Woman ordered to pay damages to neighbor over noise from hitting futons

OSAKA -- The Osaka District Court on Aug. 24 ordered a 63-year-old woman to pay 1 million yen in damages to her 72-year-old male next-door neighbor after years of bothering him with noise by hitting futons.

The woman exceeded a court-ordered limit that had been agreed to in an earlier settlement, and the neighbor brought the woman to court, seeking 1.86 million yen in damages for infringing on his right to live peacefully.

In handing down his decision, Judge Akihiro Takemura said, "The futon hitting exceeded the limit that social norms dictate could reasonably be withstood, and infringed on the victim's rights. Additionally, the defendant did not take sincere efforts to respond (to the victim's complaints)."

According to the court ruling, the woman had been bothering her neighbor by frequently hitting futons ever since he moved next to the woman in Takatsuki, Osaka Prefecture, in 2000. The two residences' outer walls are only a meter apart at their closest, and the problem could not be resolved even after the man brought the issue up with the neighborhood association.

In April of 2005, the man filed with the Osaka District Court for an injunction to stop the futon hitting. A settlement was reached on conditions including that the woman would not hit futons more than twice a day, would not hit for 10 minutes or longer at a time, and would not hit between 6 p.m. and 9 a.m.

However, even after the settlement, the woman continued to hit futons more than the agreed upon number of times. When the man complained, she is said to have responded, "If you don't like it, go away," and hit the futons even more loudly.

The Mainichi Daily News

Japanese torches home after mum dumps toys

A Japanese man has admitted to burning down his family home after his mother threw away some of his favourite robot toys from the "Gundam" animation series.

Yoshifumi Takabe, aged 30 and living with his mother, said he had become suicidal after she dumped some of the robots, of which he had enough to fill 300 boxes stacked to the ceiling, the Sports Nippon said Wednesday.

The blaze on August 9 last year completely destroyed their two-storey wooden house in Kasai, Hyogo prefecture, but no one was injured.

"The Gundam figures are like the partners I spend my life with," he reportedly said after pleading guilty at western Kobe's District Court. "I wanted to die with them in a fire if they were to be thrown out."

The Mobile Suit Gundam series, based on an animation TV series which started in the late 1970s, is about space wars fought by gigantic robots.

source:yahoo

Japan blind-school teacher in drag arrested for panty theft

A teacher at a school for the blind in Japan has been arrested for allegedly stealing a woman's underpants from a laundromat while dressed in a miniskirt and wearing a blonde wig, police said Wednesday.

Police later confiscated some 150 female garments, including more underwear and knee-high boots, from the home of Tsuyoshi Hirano, 43, a teacher at a prefectural school for the visually impaired, the Nikkan Sports daily reported.

The victim, a 22-year-old woman, realised her underpants were missing from a drying tumbler in a coin laundromat in Fukuoka, western Japan.

When she saw Hirano get into a car parked outside, she reported the licence plate number to police, Kyodo News reported.

"At first glance, I knew 'she' was a 'he,'" she reportedly told police. The man was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of theft, Fukuoka police said.

source:yahoo