Australia accepts Eiken certificate as proof of English ability
Holders of an Eiken English language certificate can now apply for admission to hundreds of high schools across Australia. The arrangement follows an agreement between the Tokyo-based Eiken Foundation of Japan and the Australian Embassy, as part of ongoing efforts to encourage Japanese high school ...
U.S. 'supports' Japan's efforts to resolve North Korea abduction issue
A U.S. official said Wednesday that Washington supports Japan's efforts to resolve the so-called abduction issue with North Korea, after Tokyo announced it will send a delegation to Pyongyang for talks. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said the United States "certainly supports" the central government's ...
A Serbian environmental scientist is trying to clean up pollution in the Danube River with Japanese assistance. Kobe resident Vladimir Beskoski, 39, a research fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, was born in Belgrade. "I played in the Danube chasing fish, and ...
Demand growing for medical interpreters as tourist numbers surge
With growing numbers of resident foreigners and surging tourist arrivals, the nation is increasingly looking at the problem of medical care getting lost in translation. This fiscal year, the health ministry began offering to subsidize the cost of English, Chinese and Portuguese interpreters at certain ...
Japan's millionaires increased their wealth at the fastest pace in the Asia-Pacific region last year as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's campaign for an economic revival drove the stock market higher. The nation's high net worth individuals, defined as those with investable assets of at least ...
Residents across Niigata Prefecture attended events on Thursday to remember the 68 people killed in the 2004 Niigata-Chuetsu earthquake. "We must convey the lessons from the disaster to the next generation," Ojiya Mayor Yasuo Yatsui said at a 10th-anniversary memorial ceremony in Nagaoka co-sponsored by ...
Man confesses to grisly Kobe killing, saying he lured young girl to his home
A man arrested on suspicion of killing and dismembering a 6-year-old girl and then dumping her body parts in plastic bags in Kobe has admitted to committing the murder, according to investigative sources. Yasuhiro Kimino, 47, who is unemployed, told investigators he strangled Mirei Ikuta ...
Police see spike in number of tips on potentially illegal foreign websites
Police received more tips about illegal Internet sites in the first six months of this year but made far fewer arrests compared to the same period last year, data released on Thursday showed. Reports about overseas websites doubled from a year earlier to nearly 10,000, ...
Finance Ministry wants to squeeze more children into classrooms, close elementary schools
The Finance Ministry will ask the education ministry to increase the maximum number of students per class for first-graders at public elementary schools to 40, from the current 35, in a bid to cut the education budget for next year, it has been learned. The ...
Tokyo court sees growing petitions against Internet postings
The Tokyo District Court has seen a sharp increase in petitions for injunctions against malicious Internet postings in recent years, court sources said on Wednesday. The number of such petitions, which include defamation and slander, handled by the court grew more than 20-fold in four ...
Junichiro Koizumi, known as a firm opponent of nuclear power following the 2011 Fukushima triple meltdown, on Wednesday criticized Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's policy to revive the country's fleet of idled nuclear reactors. "The government says Japan has the world's toughest safety standards for nuclear ...
Police take 'DJ Cop' approach to coach officers in traffic, crowd control
The example of a Tokyo police officer, who earned the nickname "DJ Cop" for his witty instructions to calm and guide excited soccer fans at a busy intersection outside JR Shibuya Station after Japan qualified for the 2014 FIFA World Cup finals, is still ...
