Transport authorities launched a full-fledged investigation Sunday into the derailment of a bullet train on the Akita Shinkansen Line in Daisen, Akita Prefecture, on Saturday afternoon.
It's a dangerous, unpredictable world. Twice in January Chinese warships in the East China Sea challenged Japan's Maritime Self Defense Forces patrols in a manner deemed threatening. And on Feb. 12 came North Korea's nuclear test.
Here's an open secret: Japanese men have a bad international reputation on the romance front.
SELLING WOMEN: Prostitution, Markets and the Household in Early Modern Japan, by Amy Stanley. University of California Press, 2012, 282 pp., $49.95 (hardcover) In the vast cultural landscape, Japan fascinates the mainstream with manga and anime, the martial arts, Zen and kimono. Of course, ...
Kenta Maeda shook off worries about his form with five shutout innings as Japan beat China 5-2 in first-round Pool A of the World Baseball Classic on Sunday at Fukuoka Dome. Japan improved to 2-0 following a tough win over Brazil in Saturday evening’s ...
For gamers, this weekend will feel like Christmas. Tokyo Game Show (TGS), Japan’s biggest gaming event, began Thursday at Chiba’s Makuhari Messe convention center and will continue through Sept. 18 (on Saturday and Sunday it will be open to the public). More than 140 ...
Whenever huge games or new kinds of hardware go on sale, fans line up to be the first to make their purchase, sometimes even waiting overnight. Lining up has become a time-honored tradition in gaming culture. However, at Tokyo Game Show, time is precious. ...
There was a time when Nintendo could do no wrong, when everything the Kyoto-based game maker touched turned to gold. That time is over — and has been for some time. However, that doesn’t mean you should count them out. Earlier this year, Nintendo ...
They’re some of the biggest names in Japanese gaming. And they’ve developed some of the country’s biggest games. Guys like Keiji Inafune of “Mega Man” fame, Yuji Naka (“Sonic the Hedgehog”) and Goichi Suda (“No More Heroes”). But last week in Shibuya, Tokyo, they ...
Video games feature violence. Not all of them, of course, but violence is prevalent — just as it is in movies and on television. Now, thanks to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on June 27, violent video games are protected under the same freedom ...
The annual Electronic Entertainment Expo is gaming’s main event. It’s when the industry’s heavyweights face off with new games and new hardware. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo (which doesn’t traditionally participate in the Tokyo Game Show) all go head to head. This year’s E3, in ...
This was supposed to be Sony’s year. PlayStation 3 sales were on the uptick and, back in January, the Tokyo-based electronics giant introduced its upcoming game handheld, currently codenamed Next Generation Portable or NGP. Then disaster struck, not once but several times. For Sony, ...
For much of March, regular television advertising was all but replaced by public service announcements. Understandable really: Who wants to be the official sponsor of the biggest tragedy to hit Japan since the war? But what if you had just rolled out a new ...
Japan is still reeling. The devastating earthquake and tsunami of March 11 left thousands dead and many more homeless or unaccounted for. Prime Minister Naoto Kan called the quake the worst crisis Japan has faced since the end of World War II. The earthquake’s ...
In 2004, Nintendo released the Nintendo DS, a dual-screen gaming handheld that was revised several times over the next few years as the DS Lite, DSi and DSi XL (LL in Japan) and went on to become one of the most popular consoles ever. ...
