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 ...
The Mobile World Congress (MWC) was held in Barcelona last week, and besides the usual fancy phones on display, an abundance of shiny new Android tablets were unveiled at the event as well. And now that the tablet-specific Android 3.0 Honeycomb OS is in ...
As someone who grew up in a small Newfoundland fishing town, I was instantly intrigued when Japanese toy giant Takara Tomy announced one of its latest products recently. The company’s Virtual Masters Real is a digital fishing-simulation device. No joke. I always found fishing ...
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2011 was held in Las Vegas earlier this month, and as always every major tech company in the world brought their latest and greatest products. As expected, tablet computers were in abundance as manufacturers scramble to catch up with ...
If 2010 was supposed to be 3-D’s coming-out party, then in 2011 the party is poised to continue as manufacturers do their best to make this trendy technology truly stick. While 3-D can be an incredibly enjoyable, and visually stunning, form of entertainment, there’s ...
A tiny camera for tiny photographers. From the folks over at Green House comes a fun new toy camera. With a classic design available in three colors (black, brown and white) the new GH-TCAM30C (right) is the latest of the company’s diminutive Mini Digi ...
As 2010 draws to a close, smartphone use in Japan has risen to an all-time high, accounting for around 50 percent of all handset sales here. Yet it shames this columnist to admit that I’m still rockin’ an old Windows 6.1 phone — insofar ...
At the Eco Products 2010 show last weekend, Sony proudly displayed a new 13.3-inch plastic substrate e-paper prototype. While the company was not willing to disclose many details about the technology, it does use E Ink Corp.’s electronic paper technology. Unfortunately we have no ...
It’s never easy searching for the right Christmas gift for your geeky friends or family members. But when in doubt it’s always safe to go with a practical option. And if it happens to be fun too, then all the better! In keeping with ...
The second-generation Apple TV that Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced back in September has finally hit the shelves here in Japan. Despite the fact that it looks like little more than a hockey puck, the new digital-media receiver from the folks at Cupertino should ...
Japan has produced a number of fun USB storage devices over the years (“humping dog” memory stick, anyone?) and now there’s another to add to the list thanks to the good people at Cut n’ Paste. The Ninja Driver is a new USB memory-storage ...
