Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Tokyo Sunday afternoon, just hours after rejecting Japan's demand that a group of disputed islands off the northeastern island of Hokkaido be returned.
The islands are to be the main topic of his talks with Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.
"We are not talking about turning over the (Southern) Kuril Islands," Putin told reporters Sunday morning in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the capital of Sakhalin, where he stopped over before flying to Tokyo.