Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said Friday she will request a 12.6-billion-yen supplementary budget for fiscal 2016 to take additional measures to shorten the Japanese capital’s long waiting list of applicants for nursery facilities. Announcing emergency measures to address the problem, Koike said she will increase the capacities of nursery services in Tokyo by 17,000 during […]
Fire fighters in a central Japan city said that 115 people who were taking part in a marathon event Sunday were stung by wasps, but no one suffered serious allergic reactions. After being stung, the runners were given treatment by doctors and ambulance attendants who were on standby at the site in the city of […]
An estimated 541,000 people aged between 15 and 39 in Japan avoid social contact and shut themselves in their homes, according to a government survey released Wednesday. The figure compares with the previous Cabinet Office survey in 2010 that found an estimated 696,000 such people — known as hikikomori — across the country. Despite the […]
A shinkansen bullet train driver came under fire Thursday after an online photo emerged of him operating it with his feet up. Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai) said the 29-year-old acknowledged that he operated the high speed train in that position for 10 seconds on Tuesday. “He told the company that he had tired […]
Huge rocks fell suddenly at Mount Fuji last week and reached a mountain trail, forcing climbers to escape. No one was injured. A man who took video of the scene said he heard a rumbling sound from above, and saw rocks rolling down. He said they were about 1 to 3 meters in diameter. The incident […]
The Halloween season kicks off in Japan this week with the festivities beginning at Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea where parades and other events will be held until Oct 31. Disney’s annual festival, which starts on Friday, includes Mickey Mouse and his friends joining ghost and skeleton “stars” in entertaining guests with a variety of […]
A man got caught in a waste grinding machine and was killed at a recycling plant in the city of Nara, police said. The 45-year-old was among four workers who were putting construction waste in the machine Monday morning at the plant operated by recycling company ITO, but when the work was completed around 4:30 […]
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday agreed to provide two large-sized patrol ships and lend up to five used surveillance aircraft to the Philippines, a Japanese government spokesman said, with both countries locked in territorial disputes with China. Abe and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte agreed in Vientiane to strengthen cooperation to ensure a peaceful […]
Tokyo police say 3 Taiwanese-born men they arrested for drug smuggling made the effort to hide narcotics inside over a thousand separate bags. The men are suspected of shipping to Japan 154 kilograms of stimulants with an estimated street value of 110 million dollars. Police found the drugs separated into nearly 1,300 batches and hidden […]
The Japanese school system’s English-teaching regimen will undergo a major revamp in the near future as the government tries to nurture more worldly talent in an age of globalization. The biggest transformation is expected in public elementary schools, where English will be taught as a formal subject for the first time, in conjunction with designated […]
