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October 12, 2025
 

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CITIES

Tokyo was ranked the world's best large city for the second year in a row in the Conde Nast Traveler's 2025 Readers' Choice Awards.
JAPAN
Oct 9, 2025
Tokyo named world’s best big city for second straight year
Recognition from readers of luxury travel and lifestyle magazine Conde Nast Traveler comes after Japan welcomed a record 36.8 million foreign visitors in 2024.
Nippon Ishin leader Hirofumi Yoshimura speaks to reporters at party headquarters in Osaka on Tuesday.
JAPAN / Politics
Sep 30, 2025
Nippon Ishin draws up outline for secondary capital plan
The team defined the secondary capital as an economic center comparable to the Tokyo area that can function as the capital in the event that Tokyo becomes unable to do so.
Bipinkumar Padaya (center) sits with his wife and son at home in Dharavi, a slum settlement in Mumbai.
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Sep 27, 2025
In India's Mumbai, the largest slum in Asia is for sale
The plan to redevelop Dharavi, led by Mumbai authorities and billionaire tycoon Gautam Adani, reflects modern India — excessive, ambitious, and brutal.
One of Singapore Design’s Week’s lighter exhibitions is the “Unnatural History Museum of Singapore,” where levity and engineering combat anxieties over ecological crises.
LIFE / Style & Design
Sep 20, 2025
‘Pluriversal’ Singapore Design Week brings solution-oriented works
Running through Sept. 21, the design fair in the island city-state grapples with issues especially common in Japan.
Juan Ansotegui walks on his property in Villalibado, a hamlet in the Odra-Pisuerga comarca of Burgos, Castile, Spain.
WORLD / Society
Sep 12, 2025
Spain wants to save rural areas — and it's finding creative ways to do it
Public and private actors are experimenting with ways to reverse demographic decline and save the centuries-old histories, traditions and cultures of Spain's rural communities.
Osaka stayed in first place thanks to high scores in the economy and for tourist attractions.
JAPAN
Sep 3, 2025
Osaka rated most powerful Japanese city outside Tokyo for fifth year
Osaka stayed in first thanks to high scores in the economy and for tourist attractions, with the city hosting the World Expo.
Suyun Ham, an engineering professor at UTA, reviews data from a recent inspection with two other researchers. Ham likens his technology to a “portable MRI,” which can detect cracks and other hidden dangers in a bridge.
ENVIRONMENT
Aug 26, 2025
Are bridges near you safe? This MRI-like scan may prevent disaster
An engineering professor from the University of Texas at Arlington is experimenting with a novel approach to inspecting bridges for heat damage.
The area around Shibuya Station in Tokyo. After the end of World War II, population concentration in the capital accelerated while other parts of Japan continue to see population declines.
JAPAN / FOCUS
Aug 18, 2025
80 years on: Tokyo prospers while local revitalization still insufficient
Experts stress the importance of setting up a system in which industrial resources are circulated locally in order to create a sustainable society.
One of Swiss startup Enerdrape’s energy-harvesting panels is seen in this screenshot taken from video posted to the firm's YouTube account.
ENVIRONMENT / Energy
Aug 17, 2025
A startup is tapping underground parking garages for clean energy
Globally, heating accounts for nearly half of all energy consumption. That could make decarbonizing it a half-trillion-dollar market.
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, promises a rent freeze that’s easy to deliver but it remains to be seen if it will solve the city’s deeper housing problems.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 28, 2025
Freezing rent is easy. Making NYC housing affordable isn’t.
Zohran Mamdani’s campaign pledge would be simple to put into effect but wouldn’t do much to solve the underlying problem.
London’s worsening disorder — from soaring petty crime to reckless delivery riders and rising drug use — reflects a decades-old pattern of authorities and citizens normalizing lawlessness.
COMMENTARY
Jul 23, 2025
What turning a blind eye to deviant behavior is doing to London
The city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, needs to take growing disorder on the streets more seriously.
The classic red brick arches of Tokyo’s first “gādo-shita,” built in 1910, are what most Japanese people think of when they think about commercial spaces under elevated railways.
LIFE / Style & Design / Longform
Jun 16, 2025
Revitalizing the space under Tokyo’s train tracks
Rail underpasses in big cities are being transformed into vibrant spaces for artisans, foodies and travelers — without erasing their past.
Mateusz Urbanowicz’s recent book “Imaginary Storefronts” collects his illustrations of the mundane Japanese street scenes that have given him immense inspiration.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
May 31, 2025
Mateusz Urbanowicz: ‘Miyazaki inspired me to put the audience first’
The Polish artist and animator talks about how he came to Japan and the inspiration he draws from ordinary streets and storefronts.
Construction equipment sits idle in a park near Shiba Toshogu shrine in Tokyo's Minato Ward. While Japan has a history of treating its trees with reverence, green coverage is said to be lacking in most of the major cities.
ENVIRONMENT / Earth science / Longform
May 26, 2025
Do Japan's trees no longer occupy the sacred space they used to?
Trees have long occupied a sacred place in Japanese culture. In the fast pace of the 21st century, however, they're increasingly losing out to progress.
A person walks with a dog through the "micro-forest" park created by the Athens City Council near Alepotrypa Park in downtown Athens, Greece, on March 31.
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability
Apr 22, 2025
Tentative tree planting 'decades overdue' in sweltering Athens
Planting vegetation is crucial to help cities beat the heat, scientists say, as climate change stokes hotter and more intense heatwaves.
A vandalized sign indicating an ultralow emission zone in west London.
ENVIRONMENT
Apr 10, 2025
Clean streets versus business woes: Pollution charge divides Londoners
The plan in London requires motorists to switch to low-emission vehicles or face a daily charge.
Pedestrians commute through Shibuya Station in central Tokyo, an area that is almost never devoid of people.
JAPAN / Society / Longform
Mar 3, 2025
As the rest of Japan shrinks, Tokyo grows
Women and young people are leading a migratory wave that the government is struggling to halt.
Tsuyoshi Mizukoshi, owner of a pub in Nishiogi’s commercial area, is a community organizer who is rallying local residents against the road development plan.
COMMUNITY / Issues
Mar 3, 2025
Redevelopment and resistance in historic Nishiogikubo
Stakeholders in Suginami Ward have been fighting against a road development plan for some years — but economic forces are already transforming the neighborhood.
A tourist gazes out over the sea from the top of a dune near Chabahar in Iran's southern Sistan-Baluchistan province in 2018. Faced with myriad problems including gridlocked traffic and a sinking earth surface in its current capital, Iran is considering a drastic solution: moving it to an altogether different location in Makran on the Gulf of Oman.
WORLD
Feb 18, 2025
Iran mulls moving capital to 'lost paradise' on southern coast
Tehran is experiencing traffic snarls, water shortages, resource mismanagement, extreme air pollution and subsidence.
Tokyo saw a net population inflow of 79,285 in 2024, up 11,000 from the previous year and returning to prepandemic levels.
JAPAN
Jan 31, 2025
Tokyo area's net population inflow accelerates in 2024
The government aims to reverse the trend in fiscal 2027 to address the issue of overconcentration in the Tokyo area.
University of Tokyo lands its highest spot ever in global higher education ranking
The University of Tokyo in Tokyo's Bunkyo Ward
‘Save the Ring’ calls intensify as Osaka Expo’s end nears
Visitors lounge on the grassy hill on the top of the Grand Ring during the 2025 Osaka Expo in the city of Osaka in May.
Takaichi's PM bid faces further headwinds with coalition split
LDP leader Sanae Takaichi and Komeito leader Tetsuo Saito attend a party leaders' meeting on Friday in Tokyo.
After ruling bloc breakup, CDP and Komeito eye unified PM candidate
Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan leader Yoshihiko Noda speaks to reporters at the Diet in Tokyo on Friday.
Tokyo named world’s best big city for second straight year
Tokyo was ranked the world's best large city for the second year in a row in the Conde Nast Traveler's 2025 Readers' Choice Awards.
Ghost of Yotei’s bloodstained fun sidesteps Ainu identity
Ghost of Yotei, the follow-up to 2020's smash hit Ghost of Tsushima, is a violent, vengeful and engaging romp through 17th-century Hokkaido that fails to stick the landing on its most sensitive cultural material.
‘Takaichi trade’ starts unwinding as political calculus upended by Komeito exit
Less than a week ago, Sanae Takaichi seemed set to become Japan's first female prime minister.
‘Save the Ring’ calls intensify as Osaka Expo’s end nears
Visitors lounge on the grassy hill on the top of the Grand Ring during the 2025 Osaka Expo in the city of Osaka in May.
A Japanese comedian walks into an Aussie bar … and stays there
Takashi “Waka” Wakasugi stopped by the Tokyo Comedy Bar in Shibuya Ward last month following his stint at Edinburgh Festival Fringe performing his show “Comedy Samurai.”
Chemistry Nobel winner Kitagawa says downtime helped him think up new material
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.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

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?
By Alex K.T. Martin

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