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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.
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 ...
The number of overseas visitors last year jumped an estimated 34.6 percent from 2011 to 8.368 million, the second-highest level on record, the Japan National Tourism Organization said. The figure, which fell short of the record 8.611 million travelers seen in 2010, shows Japan’s ...
Japanese nationals accounted for the largest number of foreign hostages killed during last week’s dramatic standoff with Islamic militants in southeastern Algeria, with Tokyo confirming the 10th victim Thursday. Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said Monday that 37 hostages from eight overseas countries were ...
The number of suicides last year slipped below 30,000 for the first time in 15 years, falling 9.4 percent from 2011 to 27,766, the National Police Agency said in a preliminary report Thursday. The annual figure remained between 20,000 and 26,000 from 1978 to ...
The average consumption spending by households in October fell 0.1 percent from the year before in price-adjusted real terms, shrinking for the second straight month, the government said Friday. Households spent ¥284,238, on average, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said. The decline reflected ...