Daily Japan Headlines: Friday, Jul 29, 2011

Irabu Hideki. Photo Source: BBC.

BBC: Baseball pitcher Hideki Irabu dies, aged 42

Baseball pitcher Hideki Irabu, who played on two World Series championship teams and was one of the first Japanese players in US baseball, has died at 42.
Irabu’s death at his home near Los Angeles was being investigated as a suicide, police said.

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Washington Times: Japan told of more radiation exposure

Japanese authorities this week released information that paints a more worrisome picture of the ongoing nuclear crisis than the central government has previously admitted.

AP: Japan PM calls for careful cutback on nuke energy

Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Friday called for a long-term and careful effort to scale back the nation’s reliance on nuclear power over the next four decades and make more use of solar energy and other renewable power sources.

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Wall Street Journal: Powering Down Japan

Nuclear power accounts for 11% of Japan’s total energy consumption and provides nearly 30% of electricity generation. Until the Fukushima disaster, Japan had planned to increase its nuclear power generation to 50% of all electricity demand. If all of Japan’s 54 nuclear plants are taken offline, the country will have to find a substitute for the 265 billion kilowatt hours of electricity produced each year by nuclear plants.
No country in the world is considering an energy step as radical as Japan’s.

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UPI: South Korean, Japanese island dispute heats up

South Korea’s government told Japan’s ambassador Friday it will ban a visit by Japanese lawmakers to an island near the East Sea islets claimed by Seoul.

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Wall Street Journal: Japan Baseball Players’ Debt to Hideki Irabu

Hideki Irabu, who was found dead in his Southern California home on Wednesday, will be remembered for many things. He was a pitcher with a golden arm capable of dialing up blazing fastballs and jaw-dropping splitters. And as he failed to live up to his billing as “the Nolan Ryan of Asia” during his six years in U.S. Major League Baseball, Mr. Irabu often battled his inner demons.

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Mail.com: Former Yankees pitcher Hideki Irabu found dead

“He was a world-class pitcher,” said former major league manager Bobby Valentine, who managed Irabu in Japan in 1995. “When Nolan Ryan saw him, he said he had never seen anything like it. There were just some days when he was as good a pitcher as I had ever seen. A fabulous arm.”

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Wall Street Journal: Ruby Roman Grapes Sold for Record $6,400

Swallow this: A single bunch of Ruby Romans, the titan of Japanese grapes, on Friday sold for ¥500,000 or about $6,400 – or in more remarkable terms, that means each grape is worth about ¥20,000. A steep jump from the record fetching amount of ¥250,000 per bunch in 2009 it is by far the most expensive grapes sold in Japan and likely in the world.

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