A peer-inspired dieting competition triggered the unhealthy lifestyle, but it wasn't only an eating disorder that haunted Sayaka Hashiba's late sister. Hashiba, a 34-year-old Tokyo office worker, said her younger sister's behavior became visibly erratic when she was around 12 years old. An athletic, upbeat girl ...

Men in straw capes wearing ferocious horned masks with gleaming eyes and long, pointed fangs stare down at a group of reporters. Others donning masks of a devil, monkey and a long-nosed tengu birdman squat as they pose for photographs during a news conference ...

From coffee and pastries to discerningly curated Japanese-designed products, Cibi bridges a gap between Australia and Japan.

It was around 3 p.m. on a chilly day in December. The sky was overcast and the scent of rain hung in the air when Rina Kambayashi happened upon a creature she had never seen before. Opening the front door to her family's gracefully ...

Twenty-five-year-old Sotaro Ito lives in a 9.46-square-meter apartment with a loft in the capital's retro-hip Koenji district. His apartment looks more like an office cubicle, with a desk and computer chair dominating a third of the room. A reading pillow is propped up against one ...

Yuko Nakajima says her job isn't as pretty as portrayed in "Departures," director Yojiro Takita's Oscar-winning 2008 film about Japanese ritual morticians. While the movie cast a tender light on the occupation, the 37-year-old says it can get messy and requires speed and nerves: The ...

Post-disaster Tohoku has been rife with supernatural sightings. Hauntings have been reported at homes and workplaces, in ruined towns and on beaches devastated by giant tsunami that crashed into hundreds of kilometers of Japan's northeastern coast on March 11, 2011, following a magnitude 9 earthquake ...

It's 2:30 a.m. and dark outside. Tsuyoshi Hirasawa can see his breath in the February chill as he turns the key in the ignition of his white Honda minivan. The large hands gripping the steering wheel are rough and leathery from years of working ...

The ghastly image of a goggle-eyed creature that triggered the so-called Momo Challenge — a viral social-media hoax terrifying children and parents alike — was born in a cluttered two-story studio on the outskirts of Tokyo. The creator of the girl-like monster, Keisuke Aiso, seemed ...

Mikio Atobe carefully peels a layer of rayon netting from a chunk of farmed bluefin tuna, revealing a secondary sheet of cloth clinging to its exposed flesh, partially yellowed by the mold coating it. "Take a sniff," said the 43-year-old chief executive of Meat Epoch ...