Get your mind off the heat with new flavors of convenience store chūhai
As summer sets in, convenience stores are filling their shelves with cans of limited-edition and refreshing chūhai cocktail flavors, though not all of them are winners...
Stay clear away from Asahi's Clear Latte
Picture this: the milky, coffee flavor of a latte, transformed into what looks like a bottle of water. That's the driving idea behind Asahi's Clear Latte.
Japan spends scant energy on renewables
Dec. 11, 2017, marked the 20th anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty signed by 84 countries who committed to limit the release of greenhouse gases, which are considered the cause of global warming. Japan, of course, was one of the signatories, and a ...
Shut in by the past yet still unable to face the future
Mom, dad, two kids, nice house, nice suburb, good income — you just know this story is about to go smash. There's something about the 1970s and '80s that inspires nostalgia. They were to Japan what the 1950s were to the West — bland but ...
Japan's plan to export arms is lacking ammo
When U.S. President Donald Trump was here last month, he said Japan should be buying more military hardware from America, and seemed to believe it would. Trump's penchant for talking off-the-cuff is well-known, but Japan's reluctance to address the matter forthrightly may have more ...
Organ donations and transplants still face obstacles in Japan
It has been 20 years since the government legalized organ transplants from brain-dead donors, and seven years since the law was revised to allow children to donate organs and families to approve organ donations of loved ones unilaterally. But while the transplant rate in Japan ...
Identifying the 'liberal' in Japanese politics
The current group of conservative public figures in the United States wants to return to an age when certain middle-class values were ascendant, without acknowledging that many of those values were realized because President Franklin Roosevelt implemented progressive social policies and trade unions had ...
Magazines hold their own against TV's 'iron chefs'
Prior to Japan's switch-over to full digital TV broadcasting in 2011, a number of industry insiders were already voicing concerns about how the new technology would affect their bottom line. With expanded bandwidth and additional channels, what — aside from reruns of old programs ...
No one else wants Okinawa's U.S. bases
On Aug. 15, the 72nd anniversary of the Japanese surrender, there was a symposium in Tokyo about changing the Constitution. One of the panelists, documentarian Tatsuya Mori, pointed out that earlier that day Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had given remarks at an annual memorial ...
Japan suffers from the grand illusion of prosperity
There are so many reasons to hate your job, if you're lucky enough to have one. The top four, according to Spa! magazine, are: stagnant salaries; a sense of being underappreciated and underevaluated; an overriding, unfocused anxiety; and a lost sense of purpose. Sixteen additional ...
New, fuel-efficient MSDF destroyer Asahi launched in Nagasaki
The Maritime Self-Defense Force's newest destroyer was christened the Asahi and launched Wednesday at a shipyard in Nagasaki. The new destroyer, which is to go into service in March 2018, is the first MSDF ship that uses a combined gas turbine engine and electric propulsion ...
Making a toast to retiring beer girl Misato
The intai jiai (retirement game) is a significant event in Japanese pro baseball for long-time star players about to hang up their spikes and call it a career. It usually occurs at the end of a season after it has been announced the player ...
