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Hokkaido police on look out for creepy one-man game show

Who wouldn’t want to be a game show host? It’s a relatively easy gig, making money while making other people happy with fabulous cash and prizes. But with only a few shows to go around it can be a highly coveted job.

Perhaps that’s why some people decide to start their own game on the streets. However, without all the slick production value of a major studio backer you’re bound to look like some kind of wack-job. Sure enough, that’s what happened to one young man who’s now gotten the attention of Hokkaido law enforcement.

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Kuroko’s Basketball threat suspect admits to charges in court

Kuroko’s Basketball threat suspect admits to charges in court

Hirofumi Watanabe cites jealousy as motive & vows to kill himself when released

Hirofumi Watanabe, the suspect in the Kuroko’s Basketball threat letter case, admitted to all the charges in his first day in court on Thursday. He added that he will accept the court’s judgment and any punishment without appeal.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police arrested the 36-year-old Osaka temporary worker on December 15 and accused him of sending threatening letters to convenience store chains and other establishments linked to Tadatoshi Fujimaki‘s Kuroko’s Basketball manga.

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Fare-dodging Chinese bus passenger balances karma by repaying years of delinquent fare

In one of the few instances we can think of in which crime actually does pay**, a Chinese bus passenger who spent years “ride-and-dashing” to dodge paying the fare repaid her karmic debt** by depositing a total of 800RMB (approx. US$130) into the till boxes of two local buses.

Drivers of both buses apparently tried to reject her offering and have her pay the standard 2RMB fare (US$0.30), but the woman reportedly insisted, telling at least one of the drivers, “You’ve always been kind to your passengers. This is to repay the fare I’ve been skipping out on until now.”

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Man arrested on suspicion of destroying copies of The Diary of Anne Frank in Tokyo libraries

Since mid-January this year, bizarre incidents of vandalism have been occurring in libraries and bookstores in Tokyo. A handful of texts were targeted, but hundreds of copies of The Diary of Anne Frank, which chronicles Jewish persecution during World War II, were found with pages slashed and torn out, leading some to suspect that the acts were part of some political statement.

On 12 March it was revealed the Tokyo Metropolitan Police have arrested a man for the destruction of Jewish themed books in a major book store in Toshima, Tokyo. Authorities also feel there is a strong possibility he is involved in the other 310 books that have been destroyed.

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Man gives up on life and travels 1,000 miles on stolen bikes, incredible journey ends with his arrest

Sometimes when life gets you down, you just want to get away. Run, bike, drive; whatever it takes to get out of the current situation and into a happier state. That’s exactly how one middle-aged man from Chiba Prefecture was feeling when he decided to leave his failing business and begin a nomadic life traveling across Japan. However, his sudden and deliberate flee spanning over an astonishing 1,600 km (nearly 1,000 miles) ended in his arrest five months after it began because of the man’s poor choice in transportation – stolen bikes.

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71-year-old driver of 2-ton truck arrested in Kobe, “never had a licence” in 50 years of driving

Police in Kobe arrested a 71-year-old man on suspicion of driving without a valid licence on Monday this week after a local police officer recognised the vehicle’s number plate following a prior incident. When questioned about the offence, however, it transpired that the wily old truck driver had not simply forgotten to renew his documents, but had never held a licence in the 50 years he’d been behind the wheel.

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Japanese 7-Eleven asking public’s help in stopping feline crime

To help combat the steady wave of shoplifting in Japan (360 reported cases a day), authorities remind shop staff to stay vigilant and know that anyone who enters their store – whether a little school girl or her 89-year-old grandfather – is a potential criminal just aching to take your hard-earned merchandise.

Just look at the kitty pictured above. Cute lil’ guy doncha think?

Wrong! That pilfering feline has stolen hundreds of yen worth of cat food from a helpless major convenience store… possibly to sell on the street for crack-cocaine.

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Taiwanese school boy finds real grenade while playing war, presumably wins

The modern dilemma over whether it’s okay for young boys to play games based on warfare was seemingly put to the test in Taiwan recently as two very young boys happened upon a real and unused grenade near the park they were playing in.

The event, which was reported in Searchina based on New Taipei media, resulted in the military getting called in and opened up a slew of legal and sociological debate.

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iPhone gets stolen in Spain, Japanese owner gets hit with massive bill for $9,800

Recently, we brought you the tale of a man whose iPhone was stolen while he was traveling in Thailand, only to have some of the sting taken out of the unfortunate development when he saw the pictures of the cute girl who was using the pilfered phone.

Now comes the story of another Japanese iPhone user who fell victim to overseas thieves, then received a surprise upon returning home. Unfortunately, his surprise wasn’t photos of a fine-looking female, but instead a massive bill from his cell phone carrier for nearly one million yen (US$9,800).

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Romance! Chinese man rents girlfriend, parents give her money, “couple” brawls in the street

 

A man and woman pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend in order to please their traditionally-minded, grandchild-expecting parents is one of the oldest clichés in romantic fiction. It’s right up there with the moody jerk with a heart of gold and the rich, dreamy architect who would love to spend more time with the heroine if only he wasn’t juggling so many projects.

In real life, though, often times once you peel back the layers of jerk a guy has wrapped himself in, all you’ll find he was hiding deep down inside was a smaller, more concentrated jerk. Architecture has one of the highest unemployment rates of any professional field. And talking someone you’re not dating into pretending to be your girlfriend? It’s not nearly as cute as movies and TV make it out to be, as proven by the ugly aftermath of a man in China’s unsuspecting parents giving a sizeable cash gift to his fake girlfriend.

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Man claiming he thought amphetamines were legal obviously gets arrested

Police have arrested a Hiroshima man after it became clear that he had injected himself with a drug he claimed to have thought perfectly legal. So assured in his convictions that the drug was legit, the man supposedly approached police of his own accord because he “felt strange” upon taking it and wanted them to determine what was causing it.

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Osaka man caught after teaching junior high for 15 years without a license

Back when I was applying for my first Japanese work visa, there was a thick stack of paperwork I had to submit. Most of the items made sense, but one that struck me as weird, though, was my college diploma. I knew that Japanese law required a college education for the visa I was applying for, but wouldn’t sealed, authenticated transcripts make more sense than a personal diploma, which could be easily forged for 20 bucks at any print shop, or even with a high quality home-use printer?

Nope, I was informed, it had to be the diploma. That’s the paperwork they give you when you graduate, right? After all, from the standpoint of honest and by-the-book Japanese society, who would be so dishonest as to provide false educational credentials?

How about a man in Osaka, who taught junior high school for 15 years without ever obtaining his teaching credential.

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Security camera catches a Chinese man trying to murder his girlfriend by shoving her down a manhole

A CCTV security camera in Haikou, China captured what looks like a man shoving a woman down a manhole then covering up the spot with cardboard. The incident happened in mid-December but the video is making its way around the Internet right now.

The pair reportedly had a relationship and the man owed her $20,000.

The woman was rescued 60 hours later when she was heard crying for help. The manhole was three meters deep, according to TomoNews. The woman tried to make a ladder out of clothes but it didn’t work.

“I did not sleep at all the first night I fell in the manhole,” the woman, Guo, was quoted as saying. “I could see the darkness around me. I thought that I would not be choked to death if I looked up.”

Here’s the video of what appears to be attempted murder and of the rescue.

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Despite having so many maids, officials say Akihabara really needs cleaning up

While Japan’s capital does indeed have the giant TV screens and vivid neon signs that Hollywood movies use as shorthand for “Tokyo,” a lot of advertising in the cities comes from plain old-fashioned legwork, particularly in the entertainment and red light districts. Opening a new restaurant? Trying to drum up business for you hostess bar? In either case, you put an employee on the street, flagging down prospective customers and giving them your establishment’s sales pitch, and even guiding them to the entrance if need be.

However, officials are looking to shut down this face-to-face marketing practice, known in Japanese as kyaku hiki (literally “customer pulling”) in one of Tokyo’s biggest tourist draws, the anime and video gaming mecca of Akihabara.

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Man arrested after forcing his 9-year-old stepson to play violent video games

Police in Kyoto have arrested a 28-year-old man on suspicion of coercion after it was claimed that he had repeatedly forced his nine-year-old stepson to play violent and age-inappropriate video games such as Grand Theft Auto IV and fighting game Tekken Tag Tournament 2 over the course of six months whenever his mother was absent.

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Mie Prefecture dentist arrested after massaging woman’s chest in order to fix “misaligned” teeth

It’s an excuse so implausible that it sounds like something straight out of the plot of an adult video, but a dentist in Japan’s Mie Prefecture was arrested earlier this week after fondling a young woman’s chest in the back room of his surgery while claiming that doing so would help fix her misaligned teeth.

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High-heel bandit nabbed in Tokyo, 450 pairs of women’s shoes seized

The hostesses of Tokyo’s red-light districts can rest easier tonight, knowing that their Jimmy Choos and Louboutins are safe. Police arrested 28-year-old Sho Sato for a rash of shoe thefts from clubs across the capital and neighboring Kanagawa and Saitama Prefectures.

Sato admitted to the charges, saying the pleasure of stealing was his—ahem!—sole reason for taking the shoes.

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Assaulted Japanese man runs ad in Berlin subway asking attacker to work together

How would you react to being beaten up while living in a foreign country by an assailant spewing racial hatred? While most of us may be more interested in revenge, a Japanese software developer and longtime resident of Germany recently showed how to set aside anger to make the world a better place. Instead of dwelling on the attack, the Japanese man bought ad space in a Berlin subway station to ask his attacker to work on a translation project together. Click below to find out what made this Japanese man want to reach out to the man that gave him a black eye!

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Gunma man who sought “popularity” arrested after uploading Studio Ghibli’s “Kaze Tachinu”

A man from Japan’s Gunma Prefecture is facing legal action on the grounds of copyright infringement after uploading Studio Ghibli’s 2013 animated film Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises in the West) to a public website in July and November last year, the Yomiuri Online reports. When questioned, the accused individual remarked that he uploaded the film “to be popular”, proving once again that crime, especially the dumb kind, does not pay.

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Scalding your subordinate with tofu – definitely not proper police procedure

When you think about it, there really aren’t that many situations in which it’s OK to smash food into someone else’s face. I racked my brain, and could only come up with the following two:

1. You’re a pie-throwing extra in a Three Stooges movie.

2. You and your spouse share the same slapstick sense of humor, and want to smush a slice of wedding cake into each other’s’ faces at your reception.

You know what doesn’t make the list? Scalding someone’s mug with piping-hot tofu, especially if you’re a high-ranking police officer.

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