May 08, 2013
Japanese overwhelmingly prefer South Korea to China, but South Koreans favor China by an almost equally wide margin over Japan, according to a joint poll by private Japanese and South Korean organizations.
May 08, 2013
FUKUSHIMA—Two parking lots in the city of Fukushima were declared off-limits to the public on May 7 after high concentrations of radioactive cesium were detected in the exposed soil there.
May 08, 2013
Tokyo, an exotic destination by any yardstick, is seeking to tap into the growing popularity of luxury cruises: and therein lies a problem.
May 08, 2013
RIO DE JANEIRO--Brazilian and Japanese researchers say a granite formation deep off the coast of Brazil could be a piece of an original continent that existed before the Americas, Africa, Europe and other major land masses drifted apart.
May 07, 2013
Aspiring bureaucrats will in the future be required to prove their proficiency in English before being considered for a ministry job.
May 07, 2013
The National Police Agency is stepping up its efforts to rehabilitate former yakuza members by encouraging more private companies to hire them under government incentive programs.
May 07, 2013
Sitting near the window or in between other passengers on long flights can be hazardous to your health, especially if you are a Japanese woman, according to a medical study.
May 06, 2013
KYOTO--Best-selling author Haruki Murakami gave a rare public interview here May 6 to talk mainly about his new novel and his relationship with a late friend, psychologist Hayao Kawai.
May 06, 2013
Criminal organizations are engaging in fraudulent practices amid a labor shortage and lax background checks by employers to pocket some of the trillions of yen from publicly funded cleanup work in nuclear disaster-stricken Fukushima Prefecture.
May 05, 2013
SASEBO, Nagasaki Prefecture--An aquarium here is working with universities to develop the world’s first device that could unlock the secrets behind dolphins’ intelligence and allow them to communicate with humans.
May 05, 2013
As the nation celebrated the national Children's Day holiday on May 5, the latest statistics on children continue to reflect their ominous decline in numbers, with the only bright spots being Tokyo and Okinawa.
May 05, 2013
He was just a teenager at the time. Furious at the way his stepfather scolded a bunch of rowdy friends, he lashed out with a punch that proved to be fatal. Held to account for his stepfather's death, all the youth thought at the time was "how unfortunate I am."
May 05, 2013
For 42 years, the man with a gentle smile had been selling takoyaki (fried octopus dumpling) from his red stall set up on the sidewalks near Shinjuku Station.
May 05, 2013
NASA is accepting entries for an English-language haiku contest that will put the three best poems aboard a space probe that will orbit Mars.
May 04, 2013
ATLANTA--An Algerian man pleaded not guilty May 3 to helping develop and market a computer program that drained millions of dollars from bank accounts around the world.
May 04, 2013
Hundreds of Japanese, young and old, gathered in downtown Tokyo in a peaceful protest on May 3 against calls by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to amend the country's pacifist constitution and give the government more power to abridge civil liberties.
May 04, 2013
Many carp are swimming at the banks of the Edogawa river that borders Tokyo. You just have to look upward to find them.
May 04, 2013
UNITED NATIONS--Killer robots that can attack targets without any human input “should not have the power of life and death over human beings,” a new draft U.N. report says.
May 03, 2013
Tokyo Governor Naoki Inose said he will try to learn from the recent uproar caused when he criticized rival cities hoping to host the 2020 Summer Olympics.
May 03, 2013
A Japan-based group of scientists has successfully reproduced the pathology of a severe form of epilepsy by using induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells derived from a patient's skin, bringing the global medical community a step closer to understanding the neurological condition and how to treat it.