shin2 wrote:HIDE-AND-SEEK REUNION
Close your eyes, count to 10 . . . and play to your heart's content
For many people in Japan, their wild time comes during their student days.
I wish my student days were wild. :shamefulcry: I'm still waiting for my wild days to arrive.
Literally translated as "Hide-and-Seek Reunion," the members of this Waseda University club in Tokyo risk not only their reputations but even their graduation credits to -- wait for it -- play hide-and-seek to their hearts' content.
How do they risk their credits? :headscratch:
One reason is certainly the penalty system awaiting losers.
After the 2005 WAR, the team that lost -- which was hiding in the hot-spring mountain resort of Hakone in Kanagawa Prefecture -- was made to run the 130 km back to their central Tokyo university.
LOL! I was wondering what the motivator was. :hehe:
This is really scary... especially when they send out warnings that people living near the sea should move to "higher ground". The fact that Japan is sinking is really hitting home... :sweat:
TOKYO - The mayor of the Japanese city of Nagasaki was shot to death in a brazen attack Tuesday by an organized crime chief apparently enraged that the city refused to compensate him after his car was damaged at a public works construction site, news agencies reported.
The shooting was rare in a country where handguns are strictly banned and only four politicians are known to have been killed since World War II.
Mayor Iccho Ito, 61, was shot twice in the back at point-blank range outside a train station Tuesday evening, Nagasaki police official Rumi Tsujimoto said.
One of the bullets struck the mayor's heart and he went into cardiac arrest, according to Nagasaki University Hospital spokesman Kenzo Kusano. Kyodo News agency and national broadcaster NHK said Ito died of his wounds early Wednesday.
Tetsuya Shiroo, a senior member of Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest organized crime syndicate, was wrestled to the ground by officers after the attack and arrested for attempted murder, police said.
He later admitted to shooting Ito with a handgun with the intent to kill, Nagasaki chief investigator Kazuki Umebayashi said at a news conference.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called for a "rigorous investigation."
It was the second attack in the last 20 years against a mayor of Nagasaki, which was destroyed by a U.S. atomic bomb in 1945 and whose leaders have actively campaigned against militarism.
In 1990, Mayor Hitoshi Motoshima was shot and seriously wounded after saying that Japan's emperor, beloved by rightists, bore some responsibility for World War II.
Tuesday's attack appeared to involve a more trivial matter, however.
Shiroo reportedly clashed with Nagasaki city officials in 2003 after his car was damaged when he drove into a hole at a public works site. He tried unsuccessfully to get compensation from the city after his insurance company refused to pay up, according to Japanese broadcaster NHK.
Shiroo also sent a letter to broadcaster TV Asahi to protest recent money scandals linked to Ito, including hidden accounts and public works contracts, Kyodo reported.
Backed by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Ito was campaigning for his fourth term in office before Sunday's elections. He was an active figure in the movement against nuclear proliferation, heading a coalition of Japanese cities calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
"Mayor Ito had a strong and boundless passion for peace," said Sunao Tsuboi, leader of a survivors' group based in Hiroshima, a city also flattened by a U.S. atomic bomb in 1945. "We all pray for his recovery."
Commonly known as yakuza, Japan's organized crime groups are typically involved in real estate and construction kickback schemes, extortion, gambling, the sex industry, gunrunning and drug trafficking.
The yakuza also have had a long-standing political alliance with right-wing nationalists in Japan, although authorities did not indicate that Tuesday's attack was politically motivated.
Organized crime groups are behind most shootings in Japan, with two-thirds of the country's 53 known shootings last year being gang-related, according to the National Police Agency. Police estimate there are about 84,500 gangsters across Japan.
Attacks on politicians in post-war Japan are extremely rare.
In 1960, Socialist leader Inejiro Asanuma was killed in an attack by a sword-wielding 17-year-old that riveted the nation.
In 2002, a ruling party politician was fatally stabbed in a dispute over political funds. In the 1990s, a Liberal Democrat lawmaker was killed at his home by his daughter and an opposition lawmaker was stabbed to death by a mental patient.
Last year, a right-wing extremist burned down the house of ruling party lawmaker Koichi Kato after the politician criticized then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's pilgrimage to a controversial Tokyo war shrine. No one was home at the time.
Yup. When I read that yesterday I immediately thought since he was campaigning for re-election, maybe he spoke too much about eliminating crime, opposed a development project, wanted a bigger bribe...
It's a know fact that there are construction companies own by criminal groups.
Thought this was interesting... and it even includes an actress!
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=263297
Japanese fooled in poodle scam
Thursday Apr 26 20:55 AEST
Thousands of Japanese have been swindled in a scam in which they were sold Australian and British sheep and told they were poodles.
Flocks of sheep were imported to Japan and then sold by a company called Poodles as Pets, marketed as fashionable accessories, available at $1,600 each.That is a snip compared to a real poodle which retails for twice that much in Japan.
The scam was uncovered when Japanese moviestar Maiko Kawamaki went on a talk-show and wondered why her new pet would not bark or eat dog food.
She was crestfallen when told it was a sheep.
Then hundreds of other women got in touch with police to say they feared their new "poodle" was also a sheep.
One couple said they became suspicious when they took their "dog" to have its claws trimmed and were told it had hooves.
Japanese police believe there could be 2,000 people affected by the scam, which operated in Sapporo and capitalised on the fact that sheep are rare in Japan, so many do not know what they look like.
"We launched an investigation after we were made aware that a company were selling sheep as poodles," Japanese police said, the The Sun reported.
"Sadly we think there is more than one company operating in this way.
"The sheep are believed to have been imported from overseas - Britain, Australia."
Many of the sheep have now been donated to zoos and farms.
LMAO! My boss told me about that when I got to work today.
Imagine trying to get it to eat dogfood? Or taking it to the vet: "I think my dog is sick, it eats grass all day!"
Reminds me of a story I heard about a woman who was walking her dog one day at the beach. She found another small dog washed up on the beach, half dead. She took it home, dried it off and left it some food, and left it with her other dog and went out for a few hours. When she came back, her original dog was all bloody and the washed-up dog was hiding somewhere in the house. Turns out it wasn't a dog, but a large rat :shocked: