TOKYO (AFP) - A mystery gripping Japan over anonymous cash gifts has taken a new twist. For those who want the next batch of giveaways, the place to look is in their mailboxes -- or even right at their feet.
Residents of a Tokyo apartment building are baffled after a total of 1.81 million yen (15,210 dollars) was found in 18 mailboxes by Saturday, a police spokesman said.
"The money was in identical plain envelopes, which were unsealed and carried no names or messages," the spokesman told AFP.
But residents became "spooked" rather than pleased with the anonymous gifts -- and were too upright to pocket the money secretly.
"Some people initially suspected they were fake bills. When they realised the bills were real, they reported them to us," the spokesman said.
The predominantly middle-class apartment building in Tokyo is not alone. An envelope with one million yen was left in the mailbox of a 31-year-old woman in the western city of Kobe on Wednesday.
Police admit they have no idea who is leaving the cash -- whether a few people are behind the bizarre giveaways or if Japan is witnessing a craze of copycat benevolence.
Since June, dozens of city halls and other public buildings across the country have reported finding neatly packaged envelopes full of cash in men's restrooms.
The bathroom money has come with identical letters asking people to do good deeds -- leading to speculation that the benefactor may be a public servant trying to cheer up his profession or perhaps a member of a new-age religion.
Japanese cash dropoffs are not always so neat.
On Wednesday, bills worth 960,000 yen were inexplicably seen "falling" in front of a convenience store.
"We can just say the money came from the skies," a puzzled police official said. "There were other passers-by outside and customers in the store but the incident caused no confusion," he said.
"People thought it was too eerie to touch."
A man who contacted police saying his daughter had dropped the money had his claim rejected as groundless, the official said.
The largest single dropoff so far was in the ancient city of Kyoto on July 23, astonishing a 67-year-old woman who found an envelope containing 10 million yen of stacked bills in her mailbox.
But mystery money does not always reach police intact.
A woman walking on a bridge over Tokyo's Sumida River told officers that she saw bills falling at her feet from an elevated expressway above on July 6.
She believes 30 to 40 notes fell but police managed to collect only six notes worth 46,000 yen by the time they arrived.
"Some people were picking the money up on the bridge," the Tokyo Shimbun quoted the woman as saying.
No one can say if more people have collected money and not told police.
Media tallies suggest more than four million yen, including some found last year, has been found in the public restrooms.
Dutifully, police are holding most of the money in case the rightful owner eventually decides to reveal their identity.
Global warming was under a fierce spotlight in China on Monday as forecasters said Shanghai was set for its hottest summer on record, while flood and drought wreaked havoc in other parts of the country.
Shanghai experienced its second hottest day on record on Sunday when the mercury touched 39.6 degrees Celsius (103.3 degrees Fahrenheit), with similarly high temperatures expected this week, the Shanghai Daily said.
Sunday's heat wave caused power and water consumption for the 17 million people of China's economic hub to hit all-time highs, which posed a "grave supply threat", according to the paper.
Weather forecasters are now expecting Shanghai to swelter through at least 22 days of temperatures above 35 degrees this summer, which would make it the hottest since records first were kept, the paper said.
Meanwhile, flood and drought are continuing to cause major problems across much of the country, with scientists blaming global warming for the unusual weather, the China Daily reported.
"Unbalanced distribution of rainstorms, persistent high temperatures, severe drought and powerful typhoons are all the result of climate change," the China Daily said, citing a number of weather experts.
Floods have killed 90 people over the past week in the mountainous regions of northwest China's Xinjiang region, while hailstorms and rain claimed another 10 lives in central Hubei province over the weekend, according to the paper.
More than 700 people have died from flood-related disasters across China so far this year, the China Daily said.
Meanwhile north and northeast China is enduring its worst drought in two decades, according to the director of the China Meteorological Administration climate change monitoring office, Xu Ying.
When the global climate cools (coming shortly or possibly already in the process) slightly, China's gonna be in a world of hurt. And they're gonna wish for some warming. But the warming won't come back because they've hurt its feelings. So there!
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/30/2007 18:25 Comments ||
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#2
Has anyone noticed a panic sell off of ocean front property lately ?
IIIII didn't think so.
#4
aren't they cracking down on Islamists? Maybe it's just Allah's Will...or does that meme get superceded for China? Ima confused on the meme priority
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/30/2007 22:29 Comments ||
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#5
"Unbalanced distribution of rainstorms, persistent high temperatures, severe drought and powerful typhoons are all the result of climate change," the China Daily said, citing a number of weather experts.
You know I was waiting for them to blame China's deviation from strict commie orthodoxy for the bad weather. There were never typhoons, hot spells or floods when Mao boy was in charge.
Loch Ness has its monster. Does San Antonio have one, too?
Strange sightings of a huge flying creature have been reported as recently as six months ago. Is it a monster or myth?
"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary ..."
Guadalupe Cantu III was busy working his newspaper route, but he says the big news of that day 10 years ago flew right over his car. He says he's seen what most have not an unidentified flying object, one that still scares him. "We were afraid that it would come at us. So we stayed in the car till it passed this way," witness Guadalupe Cantu III said. "This thing's all feathers, all black. Much bigger than me. It looked at us. It had very stooped-up shoulders." The beast has been spotted from the Rio Grande Valley to the mountains of New Mexico.
"(It) looked like what was possibly two people standing on top of a mountain up there," said David Zander, who saw the monster in New Mexico. "Something that big ... I guess it kinda makes you feel like it could come over and carry you off if it wanted to."
San Antonio's Ken Gerhard has written a book on these dark birds as big as planes, with wingspans from 15 to 20 feet.
Native Americans called them thunderbirds: depicted in their art, their flapping wings were said to cause explosive noises.
"What's interesting is that the reports of these giant, raptor-like birds do continue into modern times," said Gerhard, a cryptozoologist. Cryptozoology is the study of and search for legendary animals to prove their existence.
He says there's solid evidence something is overhead. "I believe there's a good chance that a lot of large, prehistoric animals, if you will, remain undiscovered by modern science," he said.
Laugh but it got him quoted on TV.
So what could the giant birds be? Some witness sketches eerily resemble prehistoric creatures, like the pteronadon of 160 million years ago.
Since that's about all they know how to sketch. I'm waiting for a TV station to provide us with an 'artist rendition'.
However, Gerhard theorizes it could be a creature that's a little less extinct if that's possible a pteratorn. "These are the surviving ancestors of modern condors and vultures. They lived up until 6,000 years ago, we know for sure, in parts of North America," Gerhard said. "In fact, over 100 specimens have been recovered from the La Brea tar pits in California."
"What do they look like?"
"Well, they're all covered with tar."
But critics have another take: human error. "Was it really as big as he thought it was?" asks Ben Radford, editor of "Skeptical Inquirer" magazine. "When there's enough information to come to a determination, I've always found an explanation for it."
Always a spoilsport out there.
Radford says the eye can be deceived. "Eyewitness testimony is very unreliable. And so it's hard for a person to tell even experts to tell 'Is that thing I'm seeing out there, is it small and nearby? Or is it huge and farther away?' " Radford said.
But in one sighting in San Antonio, three people gave similar accounts, witnessing the same fly-by of a huge, winged creature. A trio of South Side teachers traveling a deserted road had their cars "buzzed" by the monsters, and it made the papers in February 1976.
In fact, for decades papers throughout South Texas have chronicled the flying creatures. In the age of the Internet, the reports continue, like this one from a recent sighting near Huebner and Babcock roads. "The creature was large, at least 6 feet," the report reads. "I don't know if I ever want to see another one."
"If I were outside there walking, it would've gone after me," witness Cantu said.
Cantu believes most sightings go unreported because people are afraid of the ridicule they could face. However, he says a face-to-face encounter with the creature would be much worse. "I think if you do see it, then you might wind up missing," Cantu said.
#4
Well, that's what you get for being an hominid, animals-lovers don't respect you. Too high on the evolutionary ladder, that's a problem I never had.
#7
Search for Lawndale, IL, 1976, giant bird.
The folks named were not named in the white pages for Lawndale. Nor were there any other people with the same last names when I checked a couple of years ago.
There was a documentary on this subject some years ago on television which referred to some shouldabeen extinct raptor or carrion eater. And they said was the source for the Indians' thunderbird.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
07/30/2007 14:18 Comments ||
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#8
Quoth the Raven: nevermore.
Quoth the Raven: Drink Blatz Beer.*
* Mad Magazine, late 1960's. :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/30/2007 18:21 Comments ||
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#9
Sheesh! Some of you folks need to be a little less close-minded.
There have been credible reports of giant birds in that vicinity of the country for centuries. The chance that a "survival" (which is what you call something you thought was dead, but then discovered otherwise) exists in the regions is not that remote. Such survivals have been found in many other areas of the world. Currently, for example, there's an expedition forming that is looking for the Tazmanian Tiger, an animal previously thought extinct for almost a century.
In addition, there are about 1 million known species of vertebrate animals known in the world. Scientists estimate there might be as many as 3 million - this compares to about 3 million known species of insects and an estimate of 10 million species worldwide.
Folks, there are still lots of desolate, lonely, unexplored places on this planet where lots of things could hide or be left in peace.
Besides, it could be a California condor or another species that flew in on the thermals for cryin' out loud. Birds are misidentified all the time.
Keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.
#10
It's Q! Where's Michael Moriarty when you need him?
Oh. He's off being a moonbat. Never mind.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
07/30/2007 19:44 Comments ||
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#11
Geesh; don't you just wish, those nut balls get it in their thick skulls, that such creatures as(Bigfoot, The Abominable Snowman, Nessie, Thunderbirds, UFOs [from other planets that is]'etc.)don't exist and is just a figment of someones ripe fertile and 'induced' imagination! And yes, I'm willing to bet the farm on it, and yours! Such people should strive to enjoy the 72 or so years that they may have, on love of thy neighbors, their spouses and the pursuit of true productive happiness! And somebody PLEASE tell NASA that we're all alone in the universe, and to give our tax dollars back!!
#15
'Dactyl or Pteranadon? Wid Dubya = Global Warming = Man-caused SOLAR-PLANETARY WARMING causing Bug-zillas + MothMen to sprout and attack humans on earth, and scientists wanting to clone Mastodons or Mammoths, etc. why not???
Riyadh, 27 July (AKI) - Many Saudi imams have discovered that the direction of Mecca indicated to the faithful in their mosques is off-course.
Thanks to the images provided by Google Earth, some Saudi scientists have been able to monitor the main mosques in the kingdom, discovering that many of them have the qibla (the niche in the wall indicating the direction of Mecca) placed incorrectly.
According to Saudi researcher Abelaziz al-Ghamidi, quoted by the daily 'al-Watan', in the area of al-Baha alone 15 mosques have been identified where the qibla does not correspond correctly to the direction of Mecca, the most holy site in Islam.
#2
No..no...
See, this is why they have been losing in Iraq and Afghanistan. It all makes sense now! Align your prayers to Mecca and all will be right in the world! They will win and get global domination and a free pony!
/sarc
#3
That's because the local imam determines the direction based on tradition and not scientific evidence. I've told the story before of the British contractor constructing a mosque on Embassy Row in Riyadh in the early 70's. They made polaris shots, consulted the best maps, and surveyed the new building to align perfectly with the Kaaba in Mecca. After construction was well under way, the local imam visited and directed them to realign the mosque based on his understanding ignorance. Tradition trumps science in the Magic Kingdom. Good luck to Abelaziz in getting things changed. There's probably a fatwa already on this heretic.
#4
Looks like it might be time to head down to Mosque Depot to pick up some stuff for an improvement project.
Unless, of course, you all want to go to HELL!!!
#5
After posting #3,I got to thinking about the proliferation of cell phones with built-in gibla* indicators in the MME. That must rankle some traditionalists. There are probably more mis-aligned mosques in the region than Abelaziz discovered.
*The qibla is the direction from a location on Earth towards the Kaaba.
#6
I hope they realize Google earth is a tool of the Zionist Conspiracy. The Jews are trying to get them to point their collect ass in the wrong direction.
#12
#10 - I think in Arabic it's probably "Who gives a goat's ass?" ;-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/30/2007 18:31 Comments ||
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#13
Wait till they figure out that the Earth is a shpere, so from here, Mecca is in da floor. If more than about 20 miles from Mecca, ya gotta pray into the ground or your prayers will spin out into the universe. And someone else will eat your raisins.
#15
yep...guess what? Next year, after realigning all the mosques? a slight correction requires you realign them a bit more...damn
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/30/2007 22:18 Comments ||
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#16
Maybe mosques should be constructed on gimbaled supports so that they could be constantly adjusted to deal with plate tectonics and all that stuff.
Maybe it should be a requirement as construction of mosques like that should bankrupt even the richest oil tycoons. What does Allah care about economics anyway?
TOKYO - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abes coalition on Sunday suffered a crushing defeat, exit polls said, in an election that is likely to put pressure on the conservative leader to quit.
Exit polls said Abes coalition was on course to lose half of the seats it was defending in the election for the upper house, which will come under opposition control. Official results were expected later.
Public broadcaster NHK projected that the Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition won anywhere between 31 and 43 seats out of the 76 it was defending. Private broadcaster TBS put the coalitions win at 34 seats, while Nippon Television gave a figure of 38.
Abe, who has championed building a more assertive nation proud of its past, has come under fire over a raft of scandals including the governments mismanagement of the pension system.
It was the first time in nine years that the Liberal Democrats lost control of a house. The party has not lost a majority in either house since 1998 elections, but Sundays defeat was on course to be even worse.
Yoshio Yatsu, LDPs committee chief for the elections, said Abe would consult with the party on the next move. The ballot counting has just started. We will never know until all the votes are counted, Yatsu said. We faced a hard battle in this election because of the scandals over the pension agency and political funds.
The defeat does not automatically oust Abe as his Liberal Democrat-led coalition enjoys a large majority in the more powerful lower house inherited from Junichiro Koizumi. Prime ministers have traditionally quit to take responsibility for defeats in upper house polls, but Abe has no clear successor and his aides had insisted ahead of the vote that he would not consider resignation.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/30/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
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#3
The Japanese liberals lead the right-wing coalition. They use the word in its original meaning, not in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt "I'm a true liberal" canard.
According to the provincial daily newspaper Savon Sanomat , the Finnish Defence Forces are to dispose of a large amount of obsolete materiel that no longer meets the requirements of the Finnish military.
The 30 to 40 years-old armaments on the list include military weapons, unarmoured vehicles, tanks, and explosives, as well as communications and logistics equipment. Moreover, the list includes a number of armoured vehicles and weapon systems bought from Germany in the 1990s.
Civilians will for the first time have an opportunity to buy a real tank at an auction to be arranged in September. A dozen or so 34-ton Comet and 30-ton Charioteer tanks, equipped with Rolls-Royce petrol engines, will be sold to the highest bidder. From what I've heard, in Finland, AFVs in private hands is an old, old story. Including use of the Defence Forces tank range to fire a few rounds.
#4
Live closer in James, and you'll beat the Strangler every day. I do :-)
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/30/2007 13:19 Comments ||
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#5
I'd love to buy some acreage in S Colorado, and take a tank down there. Shame they will not let it in unless the main gun and weapons are de-milled. I'd love to be able to be the crazy old coot who puts 5 rounds of HEAT down range just for the hell of it (all on my own land of course).
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (AP) - A driver ran a checkpoint at a nuclear weapons plant early Monday and crashed into a barrier, then fled on foot, authorities said. Guards at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, a primary storehouse for bomb-grade uranium, said the man "appeared to be impaired in some way" when they stopped him around 5 a.m. at a security checkpoint near a rear entrance, spokesman Bill Wilburn said.
They asked him for identification, but the man hit the gas and drove through the checkpoint, then crashed into security barriers a short distance away, Wilburn said.
"When he hit that, he jumped out of the car and ran away. He left the car there with the engine still running," Wilburn said. He said the guards told him the car had been hot-wired.
Oak Ridge police were searching for the driver. Wilburn said he had no other details.
Steve Wyatt, spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration in Oak Ridge, which oversees the Y-12 plant, downplayed the crash, saying it was "next to nothing." The plant makes and dismantles uranium parts in nuclear warheads.
#1
I see he wasn't drunk enough to elude and evade capture, after that incident. God, I hope this wasn't some kind of orchestrated 'dry run' on this facility to gauge reaction and probe weak points. I hope they catch this guy!
#3
I been there. If you make a wrong turn you dont know a checkpoint is down the road. There's no place to turn around with being obvious. Might have just had a panic attack (drug induced or not).
#5
stopped him around 5 a.m. at a security checkpoint near a rear entranc
I know exactly where this happend. Unless the perp is named mohammed, he's a local boy who was trying to get home on a sunday night after a wild weekend. One of the bars down the road near the interstate was this guy's most likely point of origin. Knew he was way past the legal limit, made a wrong turn onto bear creek road, and you can fill in the rest.
It is an easy mistake to make on that road, if you are either new to the area, or mentaly impared in some way.
Posted by: N Guard ||
07/30/2007 13:03 Comments ||
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#6
He got away?????? WTF is going on in my country! If some drunk can crash into a nuke facility and just run away, we are all in very deep shiat.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
07/30/2007 13:15 Comments ||
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#7
"Facility" = the entire area. This was the outer perimeter fence, with barriers behind it, then probably a bit of a drive to get to anything that matters, which would be behind another set of fences, etc, with the "Deadly Force" signs around them.
#9
No worries. First he would have to get by the giant killer robots, then the lair of the fire breathing dragon Gnargh, and the valley of the flesh eating trolls, before even getting near the 2nd checkpoint.
That much I understand, what I don't understand is how he got away. I would have expected a facility like this to have at least a few guards that can run and jump and stuff.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
07/30/2007 14:29 Comments ||
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#11
I would have expected a facility like this to have at least a few guards that can run and jump and stuff.
There are. The ones at the first gate probably are allowed to leave their post. And its what OldSpook said, the deadly force is reserved to other parts of the "Campus".
#12
Wasn't this the site last week that reported the theft of some classified material by an employee?
What's that old line: 'Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence and the third time it's enemy action?'
bonus points for the source.....
#19
what I don't understand is how he got away. I would have expected a facility like this to have at least a few guards that can run and jump and stuff.
**SNORT** Giggle, guffaw, Etc. *wipes tea off keyboard.*
Mike, Yer talkin about DOE renta-cops. Fat, un-atheletic renta-cops. They're prolly just like, if not related to the perp. It's a toss up as to wether they will shoot and run, or just run if attacked. I have some interesting child-hood memories of when these lumps would go on strike, and saleried Phd types like my parents would be pressed into guard duty.
The sad part is, the nuclear physicists actualy made better guards. Expensive guards, tho.
Posted by: N Guard ||
07/30/2007 19:32 Comments ||
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#20
How the suspect's last name is spelled and his place of birth will probably tell the whole story.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
by Miwa Suzuki 
Joe Conger, KENS 5 Eyewitness News 
Riyadh, 27 July (AKI) - Many Saudi imams have discovered that the direction of Mecca indicated to the faithful in their mosques is off-course.
TOKYO - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abes coalition on Sunday suffered a crushing defeat, exit polls said, in an election that is likely to put pressure on the conservative leader to quit.
According to the provincial daily newspaper Savon Sanomat , the Finnish Defence Forces are to dispose of a large amount of obsolete materiel that no longer meets the requirements of the Finnish military.
