JAPAN: Chinese Aircraft Intrusion & more – 3rd Sep 2024

Konnichiwa from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 3rd of September twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

Typhoon Shanshan moved slowly through western and central Japan all throughout last week. It first hit Kyushu on Tuesday the 27th of August and went northeast, causing heavy rains, flooding, violent winds, and landslides. The Disaster Management Agency said the typhoon killed at least six people and injured more than 120.

Shizuoka City had 600 millimeters of rain between Wednesday the 28th and Saturday the 31st, three times the city's monthly average. In Kanagawa Prefecture, the flooding was high enough to reach the hood of cars parked in the street. Airlines canceled many flights in the past week, and railway companies suspended bullet train services in affected areas.

However, by Sunday the 1st of September, the typhoon calmed into a tropical depression. Weather officials said the wind speed had slowed considerably, but people throughout Japan should still expect heavy rain that might cause landslides until Tuesday the 3rd.

The typhoon had some other unexpected side effects. On Thursday the 29th, Shizuoka Prefecture's pest control center issued a warning to look out for stink bugs. They found nearly 1,600 stink bugs at key observation points, which was ten times the usual amount. They believe the typhoon drove them there since stink bugs usually try to avoid rain.

The pest control center said there could be swarms of stink bugs. These bugs like citrus fruit especially, so the center suggested using pesticides.

In a follow-up to a story we covered in a previous show, Qian Wu, a Chinese defense ministry spokesperson, said on Thursday the 29th that people shouldn't read too much into the Chinese military aircraft that flew into Japanese airspace on the 26th of August, implying it was just an accident.

Last week, Japan's Defense Ministry described the incident as the first time a Chinese military plane intruded into Japan’s airspace. Wu said that China respects the sovereignty of other nations and that China and Japan are staying in touch about the issue. He also said that China's foreign ministry is still trying to figure out what exactly happened.

Such statements of innocence are hard to believe since on Saturday the 31st of August, it happened again - only this time, a Chinese Navy ship intruded onto Japanese waters near Kuchinoerabu Island in Kagoshima Prefecture, southwestern Japan. It was the thirteenth time such a thing happened since September last year.

Japan's Defense Ministry dispatched ships and aircraft for surveillance, noting that the ship did not perform any special actions and left after two hours.

Japan's Foreign Ministry lodged a protest with the Chinese Embassy, emphasizing serious concerns over China’s military actions.

Speaking of concerns, 731 households in Suzu and Wajima in Ishikawa Prefecture still don’t have running water, even though eight months have passed since the Noto Peninsula Earthquake in that region. The quake caused water outages for 110,000 households, partly due to landslides damaging a local water purification plant. While ninety percent are back to normal, some residents still rely on water stations and rainwater.

The local governments are still trying to restore water by connecting new pipes and installing new purification equipment. However, it’s more difficult in certain remote, mountainous areas, such as the Mauramachi neighborhood.

Even so, the Self-Defense Forces finished relief operations, such as setting up temporary bathing facilities, and pulled out of the region on Monday the 2nd of September.

Moving on, the Sapporo city government recently proposed a new tax for anyone booking a hotel starting from April twenty twenty-six. The city hopes the tax will help businesses struggling with over-tourism and lost revenue from a shrinking local population. For rooms costing less than 50,000 yen, which is 340 dollars, the tax would add 200 yen (or a dollar twenty-five) per night. For more expensive rooms, the tax would add 500 yen (which is four dollars) per night.

The government plans to use the tax revenue, which will likely be around twenty million dollars annually, to improve public facilities, multilingual information services, cashless payments, and over-tourism management.

The Hokkaido government is also planning a similar hotel tax for the entire prefecture, which would mean that Sapporo would charge the tax twice. Some experts are worried that the city and the Hokkaido government might overlap and end up spending the tax revenue on the same programs, but officials said they’ll be careful to coordinate properly. They’ll submit the proposal to the city assembly by the end of the year.

In more travel-related news, Seibu Holdings and a locker operating company started an experimental service for travelers in Tokyo on Monday the 2nd of September. With this service, travelers can store their luggage in a train station locker and arrange for someone to deliver it to the hotel where they will be staying. Since most hotels don’t have check-in times until mid-afternoon, it will allow those who arrive in Tokyo in the morning to do some sightseeing without booking early check-in or carrying their luggage with them everywhere.

At the moment, the experimental service is only at Seibu-Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, and Toshimaen Stations. The companies plan to continue the trial until March twenty twenty-five and see what they should change or add before expanding.

In an update to a story that we reported on earlier this year, the Unification Church, a religious group, appealed to the Supreme Court on Monday the 2nd of September, over a lower court’s fine of 100,000 yen (that is, 690 dollars).

For the past two years, the Education and Culture Ministry has been investigating the church regarding accusations of unethical practices and large donations. As part of the investigation, the ministry asked the church 500 questions, but the church refused to answer 100 of them. The ministry asked the court to impose a fine, and in March, the Tokyo District Court fined Tomihiro Tanaka, the church’s leader, and the church appealed the decision. On Tuesday the 27th of August, the Tokyo High Court upheld the decision, saying that the government has a right to question religious organizations.

The church argues that the ruling violates the Constitution and past Supreme Court decisions, which is why they are now bringing the case to the highest court in Japan.

Moving onto sports, the Paris Paralympics have begun. On Friday the 30th of August, Kenya Karasawa won silver in the men's 5,000-meter or 16,000-foot T11 race.

In the Paralympics, the T stands for track and the numbers represent how severe the athletes’ disabilities are, with eleven being the most severe and seventy-two being the least.

Just the day before, on Thursday the 29th, Takayuki Suzuki won Japan its first gold in the Paralympics in the men’s fifty-meter or 164-foot breaststroke swimming category. Keiichi Kimura, another swimmer, won Japan’s second gold in the fifty-meter freestyle category, and Kota Kubota won silver in the 100-meter backstroke.

Those weren't the only athletes to make headlines. On Friday the 30th, Shohei Ohtani became the first player in Major League Baseball to hit forty-three home runs and steal forty-three bases in a single season. This follows Ohtani becoming the sixth player to join the forty-forty club, which we mentioned in our last episode.

Some sports outlets said that at the rate he’s going now, he might even hit fifty home runs and fifty stolen bases by the time the season ends.

Entertainment also had a big win this week. On Saturday the 31st, Hayao Miyazaki, a famous animation film director best known for movies such as Spirited Away and The Boy and the Heron, was one of five people to win the famous Ramon Magsaysay Award.

The judges praised Miyazaki for weaving important messages and life lessons into his movies, breaking down complex issues in ways that are both entertaining and easy to understand.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

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Mata Ne!