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Defense Minister Gen Nakatani delivers a speech at the 10th anniversary ceremony of the Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Agency on Wednesday at the Defense Ministry.
JAPAN
Oct 2, 2025

10 years on, Japan's defense equipment agency playing greater role

While boosting its defense cooperation with like-minded countries, Japan has a lot to do to enhance defense equipment production amid an increasingly severe security environment.
What’s worse, waking up to find a bear going through your trash or getting an earful from your neighbor on garbage separation?
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Oct 3, 2025

Don’t poke the bear: Learn how to sort your garbage the right way

Bears are increasingly wandering into towns and cities looking for food. Make sure you don’t tempt them with your leftovers.
The team at Ryokukou Garden consists primarily of a single family, including Toshiki Tanisaki (second from right), who led the company's efforts at the Osaka Expo, Chikako Tanisaki (fifth from right), who performs daily maintanence at the expo, and Takeshi Tanisaki (fourth from right), who added a nursery to the family farm more than 50 years ago.
LIFE / Lifestyle
Oct 4, 2025

How a family-run landscaper turned the Osaka Expo green

Run by three generations of the same family, Ryokukou Garden is behind the greenery for five major pavilions at the Osaka event.
An aerial view shows the contrast between the green zone and the desert landscape of the Kubuqi Desert, in Ordos, in China's northern Inner Mongolia region.
ASIA PACIFIC
Oct 3, 2025

China's 'Great Green Wall' brings hope but also hardship

While the project has been credited with "greening" over 90 million hectares, it risks erasing the traditional nomadic practices of ethnic Mongolians.
Kuwait, despite its vast oil wealth, is facing worsening power outages due to political gridlock, underinvestment and climate pressures — highlighting the unsustainability of fossil fuel dependence in a warming world.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 3, 2025

Why the most oil-rich country can’t keep the lights on

Electricity was cut to 30 regions in April as temperatures soared and households cranked up the air conditioning.
Yoshihiko Noda, leader of the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, speaks to reporters in Tokyo on July 20.
JAPAN / Politics
Oct 3, 2025

CDP doesn’t rule out cooperation with LDP

Noda’s comments come as the ruling Liberal Democratic Party prepares to elect a new leader, who will need opposition support in order to govern.
Jun Sawada (left) and David Goeckeler during a meeting of the Japan-U.S. and U.S.-Japan Business Councils in Tokyo on Friday.
BUSINESS
Oct 3, 2025

Japan and U.S. business leaders call for transparency in trade and investment

The statement call comes as U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff policy is adding to global economic uncertainties.
Avant-garde chef Grant Achatz and his team from Alinea are in Tokyo for a three-week residency.
LIFE / Food & Drink
Oct 4, 2025

Eat your balloons: The culinary theater of Grant Achatz comes to Tokyo

The man behind Chicago’s iconic Alinea restaurant shares insights on modernist cuisine and his Tokyo pop-up.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaks during the Defense Development 2025 military exhibition event ahead of the 80th founding anniversary of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, in Pyongyang in this picture released Sunday.
ASIA PACIFIC
Oct 5, 2025

North Korea says 'special assets' deployed against South

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un claimed the U.S.-South Korea "nuclear alliance" is "conducting various kinds of exercises to execute dangerous scenarios."
Fire engulfs Nepal's main administrative building in Kathmandu on Sept. 9, following a police crackdown on protests over government corruption and social media restrictions. This violent unrest is part of a larger pattern of instability in South Asia that threatens regional security and India’s strategic interests.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 5, 2025

India’s reckoning with its dangerous neighborhood

All these stories point to a larger worrying trend: Democracy in India’s neighborhood is in retreat.
Indian Army chief Upendra Dwivedi waves as he arrives to attend the ceremonial reception of Defense Minister Gen Nakatani in New Delhi in May.
ASIA PACIFIC
Oct 6, 2025

‘We have drawn lessons,’ Indian Army chief says of brief clash with Pakistan

India and Pakistan’s brief war earlier this year has offered numerous lessons on the evolving nature of warfare, according to Indian Army Chief of Staff Gen. Upendra Dwivedi.
Government Pension Investment Fund President Kazuto Uchida has said that an investment approach targeting environmental and social goals ultimately leads to economic and capital markets growth.
BUSINESS / Companies
Oct 6, 2025

World’s biggest pension fund puts impact investing on the agenda

In Japan, impact investing strategies are likely to center around climate, health care, wellbeing and inclusivity.
UEFA said its Executive Committee had reluctantly approved the move to allow LaLiga and Serie A games to be played abroad, and reiterated that it remains opposed in principle to such matches.
SOCCER
Oct 7, 2025

UEFA clears Milan and Barcelona to play domestic league matches abroad

A LaLiga fixture between Barcelona and Villarreal will be staged in Miami in December, while AC Milan will meet Como in Perth in February.
Tiger Woods participates in a ribbon-cutting event in Philadelphia on Sept. 8. The 49-year-old golfer last competed at the British Open in July 2024.
MORE SPORTS / Golf
Oct 7, 2025

Woods to make TGL Season 2 debut in mid-January

Woods will lead Jupiter Links Golf Club in a Jan. 13 match against Season 1 runner-up New York Golf Club.
Takumi Yamaguchi (right), head of startup AirKamuy, and a colleague retrieve a drone made of cardboard after a test flight in a field near Nagoya.
JAPAN / Society
Oct 7, 2025

Startups lead charge as Japan warms to defense and dual-use technologies

Opinion polls show public support growing for a stronger defense, and the new leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Sanae Takaichi, has called for more military spending.
Etsuro Honda, who advises the ruling party's head Sanae Takaichi on economic policies, says a rate hike by the Bank of Japan this month would be difficult.
BUSINESS / Economy
Oct 7, 2025

Takaichi adviser and Abenomics architect says October too soon for BOJ rate hike

Remarks by Etsuro Honda, who advises the new ruling-party leader on economic policies, suggest the BOJ may wait, despite earlier speculation of an October move.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (left) and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (right) attend a European Union leaders' summit in Brussels in June 2024.
WORLD / Politics
Oct 7, 2025

Ukraine's obstacles to EU membership extend beyond Hungarian resistance

Senior European Union officials who recently visited Ukraine have delivered a stern message that Kyiv still has a lot more to do.
Only a country with absolute indispensability in critical goods — like China — can withstand Donald Trump and America’s tariff onslaught.
COMMENTARY / Japan / Geoeconomic Briefing
Oct 7, 2025

Trump weaponizes American trade policy

The U.S. may have an indispensable domestic market for some trading partners, but China has indispensable goods and America cannot easily substitute for them.
Tokyo stocks staged a powerful rally on Monday. On Tuesday, they rallied again, then retreated.
BUSINESS / Markets
Oct 7, 2025

‘Takaichi trade’ stalls as political reality calls for wait-and-see approach

Tokyo stocks zoomed to a new record and then quickly retreated.
The Mie Prefectural Government plans to create an ordinance to penalize customer harassment.
JAPAN / Society
Oct 8, 2025

Mie eyes Japan's first penalty against customer abuse

The ordinance would define customer abuse as excessive nuisances that go beyond social norms and harm employees' working environment.
A bear seen in security camera footage taken Tuesday inside a supermarket in Numata, Gunma Prefecture
JAPAN
Oct 8, 2025

Bear injures two in Japan supermarket; man killed in separate attack

More and more wild bears have been spotted in Japan in recent years, even in residential areas, due to factors including a declining human population and climate change.
Susumu Kitagawa speaks to reporters at Kyoto University on Wednesday after receiving the news that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry the same day.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Oct 9, 2025

Chemistry Nobel winner Kitagawa says downtime helped him think up new material

Waiting on a supercomputer to analyze the structure of a new crystal gave him time to come up with the idea for a kind of material that could, for example, capture carbon dioxide.

Longform

Growing families are being priced out of Tokyo’s condo market, forced to choose between downtown convenience and suburban space.
Is living in central Tokyo still affordable?