From an anonymous reader on Slashdot:

“A recently-introduced law in Japan requires all businesses to have mandatory obesity checks (video link) for all their employees and employees’ family members over the age of 40, CNN reports. If the employee or family member is deemed obese, and does not lose the extra fat soon, their employer faces large fines. The legislated upper limit for the waistline is 33.5″ for men, and 35.5″ for women. Should America adopt universal health insurance, could we live to see the same kind of individual health regulations imposed on us by the government? By comparison, the average waistline in America in 2005 was 39 inches for men, 37 inches for women.”

I guess extreme problems call for extreme solutions!

Now, this also worries me. Potentially having to move in Japan soon to follow my love, and me being a bit overweight, will that new law make it impossible for me to find a job?

Lehman Brothers has filed a $350-million damage suit against the Japanese Marubeni trading company for fraud. Lehman claims that Marubeni employees helped secure a Japanese company for a loan.

Marubeni is claming that the employees acted on their own, that they are also victims, and so they should not be held liable for damages.

In early March, Marubeni fired two employees after discovering they had used a meeting room at the company’s office illicitly. Marubeni says the employees were used by the president of the LTT Bio-Pharma subsidiary in the alleged fraud, but were not directly involved in the document forgery. It did not provide details of what had happened in the meeting at its offices.

Any bets on how this will turn out?

Thanks to Vin Alsace

The mayor of Meiwa in Gunma Prefecture and seven other members of the town’s municipal assembly have filed a lawsuit against a female Meiwa Municipal Assembly member for defamation, because she is pressing indecent assault charges against another assembly member. The group says that the 52-year-old women implied that they also were involved in the assault and thereby defamed them.

“We tried to talk to her about it, but couldn’t come to a conclusion so had no option but to take the matter to the courts,” [the mayor] said.

The woman was baffled by the litigation.

“I don’t understand what they’re trying to do by suing me,” she said. “It’s sad.”

According to the suit, the woman gave a press conference at which she claimed to have sexually harrassed. She told reporters that she screamed, but all of the other municipal assembly member who were present acted as if nothing had happened.

The mayor and assembly memebers are demanding 100,000 yen each plus an apoloy to be printed in the newspaper. The woman in the meantime has filed a criminal complaint against the other 49-year-old assemblyman who she says fondled her breast.

Chat Noir, operator of the Caffe Veloce coffee shop in Japan, has sued publisher Kodansha for 11 million yen and an apology to compensate for losses it says it suffered due to a bad review of their coffee.

The October 2007 issue of “The Weekend for Adults” monthly magazine by Kodansha ranked 11 popular cafe chains in an undercover survey, checking them on drinks, food, atmosphere and convenience.

Caffe Veloce — known for signboards with wine-red frames or with the catchphrase, “Good coffee brewed here” — came last, with the accompanying article saying it was sheer luck whether the coffee was any good.

The chain is suing because it says the subjective opinion of a single writer has hurt is brand image. The magazine, on the other hand, claims such a suit, “not only restricts the freedom to criticize but is also disadvantageous for consumers.”

In case you are wondering, the top spot for a cup of Joe in Japan according to the review is Tully’s, followed by Segafredo Zanetti of Italy, and then Starbucks.

The Tokyo District Court has thrown out a suit against Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara and the metropolitan government by a group of French and Japanese citizens who claimed that Ishihara “insulted the French language.”

At the Tokyo District Court, Presiding Judge Katsuhiko Kasai said, “What he said is not true, but it was not targeting any individual either. His remarks surely lack consideration to the feelings of people associated with the French language, but it cannot be immediately concluded that the remarks hurt their sense of honor.”

The remarks in question were uttered by Ishihara in 2004, when he said, “French is disqualified as an international language because it is a language which cannot count numbers.”

Ishihara was pleased with the ruling, pointing out that, “The court made a logical conclusion. People cannot sue me just because they don’t like what I say.”

The group that brought the suit against the gov feels different about the outcome.

Speaking to reporters, Malik Berkane, the operator of a French language school, said, “I am deeply disappointed. Opposition against racial discrimination is stated in the charter for the Olympics, which he is seeking to invite to Tokyo (in 2016), but what he says and what he does are totally different.”

Personally, I cannot understand how remarks about a national language constitute “racial discrimination.”

The Japanese Supreme Court has upheld the dismissal of a post office worker who was fired in 2000, ten years before he was scheduled to retire, when it was discovered that he had received a suspended prison sentence in 1973 for striking a riot cop during a protest against the Vietnam war.

Following the dismissal, he filed a lawsuit claiming that it was unfair for the post office to dismiss him 10 years before retirement, when he could not make a new career start, without paying him a retirement allowance.

Earlier district and high court rulings rejected the man’s claims, saying that the reason the sacking was delayed by 27 years was that he had hidden the fact that he had received a suspended prison sentence.

Only one of the five Supreme Court justices who heard the case felt that man’s dismissal was unwarranted.

The Supreme Court ruling was made by a majority of four out of five judges. Justice Tokuji Izumi had opposed the sacking saying, “He worked for a long time exceeding the (20-year) statue of limitations under the Civil Code without any problems, and under principles of faith and trust, firing him cannot be permitted.”

Japan’s National Public Service Law stipulates that public servants are to be fired if they are sentenced to a prison term, even if it is suspended.

The family of a high school girl who was the victim of molestation at the hands of her track coach is suing for 6.88 million yen for damages saying the school did not handle the case properly.

The girl’s lawsuit says she was a top sprinter who represented Kyoto Prefecture at national championships during her junior high school days. During a camp in August 2006, for three nights straight, her 57-year-old coach said he would give her a massage, but instead fondled her breasts and private parts. The girl complained and during a school investigation the coach admitted he had molested the schoolgirl athletics champ and apologized. He was on the verge of being fired, but died suddenly on Aug. 31, 2006.

After the coach died, other members of the athletics team began blaming the girl for pressuring the coach to quit, causing her severe mental duress, the lawsuit says.

The girl’s parents say they wanted the school to go public with the details of the case, but they refused. The school say they were still in the process of mulling there options, and that the suit came as a surprise.

For some reason, the Japanese government seems to be just as intent as ever in its quest to keep it citizens as ignorant as possible regarding the appearance of their genitals. Once citizen, however, is just as determined to fight for the right to gander.

Publisher Takashi Asai started on his quest eight years ago when customs official confiscated a book of his by the late American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, which includes sado-masochistic homosexual images, because they were judged to be obscene

Asai, who heads a film distribution company, translated and published a collection of Mapplethorpe’s works in Japan in 1994, based on imported negatives that customs did not check.

But when Asai carried a copy of his book back from the United States in 1999, it was seized by customs officials and he has battled with courts since to reverse the move.

Japan’s domestic obscenity laws were relaxed in the 1990s to allow pictures of pubic hair, but imported publications are handled by customs and it still bans images of genitals.

“It’s meaningless to have to cover nude photos in this day and age when images are being freely accessed on the Internet,” Asai said in a telephone interview this week.

The book is in the Japanese parliament’s library, he said, and copies were offered for sale on the Web.

Japanese obscenity laws have loosened up a bit over the past couple of years. There once was a time not that long ago when any image that showed any pubic hair was off limits. . . Though there was softcore nudity nightly on TV and hardcore strip joints operating out in the open scattered here and there among the various night spots.

Pubic hair is no longer taboo, but the physical genitals are still officially off limits. Above-board publishers follow the law to the letter, so what is specifically declared off limits by the law (which actually is not that much) is masked. Everything else is presented in its entire glory for the purveyor’s viewing pleasure.

A court in Tokyo has slapped the father of a young child with an order to pay 360,000 yen to a neighbor who complained that the sound of the child’s footsteps constitute noise pollution.

“The footsteps surpassed tolerable limits,” Yasushi Nakamura, judge at the Tokyo District Court, said in handing down the ruling.

The plaintiff, who lives in Tokyo’s Itabashi-ku, filed a suit against the father demanding 2.4 million yen in damages because of disturbances caused by the loud footsteps of the toddler who moved into the second floor of the same condo complex around April 2004. His wife also suffered from insomnia because of the noise.

The plaintiff had complained about the annoying sound to the father of the 3-to-4-year-old toddler, but the father ignored him. The plaintiff then placed a noise meter in his home and recorded that the footsteps upstairs measured 50 to 65 decibels.

Japan Airlines has been hit with a fine by a “city consumer court” for serving a meal containing beef to a devout Hindu.

G.L. Aggarwal, a resident of Palam Enclave, had taken a Japan Airlines flight to San Francisco on September 13, 2004. He had specified he wanted Asian Vegetable meal and also confirmed its availability twice by calling up the airlines.

As he began tucking into his meal, Aggarwal realised that he was chewing something strange. He vomited instantly when the airhostess told him that it was a piece of beef. The unrepentant airhostess told him that she had served a beef-based non-veg meal as Asian Vegetarian meal was “out of stock”.

On reaching San Francisco he complained to Japan Airlines and US consumer protection department. Coming back to India, he dragged the airlines to the Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum. “The hurting of sentiments cannot be measured in terms of money. However, taking into consideration the deficiency of service on the part of Japan Airlines, we have to compensate in terms of money”, said the forum headed by its President K.K. Chopra. The Airlines took the plea that it was a complimentary service and no charges were taken for the meal. But the court rejected the argument saying “it is a matter of common knowledge that meals are covered in the ticket and nothing is served free”.

Thanks to Mr. Pink