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P/CLOUDY
NTT DoCoMo Inc., despite being Japan’s biggest mobile phone carrier, has been struggling against tough smartphone competition from KDDI Corp. and Softbank Corp., which is leading in that area. But one edge that the cellphone behemoth — it has more than 60 million subscribers ...
Throughout most of Japan, June is the rainy season. While all that rainfall is great for rice paddies so that we can have delicious new harvest rice in the fall, it makes it a rather dull month for seasonal produce: The summer’s bounty of ...
If you don’t get into the ring once or twice, then you’re a coward, Geoffrey Ima says as he describes people’s attitudes toward boxing in his hometown in Uganda. Ima has been in the ring hundreds of times and came to love boxing so ...
Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the “best birthday party ever” when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion. The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, ...
The 27-year-old defender says he was ready for a change of scenery after helping Sanfrecce Hiroshima win theJ. League title last season.
Ever since the 9-magnitude earthquake rocked the Tohoku region two years ago, Tokyo doctor Naoko Ishii and her husband, Hajime, have been quasi-residents of the Ogatsu district of Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture. Just a day after the havoc began on March 11, 2011, the couple ...
Hundreds orphaned by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami remain vulnerable two years later because of insufficient government support. Last June, the Diet passed legislation to help disaster-affected children and women, but details are hazy. Instead of waiting for the government to take action, ...
More than 10,000 demonstrators take to the streets of Tokyo, calling for an immediate phaseout of atomic energy and railing against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's pronuclear stance.
When the Kinoya fish processing company in Ishinomaki opened its brand new flagship factory last month, it gave employees a ray of hope that it would recover from the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that destroyed much of the city.
Tohoku’s fishermen are beginning to challenge the traditional fisheries system by establishing their own companies so they can have more control over prices and other aspects of the business. “Going back to the way it was before the 3/11 tsunami is not enough, because ...
The Liberal Democratic Party has rejected a proposal by Kokumin Shinto (People’s New Party) to merge and instead is demanding that the three-man opposition force disband and the lawmakers be considered individually for membership in the ruling party. LDP Secretary General Shigeru Ishiba said ...
The past few months have put the Japan Coast Guard and Air Self-Defense Force to the test, as they defend the nation’s territorial waters and airspace around the Senkaku islets in the East China Sea, a flash point for potential military clashes with China. ...
With Masaaki Shirakawa stepping down as governor of the Bank of Japan on March 19, three weeks earlier than scheduled, the process to select his successor is accelerating.
Shinzo Abe kicks off a study panel tasked with establishing a Japanese version of the U.S. National Security Council, vowing to enhance the flow of information while consolidating command.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed again Friday to revise the Constitution, including amending war-renouncing Article 9 to allow Japan to exercise the right of collective self-defense. At a meeting of a Liberal Democratic Party working group on the constitutional revisions, Abe emphasized that changing ...
Denouncing the latest nuclear test by North Korea, Japan calls on the U.N. Security Council to impose more severe sanctions against Pyongyang.
The Democratic Party of Japan refuses to accept a list of 41 nominees for key government positions because the name of one person was leaked to the media.