Tag - kyoto

 
 

KYOTO

Japan's ancient capital is now home to 16 two-Michelin-starred restaurants, while nearby Osaka claims 11.
LIFE / Food & Drink
Mar 28, 2025
Michelin awards stars to 172 restaurants in Kyoto and Osaka
Ten restaurants join the two-starred rank, while Milpa earns Japan’s first-ever star for Mexican cuisine.
Tourists walk past shops and restaurants up the street leading to Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto. Kyoto plans to raise its maximum accommodation tax to combat overtourism.
JAPAN
Mar 26, 2025
Kyoto to raise maximum hotel tax to ¥10,000
The amount will be the highest among areas using a flat-rate tax system across the country, according to the internal affairs ministry.
AMKK’s latest exhibition, “X-Ray Flowers,” is the culmination of seven years of work aided by CT technologists, who help with the highly specialized imaging techniques.
CULTURE / Art
Mar 21, 2025
Avant-garde botanists AMKK illuminate the inner worlds of flowers
The punk florists' latest exhibition immerses visitors in darkness, bathed only in the glow of X-rays and CT scans of plants and flowers.
The Kyoto Family Court dismissed a petition a married person filed to have their gender designation changed in the family register.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Mar 20, 2025
Kyoto court rejects married person's petition for gender-designation change
The petitioner's side immediately appealed the ruling.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba replies to a question from Nippon Ishin no Kai co-leader Seiji Maehara at a Lower House Budget Committee session in Tokyo on Feb. 17.
JAPAN / Politics / FOCUS
Feb 23, 2025
Party heads' love of trains could keep budget talks from derailing
The leaders of Nippon Ishin no Kai and Komeito both share Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's passion for locomotives.
After starting out as a games journalist, John Davis found opportunities in marketing and consulting that led him to work in the Japanese gaming industry.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Feb 8, 2025
John Davis: ‘At its core, indie is about creative freedom’
The co-founder of BitSummit, Japan’s biggest indie gaming showcase, shares how he pivoted from journalism to gaming after moving here.
Shinji Aoba is taken to the Kyoto Prefectural Police's Fushimi Police Station in May 2020. His death penalty has been finalized after he dropped an appeal.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Jan 28, 2025
KyoAni arson suspect's death penalty finalized after appeal dropped
An attack by Aoba in July 2019 at a studio run by the animation powerhouse caused the deaths of 36 people and injured 32 others.
Rodgers (right) was a longtime managing editor of Kyoto Journal and, alongside colleagues like Susan Pavloska (left) and John Einarsen (center), helped make it one of Japan’s leading English-language publications.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jan 27, 2025
Ken Rodgers, a fixture of the Kyoto literary scene, dies at 72
Hailing from Australia, Rodgers made a home and community for himself in Japan’s ancient capital across more than four decades.
Aside from purely aesthetics, the flowers in Mika Ninagawa’s art carry deep cultural and spiritual meaning.
CULTURE / Art
Jan 25, 2025
Mika Ninagawa transforms the Kyocera Museum into a vibrant dreamworld
The artist’s most expansive exhibition in the Kansai region to date is an experience that straddles the boundaries of photography, film and installation art.
Tourists visit shops near Kyoto's Fushimi Inari Shrine on Jan. 13. The nation's growing tourism sector, set to hit 40 million visitors in 2025, boosts the economy but is straining the nation's infrastructure.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 23, 2025
Japan has '$100 billion' reasons to welcome more visitors
Japan's growing tourism, set to hit 40 million visitors in 2025, boosts the economy but strains infrastructure, highlighting a need for smarter policies to manage overtourism.
A 17-year-old student from Kanagawa Prefecture has been arrested for allegedly creating a program that purported to verify the validity of credit cards and using it to illegally obtain their details.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Jan 22, 2025
Kanagawa high school student arrested for credit card data theft
The 17-year-old male student is accused of creating a program that purported to verify the validity of credit cards and using it to illegally obtain their details.
Tourists visit Fushimi Inari Shrine in the city of Kyoto on Monday.
JAPAN / Society
Jan 15, 2025
Kyoto to raise accommodation tax to a maximum ¥10,000 per night
The collected money under the new plan would be used to improve infrastructure in the city, such as increasing public transportation.
Scheduled to welcome its first guests in early 2025, the Waldorf Astoria Osaka is just one of many luxury hotel openings Japan has seen in recent months.
LIFE / Travel
Jan 4, 2025
Japan’s ‘quiet revolution’ of luxury travel nears fruition
“The Japanese luxury travel scene has undergone quite the metamorphosis over the past decade,” says one industry insider.
Tonoike Sake Brewery has been gearing their brewery toward tourism since the late 1980s, attempting to lure tourists to the town of Mashiko.
LIFE / Travel
Jan 3, 2025
Traveling for sake's sake: The emergence of brewery tourism in Japan
While sake consumption has declined in Japan, breweries across the nation are taking advantage of a rise in overseas interest to promote themselves as tourist destinations.
Death row inmate Chisako Kakehi, who was convicted of murdering three elderly men between 2012 and 2013 with the intent of inheriting their assets, has died, local media reported Thursday.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Dec 26, 2024
Chisako Kakehi, sentenced to death for cyanide murders, dies in custody
The 78-year-old death row inmate was convicted of murdering three men — her husband and two common-law spouses — to inherit their assets.
Ginzan Onsen hot springs in Obanazawa, Yamagata Prefecture
JAPAN / Society
Dec 23, 2024
Picturesque Japan hot spring town limits day trippers
Authorities in Ginzan Onsen have become fed up with a rise in road problems, quarrels and other nuisances.
The head priest of Kiyomizu Temple writes the kanji "kin," which was chosen by the public as the character that best represents 2024, on Thursday in Kyoto.
JAPAN
Dec 12, 2024
'Kin' selected as the kanji of 2024 after strong year for Japanese athletes
The choice also reflected the Liberal Democratic Party’s slush-fund scandal and the spate of robberies involving shady part-time jobs.
A building in the city of Osaka housing the Osaka High Court
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Nov 25, 2024
Osaka court upholds 18-year sentence for murder of ALS patient
Yoshikazu Okubo killed the patient at the request of the victim in 2019, causing her death by acute drug poisoning.
Gary Perlman has developed a kabuki adaptation of “Madame Butterfly” that he hopes will be performed 100 years from now.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Nov 7, 2024
Gary Perlman: ‘Kabuki is pure entertainment … the characters and themes are universal’
In adapting "Madame Butterfly" for kabuki, the man behind the production hopes to reframe the tale with stronger female characters.
The Kyoto Prefectural Police headquarters in the city of Kyoto. A 23-year-old university student from Kyoto sought help from police days before his alleged involvement in an attempted burglary in western Tokyo last month.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Nov 6, 2024
Tokyo burglary suspect sought police help days before attempted heist
University student Masaki Saen told police that he had received threats after applying for a “dark” part-time job, or “yami baito.”

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