MMV...

2005 - The year that was...

• January - 5 tonnes of mayonnaise spilled across the Tomei Expressway and created a 5 km traffic jam.
• February - The Yamanote line tightened its scheduled from a 60 minute loop to 58 minutes.
• March - The Bank of Japan announced that it had $715 billion in its vaults.
• April - Japanese high school and university students get 4 hours of sleep a night as they spend so much time on their cellphones and computers.
• May - The Yasukuni Shrine website got 15 000 hits a second.
• June - Yokohama City Hall issued a 27 page manual explaining how garbage should be sorted.
• July - Cool Biz entered our vernacular (not wearing ties and jackets to work to help save the environment!)
• August - A 1 ton bomb dropped 60 years ago in Nishi Tokyo was dug up - 7 000 people were evacuated during the process.
• September - The LDP gained a greater majority than before.
• October - A robotic camera snapped a 26 foot long giant squid 3 000 feet below sea level - it lost a tentacle - all 18 feet of it!
• November - The Yamanote line was nonoperational for 5 hours - stranding millions of commuters.
• December - It snowed - briefly - in Tokyo.

Happy New Year!