JAPAN: Japan opens 98th national airport

Page last updated at 06:50 GMT, Thursday, 11 March 2010

By Roland Buerk
BBC News, Tokyo

Japan's 98th airport has begun operations - offering just one flight a day.

Ibaraki airport cost 22bn Yen ($220m, £147m) to build and is being seen in Japan as a prime example of wasteful public expenditure.

It is located 80km (50 miles) and a long bus ride north of Tokyo.

The airport was conceived as a hub for budget carriers but the check-in counters were almost deserted as operations began.

There is just one plane a day, to South Korea. Another flight, to the Japanese city of Kobe, will begin next month.

The airport has become a symbol of decades of public spending to prop up the economy that has left Japan studded with bridges to nowhere and unneeded dams.

The new centre-left government, which came to power last year, has criticised the links between previous conservative administrations and the construction industry, and vowed to cut waste.

International travellers tired of long queues and crowded departure lounges should perhaps consider flying to Ibaraki.

But Ibaraki itself has little to commend it to Korean tourists who might be thinking of catching the single daily flight from Seoul.

Apart from one well-known Japanese garden the prefecture's main claim to fame is the locals' skill in making natto, a fermented soy bean dish that many consider an acquired taste.

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JAPAN: Man tried for Akihabara stabbing spree pleads guilty, apologies

Jan 27 10:46 PM US/Eastern

AP

TOKYO, Jan. 28 (AP) - (Kyodo)—The man charged with the June 2008 fatal stabbing rampage in Tokyo's Akihabara district that killed seven and wounded 10 pleaded guilty Thursday and apologized to the victims of the crime.

Tomohiro Kato, 27, said in the first hearing of the case at the Tokyo District Court that he is "certainly the one who committed the crime" although he cannot remember some parts of what happened on the day of the Sunday afternoon attack.

"I'm sorry for the people who died and got injured," said Kato, who was clad in a white shirt and a black suit, bowing his head.

The prosecution argued in its opening statement that Kato "did not receive decent treatment" at the office where he was employed as a temporary worker and "felt that what he wrote about in a cell-phone website was ignored."

"So he hit on the idea of getting other people to acknowledge his existence by erupting in anger and setting off a major crime."

Kato allegedly warned in advance of his crime on the website along with a number of posts in which he vented his frustration with his workplace.

The prosecution also said Kato was inspired by a fatal indiscriminate stabbing spree that occurred in March 2008 in Ibaraki Prefecture as well as an April 2005 incident in which three people were killed after a truck crashed into a shopping arcade in Sendai.

"It is apparent that he kept those incidents in mind and decided to kill people at random in Akihabara, where he had been a number of times before," according to the prosecution.

The focus of the trial is expected to be on a psychiatric examination that found him mentally competent at the time of the crime.

The prosecution indicted Kato on charges of murder and attempted murder based on the mental evaluation result.

On Thursday, the defense team questioned the exam result, suggesting Kato was mentally incompetent during the spree.

Kato is charged with running down five pedestrians, three of whom died, with a truck in a vehicle-free shopping area on June 8, 2008, and fatally stabbing four passersby with a dagger after getting out of the vehicle.  Eight others were injured in the stabbings, while one policeman was attacked but unharmed, according to the indictment.

The incident in the Tokyo electronics area, a popular district that attracts Japanese and foreign comic and animation fans, drew attention to the fragile situation facing temporary workers.

No citizen judges are taking part in the trial because he was indicted in October 2008, before the law on the lay judge system took effect.

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