Japanese restaurant gets monkey butlers | Metro.co.uk
A Japanese restaurant has taken an unusual approach to employing waiters – they have two trained monkeys who wait on their clientele.
The Kayabukiya tavern, a sake house just north of Tokyo, employs the two macaques to help out their more traditional human waiters.
The macaques, called Yat-chan and Fuku-chan, are tipped by the cutstomers with boiled soya beans.
Yat-chan, aged twelve, is the more experienced of the two – he takes customers’ drinks orders and brings them to their table.
Fuku-chan, who is younger, isn’t up to taking orders yet, but hands the customers hot towels.
Kaoru Otsuka, 63, the owener of the tavern, originally kept the monkeys as pets – but then noticed how they began copying his actions in the restuarant, and so set them to work as waiters.
Otsuka is currently hoping to train three baby monkeys as the next generation of waiters.
Kentucky Sheriff Joe Gaddie brought back wrong suspect Joe Oros from California
Joe Gaddie, Butler County Sheriff and a deputy (From Kentucky) drove 4100 miles to California and back to fetch a suspect, Joe Oros III, 27, on minor felony charges of fleeing from police and DUI. Joe Oros protested that they had the wrong man. His ID was stolen and used by another man. Joe Oros was ignored. The police never ran checks on his fingerprints and pictures.
When the trio reached Kentucky, jailor Terry Fugate checked the wanted mug shot of the man and saw that it did not correspond with Joe Oros. Oros was freed and sent back to California on a plane. It was his first plane trip. He rode the journey to Kentucky in shackles but ride back to California in style in a plane.
While Oros was in Kentucky, he met a lawyer who agreed to represent him to try to sue Butler County and the State of California to get compensation for their mistake. Joe Oros said he admired Kentucky for its greenery and nice people. He might move there!
(CBS/AP) With two runners on base and a strike against her, Sara Tucholsky of Western Oregon University uncorked her best swing and did something she had never done, in high school or college. She hit her first home run, which cleared the center field fence.
But it looked like the shortest of dreams-come-true when she missed first base, started back to tag it, and collapsed with a knee injury.
She crawled back to first but could do no more. The first base coach said she would be called out if her teammates tried to help her. Or, the umpire said, a pinch-runner could be called in, and the homer would count as just a single.
Then, members of the Central Washington University softball team stunned their home crowd in Ellensburg by carrying Tucholsky around the bases Saturday so the three-run homer would count – an act that contributed to their own elimination from the playoffs.
Central Washington first baseman Mallory Holtman, the all-time home run leader in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference, asked the umpire if she and her teammates could help Tucholsky.
The umpire said there was no rule against it.
So Holtman and shortstop Liz Wallace put their arms under Tucholsky’s legs, and she put her arms over their shoulders. The three headed around the base paths, stopping to let Tucholsky touch each base with her good leg.
“It was the right thing to do,” Holtman told Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen Thursday. “She’d hit it over the fence. She deserved the home run.”
home run college softball western oregon central washington sportsmanship
Nike fudges, recognizes fastest marathon runner as “a” winner
Marathon runner Arien O’Connell will be a winner after all.
O’Connell ran the fastest time in last Sunday’s Nike Women’s Marathon, but when she finished she was told she couldn’t be awarded first place because she hadn’t run in the “elite” women’s group, which was given a 20-minute head start.
O’Connell said she was contacted early this morning by a Nike representative who said they were going to award her a trophy and recognize her as a winner.
Not the winner – “a” winner. Notice the distinction.
“She told me they had been getting lots of calls and e-mails,” said O’Connell, a fifth-grade teacher in New York City. “She said they were going to send me the same prize as the one awarded to the winner.”
O’Connell’s story, which first appeared in Tuesday’s Chronicle, set off a firestorm of controversy, most of it directed at corporate sports giant and race sponsor, Nike.
O’Connell said the Nike representative also said that the sports shoe corporation had also decided to eliminate the “elite” category in the annual San Francisco event and would let everyone start at the same time.
The annual event is billed as the largest women’s marathon in the world with 20,000 entries. O’Connell ran the race in 2 hours, 55 minutes and 11 seconds. The fastest woman in the elite group ran it in about 3 hours, 6 minutes.
Fast-food worker laughs, tells robber to get a job
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A San Antonio fast-food restaurant cashier laughed at a robbery suspect and told him to get a job if he wanted money during a failed holdup on Tuesday evening.
Police said the suspect approached the worker and demanded money, but the cashier laughed and apparently didn’t realize the man was trying to hold up the place.
The suspect then allegedly pulled out a box cutter and demanded the cashier’s wallet. The employee complied, but had no money in his billfold.
The suspect fled, but was caught by police who responded to the robbery call.
San Antonio police said the suspect is expected to be charged with aggravated robbery.
11/27/2008 HQ – Romania’s staid election campaign has been shaken after a former bodybuilder turned senator hurled a glass of water at a female rival during a
heated TV debate.
Foam mishap at Northeast Airport – 12/09/07 – Philadelphia News – 6abc.com
NORTHEAST PHILADELPHIA – December 8, 2007 (WPVI) — “Don’t hit button unless in an emergency” … well, one curious kid just couldn’t resist the warning.
Today was family day at Agusta Aerospace, located at 3050 Red Lion Road in Northeast Philadelphia. Employees and their families gathered for a day of fun in a helicopter hanger this morning.
Everything was relatively normal about the event until shortly before 11 a.m.. That’s when authorities say an employee’s child hit a button that said “don’t hit button unless in an emergency”. The button triggered the fire suppression system, filling the hanger with foam.
The Philadelphia Fire Department was called out to the Northeast Airport to clean up the scene. There were helicopters inside of the hanger at the time of the incident. At this point there’s no word on any damage to the helicopter.
CU official apologizes for ‘gangster’ mascot garb : CU News : Boulder Daily Camera
An official at the University of Colorado apologized Saturday for an “insensitive, unfortunate and thoughtless” display from a CU mascot during a promotional appearance Friday.
The incident happened when Chip, CU’s costumed buffalo mascot, showed up Friday at the Pepsi Center in Denver for a “kid’s night” Nuggets basketball game dressed in “gangster-themed” attire.
The fuzzy, cartoon-like buffalo replaced his trademark CU clothing with a white T-shirt and baggy pants, a do-rag and fake gold teeth. The costume also had a graphic of a teardrop tattoo below one eye.
The tattoo is commonly associated with gang activity, often signifying that the wearer has killed someone.
“It was, basically, every stereotypical thing you could think of,” CU spokesman Bronson Hilliard said. “It ended up being a gang-style persona, and that’s just unacceptable.”
Hilliard said the act was put on by two CU student volunteers who have played the part of Chip since at least August last year.
He declined to name the students, saying officials wanted to have the opportunity to decide on an appropriate punishment for them first.
“Because they’ve represented Chip before, they should have known better,” Hilliard said. “We’re going to deal with it.”
Hilliard said the students, two of the three students currently authorized to appear as Chip, performed at the Nuggets game without the supervision of Travis Prior, who heads the CU cheerleading and mascot programs.
“(Prior) is taking full responsibility for this as well,” Hilliard said. “This is a collective failure. This is a failure on our part to educate these young people about what it means to represent the university appropriately.”
A phone number listed for Prior in Longmont was not working Saturday.
Hilliard said student volunteers in the mascot program are given “guidelines about what’s appropriate,” and told to conduct themselves appropriately.
He said he spoke with one of the students responsible for the incident on Saturday, and that he was remorseful and did not consider how some people might react to the costume.
“They obviously didn’t do a good job researching this, because if they had they would have seen the enormous implications and the tragic implications of that (teardrop) symbol,” Hilliard said. “We want to apologize to the general public for this, to Nuggets fans and to Buffs fans. This does not represent our values.”
Hilliard said Chip has a history of dressing up for Halloween, Christmas and for special football games.
“They do it to kind of spice up the mascot for the public, but why they would think this was a sort of fun mascot persona is a little bit beyond me,” he said. “The two students in this case … made a very, very unfortunate decision.”
A spokesperson for the Pepsi Center could not be reached by phone Saturday afternoon.
colorado university mascot gangsta teardrop tattoo gold teeth
Finland brands Little House on the Prairie with adult rating
Little House on the Prairie, the classic family-oriented television series, has been deemed suitable for adult viewing only in Finland.
A DVD release of the U.S. series is slated for distribution in Finland. However, Universal Pictures decided against submitting the program to the country’s film board for assessment, the company’s marketing manager Meri Suomela told Reuters.
Film officials charge approximately $3 per minute to assess film and television shows for age appropriateness. Products not submitted for this state inspection must be sold under the label “Banned for under-18s.”
“Long series can get quite expensive to check, and some use this exemption in the law to their advantage,” said Matti Paloheimo, director at the Finnish Board of Film Classification.
Little House on the Prairie, which was loosely based on the children’s books of American author Laura Ingalls Wilder, ran from 1974 to 1983. The frontier-life series followed the Ingalls family as they lived in Minnesota and detailed Laura’s life as she matured from a young girl into a teacher and mother.
The show continues to air in syndication around the globe and recently inspired a musical adaptation, which concluded a successful run at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis last month with actress Melissa Gilbert — Laura Ingalls in the original series — returning to play Ma Ingalls.
little house on the prarie dvd finland adult rating film board
Police: Man impersonating friend arrested on friend’s warrant
PORTSMOUTH — A New Castle man showed police his friend’s driver’s license to avoid arrest, but was arrested anyway when police learned the friend was wanted on a warrant, according to court records.
Police allege Jared Maddock, 25, of 174 Wentworth Road, was taken into custody on his friend’s warrant, but when his true identity was revealed, it showed Maddock was also wanted on a warrant. Five other charges followed.
According to an affidavit by Officer Erik Widerstrom, he answered a domestic call on Pleasant Street at 11:14 p.m. August 30 and based on a witness description, detained a man who provided a driver’s license identifying him as from North Hampton. The suspect was arrested when Widerstrom learned there was a warrant for the North Hampton man’s arrest, according to court records.
Back at the police station, the man confessed he was Maddock and was also wanted on a warrant, his from Exeter District Court for driving after revocation, according to Widerstrom’s affidavit. While Maddock was being booked for that charge, the officer found him in possession of a knife, marijuana and three false driver’s licenses, according to court records.
As a result, Maddock is scheduled to be arraigned in Portsmouth District Court Monday on a count of being a felon in possession of a deadly weapon — a folding knife — with a Sept. 2, 3003 robbery conviction from Rockingham County Superior Court. He is also charged with a class A misdemeanor count of drug possession and three class A misdemeanor counts of driver’s license prohibitions for having three bogus licenses, two from Maine and one from Florida.
Popularity: unranked [?]
