Two weeks after going on the lam, a giant tortoise that went missing from a zoo in Okayama Prefecture has been found safe and sound in bushes about 140 meters away from the spot where she made her getaway. The man and his teenage son, ...
An elderly man is arrested after allegedly setting a fire on a shinkansen traveling through Okayama Prefecture.
Hirohiko Sunami's hands emerge from his indigo vat covered in rivulets of fermenting natural dye. The light is dim in this Kojima workshop, but a few stray sunbeams reflect off the millions of bubbles at the vat's surface as Sunami pulls a piece of ...
Heavy snow plastered much of the Sea of Japan coast on Friday as a cold wave hit the archipelago, disrupting transportation and causing power outages. The Meteorological Agency warned the snowfall could continue through Sunday and spread to the Pacific coast. In Kurayoshi, Tottori Prefecture, around ...
The shōtengai (shopping street) in Katsuyama, a rural hamlet located on the banks of the Asahi River in Okayama Prefecture, wouldn't look completely out of place in a Richard Scarry picture book for young children. The doorways to the buildings that line the paved street ...
Three municipalities in Okayama Prefecture have launched a joint project to promote Muslim-friendly tourism in the region, initially targeting travelers from Malaysia with the help of a local travel agency. A memorandum of understanding on the "Okayama-Style Health Tourism Project" was signed Tuesday in Kuala ...
The governors of Okayama and Toyama prefectures both won re-election Sunday after stressing their experience and achievements during the campaigns. Toyama Gov. Takakazu Ishii, 70, defeated Kanji Kometani, 69, an independent backed by the Japanese Communist Party, to win a fourth term. Ishii had to overcome ...
A staff member at the Japanese Embassy in Indonesia has been arrested for allegedly stalking his former girlfriend while on vacation in Japan. The police suspect Hirokazu Suzuki, a 46-year-old first secretary and consul based in Jakarta, entered the woman's apartment building in Okayama Prefecture ...
Visitors to Korakuen Garden in Okayama, one of the nation's top three Japanese gardens, exceeded 800,000 for the first time in 15 years, thanks to a surge in tourism and events to lure young people. Attendance hit 817,260 in fiscal 2015 ended in March. The ...
Education ministers from the Group of Seven agree to work together to address global issues such as refugee problems and widening income inequalities.
For many years now I have been hammering on about Japan's runaway population of deer and wild boar, and about the huge damage they cause — especially to agriculture, silviculture, forestry and endangered wild plants in national parks. In previous articles for The Japan Times, ...
A man convicted of the abduction and false imprisonment of an 11-year-old girl in Okayama Prefecture has been sentenced to 6½ years in prison. Takeshi Fujiwara, 50, a self-described illustrator, seized the elementary school girl at knife-point as she made her way home from school ...
