JAPAN

As Japan frets that solid full-time jobs are becoming scarcer, even the mob is turning to part-timers. A police study out Thursday showed that part-time gangsters outnumbered full-time mobsters for the first time on record, even as overall mob membership went down.

A Japanese man told police he stole a patrol car that had been left idling outside a post office in Gunma, north of Tokyo, because he was too tired to walk home. Police officers had left the vehicle in the car park with the engine running while they investigated a report that a stolen card had been used at the post office, the Mainichi newspaper said on Tuesday.

A Japanese toymaker selling miniature buses has discovered an unexpected fan base — balding men. The toy is a replica of a bus that used to run in the 1980s to Mashike, a northern town known for herring. But the characters for the town’s name can also be read as "Zoumou", which in Japanese means "increasing hair".

Japanese romantics will have the chance to hear some truly flowery language with the help of a playful gadget purported to express the feelings of plants. Through the voice of a small doll, the device will share what the plant is upposedly ”thinking” when a person strokes it.

Japan’s justice minister vowed on Tuesday to carry out more executions after the country’s first hangings in over a year, saying the vast majority of the public supported the death penalty. Japan hanged four prisoners on Christmas Day, including two men in their seventies.

Brazil formally submitted a bid to Fifa to host the 2014 World Cup on Wednesday, hoping to bring the tournament to the country for the first time since 1950. Ricardo Teixeira, the president of the Brazilian Football Confederation, presented his country’s bid to soccer’s world governing body in Tokyo where he and his fellow directors are attending the Club World Cup.

A team of Japanese scientists have found a gene closely linked to nicotine addiction, which could lead to more effective ways for smokers to kick the habit, a Japanese daily said on Wednesday. The team at Osaka University found that among heavy smokers a gene responsible for producing an enzyme that breaks down nicotine is more active than others.

Japanese auto buffs with a passion for classic European designs will get to be builder, mechanic and driver with new do-it-yourself cars unveiled on Tuesday. The miniature car requires the owner to put together all the parts of the car, from the steering wheel to the brakes, with the help of a set of tools and an instruction manual.

Japan on Friday declared its bid to host the 2015 Rugby World Cup and bring the event to Asia for the first time, after learning lessons from its narrow defeat to New Zealand for the 2011 contest. ”We decided because of the enthusiastic support at home and overseas,” said Japan Rugby Football Union president Yoshiro Mori.

Hardly any Japanese felt the earthquake in the distant north Pacific this week, but anyone watching television saw a tsunami warning and thousands evacuated to higher ground. While the waves that rolled ashore were only about 40cm high, a network built up over decades has made possible the swift dissemination of information vital to saving lives.

Small tsunami waves hit Japan’s northernmost island late on Wednesday after a major quake in the north Pacific triggered a full-scale tsunami warning for areas of northern Japan and Russia’s sparsely populated Kurile islands. An initial tsunami of 40cm came ashore near Nemuro on the Pacific coast of Hokkaido island, just before 10pm (1pm GMT).

A massive earthquake struck in the northern Pacific Ocean on Wednesday, triggering a tsunami warning for the coasts of Japan and Russia. The earthquake registered 8,1 on the Richter scale at 8.15pm (11.15am GMT) in the Pacific, about 600km north-east of Japan’s main northern island of Hokkaido.

The Williams Formula One team has hired Japan’s Kazuki Nakajima as a test driver to work alongside race drivers Nico Rosberg and Alex Wurz. Nakajima, who is currently racing in the Formula 3 Euro Series, joins India’s Narain Karthikeyan as a Williams test driver in preparation for the 2007 season that starts in Melbourne in March.

Japanese researchers said on Sunday that a bottlenose dolphin captured last month has an extra set of fins that could be the remains of back legs, providing further evidence that ocean-dwelling mammals once lived on land. Fishermen captured the four-finned dolphin off the coast of Wakayama prefecture in western Japan.