Tokyo man handed life term for murdering, mutilating female neighbor – The Mainichi Daily News

Takanori Hoshijima, 34, a former temporary worker from Tokyo’s Koto Ward, was given a life sentence at the Tokyo District Court on Wednesday for murder and destruction of a corpse.

50 hurt in turbulence on Japan-bound flight

By SHINO YUASA – 3 days ago

TOKYO (AP) — Severe turbulence jolted a Tokyo-bound Northwest Airlines flight from the Philippines on Friday, injuring 50 passengers and crew members, a company spokesman said.

Four passengers were hospitalized, including one person with a serious neck injury, said Masashi Takahashi, spokesman for Northwest Airlines in Tokyo.

The 46 others, including seven crew members, received light injuries, he said.

Record number of people apprehended, in Japan, over cannabis violations in 2008 – The Mainichi Daily News

A bag that was used to smuggle drugs, top right, is pictured at Narita Airport next to parcels of cannabis resin that it contained. (Mainichi)The number of people apprehended on suspicion of violating the Cannabis Control Law in Japan last year hit 2,778, the highest figure on record, a National Police Agency (NPA) report has shown.

Japan’s History of “Dutch Studies”

I like digging around in Japanese history to find interesting little tidbits. In 1853, Admiral Matthew Perry sailed his “black ships” into the harbor at Edo (modern day Tokyo) on a mission to force Japan to ends its “closed country” policy and trade with the U.S.

Japanese Surgical Mask Culture

Posted by Danny Choo, February 13, 2009 7:10 PM | permalink

Danny Choo is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. Danny resides in Tokyo, and blogs about life in Japan and Japanese subculture – he also works part time for the empire.

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When I first came to Japan, I was shocked to see people wearing surgical masks in public. The first time was when I was on a train. I looked around to see if anybody was looking at the masked middle aged woman but spotted nobody. The only conclusion I came to was that she was a doctor – but she didn’t look like a doctor and even if she was – why on earth was she wearing a surgical mask on the train?!

I soon learned that folks in Japan wear masks for a few reasons…

* They are sick and don’t want their evil germs to infect others.
* They have hay fever and don’t want the evil pollen to affect them.
* They are not sick but don’t want to catch any evil germs from others.
* They have a tooth missing and want to cover it up.
* Their breath smells like a fart and want to diffuse the smell.
* They have no mouth and don’t want people to know that they are from Mars.

The main reason however is the first one – to prevent others from being infected with ones germs. This poor chap in the photo above is being a good citizen and wants to keep his germs to himself – he wears the mask all day until he gets home. And for those who don’t like masks – they choose something like the product below to plug up their nostrils.

I’ve only seen folks wearing masks in Japan – anybody wear surgical masks in your region out n about in public?

Photo taken during my times at Microsoft Japan with more Japanism cultural shenanigans at the Japan Portal.

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