Tokyo underground

TOKYO (TR) – It is a typical central Tokyo intersection. Office workers shuffle out of coffee shops; cheap suit outlets troll for customers with fancy window displays; taxis and buses clog the roads from curb to median; and a construction site – as all intersections in this modern metropolis seemingly require – sits on one corner, white fencing surrounding the property.

But this intersection in Toranomon is special in a particular way: no column, scaffold, concrete mixer, or other standard evidence of work ever shows itself from behind the construction site’s enclosure. The reason can be found below – way below – ground level.

Stepping past the barrier and descending a narrow spiral staircase to a temporary platform reveals Tokyo’s literal underworld. It is a stunning 20-meter diameter concrete cylinder extending down for 40 meters. Light green hues reflecting off the smooth concrete from mounted lights fill the scene as workers move in and out of a temporary trailer and up and down the single steel-cage elevator. Read more

The king of satellite television smut

TOKYO (TR) – Michiyuki Matsunaga peers left through the glass window of his Shinjuku office and into the adjacent administration department. A small brown wooden Buddha statue rests at the edge of his desk near his collection of framed family photos.

With his black zippered jacket as sharp as his Ray-Ban glasses, the 58-year-old then faces forward and begins counting off the things that people will pay substantial sums to watch on television. “Movies,” he says, folding his pinky inward in typical Japanese fashion, “gambling, sports…” He then pauses, his face forming a grin.

And sex. Read more

I spy with my miniature camera

TOKYO – As casually as any one of the millions of Tokyo train commuters may, Kazuo Ozaki, manager of Y.K. Musen in Tokyo’s technology hub of Akihabara, flips open his mobile phone and stares at the screen. A camera lens is mounted in the hinge. Nothing too special thus far; most phones have such a feature these days. But in truth, this is really no phone at all. It is only a micro lens contained within a phone’s body. A remote wireless digital recording device receives and stores all that is filmed.

“You can place the recorder within a 300-meter range,” he boasts of the gadget’s versatility. Read more

Ninjashot photography

TOKYO (TR) – It is a typically teeming scene in front of the intersection at Shibuya Station. As is common in this teen shopping hub, girls, lots and lots of young girls, dressed in their summer best – tiny skirts and thin tops – stand waiting at the signal.

It is a prime opportunity. He slowly lowers the tip of the billiard cue case, in which a tiny pinhole camera is mounted, behind an attractive woman’s feet.

“It is the same technique as that of a magician,” explains Masa Shiohara of the need for an element of distraction in his brand of photography known as “ninjashot,” a term he coined himself to describe his pursuit of panty pictures. “He keeps the audience’s attention in one place and performs the trick in another.”

But when the light changed and the shapely target started walking, Masa failed to pull the rabbit out of the hat. Read more

Former yakuza sees the light

CHIBA (TR) – Hiroyuki Suzuki’s shoulders and upper arms are alive with colorful tattoo images of carp and monsters. His pinkies have both been trimmed at the first knuckle. All are sure signs of a Japanese gangster, a distinction he most definitely had for 17 years of his early life.

But time can do wonders – even for mobsters; today he’s born-again and a reverend, leading a congregation at the Siloam Christ Church in Funabashi, just east of Tokyo.

“My tattoos and missing pinkies are my handicap,” he says from his office in between services on a recent Sunday. “I always tried to hide that fact. However, I stopped hiding it after I became Christian. [Before] I led a life of lies. But after I met Jesus and came to know the Lord, I wanted to live with my true self.” Read more

The right thing: Yasukuni on the anniversary

TOKYO – On Wednesday, August 15, the anniversary of the conclusion of World War II, great debate will once again fall upon Yasukuni Shrine as embattled Prime Minister Shinzo Abe decides whether to accommodate conservative pressures and follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, who during his administration repeatedly raised tensions with Japan’s Asian neighbors by visiting the historic rallying point for militarism. Read more

Gyroball ready for spring showcase…or not

TOKYO (TR) – Even though the middle of February has many still pondering such forms of procrastination as non-shoveled snow and blank tax forms, for pitchers and catchers it signals the opening of spring training facilities in Florida and Arizona. Veterans will get a head start in shaking the rust that increasingly accompanies age and new faces will begin making impressions — hopefully positive ones — with their clubs. This week Boston Red Sox right-hander Daisuke Matsuzaka, Japan’s latest export to M.L.B., will be attracting more than the usual amount of cameras when he makes his first throws from a mound at Red Sox camp in Fort Myers. Not because of the twenty-six-year-old’s knee-buckling curve, his devastating change-up, nor even for the Red Sox hefty investment of $103.1 million dollars (which includes the $51.1 million dollar posting fee paid to his former club, the Seibu Lions), but due to his rumored “gyroball” — a pitch that is delivered toward the plate in a spiral similar to a football. Read more

The AV director

TOKYO – Aki Tomozaki, her large breasts fully exposed and generously smeared in baby oil, is seated on a kitchen stool in a five-room apartment just north of central Tokyo.

It is a weekday morning, and aside from her exceptionally thin red g-string and flower-patterned kimono belt around her midsection, this veteran of over 250 AV, or “adult video,” features has nothing at all covering her short yet very curvy frame.

The 37-year-old’s co-star, who is acting as her son, “Mizuo-chan,” is supporting her at the waist with his right arm. Today’s theme: incest. Read more

Tokyo’s only private highway

TOKYO – A steady hum and an occasional small shake or two rolls through the second floor office of Masaki Negishi, chairman of Tokyo Kosoku Doro Co. (Tokyo Expressway). The company’s centerpiece is the reason for the rumbling: an elevated, U-shaped freeway that boxes in Tokyo’s glittering Ginza shopping district on three sides.

Financed without government assistance and lacking any toll collection, the freeway’s operating revenue is sourced from the rent of three floors of businesses housed within buildings directly below its pavement. For Tokyo, it is the only private motorway in the metropolis. Read more

Film festival to raise awareness of refugee plight

TOKYO (TR) – Raising awareness of the plight of the world’s refugees is the goal of the third annual Tokyo Refugee Film Festival, which begins today at five halls and theaters throughout the metropolis. Supported by the United Nations Refugee Agency, the festival’s theme is “Refugees – the human side.”

Festival organizers feel that Japan’s reluctance to accept refugees makes it a perfect location for such an event.

“With 33 million refugees around the world, Japan does a lot to help financially to work on the refugee issue but our hope is that the doors of this country would be as open as the wallets to actually welcome more refugees to Japan too,” said Kirill Konin, the festival’s director. “So far, it has not been easy for asylum seekers to get refugee status here.” Read more

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