suicides topped 30,000 for the first time in 1998.
Males accounted for 20,867 of the total, exceeding 20,000 for the 14th straight year.
The monthly figures exceeded levels a year earlier in April, May and June last year. In May, in particular, the number of suicides increased by 585 from a year earlier to a record 3,367. (Mainichi)
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Japan's oldest elephant turning 65
The oldest Asian elephant in Japan will turn 65 next month and officials at the Inokashira Park Zoo in western Tokyo say they're planning a party for her.
The elephant, named Hanako, has been living at the zoo for more than 50 years and has never had a major disease or injury, her keepers say.
"She likes people very much," Miwa Saito, 28, one of four keepers who look after the pachyderm, told Kyodo News.
Hanako is fed about 120 to 175 pounds per day of fruit and vegetables, fresh grass and hay and bread, keepers said. Her food is cut into small pieces since the elephant lost all but one of her four teeth about 30 years ago.
(UPI)
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Mother Nature finally smiles on Japan, with bumper ski season
Skiers and snowboarders are basking in bumper snowfalls in Japan, while the United States is struggling with below average snowfalls.
But ironically bookings for Japan have been down following last year's earthquake and tsunami.
Whistler in British Columbia has recorded some of the best snowfalls in Canada, with a 208cm base, and Alberta resorts such as Banff and Lake Louise were also doing well.
But most of the US is suffering below average snowfalls with many of the most popular resorts struggling to reach a half-metre base.
Niseko on Japan's northern island Hokkaido has had more than 10m of snow fall this season. (news.com.au)
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20-year-old cop arrested for allegedly molesting girl in Yokohama
A 20-year-old Kanagawa Prefectural police officer has been arrested on suspicion of molesting a 16-year-old high school girl.
According to investigators, the suspect, identified as Yuki Kobayashi, came up behind the girl who was walking along a street in Yokohama's Asahi Ward at about 11:30 a.m. The girl said he lifted up her skirt and touched her buttocks, TBS reported.
Kobayashi has admitted to the charge and said he did it on impulse, TBS reported. He said has has done the same thing many times before, police said. (Japan Today)
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