With Japan suffering its worst heatwave since records began in 1898, haunted houses or “obake yashiki” are doing a roaring trade as the traditional summertime venues to cool off.
Ghost houses are set up especially for the summer in amusements parks in Japan with the tradition linked to Japanese Buddhism which views August as the time when ancestral spirits may return for a visit and Japanese visit their elders’ graves.
This year ghost houses have reported dramatic increases in visitor numbers as they tap into the Japanese tradition of also telling scary stories to send shivers down people’s spines and cool them down. (Reuters)

Japan’s public TV broadcaster is to resume live sumo broadcasts, after canceling coverage of July’s Nagoya tournament over a betting scandal that hit the country’s ancient sport.
NHK officials said Thursday the station will televise the Sept. 12-26 Autumn Grand Sumo Tournament as usual.
NHK did not air live broadcasts of the Nagoya tournament, saying that the betting scandal generated viewer disgust. It was the first time since 1953 that live broadcasts weren’t shown on NHK. (BusinessWeek)

Police said they will send papers to prosecutors over a senior police officer who allegedly stole a bicycle because he was worried about being late for work.
The Kanagawa prefectural police will punish the police officer, whose duties include preventing bicycle thefts.
The policeman, 25, of Takatsu Police Station, allegedly stole a bicycle parked outside a video rental shop in Saiwai Ward, Kawasaki, on the morning of Aug. 3 and rode it two kilometers to Kashimada Station on the JR Nambu Line. The bicycle belonged to a part-time worker at the store. (Yomiuri)

Japan discovered a suspected case of foot-and-mouth disease in a cow in its southern prefecture of Miyazaki, just days after it lifted a state of emergency, an official said.
“We cancelled two auctions of cows in the prefecture after a suspected case of foot and mouth was discovered on a farm,” a prefecture official told AFP.
The region reported the case to the farm ministry and was awaiting the test result to determine if it is a fresh foot-and-mouth case. (AFP)

Police responded to a record 2,444 Internet crime cases nationwide in the first half of this year, a National Police Agency survey showed Thursday.
The number, up 586 or 31.5 percent from a year earlier, represented a new high since the NPA started gathering statistics for Internet crimes, defined as crimes which use a computer network, on a half-year basis in 2004.
Of the total, the number of fraud cases, such as swindling money from a successful bidder by posting false information in an online auction, climbed 22.8 percent to 867 cases.
(AP)

The star of “The Cove,” an Oscar-winning documentary about a Japanese dolphin hunt, is back in Japan to protest the slaughter but had to cancel his trip to the village at the center of the controversy because of threats from an ultranationalist group.
Instead, Ric O’Barry, the former dolphin-trainer for the 1960s “Flipper” TV show, is playing host to a reception Wednesday for some 100 animal-lovers at a Tokyo hotel.
On Thursday, he will take a petition signed by 1.7 million people from 155 nations demanding the end of the dolphin hunt to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, escorted by police security. (AP)

Police turned over to prosecutors Wednesday their case against a 21-year-old man who walked naked on a street in Yokohama last month and a 22-year-old woman who ordered him to do so, alleging they committed acts of public indecency. The woman and the man had been living together since January. She was angry with him for not paying rent and was quoted as telling him to, “Take off your clothes” and “follow my bicycle.” (Japan Times)

An investigation by the Association of Japanese Private Railways has shown that in fiscal 2009, there were 869 cases of violence committed against train station employees and train crew members. This marked a rise of 117 cases from the 2008 fiscal year, and the most number of cases since the association began compiling such records in fiscal 2005.
In response to the recent surge in cases of violence perpetrated against railway workers, the association decided to put up posters to raise awareness and call for a stop to such violence on trains and at train stations.
Violence toward station attendants tended to occur late at night on weekends, and nearly 60 percent of perpetrators were reported to have been drinking alcohol before the incidents. Considering the fact that these cases increased in the month of December — when end-of-the-year parties take place — the majority was likely committed by those who had been drinking. (Mainichi)

A Japanese-Argentine couple won the stage dancing division of the Eighth World Tango Championships held Tuesday in Buenos Aires, reports from Argentina said.
The achievement by Japanese dancer Chizuko Kuwamoto and Diego Ortega from Argentina follows the victory in last year’s contest by Japanese married couple Hiroshi and Kyoko Yamao in the salon dancing category.
In this year’s competition, in which 405 pairs from 18 countries took part, another Japanese dancer, Naoko Tsutsumizaki, and her Argentine partner, Cristian Lopez, came in third in both stage and salon dancing. (AP)

The Kobe municipal government is considering banning people with tattoos from a beach in Suma Ward following the recent arrests of college students for alleged marijuana possession during a music event at the beach, city officials said.
The city office intends to come up with a concrete plan during this year, including establishing the rule by ordinance, but banning tattooed people from a public beach is a rare case in Japan as most tattoo bans are for commercial facilities such as saunas.
The envisaged ban may prompt controversy over its possible violation of the freedom of expression as tattoos are becoming increasingly fashionable with young people, critics say. (AP)