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Margot Magniere and Theo Poyer returned to Japan after pandemic-era restrictions were lifted and decided to stay for a while.
CULTURE / Music
Apr 11, 2025

The band that turned a pandemic lockdown into a Tokyo dream

On “Grand Voyage,” French pop act Tapeworms tap into Japanese cultural nostalgia and picopop.
Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
JAPAN / Society / Longform
Apr 11, 2025

Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.

On a man-made island in Osaka Bay, Japan stages a grand vision of the future — and a quiet test of relevance.
The opening ceremony for the Osaka Expo on Saturday.
JAPAN
Apr 12, 2025

Ishiba warns of divided world at futuristic Osaka Expo opening ceremony

"Having overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, the world now faces the crisis over many different divisions," Ishiba told the opening ceremony.
Customers line up patiently for some early-afternoon baked goods outside Truffle, which is located close to Hiroo Station on the Hibiya Line.
COMMUNITY / Issues / The Foreign Element
Apr 13, 2025

How to spend the perfect day in Hiroo, Tokyo’s expat enclave

A stroll through Hiroo reveals both the comforts of expat luxury and the quiet intrusions of a changing Tokyo.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, greets supporters after speaking at the "Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here" rally at Gloria Molina Grand Park in Los Angeles on Saturday.
WORLD / Politics / FOCUS
Apr 13, 2025

Bernie Sanders fights apathy on American left

The 83-year-old senator is drawing tens of thousands of people to his "fighting oligarchy" rallies around the country.
Argentine artist Javier Sativa draws the face of the late Pope Francis on a street in front of the entrance of the Buenos Aires Cathedral on Monday. Francis died Monday at 88, a day after making a much hoped-for appearance at St. Peter's Square on Easter Sunday, the Vatican said in a statement.
WORLD
Apr 22, 2025

Pope Francis' death from a stroke sets off global tributes and mourning

World leaders from U.S. President Donald Trump to Russian leader Vladimir Putin paid tribute to the pope's moral and spiritual leadership.
MS&AD forecasts that net profit for its North American operations will reach ¥166 billion in the fiscal year ended in March, a 3.5fold increase from the previous fiscal year.
BUSINESS
Apr 22, 2025

Insurer MS&AD plans to invest $5 billion to double U.S. profits

The Tokyo-based casualty insurer has the highest market share in Asia among global firms, but it’s No. 3 among Japanese peers in North America.
Then-Canadian Industry Minister Allan Rock (left) talks with bat-maker Sam Holman at the Original Maple Bat manufacturing plant in Ottawa in October 2002. By the early 2000s, Holman had clients with nearly every major league baseball team.
BASEBALL
Apr 22, 2025

He revolutionized bats not with a new shape but a new kind of wood

Sam Holman made use of the fact that maple has a tight grain structure and is a harder wood than ash, giving it the potential to be more durable.
Hungarian Nikoletta Bogadi speaks during an interview in Budapest on April 2. Bogadi's life was turned upside down when one of her four children came out as gay and another one as transgender.
WORLD / Politics
Apr 22, 2025

Trump helps inflame anti-LGBTQ+ feeling from Hungary to Romania

The U.S. president's anti-LGBTQ+ push is emboldening similar efforts in Europe.
Katia Beeden, life coach and campaigner for white South Africans who want to apply for U.S. refugee status, speaks at her residence in Fish Hoek, Cape Town, South Africa, on Thursday.
WORLD / Society
Apr 25, 2025

U.S. eyes persecution claims as white South Africans seek resettlement

U.S. President Donald Trump issued a Feb. 7 executive order that called for the U.S. to resettle Afrikaner refugees.
Pallbearers carry the coffin of Pope Francis at the end of the funeral ceremony in St. Peter's Square in the Vatican on Saturday.
WORLD
Apr 27, 2025

Francis laid to rest as 400,000 mourn pope 'with open heart'

The Vatican said 400,000 people packed St. Peter's Square and lined the streets of Rome for the funeral of the first Latin American leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics.
Keiichi Uchida, a member of a team of Japanese doctors who performed a colostomy reversal surgery on the younger of a pair of Vietnamese conjoined twins 30 years ago, shows a postcard he received from his former patient, Nguyen Duc, in February in the city of Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture.
JAPAN
Apr 28, 2025

Japanese pediatrician recalls Vietnamese twin he operated on 30 years ago

The younger of a pair of conjoined twins — believed to have been affected by chemicals used by the U.S. during the Vietnam War — underwent colostomy reversal surgery in Japan.
Japanese junior high school students attending a traditional calligraphy class
JAPAN
Apr 30, 2025

Foreign tourists get taught the Japanese high school experience

Amid a tourism boom fuelled by an extremely weak yen, repeat visitors to Japan are looking for more immersive activities.
U.S. President Donald Trump's 100th day rally in Warren, Michigan, on April 29
BUSINESS
May 4, 2025

Auto workers welcome Trump tariffs, no matter the fate of Wall Street

According to some autoworkers, the tariffs are their best chance of restoring American manufacturing might.
People watch as Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett is seen on a screen speaking at the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders' meeting, in Omaha, Nebraska, on Saturday.
BUSINESS / Companies
May 5, 2025

Warren Buffett successor inherits giant cash pile and many questions

Buffett, the 94-year-old architect and face of Berkshire Hathaway, built the firm from humble beginnings into one of the world’s most valuable enterprises.
While for Aston Martin, it’s all about delivering luxury, their regional president for Asia Gregory Adams' start in the auto industry in Japan was far more humble.
BUSINESS / Companies
May 6, 2025

The drive for luxury: Aston Martin Asia's president explains the desire for more

“No one needs an Aston Martin,” said the company's regional president for Asia — it is more about emotion and less about practicality.
U.S. citizen Chrishan Wright from New York after an interview in Lisbon on April 9
WORLD / Politics
May 6, 2025

Fearing Trump's policies, some Americans start new lives in Europe

Relocation firms said there has been a spike in interest since Trump returned to the White House, with clients expressing concern over policy and social issues.
The Osaka city board of education organized classes in which elementary school students disassembled devices slated for disposal and learned about the recycling of the rare metals contained in them last November.
JAPAN / FOCUS
May 6, 2025

Disposal questions arise as student learning devices need replacing in Japan

The Osaka city board of education organized classes in which elementary school students disassembled devices slated for disposal.
Takeshi Hakamada, founder and CEO of Ispace, says his primary interest in space development is not to abandon Earth, but to protect it.
JAPAN / Science & Health
May 7, 2025

'Big picture thinker': Ispace CEO Hakamada on reaching the moon and dreaming of starships

CEO Takeshi Hakamada envisions a distant future where humans live and work on the moon — just don't ask him to visit.
Ayano Kikuchi began practicing yoga in 2014 to alleviate her chronic back pain, and now shares her knowledge with the Karuizawa community as the manager of W Tree House.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
May 10, 2025

Ayano Kikuchi: ‘People need to take care of themselves holistically’

How a corporate office worker in Tokyo became a yoga studio manager in Karuizawa
A deceased family patriarch and his grandson (Ginjiro Nishimoto, left) switch bodies in “My Edison.”
CULTURE / Film
May 9, 2025

‘My Edison’: Family-made sci-fi comedy is a real charmer

Gaku Kawasaki’s feel-good indie flick with a touch of “Freaky Friday” is a heartfelt reminder that it’s never too late to live out your dreams.
Kotoba Slam Japan runs regional competitions to select a representative for the annual World Poetry Slam Championship, which will take place in Mexico at the end of the month.
CULTURE / Stage
May 9, 2025

Japan’s slam poetry scene is all about raw vulnerability

Slam poetry is a rarity in Japan, but the scene is full of energy and potential that the poets have been bringing to the world slam poetry stage for 10 years now.
Bayer Leverkusen coach Xabi Alonso waves to fans before Sunday's match against Borussia Dortmund in Leverkusen, Germany, on Sunday.
SOCCER
May 12, 2025

Xabi Alonso says announcement about future 'not too far' away

Alonso is widely expected to join Real Madrid, where he won the Champions League and La Liga as a player.
Rory McIlroy plays a shot during the third round of the Truist Championship golf tournament in Philadelphia on Saturday.
MORE SPORTS / Golf
May 13, 2025

McIlroy looks to the future after post-Masters thrill ride

"I honestly could not be in a better place in my life professionally, personally, all of it," Rory McIlroy said.
Yi Liu (right), one of 10 directors involved in Taiwanese television series "Zero Day," works on post-production with colorist Liang Yu Fang in Taipei on March 5.
CULTURE / Film
May 13, 2025

Taiwanese war drama 'wake-up call' to Chinese invasion threat

The on-screen chaos of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is the basis of a new Taiwanese television series called "Zero Day."
Ashikaga Takauji was a 14th-century warrior whose shifting alliances had a profound impact on the turbulent politics of his day. More than 500 years later, imperial loyalists were moved to channel their lingering fury at Takauji's betrayal of Emperor Go-Daigo.
JAPAN / History / The Living Past
May 17, 2025

The emperor and the shogun: A power struggle across the centuries

For imperial loyalists of the late Edo Period, the experiences of Emperor Go-Daigo from five centuries past were an inspiration — and a warning.
A model of the proposed Roshn Stadium inside a Saudi Arabia World Cup bid exhibition in Riyadh on Dec. 11
WORLD
May 14, 2025

Human Rights Watch warns of migrant worker deaths in Saudi Arabia

The NGO, which has studied nearly 50 cases of deaths in Saudi Arabia, said Saudi authorities had "failed to adequately protect workers from preventable deaths."
Farmers load a truck with vegetables in San Ignacio, El Salvador, in May 2020.
WORLD
May 15, 2025

World hunger monitor faces 'large gap' after U.S. aid cuts

USAID cuts have significantly affected humanitarian organizations around the world that were working on life-saving programs.
Starting in the early 1980s, shipping nuclear waste for storage on Orchid Island off the southeastern coast of Taiwan was standard practice.
ASIA PACIFIC / Science & Health
May 16, 2025

Final nuclear plant shutdown leaves Taiwan facing energy crunch

The shutdown takes place just as power demand is projected to rise 13% by the end of the decade, largely driven by data centers and chipmakers.
Unlike Silicon Valley, many Asian societies, due to their penchant for risk aversion, need more government support to boost early-stage deep-tech innovation.
COMMENTARY / World
May 18, 2025

Government capital is not just 'silly money'

Unlike Silicon Valley's predominantly private-sector-driven ecosystem, many Asian societies exhibit greater risk aversion, necessitating proactive government involvement.

Longform

A sinkhole in Yashio, which emerged in January, was triggered by a ruptured, aging sewer pipe. Authorities worry that similar sections of infrastructure across the country are also at risk of corrosion.
That sinking feeling: Japan’s aging sewers are an infrastructure time bomb