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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 launch of preparatory drilling for methane hydrate off Aichi Prefecture last month drew public attention amid hopes it will become an alternative to nuclear power at a time when Japan’s self-sufficiency rate in energy is a meager 4 percent. While the potential of ...
Is word-of-mouth information on the Internet trustworthy — or to be taken with a grain of salt? The operator of a popular website collecting presumably honest consumer commentary about restaurants is endeavoring to gain consumer trust and ensure planted stooges aren’t unleveling the playing ...
Abubakar Awudu Suraj spent 20 months in an Immigration Bureau detention center before being manhandled onto a jetliner at Narita airport for deportation back to Ghana in March 2010. He died in handcuffs on the plane. Immigration authorities allegedly used “excessive force” to restrain ...
Tokyo Skytree, the world’s tallest free-standing tower, is already a Sumida Ward landmark and will become even more so when it opens in May. The tower is a key installation for digital terrestrial broadcasting and is expected to draw hordes of visitors to its ...
When writer Shinya Tanaka won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize last month, he said, “I deserve this,” paraphrasing U.S. actress Shirley MacLaine at the Academy Awards ceremony in 1984. His cynicism about selection committee members and Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara also drew attention from the ...
Japan has 98 airports, and most of them are operating in the red as a result of exaggerated demand forecasts and rampant, costly and arguably pork-barrel construction projects. The transport ministry hopes to mitigate the problem by selling off the management rights to 27 ...
Last June more than 90 percent of Italian voters said no to nuclear power in a referendum, while Germany and Switzerland voted to phase out atomic energy in the coming years. In France, which faces a presidential election this spring, the Socialists and Greens ...
Japan’s overtime defeat of the United States in the 2011 women’s World Cup soccer finals inspired a nation suffering from the March 11 disaster and ensuing nuclear crisis. This year will see the club dubbed Nadeshiko Japan attempt to repeat their success at the ...
Japan Inc. is often criticized for its poor corporate governance, especially when it comes to monitoring how top management makes decisions. The Olympus Corp. scandal, based at the very least on the camera maker being caught covering up massive investment losses over almost two ...
Education experts have for years been lamenting the academic decline of young Japanese. Teachers have complained that an increasing number of college students lack even the basics that should have been driven home in junior high school. Students’ math and science skills have markedly ...
Nationality has long been a controversial issue in Japan. For most, it is something they are born with; for others, it is something they had to fight for. For some, nationality may be a source of pride, while for others, it may be the ...
Every winter places set themselves aglow with illuminations as part of the festive mood for Christmas and New Year’s. Major shopping malls and amusement parks in particular go out of their way to put up dazzling arrays, and in recent years people have likewise ...