The Justice Ministry has issued a new guideline for handling prisoners with gender identity disorder that allows them to bathe alone and wear the underwear of the gender they identify with, sources said Saturday.
The guideline was issued after some prisoners who were born male but identify themselves as female, filed complaints about their treatment, prompting local bar associations to lobby the ministry and prisons to show more respect in protecting GID prisoners' human rights. (Japan Times)
Gender-conflicted inmates to get solo bathing time, choice of undergarments
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Equestrian: Hiroshi Hoketsu qualifies for London Olympics at age 70
Japanese equestrian Hiroshi Hoketsu qualified for the London Olympics at age 70, although it's not yet clear if he will actually compete.
The oldest Olympian in history is Swedish shooter Oscar Swahn. He won a silver medal at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics at 72, his sixth medal in three games.
Hoketsu qualified by winning an international dressage meet in France on Thursday. Japanese equestrian officials said Sunday an announcement will be made soon on whether he will ride in London. Hoketsu will turn 71 on March 28. (New York Daily News)
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Marathon: Yamamoto closes in on place at Olympics
Ryo Yamamoto is used to taking the express lane. The 27-year-old proved it on Sunday, placing fourth in the Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon for the top finish among Japanese runners to all but secure his spot in his first-ever Summer Olympics at this year's London Games.
Yamamoto, who works for major logistics company Sagawa Express Co., maintained a steady pace in rainy and cold conditions to cross the line at Ojiyama stadium in 2 hours, 8 minutes, 44 seconds in the race won by first-time marathon runner Samuel Ndungu of Kenya in a time of 2:07:04. (Japan Times)
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Crackdown on intellectual property piracy pays off
The first joint effort between Japan and Taiwan to crack down on the pirating of intellectual property has led to the seizure by Taiwanese police of nearly 10,000 Japanese DVDs sold in the island's night markets, local police said Saturday.
Shyh Show-yi, deputy commander of the National Police Administration's Intellectual Property Rights Division, said the seizure capped a five-month operation that began in November when five Japanese TV stations filed a complaint. (Japan Times)
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1 year after Japan's quake, 20% of affected businesses closed
Of about 27,000 Japanese businesses in prefectures affected by last year's earthquake and tsunami, more than 20 percent have not resumed operations, according to a recent Yomiuri Shimbun survey.
Some have decided to go out of business permanently, heightening the sense of crisis in the region, as local businesses should be a pillar of reconstructing the economy there.
A total of 27,149 commercial and industrial businesses in Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima prefectures have been affected by last March's disaster. Of them, 5,947, or 22 percent, have temporarily or permanently closed, the survey found. (bostonherald.com)
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Semester shift to align universities globally means major overhaul
A call to shift enrolment from the current April to September, made by the prestigious University of Tokyo and supported by at least 30 other universities, has turned the spotlight on higher education internationalisation in Japan and reviving universities' depleting revenue. But a changeover would also have an impact on broader recruitment practices.
Although the university first raised the idea of changing its semester dates last year, it was in an announcement in January that University of Tokyo President Junichi Hamada outlined a timetable for change, saying he "would aim to conclude the transition five years from now". (universityworldnews.com)
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Okada loses in Manila as Wynn goes 'nuclear'
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Japanese factories in post-tsunami rethink
When small unheard-of factories on Japan's tsunami-hit northeast coast were knocked out of action last year, few people would have predicted that it would cause the global car industry to come screeching to a halt.
However, that painful experience has quickly forced manufacturing giants to re-think their complex web of globalized production.
The crippling of thousands of workshops by the quake or flooding by the monster tsunami it caused on March 11 last year did not at first appear to be a disaster in itself.
This was Japan's hinterland, not the economic and cultural hub of Tokyo or the industrial base around Osaka. (Taipei Times)
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Charges loom over falsified AIJ reports
The Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission is considering filing criminal charges against executives of scandal-ridden AIJ Investment Advisors Co. on suspicion of falsifying pension asset management results for years, according to informed sources.
The investigation by the commission, the Financial Services Agency's independent watchdog, has been conducted mainly by its Securities Business Inspection Division. After the probe is completed, the Investigation Division will start examining whether criminal charges should be laid against AIJ President Kazuhiko Asakawa and other executives, the sources said.
(Yomiuri)
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500-kg bull gores man shielding grandkids
A 56-year-old farmer was gored and seriously injured while he tried to protect his grandchildren from a 500-kilogram bull that had escaped from its owner on Tokunoshima island in Kagoshima Prefecture, according to police.
The bull had wandered into the garden of Eio Okuyama in the town of Isen at about 2:50 p.m. Saturday. When Okuyama stood between the animal and his three granddaughters, aged between 8 months and 10 years, the bull gored him in the lower abdomen and tossed him about one meter into the air.
(Yomiuri)
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More retailers look to S.E. Asia / Economic doldrums at home make fast-growing economies attractive
Domestic demand-oriented companies, such as supermarket chains, convenience store chains and food makers, are accelerating their moves into the markets of other Asian countries.
Aeon Co. on Friday officially launched a project to operate in the Vietnamese market.
Deflation, a declining birthrate and a rapidly aging population have been shrinking Japan's domestic market, making other Asian countries, whose economies and populations continue to grow, more attractive. (Yomiuri)
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Govt increasing efforts to woo LDP
Deputy Prime Minister Katsuya Okada has met with senior members of the largest opposition party--the Liberal Democratic Party--and asked for their cooperation on bills related to consumption tax hikes, according to sources.
After Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda reportedly held secret talks with LDP President Sadakazu Tanigaki recently, the government is apparently increasing its efforts to seek coordination in passing the bills.
Okada approached former Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura, who heads his own LDP faction, and Takeshi Noda, chairman of the LDP Research Commission on the Tax System, to hold a meeting, according to the sources. (Yomiuri)
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Himeji bar owner killed in arson attack
An apparent dispute over money resulted in the death by arson of the owner of a hostess bar in Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture, police said Sunday.
According to police, the bar owner, who has been named as Aimi Nemoto, 27, became embroiled in a dispute over money with her ex-partner, Takeshi Suzuki, 35, Fuji TV reported.
Suzuki is accused of breaking into Nemoto's bar in the early hours of Saturday and setting fire to the property by spraying gasoline. Nemoto died in the blaze and four others were injured, police said. (Japan Today)
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Penguin escapes from Kasai Rinkai Aquarium
A penguin bred at Kasai Rinkai Aquarium in Tokyo's Edogawa Ward escaped on Sunday morning.
According to the aquarium, around 11 a.m., an employee at a nearby bird park called the aquarium, saying that a creature resembling a penguin was swimming in the Kyu-Edo River, NTV reported. Aquarium staff counted the number of penguins and found one young penguin was missing from the 135 Humboldt penguins. (Japan Today)
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Japanese artist creates music using brain waves
News of the mind-controlled skateboard spurred a rather heated discussion on Crave this week about how we could apply brain-wave-powered tech to other aspects of our lives.
Of all the things we came up with, music was not one of them. However, Japanese artist Masaki Batoh's had the wherewithal to make that connection.
Wanting to remember and help those affected by last year's Great East Japan earthquake, Batoh produced a new album, called "Brain Pulse Music", that took survivors' brain waves and turned them into music. (CNET)
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Heroes of Japan's nuclear disaster all but forgotten
Koichi Nakagawa sometimes wonders if he should have bailed out on his friends and other employees at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant a lot earlier.
Maybe he should have left the day he worked to restore electricity to the plant wearing his regular work clothes while others wore hazmat suits. Or the day he watched as a pink mushroom cloud formed over the plant after Reactor Unit 3 blew up.
Or maybe he should have driven away on March 11, 2011, when he felt the earth move at 2:46 p.m. Hard pavement started undulating like waves on water, windows shattered, and a female employee was frantically shouting on the public-address system: "Please evacuate! Please evacuate!" Soon hundreds of workers rushed toward the headquarters where Nakagawa was standing petrified. (thedailybeast.com)
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Nikkei drops on profit-taking, China growth target letdown
Japan's Nikkei share
average dropped on Monday as profit-taking from domestic
investors mounted near key chart levels and as Asian shares
slipped on disappointment after China announced its lowest
annual growth target in eight years.
Selling from Japanese institutional investors could cap
gains in the Nikkei in coming weeks ahead of their book closing
on March 31, though the yen's decline last month is seen
providing support, market players said.
The benchmark Nikkei fell 0.8 percent to 9,698.59,
slipping from Friday's seven-month closing high of 9,777.03
while the broader Topix index shed 0.6 percent to
832.86.
(Reuters)
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Shareholders file $67 bln lawsuit against Tepco executives
Shareholders of Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc, operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in northeast Japan, are suing the utility's executives for a record 5.5 trillion yen ($67.4 billion) in compensation, lawyers said.
The Fukushima Daiichi plant was wrecked by a quake and tsunami last March, triggering the world's worst nuclear crisis in a quarter of a century and swamping the firm with huge clean-up, compensation and decommissioning costs.
In the biggest claim of its kind in Japan, 42 shareholders filed a lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court on Monday accusing 27 current and former Tepco directors of ignoring multiple warnings of a possible tsunami and of failing to prepare for a severe accident, lawyers for the shareholders said in a statement. (Reuters)
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Disasters cost $380 billion in 2011, says UN
Disasters led by the Japan earthquake cost the world a record figure of more than $380 billion last year, a UN official said Monday.
While countries are managing to control the disaster death toll, economic costs are increasing more than ever before, said Margareta Wahlstrom, the UN special envoy on disaster risk reduction.
She called the $380 billion figure "the minimum" cost, two thirds higher than the last record in 2005 when the United States suffered huge losses from Hurricane Katrina. (AFP)
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Japan beats US women 1-0 on 84th-minute goal by Megumi Takase to reach Algarve Cup final
Megumi Takase scored on a header in the 84th minute, and world champion Japan beat the United States 1-0 Monday at Faro, Portugal, in a rematch of last year's World Cup championship game. With the win, the Japanese advanced to the final of the Algarve Cup.
The Americans, who had been seeking their third straight title and ninth overall in the annual tournament, finished second in Group B with a 2-1 record and will play in the third-place game Wednesday. Japan (3-0) goes to the final.
(Washington Post)
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