| August 10, 19:00 PM
, 2020 | - Experts predicted a period of deflation, or falling prices--a condition that wrecked Japan's economy throughout the 1990s. “We could get into a vicious circle of deepening malaise,” said economist Nouriel Roubini.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 16, 2013 | - A report revealed that Japan's economy recently registered its worst decline in three decades.
| Source:
MarketWatch
|
| November 5, 2009 | - A Japanese firm designed spectacles that can project translations onto the wearer's retinas.
| Source:
BBC
|
| September 2, 2009 | - The wife of Japan's next prime minister said that her soul once rode to Venus on a triangular UFO.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| July 31, 2009 | -
Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata revealed that for a month in space he wore the same underwear, which was flame-resistant, controlled odors, killed bacteria, and absorbed water. Wakata said that he also ate a number of curries. “My station crew members never complained,” he said, “so I think the experiment went fine.”
| Source:
Times Online
|
| July 12, 2009 | - The unemployment rate was rising for Japan's robots.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 10, 2009 | - Stress-relief was also the reason offered by Japanese manufacturer Wishroom for the success of its line of male bras.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| July 1, 2009 | -
Scientists said that a single super-colony of billions of Argentine ants had conquered Europe, the United States, and Japan, forming the largest insect colony ever.
| Source:
BBC
|
| June 17, 2009 | - The United States was spying on a 2,000-ton freighter believed to be carrying missile components from North Korea to Burma; North Korea responded by threatening “unlimited retaliatory strikes” against South Korea, and Japanese intelligence officials suggested that North Korea may attempt to fire a Taepodong-2 missile toward Hawaii on July 4th, leading Hawaii to deploy its anti-missile defenses. “Without telegraphing what we will do,” said Defense Secretary Robert Gates, “we are in a good position, should it become necessary, to protect Americans and American territory.”
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
The Daily Mail
|
| May 28, 2009 | - Geneticists in Kawasaki, Japan, announced that they had used an engineered virus to insert a jellyfish gene into marmoset embryos, producing monkeys that glow green in ultraviolet light and that can pass on the glow to their offspring. “It's hard to put your finger on what is it about this research that is likely to stimulate ethical debate,” said a bioethicist in Kentucky, “besides the sort of gut feeling that this is not the right thing to do.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| May 24, 2009 | - A Japanese company introduced toilet paper printed with novellas by Koji Suzuki, the author of the “Ring” series, intended to provide “a horror experience in the toilet.”
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| March 16, 2009 | - The House of Representatives, reacting to a plan by AIG to pay its executives as much as $218 million in bonuses, voted 328 to 93 in favor of a 90-percent tax on executive bonuses at firms that receive $5 billion or more in federal funds. Eighty-five Republicans voted for the bill despite their party's traditional opposition to tax increases. “The American people,” explained Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), “are all watching here.” “The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better towards them,” said Senator Charles Grassley (R., Iowa) of the AIG executives, “if they’d follow the Japanese model and come before the American people and take that deep bow, and say I’m sorry, and then either do one of two things--resign, or go commit suicide.”
| Source 1:
Politico
Source 2:
CBCNews.ca
Source 3:
Politico
|
| March 16, 2009 | -
Scientists in Japan released a five-foot-two, 95 pound fashion-model robot.
| Source:
Breitbart
|
| November 21, 2008 | - Men in Japan were wearing bras.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| November 4, 2008 | -
Scientists in Japan produced clones of dead mice, a feat they say brings them closer to resurrecting extinct species.
| Source:
CNN
|
| September 2, 2008 | - A murder investigation in Japan ended when pathologists discovered that the decomposing corpse was actually a life-sized sex doll.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| September 1, 2008 | -
Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda resigned.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 22, 2008 | -
Japanese scientists created human stem cells from a little girl's teeth.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| May 23, 2008 | - The United Nations, responding to food riots in 30 countries, said that the number of chronically hungry people in the world was expected to rise 100 million to 950 million. Japan released 20,000 tons of its 1.5-million-ton rice stockpile for sale to Africa.
| Source 1:
The Washington Post
Source 2:
The Daily Star
Source 3:
AFP
|
| May 22, 2008 | - A 34-year-old farmer in Kumamoto, Japan, killed himself by ingesting the agricultural chemical chloropicrin. Hospitalized before dying, he injured 54 people by vomiting toxic chlorine gas.
| Source:
Mainichi Daily News
|
| May 2, 2008 | - A Japanese government employee was found to have viewed online pornography at work more than 780,000 times in nine months.
| Source:
BBC
|
| April 28, 2008 | - South Korean intelligence officials told the Japanese press that ten North Koreans working on the site were killed in the attack.
| Source:
Bloomberg
|
| February 28, 2008 | -
Japanese scientists studying the path of space debris over the last four billion years postulated an undiscovered “Planet X,” between 30 and 70 percent the size of Earth, at the edges of the solar system.
| Source:
Yahoo! News
|
| February 23, 2008 | -
Japan launched an experimental satellite that would provide Internet access speeds of 1.2 gigabytes per second.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| February 14, 2008 | - Senator Barack Obama beat Senator Hillary Clinton by huge margins in primaries in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, and Senator John McCain beat former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. The close Democratic race worried party superdelegates, who will play a decisive role in choosing a candidate. Nancy Larson, a lobbyist and superdelegate from Minnesota, characterized superdelegates in general as “big schmucks.” Alaskan superdelegate Cindi Spanyers received a call from former president Bill Clinton, who recalled his wife's work on a fish cannery slime line there, and Obama was endorsed by the fishing village of Obama, Japan. McCain was endorsed by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and ex-president George H. W. Bush.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
Washington Post
Source 3:
Los Angeles Times
Source 4:
Washington Post
Source 5:
AP via Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Source 6:
Los Angeles Times
Source 7:
Star Tribune
Source 8:
Anchorage Daily News
Source 9:
Guardian
Source 10:
LAT
Source 11:
AP via Google
|
| January 31, 2008 | - A Japanese urologist noted an increase in “vaginal ejaculation disorder, or an inability to ejaculate inside the vagina,” among Japanese men, crediting it to “incredible progress made in masturbation goods.”
| Source:
Wanton women cry that men jerk their shot and miss the real target
|
| January 16, 2008 | - The thoughts of a monkey in North Carolina controlled the actions of a robot in Japan.
| Source:
Information Week
|
| November 22, 2007 | - Teams of biologists in Japan and Wisconsin discovered new methods for transforming human skin cells into “induced pluripotent stem cells.” Both techniques employ a retrovirus to inject the cells with four “master regulator” genes that reprogram the cells' function. The Wisconsin team, directed by James A. Thompson, who pioneered the harvesting of embryonic stem cells, culled its skin cells from foreskins. The Japanese team conducted their preliminary research on mice, with a cancer gene among the regulators, and created in the process a mischief of clone mice, 20 percent of which developed cancer. President George W. Bush was said to be “very pleased” that the innovation might render the use of embryonic stem cells obsolete, but critics said it was too soon to tell whether the synthesized stem cells would prove as versatile as those from embryos.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
Seattle Times
Source 3:
New York Times
|
| November 18, 2007 | - A Japanese whaling fleet, trailed by a Greenpeace vessel, was under sail with orders to kill 1,000 whales, including 50 humpbacks.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| November 2, 2007 | - Alexander Feklisov, the Soviet spy handler of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, died at 93, as did Washoe, the signing chimp, at 42, and Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr., the pilot of the Enola Gay, at 92. Tibbets remained unapologetic about his role in the 66,000 deaths and 69,000 injuries wrought by the atomic blast at Hiroshima. “I never,” he once said, “lost a night's sleep over it.”
| Source 1:
AP via Yahoo! News
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
Los Angeles Times
|
| September 16, 2007 | - There were reports of a restaurant in Tokyo where patrons could rape an animal before eating it. “When people have got money and done everything else,” said a lawyer who'd had the pork, “they turn toward bestiality.”
| Source:
Mainichi Daily News
|
| September 16, 2007 | - At a gala hosted by Mr. Sulu from “Star Trek,” the Japanese American Citizens League saluted Sen. Larry Craig (R., Idaho), and tourists flocked to the airport men's room stall where Craig was recently arrested for attempted cruising. “I checked it out,” said Jon Westby of Minneapolis, who was with his wife, Sally, visiting the stall for his second time. “It's the second stall from the right.”
| Source 1:
The Hill
Source 2:
Idaho Statesman
|
| August 3, 2007 | - Five hundred inmates contracted food poisoning at Hiroshima Prison.
| Source:
Mainichi Daily News
|
| July 23, 2007 | -
Japan was gradually rearming itself. “Bombing,” said Col. Tatsuya Arima, “does not always mean offensive weapons.”
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| June 25, 2007 | -
Tuna shortages were forcing Japanese chefs to consider deer and horse meat as substitutes for sushi.
-
Tuna shortages were forcing Japanese chefs to consider deer and horse meat as substitutes for sushi.
| Source:
NYT
|
| June 21, 2007 | -
Japan rechristened the island of Iwo Jima, made famous by World War II, with its prewar name of Iwo To.
-
Japan rechristened the island of Iwo Jima, made famous by World War II, with its prewar name of Iwo To.
| Source:
AP via CNN
|
| June 2, 2007 | -
Japanese engineers unveiled a gray-skinned child-android with the physical abilities of a toddler.
| Source:
Yomiuri Shimbun
|
| April 16, 2007 | - Toto, Japan's leading toilet maker, was offering free repairs for 180,000 bidet toilets after several burst into flames.
| Source:
Fox News
|
| March 6, 2007 | - A BBC World Service poll of twenty-seven countries suggested that a majority of people believe Israel and Iran have a “mainly negative” influence in the world. Canada and Japan were the most positively viewed countries.
| Source:
BBCnews.com
|
| March 6, 2007 | -
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the 200,000 women staffing the Japanese military's World War II brothels had not been coerced into service; surviving comfort women countered that they had been raped en masse and demanded compensation.
| Source:
The Australian
|
| February 15, 2007 | - A Japanese
dolphin was fitted with an artificial tail.
| Source:
DailyMail
|
| January 29, 2007 | -
Japanese Health Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa apologized for calling women “birth-giving machines.”
| Source:
AP via International Herald Tribune
|
| January 26, 2007 | -
Profits at Tokyo-based Nintendo Co. were up 43 percent in the nine months ending in December, largely on sales of its new Wii video-game system.
| Source:
AP via LA Times
|
| January 9, 2007 | - In the Persian Gulf, the USS Newport News, an American nuclear submarine, collided with the Mogamigawa, a Japanese
oil tanker.
| Source:
Boston Globe
|
| November 15, 2006 | - Some women in Japan were reportedly experiencing constant orgasms; their condition, known as persistent sexual arousal syndrome, or PSAS, is colloquially known as iku iku byo, or “cum cum disease.”
| Source:
MAINICHI DAILY NEWS
|
| November 5, 2006 | - Researchers in Japan captured a dolphin with legs.
| Source:
Chicago Tribune
|
| November 1, 2006 | -
Japanese law enforcement arrested a fetishist who had filled a warehouse with 5,000 pairs of stolen children's shoes.
| Source:
Mianichi Daily News
|
| September 28, 2006 | - Teens were hunting geeks on the streets of Tokyo.
| Source:
Mainichi Daily News
|
| August 15, 2006 | - American guitars were dominating Japan.
| Source:
MSN
|
| August 11, 2006 | - A Hiroshima man was arrested for making 37,760 silent phone calls to directory assistance because he wanted “to hear these women's voices.”
| Source:
The Australian
|
| August 2, 2006 | -
Japanese physicists were preparing to create a “baby universe,” with its own laws of physics, by cutting off a piece of our own.
| Source:
Sentido.tv
|
| August 1, 2006 | - In Japan, on the Day of the Dog, Princess Kiko prayed for the safe delivery of her third child.
| Source:
BBC
|
| July 27, 2006 | - A large praying mantis statue was frightening children in Tokyo.
| Source:
NDTV.com
|
| July 5, 2006 | -
North Korea launched six rockets over the Sea of Japan, including a Taepodong-2 intercontinental ballistic missile, which apparently was aborted after just 40 seconds. One thing we have learned, said President George W. Bush, who strongly dislikes North Korea's Dear Leader Kim Jong Il, “is that the rocket didn't stay up very long.” The president, who expressed annoyance when a reporter pointed out that Kim Jong Il had on all accounts increased his nuclear potency since Bush took office, claimed that his antimissile system, which has failed repeated tests, had a “reasonable chance” of intercepting the Taepodong.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 29, 2006 | -
Engineers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology announced the creation of a machine that can record and reproduce smells. “We can tell a green apple from a red apple,” said TIT scientist Pambuk Somboon.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| May 31, 2006 | - A Japanese
acoustics expert recreated the voice of the Mona Lisa. “My true identity,” said the virtual Mona Lisa, “is shrouded in mystery.”
| Source:
Yahoo! News
|
| March 25, 2006 | -
Japanese researchers analyzing water trapped in minerals discovered that the microbes that generate methane existed about 3.49 billion years ago.
| Source:
Science News Online
|
| March 7, 2006 | -
Japanese
scientists extracted sweet-smelling vanillin from cow dung.
| Source:
The New Zealand Herald
|
| January 20, 2006 | -
Japan blocked imports of American beef after a spine was discovered in a shipment from a U.S. meatpacker.
| Source:
IHT.com
|
| January 19, 2006 | - In Tokyo a hamster named Gohan ("snack") and a rat snake were still friends after two years.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| January 19, 2006 | -
Greenpeace dumped a 55-foot fin whale in front of the Japanese Embassy in Berlin.
| Source:
Fox News
|
| January 11, 2006 | - Firemen in Japan were celebrating the end of a fire awareness event when a fire broke out, severely damaging their station.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| December 17, 2005 | - A passerby found 30 dog heads in a Tokyo moat.
| Source:
Japan Today
|
| November 8, 2005 | -
Socks made from corn were slated to go on sale in Japan.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| November 3, 2005 | - In Japan a 16-year-old girl was found to have rendered her mother comatose by dosing her with rat poison over several months. The girl kept track of the poisonings on her blog: “To kill a living creature. The moment of sticking a knife into something. The warmth of the blood. The little sigh. It is all a comfort to me.”
| Source:
Times Online
|
| September 28, 2005 | -
Japanese scientists photographed a giant squid and managed to tear off one of its tentacles.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| September 6, 2005 | - A typhoon killed at least 21 people in southern Japan.
| Source:
AFP
|
| August 10, 2005 | -
Japanese scientists were able to control the direction a person walked by using a handheld remote control.
| Source:
NewScientist.com
|
| August 7, 2005 | - And North Korea would not make changes to its nuclear program, despite the efforts of China, Japan, Russia, the United States, and South Korea.
| Source:
VOA.com
|
| August 5, 2005 | - The world marked the sixtieth anniversary of America's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
| Source:
LATimes.com
|
| July 3, 2005 | - A Japanese man recited 83,431 digits of pi.
| Source:
Japan Today
|
| June 30, 2005 | - In Tobe, Japan, a panther stood on its hind legs and clasped its paws together in the posture of prayer.
| Source:
Mainichi Daily News
|
| June 6, 2005 | - A care worker at a Japanese mental home was arrested for unleashing feral dogs to keep patients in their rooms.
| Source:
Mainichi Daily News
|
| June 2, 2005 | - Zoo officials in Japan were worried that Futa, the red panda that became famous when it stood up on two legs, would be worn out by all of the attention. “His primary purpose here,” said an official, “is to mate.”
| Source:
Canada.com
|
| May 24, 2005 | -
Japan announced it would close down its fund for WWII-era sex slaves.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| May 13, 2005 | - Researchers in Japan developed a fuel cell that runs on blood.
| Source:
IOL.co.za
|
| May 11, 2005 | - Researchers in Tokyo used smoothed particle hydrodynamics to prove that stones skip farthest when they strike the surface of water at a twenty-degree angle.
| Source:
CBC
|
| April 28, 2005 | - George W. Bush gave his fourth prime-time news conference and took a firm stance against North Korea. “Perhaps Kim Jong Il has got the capacity to launch a weapon,” he said. “Wouldn't it be nice to be able to shoot it down?” North Korea then fired a missile into the Sea of Japan.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
VOA
|
| April 25, 2005 | - In Japan, a commuter train derailed and smashed into an apartment building, killing at least seventy-one people and injuring hundreds.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 22, 2005 | -
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi publicly apologized for the “tremendous damage and suffering” caused by Japan's actions prior to and during World War II.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 12, 2005 | -
American and Japanese scientists proclaimed cloned
cattle safe to eat.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 10, 2005 | - Thousands of Chinese rallied to protest Japanese history textbooks.
| Source:
The Australian
|
| April 4, 2005 | -
Cambodia
privatized the Killing Fields at Cheoung Ek; a Japanese firm will plant flowers near the tower of eight thousand skulls and will raise admission rates.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| March 21, 2005 | - A magnitude-7.0 earthquake hit Japan.
| Source:
Christian Science Monitor
|
| January 27, 2005 | -
China overtook the United States as Japan's biggest trading partner,
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| November 4, 2004 | - In Japan, young women were being raped by the men with whom they'd hoped to commit suicide.
| Source:
The Japan Times
|
| September 18, 2004 | - Volcanic ash rained down on Tokyo.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| September 6, 2004 | - Earthquakes in western Japan caused tsunamis, and a typhoon hit the country's southern islands.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 27, 2004 | -
Japanese seismologists predicted that Tokyo will be hit with a major earthquake within the next 50 years.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 18, 2004 | - Demographers said that Japan's population could decline 20 percent by 2050.
| Source:
CNN
|
| July 20, 2004 | - County commissioners in Jefferson County, Texas, voted to change the name of Jap Road, which was reportedly named 100 years ago in honor of a Japanese rice farmer.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 7, 2004 | -
Japan's defense ministry said that it will issue its annual defense whitepaper as a "manga" comic book.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 4, 2004 | - A 132-pound Japanese man ate 53 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes. "I think he has proven, once again, that he is one of the finest athletes of any sport in the world," concluded a spokesman.
| Source:
WNBC.com
|
| June 21, 2004 | - A Japanese
teacher forced a student to write an apology in his own blood after he was caught sleeping in class.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| June 11, 2004 | -
Suicide was up in Japan.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 2, 2004 | - An 11-year-old Japanese schoolgirl fatally stabbed a classmate during their lunch hour.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| April 23, 2004 | - Agriculture officials were still trying to convince Japan to drop its ban on American beef that has not been tested for mad cow disease.
| Source:
Seattle Times
|
| April 4, 2004 | - A Japanese robot conducted the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| April 3, 2004 | - The Department of Homeland Security announced that visitors from Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Japan, Australia, and 21 other countries will be photographed and fingerprinted when they enter the United States.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 27, 2004 | - A large beef producer in Kansas applied to test all its cattle for mad cow disease so that it can resume exporting its beef to Japan. "The problem we're having now is that the U.S.D.A. is not wanting to do this," said the company's president. "They don't want to test. They don't want to recognize BSE is a problem. They are not going to allow anyone to test until they decide how or when. We believe that may be never."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 27, 2004 | - Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, which released sarin gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995, was sentenced to death, eight years after his trial began.
| Source:
BBC
|
| February 24, 2004 | - Prince Naruhito of Japan said that his wife, Crown Princess Masako, has been exhausted by royal life.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| January 20, 2004 | - A Japanese scientist created a belly-dancing robot.
| Source:
Nature.com
|
| December 31, 2003 | - Large shipments of frozen french fries, which were pre-fried in beef tallow, were in limbo because Japan and other Asian countries were refusing to accept them.
| Source:
Tri-City Herald
|
| November 29, 2003 | - Two Japanese diplomats died near Tikrit.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| November 2, 2003 | - Historians were upset that the Smithsonian Institution's new exhibit of the Enola Gay bomber fails to mention that the B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 1, 2003 | - Shoko Asahara, the guru of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, claimed that he had lost control of his followers shortly before they released nerve gas in the Tokyo
subway eight years ago.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| October 17, 2003 | - A bear barged into a hospital in Japan.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| October 7, 2003 | -
Japan was investigating an orgy in China involving 400 Japanese tourists and 500 Chinese prostitutes.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 18, 2003 | -
Japanese
police replaced their sirens with the recorded sound of church bells, in hopes of soothing agitated criminals.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| January 21, 2003 | -
Japan's Imperial Household Agency revealed that Emperor Akihito has prostate cancer.
| |
| June 20, 2002 | -
Tom Cruise accepted a “happi” coat from the Japanese Transport Minister.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| December 4, 2001 | -
Japan reported another case of mad cow disease and was preparing to slaughter 5,129 cows which might have been exposed to the disease.
| |
| December 4, 2001 | - Crown Princess Masako of Japan gave birth to a baby girl.
| |
| November 27, 2001 | -
Mad cow disease continued to spread in Japan.
| |
| October 2, 2001 | - Beef prices in Japan were dropping after a British lab confirmed a case of mad cow disease near Tokyo, by which time the diseased carcass had been lost.
| |
| September 25, 2001 | -
Japanese
scientists were developing remote-controlled cockroaches guided by means of backpacks that send electronic signals into their brains.
| |
| September 18, 2001 | -
South Korea banned Japanese beef after a Holstein cow on a farm near Tokyo tested positive for mad cow disease.
| |
| September 18, 2001 | - At least five people died in Tokyo during a typhoon.
| |
| August 28, 2001 | -
Japanese
scientists, using resin and a laser, sculpted a bull the size of a red blood cell.
| |
| August 21, 2001 | - Khieu Samphan, a former Khmer Rouge leader, apologized for the deaths of a million people but said he hadn't known about it at the time: “My mistake was that I was too naive and was out of touch with the real situation.” Twenty Koreans chopped off the tips of their little fingers and chanted “Apologize! Apologize!” to protest a visit by Japan's prime minister to a shrine honoring Japan's dead soldiers.
| |
| August 21, 2001 | - A Japanese mummy was found in the Alps.
| |
| July 31, 2001 | - Secretary of State Colin Powell played a cowboy in love for a skit marking the end of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations conference; his Vietnamese paramour was portrayed by Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka.
| |
| July 31, 2001 | - In his last press interview before flying to the U.S. Wahid predicted dark times ahead for Indonesia but ended with a joke about the difference between American and Japanese
farmers.
| |
| July 31, 2001 | - Norwegians were preparing to sell millions of tons of edible whale blubber to Japan.
| |
| July 31, 2001 | -
Japanese
scientists invented a bionic suit to help nurses lift patients.
| |
| June 26, 2001 | -
Pearl Harbor opened in Tokyo.
| |
| June 19, 2001 | -
Japanese
farmers were growing square watermelons.
| |
| June 12, 2001 | -
Japan claimed that since whales eat so much fish, an increase in whaling would protect the world's fisheries.
| |
| May 29, 2001 | -
Japan apologized to its lepers for keeping them confined in colonies for decades after the disease was cured.
| |
| May 15, 2001 | - Three Japanese ships embarked on a two-month whale hunt, supposedly meant to determine whether Brydes, minke, and sperm whales are suffering from pollution.
| |
| May 8, 2001 | -
Police in Japan were looking for a killer disguised as a panda bear.
| |
| May 8, 2001 | -
Japan arrested Kim Jong Nam, son of Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader of North Korea; the Little General, as he is known in the Hermit Kingdom, was trying to sneak into Japan to take a four-year-old boy to Tokyo Disneyland.
| |
| May 8, 2001 | -
Japanese
researchers found that eating sushi reduces a smoker's risk of developing lung cancer.
| |
| May 8, 2001 | -
Tokyo declared war on its crows.
| |
| April 24, 2001 | - A Thai senator claimed to have found evidence of a cache of gold hidden by Japanese soldiers during World War II; troops were called in to look for the loot.
| |
| April 24, 2001 | - Taro Aso, a candidate for prime minister in Japan, said that his country should try to attract “rich Jews” to help solve Japan's problems. “I think the best country is one in which rich Jews feel like living.” Aso later said he had been misunderstood: “If the phrase 'rich Jewish people' causes misunderstanding, I will correct it and stop it.”
| |
| April 17, 2001 | -
Japan's whaling fleet returned to port with 440 minke whales.
| |
| April 17, 2001 | - Aum Shinrikyo, the cult that carried out the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo
subway in 1995, grew by 10 percent last year.
| |
| April 10, 2001 | -
Japan approved a new history textbook that, according to critics in China and elsewhere, fails adequately to criticize Japanese conduct in World War II.
| |
| February 27, 2001 | - A team of Japanese
researchers think that Earth will be as dry as Mars in about a billion years, because 1.12 billion tons of water leaks down into the earth's mantle each year.
| |
| February 13, 2001 | -
Japan banned a Chinese soft drink that contains 64.3 mg of sildenafil, the active ingredient of Viagra, per serving; a Japanese Viagra tablet contains 25-50 mg of sildenafil.
| |
| January 23, 2001 | - Mount Fuji was rumbling; Japanese officials were reluctant to draw up an evacuation map of the area for fear of hurting the tourist
trade.
| |
| December 5, 2000 | -
Japan outlawed human cloning.
| |
| November 28, 2000 | - Peru's dictator Alberto Fujimori stopped in Japan on his way to an economic summit, decided he liked it there, and quit his job, via fax; Peruvians were generally pleased with the development, and within days Fujimori was named in a corruption investigation.
| |
| October 31, 2000 | - StarLink genetically modified corn was found in Japanese snack food.
| |
| October 10, 2000 | - Thousands of Chinese who worked as slaves for Japan in World War II filed suit in California against Japanese companies that might have profited from their servitude; Japanese military occupiers enslaved over ten million Chinese on the mainland and some 50,000 in Japan.
| |
| September 26, 2000 | - Fifteen former “comfort women” from Korea filed suit against the Japanese government.
| |
| September 26, 2000 | -
South Korea urged Japan to get friendly with North Korea.
| |
| September 12, 2000 | - A Pentagon
security gate popped up and wrecked a car carrying the German
defense minister; two years ago the same thing happened to the Japanese defense minister.
| |
| September 12, 2000 | - While in Japan, the Russian president was serenaded by a robot
dog that sang the Russian national anthem.
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| August 22, 2000 | -
Japanese were committing suicide in record numbers.
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| August 1, 2000 | -
Japan will resume hunting for sperm and Bryde's whales, purportedly to study the diet and ecology of the rare species.
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| July 25, 2000 | - They pledged to form a “dot force” to combat this “digital divide.” Barak and Arafat remained at Camp David, chaperoned by Madeleine Albright, who received an encouraging note from the G8 leaders, each of whom scrawled his best wishes below a Japanese newspaper photograph of a grim Secretary of State and her two intransigent charges.
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| July 25, 2000 | -
Tony Blair, the prime minister of Great Britain, wrote: “You look like you're having fun.” President Clinton apologized to the Okinawans for the sexual abuse their women and girls had suffered at the hands of American soldiers.
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| July 25, 2000 | - Two Japanese
terrorists were sentenced to die for releasing nerve gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995.
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