月別: 2016年7月

今日はなぜかグアムの話。時差の事を考えるとグアムあたりに住みたいそうだ。それとポケモンと神奈川の事件について。

1)   Do you think Russia should have been banned from the Rio Olympics over allegations of state-sponsored doping?

2)   Sarah Takeda thought she had a good little business renting a traditional tatami-mat room in her house on Airbnb.

But she and other hosts in Japan are learning the hard way that the home-sharing site’s fastest-growing market is also becoming the next flashpoint in a global battle over the sharing economy.

Hoteliers are up in arms, local residents complain that outsiders are invading their neighborhoods, and Japanese officials say renting out private homes is illegal.

3)   Executives at Hokkaido Railway Company are drastically reviewing their business in the face of losses caused by falling passenger numbers.

JR Hokkaido has posted an operating loss of more than 380 million dollars at current rates for the business year ended in March. It was one of the firm’s biggest losses in about 20 years.

Officials are reviewing money-losing train services. They are expected to announce later this year which lines the company cannot maintain on its own.

They are considering abolishing unprofitable lines and replacing them with bus services.

4)   The new governor of Kagoshima Prefecture in southwestern Japan says he plans to request, possibly next month, for a temporary halt of the only nuclear plant in the country currently in operation.

Satoshi Mitazono took office as governor on Thursday following his election victory on July 10th. During his election campaign, he called for a halt of the Sendai nuclear power plant in the prefecture. The two reactors at the plant are currently online.

At a news conference, the new governor said people in Kagoshima are worried about the Sendai nuclear plant after the series of powerful earthquakes in neighboring Kumamoto in April.

5)   A probe using an X-ray-like detector has found that a large amount of melted nuclear fuel apparently remains at the bottom of one of the damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company released images of the No. 2 reactor on Thursday. One of the images shows a large black shadow at the bottom of the reactor. In photos taken by a muon detector, black shadows represent heavy metals such as uranium.

TEPCO says the image suggests that most of molten fuel mixed with structural objects within the reactor and accumulated at the bottom. It estimates the amount of the accumulated materials at 160 tons.
6)      Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has ordered a review of the current state system for compulsory hospitalization of people considered at risk of harming themselves or others. The request comes after the recent knife attack at a facility for people with intellectual disabilities.

Abe instructed his ministers at a meeting on Thursday. 19 people were killed in Tuesday’s attack at the facility in Sagamihara. Twenty six others were injured.

The Prime Minister said it was deplorable that so many innocent, defenseless people were killed and injured. He said he offers his deepest condolences to the families of the victims.

7)   Pokemon Go has become a global phenomenon. But managers at many public and private facilities around Japan are telling the developers of the augmented-reality game that they don’t want to play along.

Officials at several Japanese railway companies are worried that players absorbed in the game will bump into passengers or fall off platforms. So they’ve asked the developer to exclude their properties from the game.

But they say many of the game’s characters have appeared at major stations or on rail tracks…despite the developer’s promises to keep them away.

8)   Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga says Japan’s Self-Defense Forces will continue with its peace-keeping operations in South Sudan despite the general deterioration in security in the country.

Suga on Thursday mentioned a recent incident in which a vehicle carrying staff of a Japanese aid agency was shot at.

He said that the Japan International Cooperation Agency, or JICA, reported that a vehicle carrying 4 staff members came under gunfire on July 8th, at around 6 PM, local time. The members were on their way back to their hotel. He said the vehicle was bullet-proofed, and nobody was injured.

やっぱりポケモンGOの話^^ がメインに。

1)   The wait is over for Pokemon Go fans in Japan.

Players began tweeting about it as soon as it was available Friday morning, and the Pokemon Co and the developer of the augmented reality game, U.S.-based Niantic Inc, confirmed its launch.

Pokemon Go is expected to be a huge hit in Japan, the country of the character’s birth.

2)   When Saori Ito went on maternity leave last year and stopped getting a regular paycheck from her cosmetics company, she became worried about her future – and wondered if this kind of anxiety is what awaits her after retirement.

The 34-year-old married mother of a one-year-old girl had doubts about the government’s ability to fund retirement for Japan’s growing ranks of elderly in the world’s oldest population.

So she set up a private, self-managed pension account.

Japan’s government loosened laws on pensions in May, allowing almost all working-age Japanese to join private defined-contribution retirement plans – similar to individual retirement accounts (IRAs) in the United States that allow workers to make regular contributions to an investment fund with tax breaks.

3)   Declaring America in crisis, Donald Trump pledged to cheering Republicans and still-skeptical voters Thursday night that as president he will restore the safety they fear they’re losing, strictly curb immigration and save the nation from Hillary Clinton’s record of “death, destruction, terrorism and weakness.”

4)   Is Honda’s walking robot Asimo marrying Pepper, the chattering robot from SoftBank?

Automaker Honda Motor Co. and internet company SoftBank said Thursday they will work together on artificial intelligence to develop products with sensors and cameras that can converse with drivers.

Asimo, first shown in 1996, walks, runs, dances and grips things.

Pepper, which went on sale last year, doesn’t have legs but is programmed to recognize mood swings in people it interacts with.

Major automakers and technology companies are interested in robotics to improve driving safety and comfort.

5)   The number of criminal cases detected by police in Japan in the January-June period fell 9.3% from a year earlier to 488,900, the lowest since 1989 when data for the half-year period became available, a preliminary report from the National Police Agency said Thursday.

The figure is well below that of the first half of 2015 when the police detected 538,778 crimes. The number of crimes for the whole of 2015 hit a postwar low of 1,098,969.

NPA chief Masahito Kanetaka told a press conference, “I believe a wide range of measures taken by the public and private sectors together for crime prevention are achieving effects.” An agency official attributed the decline also to measures taken against street crimes including installations of security cameras.

6)   The European Central Bank has decided not to alter its monetary policy while it waits to observe the longer-term impact of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.

The bank’s policy board members met on Thursday in Frankfurt.

They opted to leave the main interest rate at 0 percent, and the bank deposit rate at minus 0.4 percent.

7)   Executives at Japanese telecom operator Softbank and Honda Motor say they are going to start joint research on artificial intelligence for vehicles.

Softbank Group officials say the companies will develop voice interaction technology that enables AI-equipped cars to understand the driver’s emotions.
8)   Japan’s central government has filed a fresh lawsuit against the Okinawa prefectural government over the planned relocation of a US base within the southwestern prefecture. The move is likely to intensify the clash over the relocation.

The central government plans to move the US Marine Corps Futenma Air Station from a densely populated area in the city of Ginowan to the less-populated Henoko district in Nago City. The Okinawa prefectural government opposes the plan.
9)   North Korea says it has carried out a firing drill of ballistic rockets, simulating preemptive strikes on South Korea.

The North’s state-run media reported on Wednesday that the nation’s leader Kim Jong Un ordered the drill by the Strategic Force of the Korean People’s Army.
10)   IEC Corp has officially announced that the Samurai Studio will open again in Asakusa, Tokyo, for a limited time this summer, following a successful project in the spring.

IEC, which has been providing educational services to the business community in Japan for the last 60 years, says the idea of the Samurai Studio is to provide an authentic cultural experience for foreign tourists. This time, the price has been reduced to 30,000 yen from 36,000 yen (not including tax) for two persons.

Guests will be able to dress up in samurai armor and pose for photos. The armor the studio will offer is authentic and used in TV period dramas on NHK.

通常のテキスト以外にポケモンGOと福岡の不審者などなど。7時からのクラスなのに目が覚めたら6:50で慌てて起きたのでボケボケになってしまった。

Police in Dazaifu, Fukuoka, said Friday they have arrested a 34-year-old man on suspicion of theft after he was seen rummaging through the mailbox of an empty house on July 1.
The man, who was wearing wearing a Playboy bunny girl costume when he was seen at the house, is also believed to be the same man seen wearing a Spider-Man costume and loitering outside empty houses earlier this year, Sankei Shimbun reported.
According to police, a woman witnessed the man looking through the mailbox of an unoccupied house at around 12:30 p.m. on July 1. She called a nearby police koban and said a strange man wearing black fishnet tights and high heels was loitering outside the house. When the “bunny girl” spotted the woman, he fled in a car.
Police identified the suspect, Tetsuya Fujisawa, from his car license plate; however, he has denied the charge and said he has no idea what they are talking about.

“Pokemon Go” has established a new US record as the most popular smartphone game.

The augmented reality game was developed by Japan’s Nintendo and other companies. A US research firm says “Pokemon Go” has about 21 million active daily users, surpassing the previous record of 20 million set by Candy Crush.

Players can visit real-life locations to capture virtual pocket monsters, or Pokemon.

Since its US release on July 6th, the number of free downloads has increased at a substantial speed and the game has topped the app charts.

A government survey on living conditions of households in Japan shows that 60 percent of the respondents are having difficulty making ends meet.

The welfare ministry conducted the survey in June and July of last year. More than 46,000 households responded.

 

Police on Saturday said a Chinese man, who was arrested earlier this month for overstaying his visa, has admitted to putting the body of a Chinese woman in a suitcase and dumping in a canal in Tokyo.

The body of Yang Mei, 34, was found in the suitcase floating in the canal near Tennozu Isle Station in Shinagawa Ward on June 27. Yang had been missing for more than two years.

Police quoted the suspect, in his 30s, was quoted as saying he used to live with Yang. Police said he will be charged with abandoning a corpse.

The corpse, clad in a camisole and short pants, was not badly decomposed when discovered. Reports said the woman had not been dead for long.

 

Yang came to Japan in September 2013 as a trainee to participate in the government’s Industrial Trainee and Technical Internship Program (TTIP). She was working at an auto-parts plant in Kyoto but disappeared from her dormitory after being seen in its cafeteria in March 2014. She was placed on a missing persons watch list by police in Kyoto.

 

1)   Reports that Japanese Emperor Akihito intends to abdicate within a few years could re-open debate about female succession, but any such move is likely to provoke strong opposition within the current conservative ruling party.

The 82-year-old monarch, who has had heart surgery and been treated for prostate cancer in recent years, expressed his intention to abdicate in a few years to the Imperial Household Agency, public broadcaster NHK said on Wednesday.

No reason was cited and agency officials later denied the earlier reports.

2)   A gunman at the wheel of a heavy truck plowed into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the French city of Nice on Thursday night, killing at least 84 people and injuring scores more in what President Francois Hollande called a terrorist act.

The attacker, identified by a police source as a 31-year-old Tunisian-born Frenchman, also opened fire before police shot him dead. He had been known to the police for common crimes but not to the intelligence services, the source said.

3)   Police in Tokyo said Thursday have arrested an Air Self-Defense Force officer for using his smartphone to film up the skirt of a woman on a train.

According to police, Yukifumi Fujita, 50, a major at an ASDF academy in Meguro Ward, used a smartphone camera inside a bag to film up the skirt of a woman in her 20s on a train on the JR Yamanote line between Shibuya and Ebisu stations at around 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sankei Shimbun reported.

A male passenger saw what Fujita was doing and detained him, police said.

4)   Twenty-one candidates have started official 17-day campaigning for the Tokyo gubernatorial election to be held at the end of this month.

Voters will go to the polls on July 31st to choose a successor to Yoichi Masuzoe. He resigned last month following a scandal over alleged misuse of political funds.

Masuzoe’s predecessor, Naoki Inose, also stepped down because of a political funds scandal.

5)   The Kansai Electric Power Company has appealed against a court injunction that blocks the restart of 2 reactors at its Takahama nuclear plant in central Japan.

On Tuesday the Otsu District Court in Shiga Prefecture issued a fresh injunction to suspend the operations of the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at the plant in neighboring Fukui Prefecture.

In March, the Otsu District Court issued an injunction to suspend the operations of the 2 reactors. It was the first injunction for reactors in operation. Residents in Shiga Prefecture sought the injunction.
5A)   Japan’s state minister for industry has ruled out the option of sealing off disabled reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant with a Chernobyl-style sarcophagus.

Yosuke Takagi met Fukushima Governor Masao Uchibori in Tokyo on Friday.

Uchibori said he was shocked to hear the word “sarcophagus” and called the option unacceptable.

6)   Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plans to use an upcoming summit to urge China to accept a recent ruling by an arbitration tribunal in The Hague regarding its claims in the South China Sea.

Abe will attend the 2-day Asia-Europe Meeting, or ASEM, that opens in the Mongolian capital, Ulan Bator, on Friday.

Abe plans to join other leaders in calling on China to accept the tribunal’s decision for a peaceful settlement of territorial disputes in the South China Sea. The tribunal ruled on Tuesday that there is no legal basis for China’s claims.
7)   People in southwestern Japan are still trying to find places to stay and rebuild their lives 3 months after the first in a series of earthquakes hit the region.

The jolts killed 49 people in Kumamoto Prefecture. An additional 6 were confirmed to have died due to the effects of the quakes, such as physical fatigue from the evacuation. One person remains unaccounted for.

Authorities say that as of Wednesday, 4,692 people remain in shelters. Many others are said to be spending the night in their garages or tents.

Officials say the quakes have affected more than 157,000 houses in the prefecture. More than 34,000 homes were fully or partially damaged.

8)   Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has suggested that he will seek approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal at an extra session of the Diet this year.

Abe was speaking to business leaders including Sadayuki Sakakibara, the chair of Japan’s largest business federation, Keidanren.

Japan and 11 other countries signed the TPP last year but none has completed domestic procedures needed for the deal to take effect.

9)   US government officials have launched a challenge against China at the World Trade Organization.

They say China’s export duties on key raw materials impose higher costs and substantial disadvantages on US manufacturers.

US Trade Representative Michael Froman has criticized China for imposing export duties of 5 to 20 percent on 9 raw materials including cobalt, copper and lead.

The USTR says these duties give Chinese manufacturers a competitive advantage by making the materials more expensive for US automakers and aircraft makers.

US trade officials hope to eliminate the duties by first aiming for a negotiated settlement with China.

10)   Japanese automaker Nissan Motor has introduced driver-assist features that enable its new minivan model to handle congested highway traffic on its own.

Nissan showed the minivan equipped with limited autonomous driving technology to media on Wednesday.

The firm said the model has an advanced camera that can recognize other vehicles and white lines between lanes.

The car can accelerate, brake and navigate highway traffic in one lane.

テキスト以外の内容、浜名湖のバラバラ遺体とベッキーについてのニュースについて話した。あとダラスの白人警官殺害の話とバングラディシュのテロ。世界がどんどん怖いことになっていく気がする。

1)   A major Japanese IT firm says it will launch a driverless bus service at a park near Tokyo next month.

DeNA got help on the project from a French venture company that develops self-driving technology.
2)   A Russian Soyuz spacecraft with three astronauts including Japanese Takuya Onishi on board has been successfully launched from Kazakhstan for a mission to the International Space Station.

The Soyuz was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 1:36 Thursday UTC.

9 minutes later, the spacecraft detached from the rocket and entered Earth’s orbit as scheduled at an altitude of around 200 kilometers.
3)   Much of Japan sweltered on Thursday. Temperatures above those of the human body were recorded in some places in central Japan.

A high-pressure system covering the country brought clear skies and a blazing sun to a wide area from east to west.

Koshu City in Yamanashi Prefecture recorded a high of 38.8 degrees Celsius. Kawane-hon-cho in Shizuoka Prefecture had 38.6 degrees, and Tokyo’s Nerima Ward was at 37.7 degrees. Normal human body temperatures are below 37 degrees Celsius.

4)   Tens of thousands of people in a western Japanese city enjoyed a night view of a river lit up by LEDs to mark the traditional star festival called Tanabata on July 7th.

Legend has it that 2 deities who are in love with each other are separated by the Milky Way and allowed to meet only once a year on that date. People in Japan celebrate the day by making wishes.
5)   A Japanese district court has given a former prefectural lawmaker a suspended prison term for fraud involving misuse of taxpayers’ money.

The Kobe District Court on Wednesday sentenced former Hyogo Prefectural assembly member Ryutaro Nonomura to 3 years in prison, suspended for 4 years.

Nonomura was accused of misusing more than 9 million yen, or about 89,000 dollars, over 3 years until his resignation in July 2014. Prosecutors said he claimed expenses for 344 fictitious day trips.
6)   A Japanese man on a 10 meter yacht has completed the first half of a round-trip solo voyage across the Pacific Ocean.

66-year-old Shinkichi Shoji who runs a billboard business, left Japan almost 2 months ago, from the port of Sakai in Tottori Prefecture. He was bound for San Francisco in the United States.

His local yacht club said on its website that he completed the journey of about 12,000 kilometers on Tuesday.

7)   The number of scrambles by Japanese Air Self-Defense Force fighter jets against Chinese aircraft surged between April and June.

The Defense Ministry says Japanese fighters made 281 emergency takeoffs to intercept unidentified jets in the 3-month period.

Of those, 199 scrambles were against Chinese aircraft. That’s up 70 percent from a year ago.

Ministry officials say Chinese military planes are increasing activities near the Japanese side of areas between the 2 countries.

8)   Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Yuriko Koike has announced she will run for Tokyo governor without her party’s recommendation.

Koike is a former defense minister. She met on Tuesday with Economic Revitalization Minister Nobuteru Ishihara, who heads the ruling party’s Tokyo chapter.

She sought the party’s recommendation and asked the chapter to quickly decide its position.

Ishihara said the chapter will make its decision after the Upper House election on Sunday.

9)   Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda has once again said he will pump more money into the financial markets if it is necessary to support the economy.

Kuroda told the chiefs of the central bank’s 32 regional bureaus on Thursday that exports and production are sluggish due to slowdowns in emerging economies.
10)   Britain’s central bank has taken steps to support the economy, whose outlook has worsened since the vote to leave the European Union.

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said on Tuesday that the UK has entered a period of uncertainty and significant economic adjustment.

He announced that the bank had lowered the amount of capital that lenders must hold in reserve.

dollars.

実は先週は寝坊して目が覚めたらレッスン時間が終わっている時刻であった。（ダメじゃん）。なので今週は反省してちゃんと起きた！（大人として当たり前の事ですよ）

1)   As the death toll from the Istanbul airport attack rose Thursday to 44, a senior Turkish official said the three suicide bombers who carried it out were from Russia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and Turkish police raided Istanbul neighborhoods for suspects linked to the Islamic State group.

2)   An all-female reboot of Ghostbusters” hits theaters this summer amid a savage backlash by Internet trolls that has thrown the spotlight back onto Hollywood’s gender discrimination problem.

The film’s first trailer has become the most reviled in YouTube history, having amassed almost 900,000 dislikes, while director Paul Feig and his cast have been bombarded with death threats and misogyny on social media.

3)   A top Singapore bank said Thursday it has suspended loans to anyone wanting to buy property in London, citing uncertainty from Britain’s vote to quit the EU but dealing a blow to investors looking to make the most of the weak pound.

United Overseas Bank (UOB), one of the city-state’s three homegrown lenders, said it was monitoring the market closely to determine when the loans would resume.

4)   Porfirio Guerrero has grown increasingly frustrated as a decade-long recession has sapped business from his tailor shop in the Puerto Rican capital. He now feels the only way for the island to recover is to become a full-fledged part of the United States, a sentiment that is gaining force in the territory.

Puerto Ricans have been divided for decades on whether to remain a semi-autonomous commonwealth, push for statehood or break away entirely from the United States. The island’s economic crisis — including a $70 billion debt and looming default — have pushed many like Guerrero toward statehood.

6)   The number of scrambles by Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force fighter jets in reaction to the flight paths of Chinese aircraft was up sharply for the 3 months through June of this year.

Admiral Katsutoshi Kawano, the chief of staff, Joint Staff of the Self-Defense Forces, made the announcement at a news conference on Thursday.

Kawano said the number of scrambles against Chinese aircraft for the April-June period increased by more than 80 sorties from the 114 the ASDF made during the same period of last year.
7)   Japanese government officials say tax revenues for the last fiscal year were lower than earlier estimates.

This is the first time since the 2008 global financial crisis that Japan’s tax revenue has fallen below the government’s forecast.

The officials say national tax revenues in fiscal 2015 that ended in March came in at 56.3 trillion yen, or about 550 billion dollars. That’s up around 22 billion dollars from the previous fiscal year. But it’s nearly 1.3 billion dollars lower than the estimate the government made last December.
8)   A government survey shows that over a quarter of Japan’s population is now aged 65 or older.

The Internal Affairs Ministry says the estimate is based on preliminary figures from last year’s national census.

The survey says about 33.4 million people are 65 or older, or 26.7 percent of Japan’s population.
9)   Japanese lawmakers are discussing ways to minimize the impact of Britain’s decision to leave the EU.

Members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party met on Tuesday to consider extending financial support to small and medium-sized businesses.

A senior LDP official asked for a second supplementary budget of about 98 billion dollars for the current fiscal year.

Some members called for doubling that, to about 195 billion dollars including fiscal investment and loans. They said the negative aftereffects of Brexit may become prolonged.July 1st, 2016