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Farmers in the city of Tamura, Fukushima Prefecture, have begun planting rice in a district once designated a no-go zone because of radioactive fallout ejected by the disaster-hit Fukushima No. 1 power plant.
Recently I was asked to write a blurb for a new liquid plant-nutrient. As soon as I saw the name of the product, 早根早起 （Hayane Hayaoki), I smiled at this example of linguistic creativity. The four characters translate loosely as “early root, early sprouting”; ...
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 ...
Denmark’s Emmelie de Forest won this year’s Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday night with her ethno-inspired flute and drum tune “Only Teardrops,” despite tough competition from spectacular stage shows by performers from Azerbaijan and Ukraine. Juries and television viewers across Europe awarded the barefoot, ...
One team’s quest for a first title has ended. The other team’s fight will continue next season. The Yokohama B-Corsairs outplayed the Rizing Fukuoka in Sunday’s bj-league championship game, controlling the tempo for larger stretches and making enough timely baskets to fill an instructional ...
After a market debut marred by technical glitches and a deep dive in the company’s stock price, Facebook has spent the past year focused on its biggest weaknesses: how to make money and keep its more than 1 billion users tethered to the social network. The results have been mixed. ...
Japan is hoping LNG from the U.S. shale gas boom will give it the power to rework bruising long-term contracts ...
Two mind-sets seem to be catching on in Japan these days. They worry me. One is the notion that something ...
Budding growth in the Japanese economy, just as a recession in Europe digs in, is renewing pressure on European policymakers to shift course from austerity to stimulus. Data released on Thursday said that Japan’s economy grew markedly in the first quarter, only weeks after ...
The chatter across the world of financial journalism over the last few days has been the story of Bloomberg reporters accessing information about subscribers of the firm’s financial data service that those customers thought should remain secret. The episode contains some important lessons for ...
Japan is gearing up to launch fuel cell vehicles as the next-generation of environmentally safer cars. Oil distributors have started to establish hydrogen station networks, while the government is set to provide financial assistance and is considering deregulation to make it easier to set ...
Japan’s government must demonstrate a commitment to fiscal rehabilitation to boost the credibility of government bonds and prevent a spike in long-term yields as soaring stocks damp the allure of the nation’s sovereign debt, Economy Minister Akira Amari said. “As stocks have rallied this ...
Economic revitalization minister Akira Amari revealed Sunday that he plans to open talks with national labor and management representatives on how to convince companies to raise wages. Amari said on a TV program that improved corporate earnings resulting from “Abenomics,” the moniker for the ...
All of Japan Post Holdings Co.'s 13 outside directors will resign next month when the group's new president is to be appointed as part of its government-led management reshuffle.
LinkedIn and Facebook celebrated the anniversaries of their IPOs just a few days apart this week. But their experiences as publicly traded companies couldn’t be more different. LinkedIn Corp. promotes its service as a stepping stone to a more enriching career. As it turns ...
Mixi Inc. will shore up its faltering earnings by seeking new businesses and doing away with complacency in the face of stiff competition from Facebook, incoming President Yusuke Asakura said Friday. Asakura, who will take the helm of the domestic social-networking site starting in ...
U.S. stocks closed out another week of new record highs Friday. Optimistic reports on consumer confidence and the economic outlook drove a rally that pushed the Dow and S&P 500 to end-of-the-week records highs for the third straight week. Over the week, the Dow ...
Investors are more confident in a Japanese leader than any time since at least September 2010, with optimism about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s policies exceeding that for counterparts in the U.S., Europe and China. The number of respondents who are more optimistic than pessimistic ...
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 ...
Resona Holdings Inc., the nation’s fifth-largest bank by market value, is poised to tie up with Malaysia’s Public Bank Bhd. as part of its efforts to expand in Asia. Resona will sign an agreement with Malaysia’s third-biggest lender on Monday to serve Japanese companies ...