Daily Japan Headlines: Monday, Sept 26, 2011
ABC Australia: Japan out to end World Cup with win
Japan, for whom coach John Kirwan has set the lofty goal of becoming a top-eight team by 2015, will seek to break a 20-year World Cup winless streak in Tuesday’s Pool A match against Canada in Napier.
Japan is the only World Cup team to have shipped more than 1,000 points and is one of just three of the 20 sides in New Zealand that has conceded more than 100 at the current tournament, mostly due to their 83-7 rout by the All Blacks.
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AP: Key Japan lawmaker’s aides convicted in scandal
Ichiro Ozawa engineered the Democratic Party of Japan’s rise to power in 2009, but was charged this year with political funding violations for allegedly overseeing false accounting by his aides.
The Tokyo District Court gave the former aides suspended prison terms ranging from one to three years for accepting $1.3 million (100 million yen) in illegal donations from a construction company and for failing to register a $5.2 million (400 million yen) loan from Ozawa to his funding body in a 2004 Tokyo land deal.
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LA Times: Japanese return cash recovered after tsunami
The Japanese have turned over more than $48 million in loose cash to authorities.
“People tell me they just want the money to go to its owner,” said Kouetsu Saiki, a Miyagi prefecture police officer who oversees the collection, identification and return of salvaged money and valuables.
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New York Times: In Japan, the Summer of Setsuden
The destruction of the Fukushima Daiichi plant led Japan to shut down all but 15 of its 54 nuclear reactors. This was a huge blow to a country that depends heavily on nuclear power and has made scant investments in renewable energy. As summer approached, the only way to avoid a national energy emergency was through drastic conservation. And so the Japanese powered down.
The government required big power users to reduce peak consumption by 15 percent. Utilities pleaded with consumers to pitch in. Industries, offices and private households turned lights off and thermostats up, above 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Office workers traded suits and ties for kariyushi shirts, the Okinawan version of aloha wear. They moved their shifts to early mornings and weekends, climbed the stairs and worked by the dim glow of computer screens and LED lamps. Families stopped doing laundry every day; department stores and subway stations turned off the air-conditioning. Posters of happy cartoon light bulbs urged everybody to pitch in.
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Bloomberg: Japan May Postpone Income Tax Increase by One Year, Asahi Says
Japan may postpone a planned income tax increase by one year, the Asahi newspaper reported, without saying where it obtained the information. The governing Democratic Party of Japan may propose implementing the tax increase in January 2013
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Aluminium has been the standard material used in aircraft for more than a century – even the Wright brothers’ famous first flight in 1903 used an aircraft made partially from the metal. But the ‘aluminium age’ could be about to end – with the delivery of the first large-scale commercial aircraft made using 50 per cent ‘composite materials’ including plastics and carbon fibre.
The much-delayed Boeing Dreamliner 787 can fly 10,000 miles, is far quieter than ordinary jets, and is constructed using a ‘moulding’ process that has eliminated 1,500 aluminum sheets and 50,000 fasteners. It’s also three years late – and has cost a reported $32 billion.
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Washington Post: Asia wooing Japanese companies
As the Japanese economy staggers under the weight of the strong yen, businesses here are receiving much-needed offers of help, with a chance to reduce rent, pay fewer taxes and cut utility costs.
The problem for Japan is that these offers are coming from its neighbors, particularly China. Delegations from across Asia have spent recent months hosting seminars in Tokyo’s upscale hotels and conference rooms, hoping to pluck away Japanese business by offering incentives that companies find increasingly difficult to resist.
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