JAPAN: Water Pipe Geyser & more – 13th Feb 2025

Konnichiwa from BA! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 13th of February twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

In an update to a story from the last two weeks, the sinkhole in Saitama Prefecture, eastern Japan, is still getting bigger. It used to be ten meters or thirty-three feet across but as of Sunday the 10th, it was forty meters or 131 feet wide. However, the depth of fifteen meters or fifty feet remained the same.

Also on Sunday, firefighters ended their search for the seventy-four-year-old man whose truck fell inside the sinkhole two weeks ago. Despite looking for him all this time, they couldn’t find a trace of him, and are worried that digging around in the sinkhole could make it get even bigger.

However, on Tuesday the 12th, officials sent a drone to take pictures inside a sewage pipe, and have confirmed that the cabin of the missing truck is stuck in a pipe thirty meters or 100 feet downstream from the sinkhole. The images also seemed to show a human body inside the cabin, but no one can get in to retrieve it because the water is always flowing and there are a lot of deadly gases in the pipe.

If only that were the only bad news to come out of the streets. On Tuesday the 12th, a geyser of water burst out of the asphalt in Oami-Shirasato, Chiba Prefecture, in eastern Japan. The water shot up ten meters or thirty-three feet, breaking apartment windows and overturning a roof, but thankfully didn’t injure anyone. It likely came from a broken underground pipe.

Part of the road caved in, creating a hole over two meters or almost seven feet wide, but officials repaired the pipe and reopened the road after a few hours.

Both this and the sinkhole have a lot of people on Twitter talking about the dangers of failing pipes and other infrastructure that keeps society running. The incidents have raised questions as to why city governments aren’t doing better maintenance. However, some Twitter users say that burst pipes and sinkholes happen all the time, and while unfortunate, it’s hardly world-ending.

On top of infrastructure troubles, people are worried about the cost of rice. Rice prices have hit record highs, averaging 3,650 yen, which is twenty-four dollars, for a five-kilogram or eleven-pound bag as of late January. That’s an increase of nearly eighty percent from twenty twenty-four. The people who produce rice said that the price will likely not go down.

Reasons behind the hiked prices include the unusually hot summer of twenty twenty-three and increased post-pandemic demand. In response, the Agriculture Minister said that they planned to release rice from government stockpiles to help with supply and keep prices from getting out of hand. This marks the first time the government has used reserves specifically for distribution concerns rather than poor harvests or disasters.

The ministry is asking agricultural cooperatives and distributors for bids, but it hasn’t put anything in writing yet.

In other news, Donald Trump, the US President, imposed sanctions on International Criminal Court officials on Thursday the 6th after the court issued arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and former defense minister.

Eighty countries signed a joint statement criticizing the US for the sanctions, but Japan opted out. Yoshimasa Hayashi, the Chief Cabinet Secretary, basically said they had to think about it. More specifically, he said that Japan is concerned, but for now, they’re going to watch and see what happens.

Japan’s decision to stay neutral lines up with the first in-person meeting that Shigeru Ishiba, the Japanese prime minister, had with Trump in Washington, where they agreed to keep the relationship between the two countries strong.

To know more about this topic, check out the Rorshok Multilateral Update with the link in the show notes!

Meanwhile, on Thursday the 6th, Fukuoka prefectural police arrested four Vietnamese nationals who were part of a shoplifting ring responsible for at least sixty-six cases of stolen clothing that took place between twenty eighteen and twenty twenty-three, stealing items worth almost twenty million yen altogether, which is 128,000 dollars. The ring then sold the stolen items in Vietnam.

Police said that there are at least two other members of the ring, one who shipped the items to Vietnam, and another based in Vietnam who gave instructions on what to steal.

A few days later on Monday the 10th, NHK, the broadcasting network, reported about an entirely different Vietnamese shoplifting ring that focused on stealing drugstore items, particularly cosmetics and skin care products that are very popular in Vietnam.

NHK spent several weeks monitoring the drugstore shoplifting ring’s base, located in a warehouse in Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi. A Hanoi resident told NHK reporters that trucks used to visit the warehouse around the clock, delivering packages, but thought they were legitimate shipments. Japanese police uncovered the warehouse in January.

The ring also had bases used for storing stolen items in Tokyo in eastern Japan and Osaka in the west, which police raided in November. So far, they have arrested fifteen members. They also analyzed the thieves’ smartphones and identified two Vietnamese individuals, a man and a woman, who allegedly coordinated the thefts from Vietnam via messaging apps.

In entertainment, the management agency for KAT-TUN, a popular boy band, said on Wednesday the 12th that the band would disband on the 31st of March. Kazuya Kamenashi, one of KAT-TUN's three members, will be leaving the agency on that day, though the agency didn't give any details as to why.

The band started in two thousand one with six members. However, in twenty ten, one left to pursue a solo career, the second was kicked out in twenty thirteen for violating his contract, and the third quit the entertainment industry entirely in twenty fifteen.

On a far more tragic note, the managing office for Atomu Shimojo, a well-known actor in both movies and TV, announced on Thursday the 13th that the actor died on the 29th of January at the age of seventy-eight.

The actor had been struggling with health issues since twenty twenty-three. People knew him best for his voice acting work as a narrator, as he had a very unique, calming tone.

Let’s wrap up this edition with science news, researchers in Japan tried to figure out which pet is better for your health: cats or dogs? A study led by Yu Taniguchi, who specializes in geriatrics at the National Institute for Environmental studies, found that owning a dog may lower the risk of dementia and frailty in older adults.

The study tracked around 11,000 Tokyo residents aged sixty-five and older over four years. Results showed dog owners were forty percent less likely to develop dementia, and a separate study of 6,200 people found they were twenty percent less likely to become frail. In contrast, cat ownership showed no significant health benefits.

The researchers believed that this was because dog owners take their dogs for regular walks, which promotes exercise and social interaction—both of which keep the body and mind strong. The study also found that regular exercise alone reduced dementia risk, but the effect was stronger for those who both owned dogs and exercised.

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

A huge thank you to all our listeners who tune in on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other platforms—especially those who help spread the word by sharing the show with friends and family! If you’d like to send an episode as an MP3 file, you can download it directly from our website at www.rorshok.com/japan. The link is also available in the show notes. Thank you!

Mata Ne!