Apr 11, 2012

Disasters impact land prices

For the fourth consecutive year, Japan’s land prices have fallen. Prices decreased an average 2.6 percent in 2011, but the decline was smaller than the 3.0 percent in 2010 as the economy bounced back from the 3/11 disasters. Commercial land prices slipped 3.1 percent ...

Mar 26, 2012

Promoting Tohoku tourism

“Destination Tohoku,” the tourism campaign to help promote and revive tourism in the Tohoku region, started March 18. The Japan Tourism Agency and the local governments and tourism industry in the region hope that the campaign will bring tourists back to the region, which ...

Mar 16, 2012

New approach to fisheries needed

One year after the massive earthquake and tsunami hit the Tohoku region, harvesting of wakame seaweed has started in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures. But the 3/11 disasters have left deep scars in fisheries of the region’s Pacific coastal areas. The central and local governments ...

Mar 9, 2012

Mental health must match post-3/11 recovery

by Davinder Kumar

Over the past year, the tsunami-ravaged coastline of Japan’s northeast has undergone a cleanup never seen before in history for its sheer scale and speed. From Ishinomaki to Onagawa, Shichigahama to Kesennuma, the landscape has been drastically altered as the nation presses on with ...

Nov 28, 2010

Death sentence for a minor

Six lay judges and three professional judges at the Sendai District Court on Nov. 25 sentenced a male 19-year-old to death for murdering two people and injuring two others, one of them seriously. This is the second death sentence under the lay judge system ...