“Secondhand smoke” describes the fumes in the air that result from someone smoking tobacco. “Sidestream smoke” (fukuryūen) comes off the tip of the cigarette itself rather than out of the mouth of the person smoking it. Since sidestream smoke is estimated to make up ...

On June 10, a car crashed into a supermarket in Shibukawa, Gunma Prefecture, injuring 14 people. At first the incident sounded like yet another elderly person losing control of a vehicle and causing destruction, but then it transpires that the driver was a 55-year-old ...

People who live in a state of daily desperation sometimes react to their circumstances with violence against others or themselves and, while such actions are a manifestation of frustration, they can also alert the larger world to that frustration, even if it wasn't intended. ...

On May 2, Shinsei Bank announced that starting from October it will impose fees for automatic teller machine (ATM) transactions. Shinsei's main sales point has always been its lack of ATM fees, but the bank will start charging ¥108 per ATM withdrawal unless the ...

Last month, news outlets all over the world reported on the discovery of a plastic shopping bag at the bottom of the Mariana Trench near the Philippines, the deepest point in the Earth’s oceans. The discovery was made by a group of Japanese researchers ...

On May 2, the Cabinet Office removed the posts on its Government Monitor System (GMS) website, a place where citizens offered comments on government policy. The system was established in 1962 to solicit opinions from the public about government policy, but until 2012 it ...

As discussed in Media Mix last week, news organizations are on the lookout for signs of whether the country’s Self-Defense Forces are becoming politically active. There have been indications the SDF wants to be the conventional military that the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has ...

On April 16, opposition lawmaker Hiroyuki Konishi was walking by the Upper House members’ office building in Tokyo when he encountered a man jogging. The man recognized Konishi and started talking to him. His manner soon turned belligerent. An officer in the Self-Defense Forces, ...

In June, the popular online flea market, Mercari Inc., is expected to be listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's Mothers section, which is reserved for high-growth startup companies. According to an article in the April 18 Asahi Shimbun the value of the company's stock ...

With the population shrinking and the government leery of allowing more immigrants into the country, foreign tourism has become an effective economic stimulus. In fact, its success has exceeded anyone’s wildest dreams. More than 28 million tourists from abroad visited Japan last year, and ...