TRAVEL

Three "alligator-like" creatures spotted swimming last month near Nagasaki Prefecture's Isahaya Bay reservoir are most likely soft- shelled turtles, a native aquatic species, prefectural officials announced Wednesday. The officials said photos of the creatures swimming in the bay, with just their eyes and nostrils protruding from the water's surface, were shown to multiple experts for identification. The experts detected an absence of scales, which are possessed by alligators and other crocodilians, and they found the distance between the creature's eyes and nostrils to be only about 3 centimeters -- too short for them to be crocodilians. (AP)

Children in the city of Nagasaki lit about 5,000 candles Sunday to pray for peace, while the French charge d'affaires visited an atomic bomb park prior to this year's peace memorial service Monday to mark the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of the city. At Nagasaki Peace Park where the memorial ceremony will be held, elementary and junior high school students lit handmade candles at 7 p.m. and wished for the elimination of nuclear weapons. (AP)

Three days after an atomic bomb devastated Hiroshima, six-year-old Kazuko Uragashira and her parents were aboard an evacuation train out of their charred home city. Having narrowly survived the nuclear inferno, the family headed for the home of an uncle, not knowing that another date with destiny lay ahead of them. His home town was Nagasaki. (AFP)

The task of passing on the personal experiences of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombing victims to the future looks like it's going to get a whole new dimension as testimonials and research resources go digital. It may even be possible to recreate these experiences with realistic digital simulations. (Mainichi)

Three animals believed to be crocodiles were spotted swimming Friday in a reservoir at a land reclamation project area in Isahaya Bay in Nagasaki Prefecture, prefectural government officials said. The prefectural and Isahaya city governments are asking local residents to stay alert while planning to hold a search at the reservoir on Saturday, they said. Crocodiles are not an animal native to Japan. (AP)

A monster tuna caught off Japan turned heads at a Tokyo fish market Friday, where the 445 kilogram (981 pound) bluefin -- the biggest caught here since 1986 -- sold for 3.2 million yen (36,700 dollars). "Many of the people who work at the market have never seen a tuna that big," said an official of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which runs the Tsukiji fish market, the world's biggest seafood market. The fish, which was auctioned at 7,200 yen per kilogram, had already been gutted and cleaned of its gills, meaning it must have weighed more when it was caught off Nagasaki prefecture this week, the official said. (AFP)

With "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet," David Mitchell has traded in the experimental, puzzlelike pyrotechnics of "Ghostwritten" and "Number9Dream" for a fairly straight-ahead story line and a historical setting. As the novel opens, it's 1799, and the Land of the Rising Sun is closed to the West, save for one trading post on the island of Dejima near Nagasaki that is run by the Dutch. Young Jacob de Zoet has arrived there to make his fortune and to win the hand of his beloved, Anna, back home in Rotterdam: her father has promised they can wed after Jacob has served a five-year posting in the Far East as a clerk. (New York Times)

Seven more officially recognized victims of a 1968 food poisoning outbreak in western Japan filed a suit Friday seeking ¥77 million in damages from Kanemi Soko K.K., the maker of the contaminated cooking oil at the center of the incident. The seven plaintiffs - from Aichi, Osaka, Fukuoka and Nagasaki prefectures - claim they developed skin disorders, deformities and other abnormalities after consuming Kanemi rice bran cooking oil contaminated with toxic polychlorinated biphenyl and other substances. (Japan Times)

From fake European villages to sex dolls, how Japan creates imitations that are even better than the real thing. On a recent Saturday afternoon at a fake European village in Tokyo, a group of Japanese women with fake eyelashes sipped cappuccinos at a fake French cafe and watched a real wedding. A Japanese couple in Western wedding clothes was getting married in a fake, vaguely European-looking chapel by a Caucasian priest. A fake one, of course. Venues with European themes have exploded across Japan. There's the Country Farm Tokyo German Village, a Nagasaki Holland Village or Shima Spain Village. This particular hot spot, the Partire Bay Wedding Village, lies in the midst of Odaiba, the artificially created island in Tokyo Bay. It sits just past the replica of the Statue of Liberty and near the Venus Fort, a Venice-theme shopping mall built in the Las Vegas architectural style. The surroundings here - a somewhat quaint village square with a Romanesque fountain, complete with a live mime - are supposed to recreate an authentic European street scene. Many young Japanese consider it an ideal and cosmopolitan setting for what they call a Western-style wedding. It's working. The Partire Bay Wedding Village hosted eight weddings on this single Saturday. (Global Post)

Two plainclothes police officers suffered stab wounds after being attacked by a man they approached for questioning on a street here Monday, police said. Police said a 49-year-old assistant inspector was stabbed about four or five times in the chest, right knee and other places, leaving him seriously injured. Another 42 year-old police sergeant at the scene was stabbed in the right thigh and received minor injuries. (Mainichi)

A security guard at the Nagasaki Bio Park noticed Akira Honda, 24, ushering the Humboldt Penguin into his suitcase in January. According to the zoo, the penguin is worth about Y400,000. Mr Honda told police that he had run up debts which he intended to pay off by selling the creature to a collector. Humboldt Penguins are native to South America and grow to around 27 inches tall and up to 13lb in weight. They are currently listed as vulnerable, due largely to the destruction of their habitats, and an estimated 12,000 survive in the wild. (telegraph.co.uk)

Kenichi Ikeda of the city of Nagasaki has carried around three bags and a secret he could not tell his family at home - inside the bags were hundreds of women's undergarments that he had stolen over 10 years, police said. Police arrested the 36-year-old truck driver, who allegedly had stolen about 260 pairs of women's underwear and kept them in bags behind the driver's seat of his truck. "I couldn't leave them home because I have a wife and children," Ikeda was quoted as saying by police. (Japan Times)

Sasebo City concluded an agreement on Monday to provide about 900 million yen annually over 10 years to major travel agency H.I.S. Co. to help it rebuild struggling theme park Huis Ten Bosch in the Nagasaki Prefecture city. At a press conference after the ceremony, H.I.S. Chairman Hideo Sawada said he will assume the post of president of a new company to operate the theme park and live in Sasebo to lead the turnaround efforts for the park. (AP)

The major opposition Liberal Democratic Party on Monday intensified its confrontational stance against the ruling camp on Diet business in a move spurred by a victory by an LDP-backed candidate in Sunday's Nagasaki gubernatorial election. The LDP boycotted a House of Representatives Budget Committee session Monday morning to protest the ruling camp's refusal to summon Democratic Pary of Japan Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa and others for questioning over their alleged involvement in political funding irregularities. (Yomiuri)

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said Monday the "question of politics and money" influenced the Nagasaki gubernatorial election the previous day, in which a candidate backed by his Democratic Party of Japan was defeated. But Hatoyama reiterated his intention to head toward the House of Councillors election this summer under the current party leadership, with Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa remaining in the party No. 2 post to take the lead in campaign strategies. (AP)

Travel agency H.I.S. Co. is poised to take over management of troubled theme park Huis Ten Bosch. Built on 800,000 square meters, or about 1.5 times the size of Tokyo Disneyland, Huis Ten Bosch began operations in 1992 after taking over the Dutch-themed Nagasaki Holland Village park, which first opened in 1983. (Asahi)

A traditional "crying sumo" tournament in which babies face off against each other in a bawling battle was staged at a temple here Wednesday, with 242 infants taking part. In the event, held at Saikyoji Temple in Hirado, Nagasaki Prefecture, babies garbed in ceremonial sumo outfits were brought together in a ring, with the one to burst into tears first being declared the winner by a referee. (Mainichi)

A pet shop manager was arrested Wednesday for allegedly stealing a penguin from a zoo here, police said. Akira Honda, 24, is accused of stealing a Humboldt penguin -- worth about 400,000 yen -- from the Nagasaki Bio Park in Saikai at around 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday. According to police, an officer patrolling around the zoo questioned Honda, who was acting suspiciously, and found the penguin in his bag. (Mainichi)

New research based on the experiences of atomic-bomb survivors has found a link between exposure to moderate levels of radiation and higher levels of heart disease and stroke. It's not clear, however, if the radiation directly causes the diseases, nor is it clear if there's a link between lower doses and the health problems. For the study, researchers from the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Japan examined the medical records of 86,611 Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic-bomb survivors who were followed from 1950 to 2003. (BusinessWeek)

The city of Nagasaki has given up its bid to co-host the 2020 Summer Olympic Games with Hiroshima, Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue said Friday. But Nagasaki would be willing to offer its full cooperation to the city of Hiroshima if it tries to host the sporting event alone, the mayor said at a meeting of city assembly members. (AP)

Snow and strong winds struck a wide area of Japan on Wednesday due to low pressure systems, shutting down an airport in Nagasaki Prefecture and blocking most of the highways in the Kyushu region. The Japan Meteorological Agency said snow blanketed much of the Kyushu region, with 9 centimeters of snow observed in the city of Nagasaki, where more than 5 cm of snow accumulation was recorded for the first time since 2001. The city of Kumamoto had its first snowfall since December 2005, where snow piled up some 7 cm. (AP)

A rare leopard cat has been found on the lower island of Tsushima, in Nagasaki Prefecture, directly confirming their existence there for the first time in more than two decades, conservation officers said Tuesday. The highly protected Tsushima leopard cat, one of two species of wildcats found in Japan, was until recently feared to have completely disappeared from Tsushima's lower island, though as many as 150 are thought to still survive on its upper island. (AP)

In Japan, the Christmas spirit is not hard to find. Twenty-foot trees with blinking lights line shopping boulevards; department stores decorated in red-and-green bunting offer holiday sales; and Kentucky Fried Chicken, which has dressed Colonel Sanders in a Santa outfit, is offering the popular "Kentucky Christmas" meal for Dec. 25 - a family-sized bucket of chicken, salad and frosted "Christmas cake" for about $40.
Though Christianity was introduced by the Portuguese in the port-city of Nagasaki in the 1500s, it has had a rocky history here, banned outright for 250 years by the Japanese ruling shogunate. Persecuted Christians went underground in a movement known as the "hidden Christians" until the late 1800s. The legacy remains: Today, an estimated 1 percent of the 126 million Japanese identify themselves as Christian. By contract, in nearby South Korea, more than 25 percent of residents are said to be Protestant or Catholic. (Global Post)

Japan's parliament passed a law Tuesday to extend relief to scores of survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings who have so far been denied recognition and welfare payments. The law sets up a fund to pay for medical help for about 30 elderly citizens who say they have suffered illnesses caused by radiation from the US atomic bombings at the end of World War II. (Straits Times)

The number of elderly people needing to enter senior care facilities is expected to increase by about 1.36 million by 2035, but about 40 percent of them will not be able to afford to enter fee-charging nursing homes, according to an estimate by the Development Bank of Japan. According to the estimate, Nagasaki Prefecture would have the highest proportion of elderly who would struggle to afford a fee-charging nursing home, at 60.6 percent, while Shiga Prefecture was lowest, at 22.2 percent. (Yomiuri)