Tokyo Times

Photographs from a small group of islands

Odd

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Sibling saga

Keisuke Yumiba, a man who chose to live out of his car for the last 12 months, was arrested over the weekend. Whilst using his car as a home isn’t crime, it could be construed as suspicious when for the same period of time his brother’s rotting corpse had been left in the apartment they used to share.

Local residents in the housing estate in Kanagawa Prefecture had complained of a vile smell, and the resultant investigation uncovered 29-year-old Kenichi Yumiba’s corpse.

The body showed no sign of external injury, but the police have yet to disclose if the autopsy revealed the cause of the elder brother’s death.

Most unpleasant.

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Arnold’s adverts

Arnold Schwarzenegger will visit Japan in November, his first sojourn as Governor of California. The, ahem, actor turned politician plans to meet Japanese political and business leaders, in an attempt to strengthen business ties between Japan and his state.

But official work aside, I wonder if he’ll find the time to make anymore TV commercials whilst he’s here?

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Click on the picture above to see one of the Governor’s more accomplished performances. And for more Schwarzenegger (and other celebrity) commercials, go to the wonderful Japander.com

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Soporific shopping

I’ve heard the expression, I’m so tired I could sleep on a washing line many times. Although admittedly not recently. Is it still in use?

Anyway, considering the width of a washing line, the man pictured below might not have been quite that tired. But at the same time he must have been more than a little bit sleepy. And if his precarious sleeping and balancing act wasn’t enough, the photograph was taken in the middle of Akihabara on a Saturday afternoon. Which for anybody unfamiliar with the area, is incredibly noisy and busy to say the least.

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High school hoax

School is not everybody’s idea of fun, but rather than feign stomachache, or simply skive off and spend the day down at the local game centre, a 16-year-old high school student made a bomb threat in a desperate attempt for a bit of time off.

The unnamed student hit on the idea after having one of his classes cancelled when the train line his school is situated on temporarily suspended services due to an accident. And with this in mind, he sent an e-mail to the Seibu Railway Company saying, “I’m going to blow up a station on the Seibu Line between September 14th and 18th. I have already planted the bomb. You’ll never find it so don’t waste your time.”

This resulted in the police and railway officials searching all 92 of its stations. An unenviable task to say the least. Although how this affected services, and whether the young prankster managed to miss any classes wasn’t disclosed.

But, as the old saying goes, every cloud has a silver lining. The school-hating hoaxer was arrested on Friday, meaning he got at least one day away from school.

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Rockin’ roses

Pictured below is Let’s Corp. president Masumi Gotoh. But don’t be fooled for one minute into thinking that Gotoh-san is a keen botanist, as what he’s actually demonstrating is his company’s Ka-on. A device that turns the petals and leaves of flowers into audio speakers.

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The name means flower sound, and the contraption consists of a donut-shaped magnet and coil that sits at the base of a vase and can be connected to a CD player, stereo, or TV. Then all you need to do is place some flowers in the vase, and the magnet and coil relay the sound vibrations up the stems and through the plant’s water tubes.

Ka-on vases and amplifiers come in various sizes and prices, the most expensive set retailing at 35,000 yen (175 pounds). Which it has to be said is a lot of money to have the sound of your favourite albums destroyed by playing them through a flower.

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