Fresh & hot from Japan, 3 Mar. to 9 Mar. 2016

Please enjoy fresh & hot news from Japan with comments by Europe-Japan Dynamics.

3 Mar.  Is your account all right? Illegal remittance via Internet banking about 3’000 million yen last year

The National Police Agency (NPA) announced that in 2015 the amount of damage of illegal money transfer by Internet banking increased by approximately 163 million yen to reach approximately 3,073 million yen, the worst-ever. The number of cases decreased by 381 to be 1,495 cases from the last year. The NPA said that the basic security measures, such as changing password at every use, were not taken for 70% of the cases.

Comments: One must be careful not to be cheated by stealers in a cypher system.

4 Mar. Identifying the position of horse mackerel by analyzing its DNA in the seawater, Maizuru Bay

A group of researchers of Kobe University or Hokkaido University, etc. successfully estimated the volume of the horse mackerel by analyzing its DNA in the seawater, in the Maizuru Bay, Kyoto. This method allows to identify the distributions of the fish easier than by capturing it. Its application to fishery is also expected. One of the features of this method is to identify the fish class, which the fish finder cannot do.

Comments: What a power of science! I didn’t know that the fish DNA is in the seawater.

7 Mar.  School to become a sushi chef is popular, people aiming at working abroad

The course of a cooking school which trains a sushi chef is popular. Sushi booming worldwide, many people want to work abroad as a sushi chef or change profession to be a sushi chef. One may graduate from the course to be the chef in two months in a short course.  An information session of a new Osaka branch of “Tokyo Sushi Academy” to be open in May was attended by fourteen interested people, aged from the 20th to 50th. A half of them wanted to work abroad, and asked questions regarding a job abroad, such as good countries to work as a sushi chef.

It is has been tradition in Japan that one is trained by an experienced sushi craftsman to be a sushi chef. Could a cooking school be a new place for personnel training?

Comments: A school program to train sushi chefs may signal a beginning of a new and maybe democratic method to grow sushi-making people.  An increasing demand for sushi worldwide is providing new ways to become a sushi chef, which has traditionally been limited.

8 Mar.  Upward revision of real GDP in Japan,  1.1 % decrease in the fourth-quarter 2015

According to the second breaking news announced by the Cabinet Office, a real growth rate of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the fourth-quarter excluding influence of the fluctuation of commodity price decreased by 0.3% in the fourth quarter of 2015 (October to December) from the previous quarter. This figure is equivalent of the annual GDP decrease by 1.1 %, which is an upward revision of the first breaking news released in February, that predicted the decrease by 1.4 %. This figure however does not change the negative economic growth for the first time in two quarters, confirming standstill of the economy.

Comments: The Japanese economy is still struggling.

9 Mar. Visualizing “Eyes” of 950 millions of witnesses, utilization of SNS for disaster prevention making progress

An increasing number of attempts are being made to utilize “the big data” and information exchanged by causal network systems (SNS) for disaster prevention. For example, “Weather news”, a company specialised in the weather information, released “Typhoon watcher” (http://typhoon.mapping.jp), which immediately collects, synthesis and visualize the information on what is going on on the ground because of a typhoon provided by the Weather watcher members.

Comment: It is a smart use of information to collect thousands of thousands of pieces of information to build a global landscape to help people in disaster risks.

 

  • All the news items are picked up from “Asahi Digital”, and summarized and translated by Europe-Japan Dynamics. The articles are not an official translation by the Asahi Newspaper.

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