A U.S. Navy sailor arrested on suspicion of raping a Japanese woman in Okinawa has admitted to the charge, having initially denied it, investigative sources said Wednesday. Justin Castellanos, 24, a seaman at the U.S. Marines’ Camp Schwab in northern Okinawa, was arrested on March 13 on suspicion of raping the woman in her 40s […]
A zebra that escaped overnight from a horse-riding club in Aichi Prefecture, Central Japan, has died after being shot with a tranquilizer dart.The 2-year-old male zebra was spotted on Wednesday at a golf course in neighboring Gifu Prefecture. It evaded police efforts to capture it for around 5 hours, and ended up in a pond […]
Safety concerns emerged Monday at an amusement park in Nagoya under scrutiny for a minor crash on one ride and failure to fully secure a carriage door on its ferris wheel. The safety mishaps occurred at Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens, where all 16 attractions have since been suspended for safety checks. According to the […]
Police suspect that two incidents that resulted in damage to property over the weekend in the Kansai area are the result of a dispute between the Yamaguchi-gumi organized crime group and its newly formed rival, reports the Yomiuri Shimbun(Mar. 20). At around 3:30 a.m. on Sunday, police received a tip about a vehicle that had smashed into an office of the Oda-gumi, an […]
Cherry blossoms in Tokyo are officially in bloom, the Japan Meteorological Agency said Monday, in one of the most anticipated announcements of spring. The season’s first blooms of the beloved pale pink flowers in Tokyo were reported for the capital’s benchmark tree of the Someiyoshino variety at Yasukuni Shrine. The declaration, which marks the arrival […]
A glider crashed into a house in Sakae, Chiba Prefecture, on Thursday, killing the two men aboard. The accident occurred around 12:20 p.m. The two men were confirmed dead after being taken to hospital in a state of cardiac arrest. No one in the house was injured. Chiba Prefectural Police identified one of the two […]
The estimated number of visitors to Japan in February increased by 36.4 percent from a year earlier to 1,891,400, marking the second-highest monthly total ever, the Japan National Tourism Organization said Wednesday. The figure was second only to the 1,918,400 recorded in July 2015. The growth was helped by the yen’s depreciation and falls in […]
Japan’s police say they will crack down harder on the country’s largest yakuza syndicate, the Yamaguchi-gumi, and a rival splinter group, amid continuing incidents involving the 2 across the country.9 such incidents have occurred in 6 prefectures over the last 10 days since the National Police Agency set up a special taskforce to crack down […]
At least two people are dead and almost 70 injured following a 12-vehicle pileup inside a highway tunnel in Higashihiroshima, Hiroshima Prefecture, on Thursday. Five vehicles caught fire following the pileup, which was triggered after a truck slammed into a vehicle about 7:30 a.m. on the Sanyo Expressway, police and firefighters said. Of the two […]
The number of foreign tourists visiting Japan increased 36% from a year earlier in February, lifted by Chinese visitors even amid the yen’s climb against the yuan. Visitors arriving from overseas totaled an estimated 1.89 million for the month, the Japan National Tourism Organization said Wednesday. The figure was second only to the 1.91 million of […]
