Sunday, October 28, 2007

10,000 IT terms, trendy words to be added to Kojien dictionary

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 at 06:48 EDT

TOKYO — Around 10,000 entries, including information technology terms and trendy words, will be added to the next version of the prestigious "Kojien" Japanese dictionary, Iwanami Shoten Publishers said Tuesday.

The terms to be added include Japanese words for whistle-blowing, the Iraq war and NEET (not in education, employment or training), as well as youth slang such as "love-love" (mutually in love), "uzai" (annoying) and "gyakugire" (becoming offensive instead of reflecting).

With the additions, the total number of entries in the sixth edition of the Kojien, or Comprehensive Dictionary of the Japanese Language, will come to around 240,000. The edition will be published Jan 11.

The publishing house examined about 100,000 words collected from the Internet and media reports since the fifth edition was published in 1998 and selected around 10,000 words after judging they had become popular.

The new entries also include words about the environment, finance and the economy.
"The changes in the roughly 10 years since the revisions to the fifth edition correspond to 100 years in the past. The progress in scientific technology and informatization are reflected in the language," Iwanami President Akio Yamaguchi said.

The publisher chose not to include trendy words such as "Ina Bauer," "cool biz" and "moe" (cute) after concluding that their use will be short-lived or not very popular.
Referred to as "the standard of the Japanese language," the Kojien was first published in 1955, according to the Iwanami website.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Chiba cop molests woman looking for help in stalking case

CHIBA -- A police officer faces charges for molesting a woman who came looking for help with a stalker, prefectural police said.

Chiba Prefectural Police has sent an investigation document to prosecutors accusing the officer, 33-year-old Yoshitaka Miura, of violence and cruelty as a special public officer. He is currently not under arrest.

He resigned Friday after being slapped with a six-month suspension from duty. He admitted to the allegations during questioning, investigators said.

The prefectural police inspection office justified its decision not to arrest him.

"It was unnecessary to arrest him, since there are no concerns that he will abscond or destroy evidence," said. Hideo Okada, a senior official of the prefectural police inspection office. "We'll step up discipline amongst officers to prevent a recurrence."

The incident occurred on July 3, the force's inspection office said. At about 2:30 p.m., the victim visited a police box in Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture, where Miura was working, and told him she was being stalked and defrauded.

Later that day, Miura went to her apartment in uniform, and fondled her breasts during his one-hour visit.

October 27, 2007

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Tokyo police lieutenant, mother found murdered at home

Thursday, October 25, 2007 at 11:39 EDT

TOKYO — Police on Wednesday found the bodies of Kenzo Shimada, 40, a lieutenant at Akiruno police station, and his mother Hiroko, 65, dead in their house. Investigators believe it was a murder-suicide.

According to police, they were found lying down in the living room on the first floor of their two-story house. Hiroko had been stabbed in the back and Shimada in his stomach. Police found several knives around them. The front door of the house was unlocked, and there were signs of a struggle because the TV set was broken. However, police say there's no evidence that anyone ransacked the house.

Shimada, who was single, lived with his parents. His father suffers dementia and is currently in hospital. Shimada's colleagues said he recently discussed his family with them, but appeared normal at work on Tuesday.

Kyodo

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

'Stalker' police inspector commits suicide after questioning

NAGOYA -- A 52-year-old police assistant inspector from Nishio Police Station has committed suicide in disgrace after he was questioned about stalking a woman in her 20s, Aichi Prefectural Police said Tuesday.

"He used his position to find out the woman's e-mail address, which is against regulations, and we were planning to transfer him," a spokesman for the prefectural police's internal affairs department said.

The assistant inspector, whose name has not been released, sometimes sent the woman up to 10 e-mail messages a day, begging her to become his lover.

The woman and her lawyer eventually visited the police station and demanded the assistant inspector be transferred and ordered to stay away from her.

Police said the assistant inspector had been in charge of authorizing the number of pachinko machines in use. When the young woman who works at a pachinko parlor visited the station in July, he apparently fell for her. The following month, he asked the woman to tell him her mobile phone e-mail address.

The assistant inspector sent scores of messages to her. On Oct. 5, the woman and her lawyer visited the station and complained about the assistant inspector.

Internal affairs officials twice questioned the assistant inspector and said he basically admitted to the allegations against him, saying that he thought the woman "seemed like a nice type."

The woman admitted that she had initially replied to some of the assistant inspector's e-mails, but later told investigators that she had only done so because she feared that ignoring the lawman would create problems for her employers.

The police assistant inspector was found hanged in his home on Monday last week. He did not leave a suicide note.

Mainichi

October 23, 2007

Senior cop commits suicide after being questioned over stalking woman in Aichi

Tuesday, October 23, 2007 at 13:05 EDT

NAGOYA — A 52-year-old senior officer of the Aichi prefectural police force committed suicide last week after being questioned twice for allegedly stalking a woman in her 20s, police said Tuesday. The policeman is believed to have sent dozens of emails to her from his mobile phone from late August through early September. In those emails, he asked the woman, who works at a pachinko parlor, to go driving and dining with him and sought her friendship, police sources said.

The policeman was in charge of authorizing the replacement of pachinko machines at pachinko parlors, and the woman visited his station in late August to receive related documents. After receiving a complaint from the woman, the prefectural police department questioned the officer twice in early October. He was found dead on Oct 15 after hanging himself at his home, police said.

In August, a 40-year-old Tokyo policeman allegedly shot and killed a woman and then killed himself after he apparently stalked her for months and feared it would be exposed.

Kyodo

Monday, October 22, 2007

Cop stabbed after catching man siphoning gas

SHIRAKO, Chiba -- A police officer is receiving treatment for stab wounds after a man knifed him because he caught him siphoning gasoline from a car here, police said.
Chiba Prefectural Police sergeant Yoshihiro Shimada, 44, is expected to make a recovery from stab wounds to his chest and stomach.

Arata Okazawa was arrested for attempted murder and for breaking the Swords and Firearms Control Law after he allegedly attacked the policeman.

Okazawa, 58, unemployed of no fixed address, denies the allegations.

"I had no intention of killing him," he told the police.

Shirako has recently seen a spate of gasoline siphoning incidents and police were on their guard to try and find the culprit. Shimada had been working on the case since July.

Police said Shimada found Okazawa siphoning gas from a car parked near a Shirako apartment not long after 2 a.m. Monday and approached him to question him over his behavior. But

Okazawa whipped out a knife and stabbed Shimada twice, police said, adding that two other officers overpowered the suspect and arrested him.

Police are questioning Okazawa about his involvement in other siphoning cases.

Mainichi

October 22, 2007

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Corrupt cop appeals prison sentence for leaking investigation info

NAGOYA -- An ex-police officer convicted of accepting bribes in exchange for leaking information on investigations has appealed his prison sentence.

Toshikazu Kurimoto, 32, a former senior officer with the Aichi Prefectural Police, has filed an appeal with the Nagoya High Court against the 22-month prison sentence that the Nagoya District Court handed down on him on Thursday.

Kurimoto was convicted of receiving a total of 813,000 yen in bribes from a former casino manager and a Chinese temporary work agency between September 2006 and last January.

In return, he provided them with confidential information on investigations, including the date of a planned raid on a Philippine pub over the hiring of illegal workers, thereby helping them evade arrest, the lower court found.

Mainichi

October 20, 2007

Monday, October 15, 2007

Doctor questions initial police actions over sumo wrestler's death

Monday, October 15, 2007 at 05:00 EDT

NIIGATA — A forensic doctor who performed an autopsy on a teenage sumo wrestler who died in June apparently from hazing questioned Sunday initial police actions for failing to suspect foul play.

Aichi prefectural police "returned the body without conducting an autopsy after accepting without question what the stablemaster and others had to say," said Koji Dewa, an associate professor at Niigata University who performed an autopsy at the request of the family of the wrestler, 17-year-old Takashi Saito. "I suspect they failed to miss some basics of investigations," said Dewa, who specializes in forensic medicine.

Saito, who had the ring name of Tokitaizan, was hospitalized in critical condition on June 26 after training at the Tokitsukaze stable in Inuyama, Aichi Prefecture, and was declared dead the same day.

The hospital determined that he died of heart failure, and police returned the body to the stable apparently without suspecting foul play or the possibility that fellow wrestlers and others at the stable may have been involved in the death.

The family of the dead wrestler, dissatisfied with the stable's explanations that bruises on the body stemmed from "regular training," asked the university to conduct an autopsy, and it was carried out June 28.

The autopsy raised suspicions over the death and the police are now working to build a criminal case against the stablemaster and some senior wrestlers of the stable on suspicion they were involved in the deadly hazing.

Dewa said, "Even if the clinical doctor who confirmed the death had not taken notice, a medical examiner from the prefectural police should have immediately noticed the suspicious nature of the death when they had a chance to see the bruises."

The autopsy found extensive internal bleeding in the shoulders, hips and other parts of Saito. The cause of his death was determined to be multiple traumatic shocks.

Dewa said a lack of doctors and investigators may have also contributed to what he calls the failure by police. "What with a lack of forensic medicine experts or complex procedures, a clinical physician may conclude a person has died of natural causes and the authorities tend to accept that view."

Kyodo

Saturday, October 13, 2007

South Korea Records US$781 MLN Trade Surplus With U.S. in August

Friday October 12, 7:13 AM

WASHINGTON, Oct 12 Asia Pulse - South Korea recorded a US$782 million trade surplus with the United States for the month of August, down from $1.4 billion the month before, a tally released by the U.S. Department of Commerce said Thursday.

The surplus broke down as $3.78 billion in exports and $3 billion in imports, making the Asian nation the seventh-largest source of exports and imports for the U.S.

South Korea's cumulative trade surplus with the U.S. for January-August stood at $9.49 billion.

July's $393 million surplus in advanced technology product trade turned into a $55 million deficit in August. South Korea's deficit in this category totaled $1.41 billion as of August.

In auto trade, Seoul sold $761 million worth of cars and parts while buying $70 million worth. South Korea is $7.2 billion in the black in this sector in the year to date.

U.S. trade with North Korea was below the minimum measuring requirement of $500,000.

(Yonhap)

Friday, October 12, 2007

Federation to limit perks for high school baseball players

10/12/2007

The Asahi Shimbun

The Japan High School Baseball Federation will limit the scholarships and perks for baseball players in response to revelations of widespread violations of federation rules banning money or gifts to talented ballplayers.

In the guidelines compiled Thursday, an advisory panel proposed that member baseball clubs offer scholarships to only five students each year.

The guidelines are not binding and offenders will not be punished. But the federation expects the guidelines to improve the situation.

Tsutomu Hotta, chairman of the panel, said the guidelines are nonbinding because of wide discrepancies in the opinions of the members.

The 15-member advisory panel was formed in July, after reports surfaced in May that nearly 8,000 baseball players at 376 member schools had been given perks against the federation's rules.

The federation will finalize the guidelines at a board meeting Nov. 30 after hearing the opinions of about 4,200 member schools through the regional boards.

The guidelines will be applied to students enrolling in senior high schools in and after fiscal 2009.
The federation will hold an extraordinary meeting of directors of the nine regional boards on Oct. 18 to explain about the guidelines.

The panel had discussed two other options: limiting the number of player on perks to four in the same grade who are allowed to play in official games or to impose no restrictions.

The panel agreed the guidelines will be implemented tentatively for three years, followed by a review.

If a member club registers more than five players for each year, it will not be penalized but will be required to explain the reasons for the excessive number to the federation.

The guidelines will also require member schools to obtain a letter of recommendation from the principal of student's junior high school when granting a scholarship. This move is intended to prevent the involvement of brokers.

Under the guidelines, students should meet a certain academic level to obtain a scholarship.

The financial perks should be limited to enrollment and tuition fees and not cover the students' club activities or accommodation fees.

The panel concluded that the guidelines do not go against the federation's ban on preferential treatment because the scholarships will be granted as an educational measure under the
Fundamental Law of Education and the School Education Law.

(IHT/Asahi: October 12,2007)

Man under arrest for murder sold sleeping pills to 12 people through suicide site

KAWASAKI -- A man under arrest for killing a woman at her request had sold sleeping pills to 12 people who accessed his online suicide site for a combined total of 1 million yen, police said.

Kazunari Saito, 33, admitted to the allegations during questioning. "I set up the site to earn money. I decided the price of the drugs through negotiations with customers," he was quoted as telling investigators.

Saito began to sell sleeping pills through a mobile phone suicide Website he set up in June 2006, Kanagawa Prefectural Police said.

He sold sleeping pills to 12 people including those from Yokohama, the Saitama Prefecture city of Koshigaya, Kobe and Fukuoka over a 10-month period.

One of the customers, a resident of Chiba Prefecture, subsequently committed suicide by swallowing the pills.

However, prefectural police have deemed it difficult to form a case against Saito for assisting suicides. Investigators have pointed out they failed to prove the causal relations between the drug and the death of the victim and that they cannot confirm that Saito urged the victim to commit suicide.

Saito was arrested in July for violating the Narcotics and Psychotropics Control Law by illegally selling sleeping pills and was subsequently hit with a new arrest warrant on suspicion of contracted murder for killing a 21-year-old woman from Kawasaki who visited his site.

Mainichi

October 12, 2007

Japan Must Answer Questions About Megumi Yokota Test

Japan has extended economic sanctions on North Korea for six months saying the North failed to address the issue of its abduction of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 80s satisfactorily. The U.S. seems to be unhappy. Washington said outwardly it understands Tokyo’s position, but under the surface there were complaints. The U.S. is discussing removing North Korea from the list of terror sponsoring nations as a reward for the North disabling its nuclear program, so Japan's attempts to link the problem of taking North Korea off the terror-sponsoring country list with the abduction issue constitute a stumbling block to U.S.-North Korea dialogue.
Washington is concerned about Japan's hardline approach and has raised doubts about a DNA test that showed that remains sent back from North Korea were not in fact those of the most famous abduction victim, Megumi Yokotga, which has galvanized Japanese sentiment. Some diplomatic sources in Washington think Japanese rightwingers or "neocons" are distorting the truth by messing with the DNA tests.
The Japanese government announced in late 2004 that DNA tests of the cremated remains North Korea said were those of Megumi Yokota were in fact those of two others. The Japanese were naturally furious, and Tokyo took a series of hardline measures including economic sanctions.
But the international scientific community says it is basically impossible to identify genes from cremated remains. The science journal Nature in February 2005 took formal issue with the Japanese government's DNA test formula.
The Japanese government on Dec. 9, 2004 commissioned the National Research Institute of Police Science under the National Police Agency to identify genes from samples of Yokota’s remains, but the testing failed. The government then reassigned the task to a Teikyo University research team, less experienced in DNA testing, which later announced it confirmed the remains were not Yokota’s.
The problem arises from the fact that the academic in charge of the research team backtracked in an interview with Nature, saying it could not be said for certain that the remains were not those of the woman who was abducted on a Japanese beach at the age of 13. In the wake of a refutation of the interview by the Japanese government, Nature sought another interview with the professor; the Japanese government gagged him by appointing him to the National Research Institute of Police Science, and requiring him to seek approval from the National Police Agency for any media interviews.
Dr. John Butler at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a U.S. authority on gene inspection, said in a recent telephone interview with the Chosun Ilbo it is almost impossible to identify genes from remains cremated at 1,200 degrees. World-renowned gene identification experts deny the Japanese government's assertion that genes were extracted from the remains North Korea forwarded to Japan.
One Japan expert says Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda is having some trouble expunging the legacy of the neocons, including the possibly bogus Yokota DNA story. Few Japanese people know that their government's announcement on the matter was full of holes; perhaps that is why the Japanese public is furious about North Korean leader Kim Jung-il's reported remarks that there are no more Japanese abductees in the North.
I have no intention whatsoever to defend North Korea’s bizarre abductions of foreign nationals. But it is a serious matter if the Japanese government is involved in the manipulation of the facts or tacitly approved it for political purposes. It behooves Japan to reveal the truth about the DNA test, a problem of its own creation. It would be the first step toward truly resolving the abductions issue and help denuclearize North Korea.

The column was contributed by Choi Woo-suk, the Chosun Ilbo's correspondent in Washington.

October 11, 2007

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Tokyo riot squad police sergeant caught pinching panties

A suburban Tokyo riot squad police sergeant caught while stealing a woman's panties has been arrested, police said.

Keisuke Kanbara, 27, the Metropolitan Police Department riot squad sergeant, was arrested for breaking the Picking Prevention Law.

Kanbara admits to the allegations.

"I broke into a first floor apartment and stole some women's panties," police quoted him as saying, adding that he has hinted at further thefts.

Kanbara is the second MPD police sergeant to be involved in an embarrassing scandal in recent months following a case in August where a cop shot a bar hostess and then took his own life.

Masahito Kanetaka, the head of the MPD's police affairs department, apologized.

"I deeply apologize that one of our members has done something like this at a time when we are instructing all staff not to commit wrongdoings," he said.

Police said Kanbara picked the lock on a woman's apartment in Tachikawa using a driver, then entered and stole some of her underwear. Kanbara told investigators he had dumped the undergarments and a search of the nearby area uncovered over a dozen pairs of women's underpants.

Kanbara joined the MPD in April 2002 and was posted to the riot squad in October 2005. He lives in a police dormitory with his family. As he has told investigators he has committed other thefts, police are looking around his workplace and the dormitory to uncover any possible stealing that may have taken place.

Mainichi

October 10, 2007

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Man resisting arrest shoots cop in buttock

The Yomiuri Shimbun

A police sergeant was shot in the buttock at point-blank range by a man who grabbed his gun while resisting arrest on suspicion of stealing from a roadside vending machine in Tagawa, Fukuoka Prefecture, early Friday, police said.

The sergeant arrived at the scene at about 4:40 a.m. with two other officers after a security company reported to Tagawa Police Station that a vending machine on a national highway selling DVDs and other items had been ransacked about 20 minutes earlier, according to the police.

The police tried to restrain two men they found in a car near the scene. One, Akira Uranaka, 29, of Kama in the prefecture and a member of the Taishu-kai crime syndicate, tried to escape, but was caught by an officer about 40 meters away. The other, unemployed Masamichi Oda, 21, of Tagawa, tried to break free when being held by the other two officers, grabbed the 29-year-old sergeant's gun from his holster and shot him.

(Oct. 6, 2007)

Friday, October 5, 2007

Japanese bureaucrats reprimanded over Wikipedia Gundam entries

By Duncan Hooper

Last Updated: 8:31am BST 05/10/2007

Six bureaucrats from Japan's Agriculture Ministry have been reprimanded for spending their work time writing Wikipedia entries on subjects ranging from films to cartoon robots.

One of the employees focused solely on a page about Gundam, a popular, long-running animated series about giant robots, spending hours submitting 260 entries.

The series has spun off intricate toy robots popular among schoolchildren as well as adults known as "otaku" nerds.

"The Agriculture Ministry is not in charge of Gundam," noted Tsutomu Shimomura an official at the ministry who announced the results of an internal probe.

The six civil servants together made 408 entries from ministry computers since 2003.
The ministry has reacted by banning access to Wikipedia at work.

An Imperial Household Agency official was reprimanded last month for using an agency computer to delete references on Wikipedia that criticized imperial tombs.

The online encyclopaedia recently revealed plans to trial restrictions on contributors following evidence of misleading postings.

Only committed editors who have submitted at least 30 reliable entries in a month would be permitted to make instant changes to the site.

Telegraph

Japan to press charges over journalist's death

Posted Wed Oct 3, 2007 8:00pm AEST

Japan's police will seek to press murder charges against Burmese troops who shot dead a Japanese journalist during pro-democracy protests last month, a newspaper reported.

Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department will seek the prosecution of the soldiers who killed Kenji Nagai, 50, a journalist for the Tokyo-based video news service APF News, the Yomiuri newspaper reported.

Under Japanese law police can seek the prosecution of suspects when a Japanese national is the victim of a felony crime overseas, although whether the suspects are extradited depends on whether there is a treaty in place.

Mr Nagai was killed in Rangoon on September 27 while covering a military crackdown on mass anti-government protests.

In television footage later aired by Japanese broadcasters, Mr Nagai, dressed casually in shorts and sandals, appeared to be shot at close range by Burmese troops.

Mr Nagai, who is believed to have died instantly after a bullet fatally penetrated his body, was seen lying on the ground still clutching his video camera.

Burmese leaders told Japan's Deputy Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka during a visit to the capital Naypyidaw that the fatal shooting was an accident.

Japanese police plan to conduct an autopsy on Mr Nagai's body, which is expected to return to Japan on Thursday via Bangkok, the Yomiuri newspaper said.

Aid withdrawal

Meanwhile, Japan is considering suspending some 500 million yen ($4.85 million) in humanitarian aid for Burma a senior Japanese government official said.

Japan has withheld new full-scale aid to impoverished Burma since democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi was detained in 2003, but it has funded emergency health projects and provided some training and technological transfers.

A senior Japanese government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tokyo was considering suspending its plan to extend 552 million yen in "human resources development aid" to Burma.

In late July, Tokyo decided to extend the aid aimed to help nurture democracy and a market economy in Burma.

But Japan will maintain its policy of engagement with Burma, he said, and Tokyo has no plans at the moment to suspend trade with Burma or freeze the country's assets.

- Reuters/AFP

Japan reaches out to Okinawa over textbook row

TOKYO (AFP) — Japan's government said Tuesday it may rescind an instruction for references to its military's role in forced mass suicides during World War II to be deleted from school textbooks.

The government, under former premier Shinzo Abe, in March ordered references to the military's involvement in the suicides of Japanese civilians to be removed from learning materials for the first time.

The controversial move angered residents in Japan's southern islands of Okinawa, where about 110,000 people staged a rally Saturday in protest.

Education Minister Kisaburo Tokai said Tuesday the government would consider any requests by publishers to put back into textbooks references to the Japanese military's role in the suicides.

"The ministry will deal with any applications for further revisions in a serious manner," said Tokai, who was appointed last month by new Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.

"A panel will be summoned to make a fair judgement over the issue if necessary."
In contrast to the hawkish young Abe, who vowed to build a "beautiful nation" more proud of its past, Fukuda is widely seen as a dove who is less eager to erase the legacies of Japan's World War II defeat.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura told reporters that the government should "not intervene in the screening of school textbooks."

The 83-day Battle of Okinawa, the bloodiest in the Pacific war, left 190,000 Japanese dead, half of them Okinawan civilians.

While many civilians perished in the all-out US bombardment, local accounts say Japanese troops forced residents of Okinawa -- a southern island chain and an independent kingdom until the 19th century -- to commit suicide rather than surrender to US forces.

Okinawa governor Hirokazu Nakaima welcomed signs that the government may rescind the order.

"What the Okinawa people have hoped for with body and soul is coming one step closer," said Nakaima, who will meet with Tokai on Wednesday morning during a visit to Tokyo to discuss the matter.

"I appreciate as governor and a resident that the new cabinet has immediately responded to this issue sensitively," he said.

Publishers are now expected to submit their applications for new revisions this month for textbooks to be used for the school year starting in April.

A spokesman for one publisher that was forced to drop a reference to the military involvement in the suicides said authors would need to be consulted before it was decided whether to revert to the original wording.

A textbook prepared by the publisher, Shimizu Shoin Co. had previously said some people "were forced by Japanese troops to commit group suicides" but was changed to, "There were people who were driven into group suicides."

In recent years, nationalist academics have insisted that Okinawa's suicide pacts were voluntary and not due to orders by troops from mainland Japan.

The ministry had said there was enough disagreement that "it is not appropriate to determine that there were military orders."

AFP

Japan to fingerprint, photograph foreigners from Nov 20

Thursday, October 4, 2007 at 06:49 EDT

TOKYO — The government will approve a draft ordinance stipulating that a mandatory fingerprinting and photographing of visitors aged 16 or older will enter into force on Nov 20, officials said Thursday. The revised Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law incorporating such a measure was enacted in May last year in a bid to block the entry into Japan of individuals designated as terrorists by the justice minister.

Under the law, scanned fingerprints and other biometric data will be stored in a computer to be checked against those of past deportees. The system can also be accessed by investigative authorities, they said. The measure excludes ethnic Koreans and other permanent residents with special status, those under 16, those visiting Japan for diplomatic or official purposes, and those invited by the state.

Kyodo

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Police sergeant arrested for molesting high school girl on train

URAYASU, Chiba -- A police officer was arrested for molesting a high school girl on a train on
Tuesday morning while he was on his way to work, local police said.

Kazumasa Yamaguchi, 36, a sergeant at the Metropolitan Police Department, stands accused of violating a Chiba prefectural ordinance prohibiting people from creating a nuisance.

He admitted to the allegations during questioning. "I molested her because she was my type," he was quoted as telling investigators.

Yamaguchi lifted up the skirt of the 16-year-old girl and fondled her body for about 10 minutes from about 7 a.m. on Tuesday on a JR Keiyo Line train while it was traveling between Minami-
Funabashi and Shin-Urayasu stations, investigators said.

The high school girl grabbed Yamaguchi and handed him over to officers after the train arrived at Shin-Urayasu Station.

Mainichi

October 2, 2007

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Police to raid bedding supplier L&G on suspicion of fraud

Tuesday, October 2, 2007 at 06:45 EDT

TOKYO — Police plan to raid the head office and the homes of managers of Tokyo-based bedding supplier L&G on suspicion that the company collected money from investors across Japan by declaring that it paid high dividends in violation of the investment law, investigative sources said Monday.

Based in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward, the firm, which claims to supply products for health purposes, is said to have collected more than 100 billion yen from about 50,000 people nationwide. But the company is believed to be virtually bankrupt, the sources said.

Kyodo News