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Since its introduction in 1985, Sega's UFO Catcher machine has come to define crane games in Japan.
LIFE / Digital
Jun 24, 2025

King of Japan’s arcades, Sega’s UFO Catcher turns 40

Where would Japan’s arcades be without the rows and rows of crane games that Sega’s influential machine helped popularize?
While a trained beekeeper can quickly look at frames in a hive assess their health, AI can do it even faster.
ENVIRONMENT / Wildlife
Jun 24, 2025

How robotic hives and AI are lowering the risk of bee colony collapse

Beewise’s units help cut down on losses by providing a near-constant stream of information on colony health in real time and give beekeepers the ability to respond.
U.S. proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services had urged Japan Exchange Group investors to vote against CEO Hiromi Yamaji’s re-election after an employee was found guilty of insider trading.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jun 24, 2025

Japan bourse CEO reappointed with slimmer vote as rating falls

Investors voted with their feet as the stock’s 18.6% decline over the past year underperformed the broad Topix’s 1.6% rise.
An 11-year-old girl (Yui Suzuki) finds glimpses of hope while coping with her father’s terminal illness in “Renoir.”
CULTURE / Film
Jun 26, 2025

‘Renoir’: An impressionistic portrait of grief and girlhood

Chie Hayakawa’s latest feature about a young girl facing losing a parent to cancer is a shining, soulful study of quiet mourning.
In addition to prepaid transportation integrated circuit (IC) cards, such as Suica and Pasmo, a growing number of railway operators are introducing contactless credit card payments.
BUSINESS
Jun 29, 2025

Railway firms diversify ticket gate access methods

A growing number of railway operators are introducing contactless credit card payments.
It is believed that Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings cannot reactivate the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant's No. 7 reactor until August 2029, when an antiterror measure is scheduled to be in place.
JAPAN
Jun 26, 2025

Tepco changes Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear reactor restart plan

The firm has decided to put the No. 6 reactor back online ahead of the No. 7 unit, which is ready to be restarted.
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Axiom-4 crew of four astronauts lifts off from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A on a mission to the International Space Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Wednesday.
WORLD
Jun 26, 2025

India, Poland and Hungary astronauts launch for first space station mission

The four-member crew was carried aloft on a towering SpaceX launch vehicle consisting of a Crew Dragon capsule perched atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket.
Tokyo Gas is in talks with at least four U.S. liquefied natural gas suppliers to secure a purchase deal, according to sources.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jun 26, 2025

Tokyo gas in talks to seal long-term U.S. LNG purchase deals

Japan’s largest gas distributor is in talks with at least four companies over supply from projects dotting the U.S. Gulf Coast, according to sources.
Pat Gelsinger (left), former Intel CEO and general partner at Playground Global, and Peter Barrett, co-founder and general partner of Playground, in Tokyo on Tuesday
BUSINESS / Companies
Jun 27, 2025

Former Intel CEO Gelsinger has some advice for Japan's Rapidus

He encourages the chipmaker to distinguish itself in some way from TSMC.
Maria Seiren, known for winning the first-ever “Japan’s Got Talent” with her opera voice, has also been training in traditional noh theater, creating productions that combine opera, noh and even pop music.
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 28, 2025

Diva of dualities: Maria Seiren sings opera and noh in both a female and male voice

The first-ever winner of talent show competition “Japan’s Got Talent” is having a stacked year with two noh and opera productions and her 10th anniversary album release.
SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son speaks during the company's annual general meeting in Tokyo on Friday.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jun 27, 2025

Masayoshi Son hints at succession plan while chasing AI ambition

Son said he plans to hold SoftBank’s reins another 10 years, but added he has several candidates for its next chief in mind.
Roger Federer salutes the crowd prior to an exhibition match in Shanghai last October.
TENNIS
Jun 29, 2025

Roger Federer's long-term deals make him a tennis billionaire

Federer, who won 20 Grand Slams between 2003 and 2018, amassed $130.6 million in prize money during a 24-year playing career, but made far more off the court.
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg's controlling interest in the tech titan frees him to have the company invest heavily in artificial intelligence efforts.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jun 30, 2025

Meta spending big on AI talent but will it pay off?

OpenAI boss Sam Altman recently lamented that Meta has offered $100 million bonuses to engineers who jump to Zuckerberg's ship, where hefty salaries await.
The Aichi Prefectural Police took the suspect, Rikuto Ando, into custody on Monday on suspicion of murdering a 19-year-old woman.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Jun 30, 2025

Man arrested on suspicion of fatally stabbing woman in her apartment

The suspect is believed to have fatally stabbed the victim multiple times in the chest with a kitchen knife.
Softbank Corp. is offering $1 billion of dollar bonds in the unit’s first U.S. high-grade deal.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jul 1, 2025

SoftBank unit set to raise $1 billion from its first dollar bond

SoftBank Corp.’s five- and 10-year notes are set to respectively price 0.9 and 1.10 percentage points above Treasuries.
In adapting Masataka Matsuda’s 1998 play “On Summer Sand” to film, director Shinya Tamada decided to age up the central character, played by Joe Odagiri (left), by 10 years to bring out a deeper sense of despondency and grief.
CULTURE / Film
Jul 1, 2025

From stage to screen, a story of quiet connection in the still heat of Nagasaki

Director Shinya Tamada adapts "On Summer Sand" for film by filling the silences between scenes with heartbreak and slow healing.
A worker installs part of a business-class aircraft seat at the factory of Safran Seats GB in Cwmbran, South Wales, Britain, on Feb. 20.
BUSINESS / FOCUS
Jul 3, 2025

Airline seat industry crisis delaying jet deliveries

Certification bottlenecks and growing demand for bespoke features make it hard for the fragmented sector to achieve economies of scale after the pandemic.
The rise of China’s DeepSeek-R1, a low-cost, high-performance open-source AI model, has challenged the belief that only nations with vast computational resources can lead in artificial intelligence, signaling a shift in global AI power dynamics.
COMMENTARY / Japan / Geoeconomic Briefing
Jul 3, 2025

A ‘Sputnik’ moment in the global AI race

Much remains uncertain about DeepSeek’s LLM and its capabilities should not be overestimated — but its release nevertheless has sparked intense discussion.
Satoshi Kirishima (Katsuya Maiguma) goes into hiding after becoming a wanted man for his alleged involvement in bomb attacks in “I Am Kirishima.”
CULTURE / Film
Jul 3, 2025

‘I Am Kirishima’ peels back the mystery of a fugitive radical

Banmei Takahashi's drama gives shape to a man whose face appeared on wanted posters in police stations across Japan — and who stayed hidden for decades.
Tokyo ranked second after New York and ahead of Dubai and Singapore in a ranking of the top global cities for nighttime tourism.
JAPAN / Society
Jul 4, 2025

Tokyo and Kyoto feature among top ‘noctourism’ destinations

Both cities rank highly in an emerging trend of nighttime tourism, according to a recently released report.
The government has already decided to provide more than ¥1.7 trillion to Rapidus.
BUSINESS
Jul 4, 2025

Japan eyes 'golden share' as condition for aid to Rapidus

In addition to granting the government a golden share and some voting rights, companies that receive government aid will also be required to raise funds from the private sector.
Private companies are rushing into risky, profit-driven geoengineering projects to fight climate change without clear regulations, raising fears of dangerous unintended consequences.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 6, 2025

Geoengineering’s risks need to be studied more

With for-profit organizations already releasing chemicals into the oceans, it’s important for scientists with no financial stake in this industry to collect data.
Maria Tyabut shows off the food stored in her new Chinese-made refrigerator while her husband Sergei Duzhikov holds their 8-month-old daughter, Yekaterina, at their apartment in the Moscow suburb of Mytishchi on June 17.
BUSINESS / Markets
Jul 7, 2025

Sanctions? No big deal, say middle-class Russian couple

They drive a Chinese car, vacation in Venezuela and buy "Camembert" cheese made in Russia.
The Magic Seas cargo ship docked at a port in Ampelakia, Salamis Island, Greece in August 2022
WORLD
Jul 8, 2025

Crew wounded and missing off Yemen as Houthis strike Greek bulk carrier

The latest attacks highlight a growing operational risk to commercial operators whose vessels have called at Israeli ports.
Kazuki Hara, the head of Japan’s Rating and Investment Information's sovereigns and international issuers department, says that confidence in the dollar as a key reserve currency has not been shaken.
BUSINESS / Economy
Jul 8, 2025

Japanese agency's affirmation of top U.S. credit rating helps Hong Kong funds

As long as Rating and Investment Information maintains its top rating for the U.S., Hong Kong funds are allowed to invest over 10% of their assets in Treasurys.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner before a practice session at the Austrian Grand Prix on June 27
MORE SPORTS / Auto Racing
Jul 10, 2025

For Christian Horner, a brutal end to a highly successful reign at Red Bull

With this season's car not competitive with rival McLaren, a discontented Verstappen and the constant hemorrhaging of pivotal backroom talent, Horner's tenure ended brutally.
A power supply agreement allowing Tokyo Electric Power and Chubu Electric Power to procure energy from leading generator Jera is set to expire at the end of March.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jul 10, 2025

Power trading in Japan set to grow as Jera purchase deal expires

The shake-up is already driving hedging activity in the futures market, as traders position for potential changes in supply and demand.
Meta hired Ruoming Pang, who ran Apple’s AI models team, with a pay package in the hundreds of millions over a several-year period, according to sources.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jul 10, 2025

Meta poached Apple’s Pang with pay package of over $200 million

Apple didn’t try to match Meta's offer to engineer Ruoming Pang as it far exceeded pay at the company for leaders other than CEO Tim Cook.
Grok, a chatbot made by xAI, on Tuesday made antisemitic comments on billionaire owner Elon Musk's social media platform, X.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jul 10, 2025

Europe’s clash with Musk’s xAI escalates after Grok’s rants

The chatbot on Tuesday made antisemitic comments on social media platform X.
A Uniqlo store in Shanghai. Fast Retailing, Uniqlo's owner, reported weak sales in China that weighted on its third-quarter earnings, which missed estimates.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jul 10, 2025

Uniqlo owner misses earnings estimates on weak China sales

Fast Retailing's operating profit in the three months ended May was ¥146.7 billion, which trails a ¥150 billion average of analyst estimates.

Longform

Members of the nonprofit group Japan Youth Memorial Association search for the remains of dead soldiers in a cave in Okinawa Prefecture in February.
The long search for Japan’s lost soldiers