According to a Newsweek Japan feature, stress and lack of privacy is taking its toll on victims of the March 11 quake and tsunami living in evacuee shelters in Japan’s Tohoku region. As the media and politicians are spouting slogans like, “Tohoku people are strong,” “We are all one,” “You will never walk alone,” “One […]
Telecom company Softbank Corp.’s president Masayoshi Son will shoulder most of the 80 billion yen ($975 million) cost of building 10 large-scale solar power plants. The governors of 19 of Japan’s 47 prefectures have signed on to take part in the project. Shizuoka governor Heita Kawakatsu said: “The (recently shut down) Hamaoka nuclear power plant […]
Japan posted its trade deficit Wednesday and the numbers are bleak. Following the March 11 quake and tsunami that caused a disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, large Japanese manufactures like Sony and Toyota have suspended production. Japanese exports in April fell 12.5 percent from a year earlier. Exports declined to 5.16 trillion […]
While surfing the Web the other day researching Japanese demographics, I found this government Web page. The page says, “To revive the title ‘Japan — The safest country in the world’, Immigration Bureau aims to reduce the number of illegal stay foreigner to the half the number of 2004 until 2008 and in order to […]
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and South Korean President Lee Myung Bak are meeting in Japan with Prime Minister Naoto Kan for a two-day summit. Kan’s goal in the summit is to persuade China and South Korea to lift import restrictions on Japanese food products, which have been in effect since the ongoing crisis at the […]
Echoing my post from Tuesday, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Wednesday Japan would continue using nuclear energy while reviewing the industry and pursuing more renewable sources of energy. Kan told a news conference, “I believe that the manner in which the country’s nuclear power has been administrated over the years must be fundamentally reviewed.” […]
Greenpeace Japan members Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, known as the Tokyo Two, have been found guilty of stealing 23 kilograms of whale meat (worth 59,000 yen, or $725) from a depot in April 2008. They were sentenced to a suspended one-year prison term Tuesday. They stole the meat in order to bring publicity to […]
No. But it should definitely reconsider how it uses it. The big news this past week was that Chubu Electric Power Co. shut down the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka following a request by Prime Minister Naoto Kan. The Hamaoka plant was considered dangerous because of its age and the likelihood of a major […]
Japan’s largest crisis is neither the ongoing disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant nor the recovery from the March 11 earthquake/tsunami. The Japanese will eventually overcome and move on from both these problems. The crisis Japan is facing is one of demographics. Japanese women are obsessed with fashion. I commented last week that […]
Miyu Uehara, a Japanese celebrity known locally as a “tarento” (talent), hanged herself early Thursday morning. (Some news sources are mistakenly reporting her name as Miyui or Miyuki.) She had just turned 24 on May 2. Uehara was a model who had been “discovered” when she was 18 working at a hostess club (a pricey […]
Rather than give my take on something in the headlines today, I will take a moment to explain an apparent contradiction that baffles many visitors to Japan. One paradox in modern Japan that often baffles foreigners is how a country that is decidedly xenophobic so quickly embraces fashion and pop culture from outside. A first-time […]
After raising 5 million won (about $4,560) it raised for victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that ravaged the Tohoku region of Japan, the South Korean city of Yangju is instead using the money for a scholarship after the Japanese government approved a textbook claiming the Liancourt Rocks are Japanese territory rather than […]
Former National Security Adviser James Johns has questioned the feasibility of the plan for relocating a U.S. Marine base within Okinawa Prefecture. Secretary General of the People’s New Party Mikio Shimoji told reporters in Washington on Friday that Johns, an Obama aide until last November, said the best option is integrating Futenma Air Station with […]
A Japanese woman who was found guilty of smuggling methamphetamine into Malaysia is unlikely to escape the death penalty, her lawyer said Friday. Mariko Takeuchi, 36, was arrested Oct. 31, 2009, for attempting to smuggle 3.5 kilograms of methamphetamine into Malaysia through Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Under Malaysian law, anyone possessing a minimum of 50 […]
The New York Times reported Wednesday that the United States warned then-Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama in 2009 about Japan’s wavering bilateral ties. The quotes came from cables posted to WikiLeaks. Assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs Kurt Campbell complained in October 2009 that Hatoyama told his Chinese and South Korean counterparts […]