From The Washington Post by Blaine Harden - Salarymen — the black-suited corporate warriors who work long hours, spend long evenings drinking with cronies and stumble home late to long-suffering wives — have danger waiting for them as they near retirement.
Divorce. A change in Japanese law this year allows a wife who is filing for divorce to claim as much as half her husband’s company pension. When the new law went into effect in April, divorce filings across Japan spiked 6.1 percent. Many more split-ups are in the pipeline, marriage counselors predict. They say wives — hearts gone cold after decades of marital neglect — are using calculators to ponder pension tables, the new law and the big D.
From the Daily Mail - A Japanese restaurant has changed the face of customer service by employing two monkeys to help with the table service.
The Kayabukiya tavern, a traditional ’sake house’ north of Tokyo has employed a pair of uniformed Japanese macaque called Yat-chan and Fuku-chan to serve patrons.
Twelve-year-old Yat-chan is the crowd-pleaser as he moves quickly between tables taking customer drink orders.
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Tavern owner Kaoru Otsuka, 63, originally kept the monkeys as household pets - but when the older one started aping him he realised they were capable of working in the restaurant.
Japanese 10,000 Yen (~$94) Gold Coin From Times Online by Leo Lewis - Japan’s high-tech rubbish dumps - the vast “urban mines” of landfill outside every big city - have grown so huge that the country now ranks among the biggest natural resource nations in the world.
Tens of millions of defunct mobile phones, discarded televisions, PCs and MP3 players conceal a “virtual lode” of hundreds of tonnes of precious metals. An even greater seam may be lurking forgotten - but not yet discarded - in Japan’s attics and garages.
According to new calculations by the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) in Tsukuba, Japan has unwittingly accumulated three times as much gold, silver and indium than the entire world uses or buys in a year. In the case of platinum, Japan’s urban mines may contain six times annual global consumption.
From Tech Crunch by Serkan Toto - In Japan, girls are crazy over virtual boyfriends. Webkare (Web Boyfriend in Japanese), a mix between a social network and dating simulation site, is Nippon’s newest web sensation. Geared exclusively towards girls, the site attracted over 10,000 members just 5 days after its release on September 10, racking up 3.5 million page views in the same time frame.
The site is a huge hit over here. Girls sign up and become members of a social network but also users of a dating simulation in cartoon style. They have to try to hook up with one of four male Anime characters (who are the “stars” of the site) through “conversations” and must collaborate with other Webkare members in order to move on in the game. Eventually they conquer the heart of the chosen cartoon boy.
