TRAVEL

A former deputy police chief pleaded not guilty Thursday to professional negligence over a fatal pedestrian crush after a fireworks show in Akashi, Hyogo Prefecture, in 2001. Kazuaki Sakaki, 64, was deputy Akashi police chief on the Hyogo prefectural force on the night of July 21, 2001, when the postfireworks throng attempted to head to the local train station en masse via an enclosed pedestrian overpass, leaving 11 people dead and 247 others injured. The 11 who were crushed to death ranged in age from 9 to over 70. "I did all I could. I was not negligent," Sakaki, charged with failure to prevent the accident, said at the opening of his Kobe District Court trial. (Japan Times)

A lighting display event was held on Jan. 16. on a sandbar in the Mukogawa river running through Takarazuka, Hyogo Prefecture, to commemorate the 17th anniversary of the Great Hanshin Earthquake. A 20-meter-by-10-meter art piece consisting of stones--in the shape of the Chinese character "sei" (life)--was lit to pray for the peaceful rest of the souls of the more than 6,000 people killed by the earthquake that leveled parts of Kobe on Jan. 17, 1995. Participants also mourned the deaths of victims of the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami. (Asahi)

Following a decline in the populations of areas hit hard by the March 11 disaster, special reconstruction zones have launched job-creation initiatives to curb a potential mass exodus of residents, as seen in previous disasters. In the wake of the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995, Kobe City's population of about 1.52 million fell by about 100,000 in nine months. It took nine years and 10 months for the city's population to return to its prequake level. In the city's Nagata Ward, the synthetic shoe industry suffered greatly after its factories were burned in fires caused by the earthquake. The population, a large percentage of which are elderly, is still about 29,000 lower than it was before the quake. (Yomiuri)

The former president of a major Japanese railway has been found not guilty of negligence in a crash that killed 107 people in 2005 and raised concerns over pressures to sacrifice safety for punctuality. Masao Yamazaki resigned as president of West Japan Railway Co. shortly after the speeding commuter train derailed and crashed into an apartment in Amagasaki, western Japan. He was charged in 2009 with not properly supervising company safety measures. He was found not guilty Wednesday by the Kobe District Court. The crash was the worst in Japan since 1963, and led to improvements in braking systems. Some experts said it reflected unreasonable expectations for drivers to keep their trains on time in a system that is among the world's most punctual. (AP)

Just after 12:10 a.m. on January 1, five upper-level members of the Yamaguchi-gumi criminal syndicate, including top boss Shinobu Tsukasa, 69, arrived at Gokoku Shrine, located near the gang's headquarters in Hyogo Prefecture, for their first visit of the year, a practice known as hatsumode. One member of the group stood out from the rest, reports Flash Jan. 17-24. Chairman Hirofumi Hashimoto, 64, had been out of the spotlight since apparently being connected to Shinsuke Shimada, the popular entertainer who over the summer abruptly announced his retirement from the entertainment business. (Tokyo Reporter)

Police said Wednesday that a woman's body was found lying beside a national highway in Kobe. Police said they received a report from a driver traveling along Route 428 in Kobe at around 11:40 a.m. on Tuesday, saying that there was a woman lying beside the road, TV Asahi reported. Police rushed to the scene to discover the body of a woman lying face up beneath the guard rail. Police, who have identified the woman from her possessions, said she was 37 and lived around six kilometers from where she was found. They have not yet released her name. According to police, she was wearing a red jumper and her clothes were in disarray. (Japan Today)

Bankruptcies associated with the March earthquake reached 505 as of Dec. 21, according to Tokyo Shoko Research Ltd., roughly four times as many as in the first 10 months following the 1995 temblor in Kobe. Tokyo topped the list with 114 filings. Many firms there have dealings in the disaster-hit Tohoku region. Six Tohoku prefectures saw 84 bankruptcies. Manufacturers accounted for 123 filings, or 24 per cent. Service-sector firms, including hotels and restaurants, followed at 116, with 89 construction businesses going under. There were 129 bankruptcies over the 10 months following the 1995 quake. (lankabusinessonline.com)

Tsuneyasu Miyamoto, Japan's captain at the 2002 and 2006 World Cups, announced his retirement Monday to take up a course to become a sports executive, in a bid to lift the status of Japanese football. The 34-year-old defender, who played for Austria's Salzburg in 2007 and 2008, said he would retire by turning down offers from several sides including his current J-League club Kobe Vissel and a team in Thailand for next season. Miyamoto was nicknamed "Batman" after grabbing world media attention for wearing a black mask to cover his broken nose during the 2002 World Cup at home when the Blue Samurai reached the last 16. (AFP)

They might not be shining for as long as usual, but winter illumination events across the nation are going ahead--albeit with a host of energy-saving techniques in place--to bring a ray of hope and inspiration to people at the end of a year unlike any other. The Kobe Luminarie light festival has been held every December since 1995 to commemorate the Great Hanshin Earthquake that devastated the city in January that year. The festival's organizing committee usually starts making arrangements for the event in April, but this year, in consideration of the victims of the March 11 disaster, views were split on whether Kobe Luminarie should even be held. In July, the organizing committee eventually decided the event would go ahead. (Yomiuri)

Expatriates in Japan have the highest living expenses compared to their counterparts working elsewhere in Asia, due largely to the Japanese currency's recent sharp rise, a global survey said Tuesday. Human resource firm ECA International's latest survey of expatriate living costs showed Japanese cities occupied the top four most expensive locations in Asia, with Tokyo ranked first followed by Nagoya, Yokohama and Kobe. The Japanese capital also topped the global list of most expensive locations for expatriates, according to the survey carried out in September. The yen has risen by about 20 percent against the US dollar in the past 12 months and expatriates who are paid in currencies such as the greenback are feeling the impact, said Lee Quane, ECA International's regional director. (AFP)

Japanese stocks rose, with the Nikkei 225 Stock Average paring its biggest monthly loss since August, as shipping companies and steelmakers rebounded. Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha Ltd. and other shipping lines advanced, rising for a third day after the sector plunged by as much as 25 percent this month. JFE Holdings Inc. and Kobe Steel Ltd. both rebounded for a third day. Nikon Corp., a camera maker that depends on Europe for about a quarter of its sales, gained 2.5 percent on optimism leaders in the region will boost efforts to end the debt crisis. Japanese stocks extended gains in the final hour of trading amid daily turnover that was 30 percent lower than this year's average. (BusinessWeek)

The shrine neighboring the Yamaguchi-gumi headquarters in Hyogo Prefecture on Wednesday revealed that the criminal organization will not pay respects at the New Year, reports Sports Nippon (Nov. 23). After members of the Yamaguchi-gumi visited Kobe's Gokoku-jinja Shrine on November 17 and 18, the head priest was informed by the gang that it will not appear for New Year's Day prayers as a matter of "self-restraint." The concession follows the enactment in October of nationwide legislation that prohibits ordinary citizens from having business dealings with criminal organizations. (Tokyo Reporter)

Japan's K computer has set a record for high-performance computing, according to the new Top500 List released Monday by researchers at the University of Tennessee, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Mannheim in Germany. Jointly developed by Fujitsu and the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan, the K computer succeeded in performing 10.5 quadrillion floating-point operations per second (petaflops), which broke the prior record of 8.16 petaflops achieved last June by an earlier configuration of the same machine. Named after the Japanese word for 10 quadrillion (pronounced "kei"), Japan's supercomputer currently leads the field because of the SPARC64 VIIIfx chips specifically developed by Fujitsu for petaflop-scale computing applications. (Reuters)

Moves to weaken the power of the underworld have been spreading in Japanese society. More bar and restaurant owners are stopping protection payments to gangs, other firms are ending deals with gangs, and street vendors are expelling gangsters from their business. In Hyogo Prefecture, printers' associations have adopted a resolution against printing name and greeting cards, and member expulsion notices for gangsters, etc. The police have asked the Hyogo Association of Shinto Shrines to turn down gangs' requests for mass worships at shrines. The headquarters of Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest underworld syndicate, is based in Kobe. (Japan Times)

Radioactive fallout from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant has caused widespread fear, prompting the government in August to adopt basic targets for decontamination efforts in and around Fukushima Prefecture. But the government's plan falls short and efforts should focus in particular on residential areas with more aggressive decontamination measures and goals, including reducing current radiation levels by 90 percent, two radiation experts said when interviewed by The Japan Times. "I really doubt their seriousness (about decontamination)," said radiation expert Tomoya Yamauchi, a professor at the Graduate School of Maritime Sciences at Kobe University. Areas with radiation exposure readings representing more than 20 millisieverts per year have been declared no-go zones, and the government has shifted the focus of its decontamination plan to areas with radiation readings, based on an annual accumulative amount, of between 20 millisieverts and more than 1 millisievert, with the goal of reducing the contamination by 50 to 60 percent over two years. (Japan Times)

A supercomputer being developed in Kobe has broken its own record as the world's fastest computer, achieving its performance goal of 10 petaflops, or 10 quadrillion computations per second, its developers said. The 10.51-petaflop performance in early October by the supercomputer being jointly developed by Fujitsu Ltd. and the Riken research institute, exceeded the mark of 8.16 petaflops it set in June to capture the top spot in the global ranking of computing speeds, Fujitsu and Riken said Wednesday. The latest performance results have been submitted to the world ranking to be presented at an international computing conference in Seattle that starts Nov. 12, they said. (Japan Times)

A printers union in Hyogo Prefecture said at a meeting on Wednesday that its members will refuse to fill orders placed by gangsters, reports the Nikkei Shimbun (Oct. 26). The Hyogo Printing Industry Association voted at a Kobe hotel in favor of its members breaking ties with organized crime and refusing to fill orders for business cards, New Year greeting cards, and declarations of membership termination in compliance with the recently enacted laws. (Tokyo Reporter)

Following the success of last week's Michael Forever tribute concert in Wales, Michael Jackson's family have announced plans for two very special charity concerts in Tokyo in December. "If Michael was alive, he would definitely have done something to help the victims of the earthquake in Japan," said Michael's mother in London yesterday. "Michael loved children, he would have felt for those children who lost parents or homes." The Michael Jackson Tribute Live concerts will feature The Jacksons performing on stage, and will benefit ASHINAGA, a charity based in Tokyo that provides financial support to children who have lost either one or both of their parents, as well as to provide constant emotional care programs at Kobe Rainbow House, which was built in 1999 as the first day care center for orphans in Japan. (looktothestars.org)

A last-gasp 1-0 win over North Korea in Saitama and a hard-fought 1-1 draw away to Uzbekistan was not the most auspicious of starts for Japan's qualifying campaign for the Brazil 2014 World Cup. The four points garnered from last month's games put Japan joint top of Group C with Uzbekistan, but the stuttering performances--followed by an unconvincing 1-0 friendly victory over Vietnam in Kobe last Friday--mean the team comes into Tuesday's qualifier with Tajikistan under pressure to perform. Such expectation is not new to fullback Yuto Nagatomo, who has returned to the side having missed September's matches with a shoulder injury. (Yomiuri)

A third-party panel tasked with overseeing Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s cost-cutting efforts has graded the utility's personnel expenses as "high," the panel head said. "Compared with firms in other sectors, it is undeniable that the expenses are high," Kazuhiko Shimokobe, a lawyer heading the panel, said at a news conference Wednesday, declining to specify which category of the costs is drawing attention. The five-member panel established by the government is investigating Tepco's finances as the utility faces massive compensation payments over the crisis at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. (Japan Times)

Japan's rugby body has suspended World Cup hopeful Ryohei Yamanaka for two years for using a banned substance which he blamed on a cream to help him grow a moustache. The 23-year-old one-cap fly-half tested positive in a random doping check in April during a training camp ahead of the Asian Five Nations tournament, and a follow-up test showed the same result. The International Rugby Board ruled that the substance was a steroid, either methyltestosterone or methandriol, said the Japan Rugby Football Union (JRFU). The Kobelco Steelers rookie told rugby authorities that he thought the cream was a cosmetic product that did not contain banned substances, the JRFU said. (Herald Sun)

Half a world away from the secretive farms that produce Japan's legendary Kobe beef, Jerry Wilson raises the American version of the meat that will become $50 steaks and $13 burgers. The chocolatey brown cattle at Wilson's Meadows Farm don't technically produce Kobe beef - that term is reserved for the Japanese super high-end cut famous for its succulent taste and eye-popping prices. Wilson calls his meat "American Style Kobe Beef." Other ranchers use similar names like "Kobe-style beef" or "wagyu beef," a reference to the breed of cattle. Whatever the name, domestic production of the pricey product has grown from practically nothing a dozen years ago to a flourishing boutique niche, with recent growth fueled in part by a ban on Japanese beef because of reports of foot-and-mouth disease. While American ranchers might not be able to match the mystique of Japanese Kobe and much of the domestic product is cross-bred, they say their product compares to the legendarily luscious stuff. (AP)

High school students were long restricted by parents and schools when it came to dating, but a new survey shows that more than one-third of female high school students are now prevented from dating by their boyfriends. The nonprofit organization against domestic violence, Women's Net Kobe, interviewed 2,600 female and 1,800 male high school students over two years and found that many high school relationships involved violence, coercion and restrictions. (Japan Times)

Some 33 percent of female high school students have experienced various kinds of social restrictions by their boyfriends, including having their friends' addresses erased from their cellphones and being told not to go out with other friends. These are some of the findings of a survey by Women's Net Kobe, a nonprofit organization against domestic violence. Twenty-one percent of the male students said they experienced similar kinds of restraints from their girlfriends. In other categories, 27 percent of the female students said they suffered psychological violence, including being yelled at, 18 percent said they were forced to have sex and 15 percent suffered physical violence. (Japan Times)

One week after clinching her first ITTF Pro Tour title of the season at the Korean Open, Singapore's world No 5 Feng Tianwei (picture) made it a double yesterday after a comprehensive 4-0 (11-8, 12-10, 11-9, 15-13) win over home favourite Ai Fukuhara in the final of the US$172,000 (S$210,132) Japan Open in Kobe. Seeded No 1, Feng found the going tough against the Japanese world No 8 even though she won in straight games. Spurred on by the home crowd at Kobe's Green Arena, Fukuhara tested 24-year-old Feng all the way, but the Singaporean was always in control to wrap up another tournament win. (todayonline.com)