TRAVEL

A man and woman living together in Yokohama were arrested Saturday on suspicion of suffocating the woman's 14-month-old daughter in December by confining the infant in a sealed wooden box, police said. According to the police, Nobutake Komaba, a 37-year-old sheet metal worker, and Sachiko Watanabe, 21, allegedly confined Watanabe's second daughter Yukina in the box Dec. 18-19 at their house in Kohoku Ward, Yokohama, eventually leaving her to die from suffocation. The two reportedly admitted the allegation, saying they always put Yukina in the box because she cried at night. (Yomiuri)

Japan's coastal city Yokohama on Friday held a water splashing ceremony in Chinatown. The event was aimed to raise people's awareness of saving water and react to heat island effect. The ceremony began at a Mazu temple in the famous tourist spot. Young people, dressed in both traditional Chinese clothes and Japanese attire, splashed water along the main street of the town despite the sizzling heat in the afternoon. The city saw a maximum temperature of 37 degrees Celsius on Friday amid heat waves troubling the country in large recently. (Xinhua)

In the years following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when Japan ended nearly 2 1/2 centuries of isolation, Tokyo, Yokohama and Kobe in particular saw a large influx of Western men in uniform, merchants, teachers and clerics. One of the first things many did upon arriving in Japan was make contact with fellow expatriates at social clubs modeled after those in Europe and the United States. Members could find food and drinks like those at home, catch up on news from outside Japan and take in a host of activities ranging from dancing to billiards to tennis and squash. The most prominent social clubs founded by Western expatriates include the Tokyo American Club and the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, the Yokohama Country and Athletic Club, the Kobe Club, and the Kobe Regatta and Athletic Club. (Japan Times)

The center of Little Tokyo was begun in 1977. Its real name is Japanese Village Plaza and it was designed and funded by a group of businessmen in cooperation with the city of Los Angeles. It's only about a square block of city real estate, bounded by First and Second and Alameda streets. But once you enter, you could be in the middle of the real Tokyo itself, or Yokohama. It has been honored for its urban design. It is the real deal for anyone wanting to experience modern Japan. (dailybulletin.com)

Russia and Japan are to work together to create a liquefied natural gas plant in Vladivostok. An official signing for he deal will take place in November, when Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visits Japan to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Yokohama. When the plant is operational, it is expected that five million tonnes of gas output will be shipped to Japan annually. (kyrgyzstannews.net)

"OK, I'm taking off," said Yukari Tajima as she left the office at 4 p.m., and headed to a day care center to pick up her 2-year-old daughter. Tajima works as a medical representative at a Yokohama branch of pharmaceutical firm Pfizer Japan Inc. She spends her days making sales calls to doctors, but only works from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. under a system the company introduced in July last year that allows shorter working hours. Normal working hours at the company are from 9 a.m. to 5:45 p.m. An increasing number of companies have introduced similar systems to allow regular company employees to work less than the standard eight hours. Employees usually use the system for child-rearing or caring for elderly family members, but some use it for personal development. (Yomiuri)

Six movie theaters - in Hachinohe (Aomori Prefecture), Sendai, Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka and Kyoto - on July 3 started showing "The Cove," a documentary film about dolphin hunting in the whaling town of Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture. There have been no reports of big disturbances. Originally, the movie, the winner of this year's Academy Award for Best Documentary, had been scheduled to be shown from June 26. Three movie theaters in Tokyo and Osaka gave up on screening the film after groups who call the movie "anti-Japanese" threatened to stage noisy protests near the theaters. Besides those six movie theaters, 18 others are to show the film. The distributor and the movie houses deserve praises for not bowing to pressure from protesters. (Japan Times)

Yokohama's Ishikawacho Station straddles the border between two worlds. Take a right turn from its south exit and you find yourself among the designer boutiques and Belgian chocolate shops of tourist Motomachi. Head left from the same station, however, walk three minutes and you discover a neighborhood omitted from most guidebooks - except perhaps as a warning in the "Dangers & Annoyances" section. This 200- by 300-meter district is called Kotobukicho, "The Town of Congratulations," and it's home to Japan's third-largest community of day laborers - the closest Yokohama has to a slum. (Japan Times)

The Yokohama District Court　has dealt a major blow to right-wingers who were using loudspeakers and sound trucks to protest a theater that was going to screen "The Cove". The court decision on the injunction Thursday prohibits making loud speeches within a 100-meter radius of the movie theater and entering the movie theater without permission, the distributor Unplugged Inc. said. As the movie theater is planning to screen the film from July 3, scores of people from the Tokyo group staged street protests around the theater on June 12. The theater applied to the court for an injunction to ban such protests. (Japan Probe)

Leena, 20, may be the new face of Chinese nationals living in Japan. A model, Leena took part in the Asia Beauty Expo last month in Yokohama that attracted about 40,000 people. Backstage after her appearance, Leena spoke fluent Japanese and her gestures and conversational pauses were typical of a young Japanese woman. "As long as I don't say my real name, no one would know I'm Chinese," she said. Leena arrived in Japan when she was 10 from Shandong province, accompanying her father who is a mechanical design engineer. (Asahi)

A 15-year-old boy arrested last week for allegedly stabbing a female classmate at a senior high school in Yamaguchi Prefecture has told police he was prompted to do it by a similar incident two days earlier at a girls' school in Yokoyama, the police said Monday. "I thought I would do the same thing. I didn't care who it was," the first-grade boy was quoted as saying about the incident that occurred on Thursday, referring to the arrest last Tuesday of a 15-year-old girl for allegedly stabbing a classmate during a lesson. The boy also said he was feeling under pressure studying to be a top student, and that he put a kitchen knife in his bag on Wednesday night after quarreling with his mother and watching TV news about the Yokoyama incident, according to the police. (AP)

A Chinese woman arrested on suspicion of robbery has been found to have entered Japan unlawfully after changing her fingerprints to slip through airport biometric identification checks, investigative sources said Thursday. Lin Xiuai, 33, a resident of Yokohama, has told police investigators that she underwent a surgical operation to change her fingerprints at a clinic in China's Fujian Province for about 30,000 yen, the sources said. (AP)

A 15-year-old girl, who was arrested Tuesday for allegedly stabbing a classmate during a lesson at a private girls' high school in Yokohama, has told police she shoplifted the knife used in the assault and waited for the "right time" to attack, police officials said Wednesday, indicating that the incident was premeditated. The victim, a 15-year-old first-grader at Seishin Girls' Senior High School, remains in critical condition in hospital. She suffered deep stab wounds to her side inflicted by a knife with a 12-centimeter blade that passed through her liver and reached a kidney, the police said. (AP)

A 15-year-old girl, who was arrested Tuesday for allegedly stabbing a neighbor during class at a private girls high school in Yokohama, is believed to have acted suddenly and without provocation while she was seated, police said Wednesday. The victim, also a 15-year-old first-grader at Seishin Girls Senior High School, remains in critical condition in hospital. She suffered deep stab wounds to her side by what appeared to be a fruit knife with a 12-centimeter blade that reached to her kidney through the liver, the police said. (AP)

A student was stabbed Tuesday with a knife in her side at a private girls' senior high school in Yokohama, and another student was arrested there, police said. Seishin Girls' Senior High School made a 119 emergency call around 12:20 p.m. about the stabbing, which caused the first-year student to be treated in an intensive-care unit of a hospital, they said. (AP)

My neighbors are farmers. They regularly bring us cabbages, cucumbers, bitter melon, tomatoes, eggplants, persimmons, and other local specialties, and their arrival on our doorstep with a box of fresh-picked produce is as much an announcement of the changing seasons as the color of the sky or warmth of the wind. Our conversations often turn to rain, mulch, tools for tilling, and fruit yields from the old but still-productive trees they tend. They offer advice on reviving my stunted tomatoes, and we debate the relative merits of baseball caps for working the fields under the hot sun as opposed to the traditional straw kasa. None of this would be remarkable except that we live in the middle of Yokohama, a progressive city of 3.6 million people, and our houses are so densely packed that they almost touch. My neighbors are Japanese urban farmers, and have been for decades. Urban development in Japan often leaves small farm plots, rice fields, and other rural features intact while houses and apartments spring up all around them. (theatlantic.com)

Trade ministers from Pacific Rim economies on Sunday trumpeted the "significant progress" made toward attaining self-imposed goals to free up regional trade, while embracing the need to make concrete efforts with a view to creating a region-wide free trade zone. Noting that the Asia-Pacific region is now gaining weight in the global economy, they also called for a regional growth strategy to be devised at their leaders' summit in Yokohama in November that Japan as chair hopes would be a key component of new policy goals envisaged for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. (Japan Times)

A 42-year-old lawyer died after being stabbed at his office here on Wednesday, police said. Police received an emergency call from a clerk at Yokohama Mirai legal office in Yokohama's Naka Ward at around 2:40 p.m., saying that a man with a knife had broken into the office. Police officers with the Kanagawa Prefectural Police's Kagacho Police Station rushed to the scene to find lawyer Yoshihiro Maeno lying on the floor bleeding. He was transferred to hospital, but died at around 4 p.m. the same day. (Mainichi)

Fitness gyms offering a variety of physical exercise programs for children are doing well despite declining adult membership in the midst of the economic slowdown that has hit the country over the past few years. One 35-year-old housewife sends her second-grader daughter and 5-year-old son to take "junior dance" lessons on weekends at a gym in Yokohama run by major exercise club operator Tipness Ltd. (Japan Times)

A 26-year-old patrol officer with Kanagawa prefectural police was arrested Thursday for allegedly paying a 17-year-old high school student for sex in violation of the child prostitution law, police said. Toshinori Sai, who says the girl told him she was 18, admitted contacting her via an Internet bulletin board where she had posted a notice saying she was looking for a boyfriend, according to the police. He is suspected of paying the girl, who is now 18, 20,000 yen to have sex in a parked car in Yokohama. The arrest came a little over a week after the Kanagawa police on May 26 sent papers to prosecutors on a 30-year-old officer on a similar charge involving a junior high school third-grader. The officer resigned from the force the same day. (AP)

Japan's oldest and internationally acclaimed Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno died of respiratory failure Tuesday at a hospital in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, his office said. He was 103. A native of Hakodate, Hokkaido, Ohno joined the dance studio led by Baku Ishii in 1933 and learned modern dance. After a break from dancing during World War II, he gave his first Tokyo performance in 1949. His encounter with Tatsumi Hijikata and his "Ankoku Butoh" (Dance of Utter Darkness), as well as influences from modern dance, led him to establish a style of dancing called Butoh, characterized by white facial and body paint and slow movements. (AP)

A foreign crew member of a cargo ship has been arrested for not having the necessary travel documents after getting lost during a port call in Nagoya and failing to return to his vessel, police said. The sailor, a 47-year-old Chinese man, was arrested late Saturday in Yokohama after going to a police station to get directions to Hokkaido, the ship's next destination. The man reportedly disembarked May 14 to take a walk, two days after the ship arrived at Nagoya, but got lost and missed the vessel's departure. (Japan Times)

The port of Tokyo, with 13 percent of the annual container volume of Singapore, is competing with other Japanese cities for government funds as the administration strives to create a harbor able to challenge the world's busiest. Tokyo, Japan's biggest container port, is teaming with Kawasaki and Yokohama for its presentation to the committee that will pick as many as two groups to develop. Bids are also being made by Nagoya-Yokkaichi, Osaka-Kobe and ports in northern Kyushu. (Japan Times)

An accused rapist who took photos of one of his victims in a bid to discourage her from filing a criminal complaint against him has been handed a 23-year prison term. The Yokohama District Court convicted Hirokazu Shinya, 35, of sneaking into four women's homes in Yokohama between July and August 2009, raping two of them and molesting two others. (Mainichi)

A legal mess is brewing between the sponsor of Yokohama's 150th anniversary celebration last year and the companies recruited for the event, which produced a massive ¥2.5 billion deficit after failing to draw enough visitors. The Association for the 150th Anniversary of the Opening of the Port of Yokohama, backed by the Yokohama Municipal Government, is blaming the companies that were entrusted with handling events related to the Grand Exposition for Yokohama's 150th Year. (Japan Times)