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Is it a sign of a full-fledged economic recovery or a looming catastrophe in the monetary making? Recent spikes in Japan’s long-term interest rate, represented by the 10-year government bond, have created a stir and roused a deep sense of alarm among investors and ...
Tonkatsu is comfort food, gourmand grub — not a gourmet delicacy. So what are those hearty, unpretentious deep-fried breaded pork cutlets doing in an elegant little bar-style restaurant above one of Ginza’s temples to high-end consumption? Katsuzen has come a long way from its ...
Life in Japan just seems tailor-made for certain foreign residents, who slip into the fabric of this society as smoothly as a hand slides into a glove. American Curtis Patterson, a professional koto player and music teacher, is a case in point. Not only ...
Disgusted by corrupt local leaders, an angry miner picks up a shotgun. A migrant worker returning home looks to armed robbery to escape a life of relentless bleakness. A pretty receptionist at a sauna is driven to the limit when a gangster tries to ...
David Beckham, whose curling free kicks, rugged good looks and celebrity marriage made him one of the most famous athletes in the world, is retiring from soccer. Whether striding on the grass, the red carpet or the fashion catwalks, Beckham transcended his sport and ...
Another motion controller, another sports game. It didn’t take game developers long to follow the lead set by Nintendo’s Wii and create games for the new PlayStation 3 Move and Xbox 360 Kinect add-ons that revolve around throwing, batting, putting or lobbing things. And ...
“While making the first and second games in the series, I went drinking in Kabukicho with (Toshihiro) Nagoshi, the overall producer of the franchise, two or three nights every week,” says Masayoshi Kikuchi, a veteran producer at Sega, as we discuss the latest entries ...
Advertising networks that gather unsold commercial space from popular online destinations and then resell them at a discount are part of a multibillion-dollar industry that is only in its infancy in Japan. Although early adopters of the technology have a huge potential for profits, ...
A new tablet may be the last gasp of the Galapagos syndrome in Japan. Apple’s iPad, introduced earlier this year, is not only a smash hit, it has created a whole new consumer space for tablet computing. While competitors such as RIM and Samsung ...
With the trend toward smart phones and tablet devices growing, NTT DoCoMo Inc. announced Tuesday the debut of Samsung’s flagship hand-held devices: the Galaxy Tab and the Galaxy S smart phone. “Today is a big day for our partnership,” said J.K. Shin, who heads ...
Outside a small town in Gifu Prefecture is a little-known scientific research establishment engaged in a project to “create a sun on the Earth.” If successful, this venture will profoundly affect the lives of most people in the world. The National Institute for Fusion ...
Far from the chaos of the Makuhari Messe exhibition center, which was filled with tens of thousands of gamers plus noisy games and event stages, members of the press, privileged bloggers and select VIPs saw a different side of the Tokyo Game Show. New ...
With record figures of 81,469 attendees last Saturday and 77,185 on Sunday, the public days at Tokyo Game Show were swamped with more people than the game companies could handle. Despite many of the bigger booths — Sony, Sega, Capcom and so on — ...
Major video-game makers wowed game fans at the Tokyo Game Show (TGS) on the weekend with products such as Sony’s 3-D games, Microsoft’s controller-free motion-sensor system Kinect and Capcom’s super popular “Monster Hunter” series. But aside from the massive crowds at big game developers’ ...
As of Tuesday, 84,512 people were united in their call for laws banning restrictions on manga / anime content, at least 8,984 people had endorsed same-sex marriage, and 1,609 individuals wanted Panasonic to keep a speech aid for the physically impaired on the market. ...
Web services such as Twitter and YouTube have entered Japan and become familiar tools in the arsenals of Japanese Web surfers. But Netizens in other countries might be hard-pressed to identify the Japanese equivalents to these services, even though they are popular at home. ...
While Twitter itself is still struggling to find a profitable business plan, Japanese ad agencies have quickly embraced the micro-blogging service to create innovative campaigns. This year, Japanese clothing chain Uniqlo has been at the forefront of creating Twitter-based microsites for which they received ...