TRAVEL

A team of Japanese researchers has detected the DNA of a leprosy-causing bacterium from archaeological skeletal remains excavated from an 18th century tomb in Aomori Prefecture. The team led by Koichi Suzuki, a senior researcher at the Leprosy Research Center of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo, published its findings Thursday in the U.S. science magazine Plos One. (AP)

Olympic curler Mari Motohashi announced Monday she has parted ways with Team Aomori and formed a team in her native Hokkaido. The new team is made up of five peers of Motohashi from Kitami, the curling capital of Japan formerly called Tokoro. "I made this move because I believe that building this team from scratch will help me grow as a curler and as a person," Motohashi said at a press conference in Tokyo. The 24-year-old nicknamed "Marilyn" played for Team Aomori at the past two Olympics. Team Aomori finished seventh in Turin and eighth in Vancouver out of 10 teams. (AP)

Twenty-two people died and 14 others were injured in Japan on Sunday as a result of water and mountain accidents as well as heat stroke as temperatures continued to soar across the country, according to reports compiled by Kyodo News. Fourteen people died in water-related accidents -- two each in Chiba, Aomori, Gifu and Shizuoka prefectures and one each in Yamaguchi, Hokkaido, Kanagawa, Nara, Wakayama and Kagawa prefectures -- while two people died in the mountains in Saitama Prefecture. (AP)

Six movie theaters - in Hachinohe (Aomori Prefecture), Sendai, Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka and Kyoto - on July 3 started showing "The Cove," a documentary film about dolphin hunting in the whaling town of Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture. There have been no reports of big disturbances. Originally, the movie, the winner of this year's Academy Award for Best Documentary, had been scheduled to be shown from June 26. Three movie theaters in Tokyo and Osaka gave up on screening the film after groups who call the movie "anti-Japanese" threatened to stage noisy protests near the theaters. Besides those six movie theaters, 18 others are to show the film. The distributor and the movie houses deserve praises for not bowing to pressure from protesters. (Japan Times)

There was a time, in the 1960s and early '70s, when the people of Japan were not apathetic about what was being done on their soil. The opposition here to the U.S. invasion of Vietnam and Japan's support of it was large scale and vocal. Mass demonstrations were frequently held across the nation, participated in by people of all ages and from all walks of life. The Japanese government, hosting U.S. forces at bases from Okinawa in the south to Aomori Prefecture in the north, knew how critical their support was to the American war effort. In 1965, Adm. Grant Sharp, Commander of U.S. Pacific Forces, said: "Without Okinawa, we could not have continued the combat in Vietnam." (Japan Times)

A 13-year-old girl died and three others were taken to hospital after possibly inhaling toxic volcanic gas on Sunday morning in the Hakkoda Mountains in the city of Aomori in Aomori Prefecture, police said. The city's fire department received an emergency call at around 6:45 a.m. saying the girl, Miki Ito, and her mother Mayumi, 45, were found collapsed at a mountain near the Sukayu hot springs resort in the city. (AP)

Ahead of the full opening of a northern Shinkansen route this December, East Japan Railway Co.'s six-car "East i" inspection train Tuesday morning pulled into JR Shin-Aomori Station, the final stop on the Tohoku Shinkansen Line, without a hitch. The red-and-white train was greeted by residents and train buffs along with traditional music from the region's famous Nebuta Festival. JR East will introduce the E5 series in March 2011 on the line. From March 2013, the train will be operating at its top speed of 320 kph, linking Tokyo and Shin-Aomori stations in 3 hours and 5 minutes. (Asahi)

The first delivery of at least 850 canisters of high-level radioactive vitrified waste arrived Tuesday morning by ship from the U.K. in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, where it will sit in storage for decades before being buried deep underground. Antinuclear activists argue that with no local government yet willing to host a final disposal site and concern over the international security and environmental risks of transporting so much nuclear waste between the U.K. and Japan, the shipments should end. (Japan Times)

Heavy snowfall and strong winds hit parts of northern to central Japan on Saturday, with the Japan Meteorological Agency warning of continued snow and winds as well as high waves on Sunday. Heavy snow was seen in regions facing the Sea of Japan, including areas in Niigata, Aomori and Yamagata prefectures where close to 300 centimeters of snow had accumulated by Saturday evening, the agency said. Winds of more than 100 kilometers per hour blew through parts of Niigata and Akita prefectures on Saturday morning. (AP)

"A is for apple." Every Japanese person learns this when they learn the E nglish alphabet. But couldn't it be, just for once, "A is for antelope?" Or how about "A is for anarchy," "adult" or "aspirin?" Wouldn't that be more helpful? We could also use our own alphabet to teach Japanese culture and language to foreigners. Something like, The ABCs of Living in Japan: A is for Amaterasu, the sun goddess and Japan's best-known deity. A is also for amanogawa (the Milky Way), Aomori Prefecture and All Nippon Airways. (Japan Times)

A snow monkey from Aomori Prefecture, the northernmost habitat in the world for a simian, enjoyed a hiccup of freedom Sunday after escaping from Ueno Zoo in Tokyo, the first day of a public exhibition of Japanese macaques at the facility, zoo officials said. Zoo staff members tried unsuccessfully to capture the monkey with nets and tranquilizer guns, and around six hours later, the monkey was finally detected and captured by a net near the zoo, they said. (AP)

A bluefin tuna from Aomori Prefecture fetched a nine-year high of 16.28 million yen on Tuesday at the first auction of the new year on the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market, commonly known as Tsukiji market, market participants said. The price for the 232.6-kilogram tuna, caught off Oma in the northeastern Japan prefecture, compares with 9.63 million yen for the same kind of tuna put on the block at the market on last year's opening day, the participants said. (AP)

Visits to the northern, southern, eastern and western tips of Honshu with the aim of receiving certificates proving the completion of such trips are quietly becoming more popular.
The four tips are:
-- East: Todogasaki cape in Miyako, Iwate Prefecture.
-- West: Bishanohana cape in Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture.
-- South: Shionomisaki cape in Kushimotocho, Wakayama Prefecture.
-- North: Omazaki cape in Omamachi, Aomori Prefecture. (Yomiuri)

An international school in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, which has just seven pupils and students but receives tens of millions of yen in state funding a year, faces scrutiny under the second round of budget request reviews that starts today. The school's operating expenses are funded by grants from the central government for local governments that host nuclear-related facilities. (Asahi)

A man was injured while houses and depositories were damaged by tornados in Noshiro, Akita Prefecture, and Fukaura, Aomori Prefecture, on Friday, local observatories and police said. In Noshiro, a 29-year-old man sustained a cut to his right leg from a broken window at an auto factory, while 25 houses and depositories were damaged. (AP)

Chiharu Icho, a silver medalist wrestler at the Athens and Beijing Olympic Games, will become a high school teacher as she has passed the recruitment examination of her native Aomori Prefecture, her former wrestling coach said Friday. Icho, 28, is expected to teach physical education at a public high school there from the next academic year starting in April. (AP)

An earthquake registering a preliminary magnitude of 5.1 shook north and northeastern Japan on Saturday evening, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. The 5:43 p.m. quake measured 4 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of 7 in Higashidori, Aomori Prefecture, and 3 in several places in the prefecture and Hokkaido, the agency said. No tsunami warning was issued. (AP)

The amount of fissile plutonium Japan possessed in the country and abroad totaled about 31.8 tons at the end of last year, up 0.6 ton from a year earlier, a Cabinet Office report showed Tuesday. Nearly all of the newly extracted plutonium during 2008 came from a spent fuel reprocessing plant during a test run in the village of Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture. (AP)

The first lay judge trial on rape cases began Wednesday at the Aomori District Court with the court giving due consideration to the privacy of two victims. In the trial, the third since the new criminal trial system was introduced in Japan in May, Yasuhiro Tajima, 22, pleaded guilty to burglary, rape and other charges in four cases as the court examined more than one case at once, also for the first time under the system. (AP)

The Defense Ministry likely will deploy Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles at three air defense missile-launch facilities to complement the functions of three similar PAC-3 installations in a bid to better defend the nation against ballistic missiles launched from North Korea, ministry sources said. The three locations to be newly equipped with the missile defense system include the 6th Air Defense Missile Group in Misawa, Aomori Prefecture. The ministry plans to include expenses for the deployment in its budget request for fiscal 2010. (Yomiuri)

Travellers in Japan have enjoyed the luxury of high-speed rail travel for more than four decades. The first bullet train, the shinkansen, was introduced just in time for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. Both events were seen as symbolic of Japan's economic recovery and global acceptance less than 20 years after the end of the second world war. The shinkansen network, operated by Japan Railways, now connects most major Japanese cities via almost 1,550 miles of track. While the early trains reached up to 130mph, the latest version, the N700 series, which entered service in 1999, reaches speeds of 186mph. The new E5 series, to be introduced in 2011, will reach 199mph, making it possible to travel from Tokyo to Aomori - 419 miles away - in three hours. (guardian.co.uk)