A Japanese man seeking medical attention for a venemous snake bite was taken into custody when it was discovered that the snake that poisoned him was only one of fifty-one illegal venemous snakes in the man’s collection. Legal hijinks ensued.

Nobukazu Kashiwagi, a 41-year-old port worker, was bitten on his finger by an eastern green mamba as he tried to feed it.

The eastern green mamba is a highly venomous southeast African snake. Kashiwagi also had another of the world’s deadliest snakes, a six-foot, four-inch long black mamba.

As much as I complain that American corporations are run by a bunch of crooks, I suppose I’m lucky I don’t live in Japan - where the corporations really are run by crooks.

Japan’s powerful yakuza organised crime syndicates are mounting a widespread and “infectious” assault on the country’s financial markets that may have left hundreds of listed companies riddled with mob connections.

In a surprisingly stark admission of the crisis, the National Police Agency (NPA) says it is locked in a battle for the “economic soul” and international reputation of Japan.

Police investigations suggest the yakuza have become voracious traders and manipulators of listed Japanese stocks, and – via a network of about 1,000 apparently legitimate front companies – occupy hefty positions on the shareholder registers of many companies that may not even be aware of the connection.

The new activities of the nation’s largest crime syndicates, said one veteran expert on the yakuza, has effectively turned the mob into “the biggest private equity firm in Japan”.

Man, if I had a dime for every ‘escaped simian’ story we posted, I’d be blogging this from my beachfront property in Tahiti. Yet another crazed monkey has eluded the elite Tokyo MCC (Monkey Catching Corps). The monkey, which entertained the crowd with its’ cop-dodging antics, is now on the loose, and is probably gathering henchmen to help steal some experimental kryptonite laser or somesuch.

“It’s a monkey - it’s not like it did anything bad,” a police spokesman said, adding that the animal was still on the loose.

The monkey was spotted hopping around by the automatic ticket gates at a train line in Shibuya Station in central Tokyo at about 9:40 a.m.

It then ran downstairs to the entrance to another line, climbed up and down a pillar and ran around the ticketing machines before taking refuge on top of a train information board for two hours, a spokeswoman for railway operator Tokyu Corp said.

Gary Glitter, who was recently released from a Vietnamese prison where he did three years for diddling children, is ‘in transit’ at Bangkok airport after refusing to board a flight to London. I don’t know about you, but after spending 3 years in a Vietnamese prison, I’d gladly fly just about anywhere other than Vietnam. Maybe he should charter a flight to Washington D.C. - he could buy John McCain a beer and they could swap Vietnamese prison stories.

“The last information we have is that shortly before the flight to the UK departed he declined to board. We were last aware that he remained in transit,” a spokesman said.

British newspapers, who had reporters on the plane with Glitter as he left Vietnam, said he had collapsed in a bedroom at the Tavern, complaining of heart problems and demanding to be taken to hospital.

He had a series of confrontations with British embassy officials and Thai immigration police, who refused him entry to Thailand because of his conviction in Vietnam for child sex offences, the newspapers reported.

Authorities freed British glam rocker Gary Glitter from prison in southern Vietnam on Tuesday, sending the convicted child molester into an uncertain future after nearly three years of confinement.

BONUS VIDEO: Seriously, was anyone surprised when he was caught?

At first, the headline made me laugh. If you are a corrupt government official, you need to make sure the toilet works properly!

Then, I wondered how wet boxes of cash could be the cause of an overflowing toilet. Unless the guy put them in the toilet for some reason.

Then I went back and read it again, and realized (with horror) that the guy has been sentenced to death for taking bribes.

Holy crap.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/08/03/china.toilet/index.html

China doesn’t fuck around, folks. And I am guessing this story is not the kind of publicity they want at the moment either. But hey, people deserve to know about stuff like this.

The AP reports that another knife-wielding lunatic went batshit crazy, wounding 7 commuters at a train station in Hiratsuka, Japan. I’m still waiting with baited breath for an ‘otaku’ reference to crop up somewhere in connection to the spree…

The woman attempted to cut her wrist with an army knife at a shopping mall Monday night near the train station in Hiratsuka, 43 miles southwest of Tokyo, but someone bumped into her and she became angry, said police official Hidetoshi Yukitake.

“She was screaming as she was slashing people at random,” Yukitake said.

None of the seven men stabbed were seriously injured, he said.

The woman was arrested at the scene after being overpowered by onlookers.

“She said she was frustrated. She was also angry at her father,” Yukitake said.

I read about the murder of Canadian model Diana O’Brien a few days ago, and it’s been lingering in the back of my mind ever since. Her senseless killing (at the hands of an 18-year-old petty thief) was bad enough, but when you find out just what she was doing during her short two-weekresidence in Shanghai, China it just compounds the tragedy.

The modeling agency she worked for in Shanghai, JH Model Management looks to have been less than legit - the owner is nowhere to be found, nor is the website which has mysteriously vanished. During her tenure in Shanghai she apparently did very little modeling; I’ve heard it reported that she was dancing at clubs and other less-than-appealing work, and at the time of her death was getting ready to cut her stint short and head back to Canada.

If there is a silver lining to this sordid situtation it is that her death may shed light on Shanghai’s shadowy modeling industry - which according to this MSNBC story can lead to some pretty sticky situations for naive hopefuls.

“So many agencies send girls here without really knowing,” said Marion Dorel, a former model from France who spent 13 years in the business in China. “Be careful, clients can ask for weird things — to sleep with them, to sleep with their clients, to go to karaoke. Of course you can say ‘no,’ but it’s not a nice situation.”

One Shanghai casting call asked for models to strip to their underwear and jump on a trampoline while being filmed, said Jeremy Stockton Johnson, a fashion photographer who said he also has been asked if models are available to strip at parties.

Worse cases include agencies that take away a model’s passport or withhold payment until the end of a contract.

Other links about the Diana O’Brien Case:

DANGEROUS DRAGON - Fast changing China may have swept Canadian model Diana O’Brien away

Model business - Do your homework before signing anything, advise local experts in light of B.C. model’s death

A 30-year-old housewife in Tokyo calmed a knife-wielding assailant by offering him a cup of tea, according to the ever-reliable Fox News.

The woman told her assailant that she had no money but he followed her and forced his way into her apartment, police said.

But rather than screaming, the woman served the man a cup of tea in hopes of calming him down.

Police said her move seemed to work.

The man put his knife away and began telling the woman about his financial hardship and asked her to lend him 10,000 yen ($94), police said.

Police said the woman put a 10,000 yen ($94) bill and a wallet containing about 30,000 yen ($280) on the table. When the man was looking the other way, she grabbed her daughter and ran out the door to call police from a nearby public phone.

Nicely done! I think I would have offered him the sharp end of the katana sitting on my fireplace mantle - which would have undoubtedly resulted in me receiving many stab wounds as I have no idea how to actually wield the damn thing. (But it does look nice on my mantle).

Well, it looks like one nutbag made it through the dragnet Japanese police made this week which nabbed 12 would-be knife-wielding maniacs. Kotaku is reporting that a policeman in Akihabara was attacked and injured while checking bags in the district. The officer only received minor wounds to the hand.

Not sure if this is even worth reporting, really, but it might have been much worse had the felon not been intercepted…

What is it about the human race, that when confronted with a sensationalized tragedy it inevitably follows that a number of wierdos will step up to plate hoping to replicate it? Isn’t life shitty enough without everyone constantly wanting to add to the misery? Seriously?

“I will commit a massacre that will go down in history,” Kyodo quoted one of the postings on an internet bulletin board as saying. Legal steps were also taken against another five people, Kyodo added.

Twenty-five year-old factory worker Tomohiro Kato was arrested on June 8 on suspicion of driving a rental truck into a crowd of shoppers and then knifing passers-by in Tokyo’s Akihabara district, known for its discount electronics shops and “otaku” culture of video games, comics and outlandish fashion.

Of course, this kind of behavior isn’t particular to Japan. Lord knows, we’ve got our share of spree-killers here too, although they tend to be a little more heavily armed.