A good portion of the airspace over central Japan has been reserved for the exclusive use of the U.S. military since the end of World War II, a fact that isn't widely known in Japan. Over the past several weeks, however, it has become ...

The Japanese expression "kankodori ga naku" (literally, "the cuckoo sings") is frequently used to describe a business slump. "Kankodori" appears in a headline in Flash (Feb. 18) concerning Nara Park. Not only are visitor numbers to this destination way down, but the famous deer that ...

Tokyo’s train system is considered to be one of the most expansive and most reliable in the world, but it can be pretty intimidating for anglophones trying to navigate the city. Thankfully, announcements in English can be heard on many railway lines, with narrators providing ...

The nerve gas sarin, planted on packed commuter subway trains in Tokyo during the morning rush hour Monday, killed six people and injured nearly 3,230 others in what police said was attempted mass murder.

As the new coronavirus spreads quickly around the world, U.S. health officials say they are "aggressively" assessing how long it can survive on surfaces to better understand the risk of transmission. Based on what is known about similar coronaviruses, disease experts say the new outbreak ...

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told Yang Jiechi the visit in April is “extremely important” for bilateral ties and must be of substance.

Fears that COVID-19 could lead to shortages of daily items sparked incidents of stockpiling from Thursday night through Saturday, causing drugstores and supermarkets in several cities to run short of toilet paper and other items. But local officials and an industry association of tissue and ...

The COVID-19 outbreak is weighing down the transportation and tourism sectors as infection fears make people reluctant to venture outdoors or share confined spaces with others for long hours. Passengers using the Tokaido bullet train line linking Tokyo and Osaka fell 8 percent between Feb. ...

In making peace with the Taliban, the United States is moving to end its longest-ever war and also signaling a major shift: After two decades, an era of global U.S. military interventionism is winding down. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks killed 3,000 people and ...

Nobody chooses to become a refugee: This is what Yonas Kinde, a 39-year-old from Ethiopia, wants people in Japan to realize when they see him competing in the Tokyo Marathon on Sunday in his bid to qualify for the 2020 Olympics. Kinde, who fled his ...

The fine is the second-highest imposed by the Financial Services Agency after the ¥7.37 billion fine on Toshiba Corp. in 2015.

Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad will run for prime minister on behalf of the former ruling coalition, he said on Saturday, less than a week after he quit and plunged the country into political turmoil. That meant that Mahathir, who as interim prime minister is the world's ...

United Airlines has announced it is suspending or cutting back on flights from major hubs in the United States to Narita Airport and Kansai International Airport amid the new coronavirus outbreak, according to a statement posted to its website Friday. Flights from Los Angeles and ...

South Korea reported on Saturday its biggest surge in new coronavirus cases and concerns grew of a possible epidemic in the United States as the World Health Organization raised its risk alert to its highest level. The virus has rapidly spread across the world over ...

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un warned top party officials of "serious consequences" if they fail to prevent an outbreak of the new coronavirus, state media reported Saturday. The impoverished nation, with a weak and ill-equipped health care system, has closed its borders to prevent ...

Mainland China — excluding Hubei province, where the new coronavirus outbreak originated — reported four new cases of infection on Friday, the lowest since the national health authority started compiling nationwide data in January. The central province of Hubei reported 423 new confirmed cases on ...

The United States has decided to postpone a meeting with leaders of Southeast Asian countries it had planned to host on March 14 due to worries about the coronavirus outbreak, two U.S. officials familiar with the matter said Friday. U.S. President Donald Trump had invited ...

The great soccer player and humanitarian is making it hard on writers to come with new ways to compliment him.

The 1990s sneaker craze eventually cooled off, but over the past four or five years a new wave has risen, towering over anything that came before.

Offering creative culinary experiences across the country, tourism companies like ByFood and Arigato Japan Food Tours are taking the lead as Japan hopes to become a "tourism-oriented country" by 2030.

Chef Atsumi says luck was the key ingredient to his culinary success in Paris.

Tokyo boasts an abundance of markets selling regional specialties from all over Japan. Just as fascinating as the diversity of merchandise on offer are the vendors themselves, who have plenty to say about their wares.

It's an excellent sign when the first sight that greets you at a restaurant is a gleaming refrigerator filled with some of the best sake in Japan. When the next thing you see is a room set aside for rolling out and cutting soba ...

Tokyo Cacao is pushing the boundaries of cacao production with the first ever chocolate bar of entirely Japanese origin. The chocolate lineup is produced from trees grown in the Ogasawara Islands, which fall under Tokyo's jurisdiction despite being nearly 1,000 kilometers away from the ...

Get your matcha, crepe or bubble tea fix simultaneously with Ochaba's green tea tapioca drinks or lineup of matcha-centric crepes.

Hostels are no longer on the lower rung of the accommodation ladder. Tokyo's burgeoning hostel scene is brimming with new additions, from the cutting-edge to the repurposed and timeless.

Iain Maloney's "The Only Gaijin in the Village" is a thought-provoking, lively examination of one immigrant's quest to create a new home outside his country of birth.

Demons, spirits and other things that go bump in the night come to life in Julie Kagawa's epic young adult fantasy "Shadow of the Fox."

Vampires may not have a traditional place in Japanese literature, but since the 1910s plenty of writers have tackled the dark — often sexy — subject, albeit with a Japanese twist.

The return of pro baseball to Tokyo Dome on Saturday night was greeted by a jarring silence. There were no songs or chants to welcome the players to the plate nor the blaring of trumpets to provide the familiar soundtrack to the NPB experience. Instead, it ...

Plans to invite the China table tennis team to train in Japan have hit a hurdle as a prospective host municipality has backed down to deal with the coronavirus outbreak, Japan Table Tennis Association sources said Saturday. The association had initially agreed to take in ...

Miho Takagi won two races to lead the women's sprint standings at the ISU World Sprint and Allround Speed Skating Championships on Friday, while countryman Tatsuya Shinhama also positioned himself atop the men's standings. Takagi won the 500 and 1,000 meter races at Hamar Olympic ...

Japan was awarded a 2020 Olympic quota spot in the women's omnium when Yumi Kajihara claimed gold at the World Track Cycling Championships in Germany on Friday, virtually guaranteeing herself a spot on the Olympic team. The 22-year-old University of Tsukuba senior, winner of the ...

Miho Miyahara earned a spot on the Japan national karate team on the opening day of the Karate 1-Premier League Salzburg, one of the last chances to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, on Friday. By meeting the qualification criteria set by the Japan Karatedo ...

A runner who fled Ethiopia nearly a decade ago is preparing for Sunday's Tokyo Marathon with hopes of returning to Japan as a member of the Refugee Olympic Team. Yonas Kinde, 39, who competed at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, has been training this ...