Typhoon Noru prompted evacuation notices in at least half a dozen prefectures over fears of landslides and rising rivers as it brought heavy rains and flooding to the Hokuriku and Kansai regions on Tuesday. As of Tuesday afternoon, at least two people were reported dead ...

Kyoto hotel bills look likely to rise as a special panel studying a proposed lodging tax hands in its final report to the Kyoto Municipal Government.

Deep in the Shikoku wilderness, along a steep winding road above a dark green river, sits the tiny village of Okawa. It's located in a region sometimes dubbed by enthusiastic travel writers as the "Tibet of Japan" for its comparative isolation within the mountains. With ...

With its basic recommendations for operating integrated resort casinos now complete, the central government will hold public hearings across the country this month to explain the requirements and the policies to address problem gambling and concerns about money laundering. While local government officials from Hokkaido ...

As the government finalizes the basic guidelines for casino operations, Osaka is pushing forward with a separate but related plan to host the 2025 World Expo — if Japan's bid beats out the competition — at the new integrated gambling resort envisioned in Osaka ...

As part of the government's drive to relocate some of its Tokyo-centric functions to other cities to promote regional revitalization, the Consumer Affairs Agency inaugurated a new office in Tokushima Prefecture on Monday. The office, set up in the Tokushima Prefectural Government building, will deal ...

Since early July, floods and landslides caused by heavy rain have forced tens of thousands of people from Kyushu to Tohoku to evacuate, with nearly three dozen deaths confirmed in western Japan. The financial damage to Oita Prefecture alone now stands at over ¥20 ...

With only four months to go until it must unveil detailed plans for its 2025 World Expo bid, Osaka's leaders plan to use the rest of the summer and early autumn to ramp up domestic and international efforts to raise the region's profile and ...

Fukui Gov. Issei Nishikawa and the mayors of six towns and villages in the prefecture hosting nuclear power plants have called on Defense Minister Tomomi Inada to dispatch Self-Defense Forces personnel to the prefecture to guard Fukui's 15 reactors (including those being decommissioned) against ...

Three months after the Okinawa Defense Bureau started seawall construction off the coast of Nago in Okinawa's Henoko district, work to build a replacement facility for a U.S. military base in Ginowan is moving forward — and along with it, renewed legal and political ...