The Bank of Japan’s latest Tankan survey shows that more managers feel their companies are understaffed. Central bank officials measured the percentage of respondents who reported employment as “excessive” against those who categorized it as “insufficient”. The index for large manufacturers stood at minus 5, indicating a labor shortage. The figure is one point worse […]
Beef bowls are cheap, tasty and filling, so does that mean they have to be bad for you? Yoshinoya is the biggest purveyor of one of Japan’s favorite convenient meals: the beef bowl, or “gyudon,” as it’s called in Japanese. With Yoshinoya locations covering the country, open from early in the morning until late at […]
Police officers and local residents promoted an anti-gang initiative at the start of a busy holiday period. Tokyo Metropolitan Police on Friday evening initiated a patrol through Tokyo’s largest red-light district to promote the exclusion of organized crime from the area during what is traditionally a busy period of the year, reports TBS News (Dec. 11). A team of […]
In terms of pronunciation Japanese is surprisingly easy to get to grips with, but some words can be real tongue-tanglers! Here are 10 of the worst. Since it’s a phonetic language, Japanese tends to be pretty straightforward when it comes to pronouncing its sounds. But some words do change in tone and inflection, and this […]
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) said on Monday that 161,014 families or 724,839 persons were evacuated due to the said typhoon. An estimated 700,000 persons were pre-emptively evacuated in the provinces of Albay and Sorsogon and in Northern Samar in anticipation of typhoon “Nona” (international name: “Melor”). The Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and […]
A demonstration calling for Japan’s minimum wage to be raised to 1,500 yen per hour was held in Tokyo on Dec. 13, with about 500 people taking part, organizers said. The demonstration was planned by the group Aequitas (meaning “fairness” in Latin). Its members include university students and workers in their 20s and 30s who […]
General foods, including fresh and processed foods, will be subject to the reduced tax rate. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its junior coalition partner Komeito have agreed to make general foods, with the exception of eating out and alcoholic beverages, subject to a reduced tax rate that will be introduced when the consumption tax […]
Sliced ham? Sliced cheese? Sorry, but sliced chocolate is about to make everything else you can put on bread seem like chopped liver in comparison. Despite its alcoholic-sounding name, Japanese company Bourbon actually specializes inchocolate. Still, its latest product seems like the kind of so-crazy-it’s-brilliant idea born out of a flash of heavily inebriated inspiration. […]
The number of bags of waste from decontamination efforts around the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant reached a little under 9.16 million as of the end of September according to Fukushima Prefecture and the Environment Ministry. The 1-cubic-meter bags are found at some 114,700 interim storage or decontamination sites across the prefecture. In the […]
Mazda Motor Corp’s all-new Mazda Roadster (known as MX-5 outside Japan) has been named the 2015-2016 Car of the Year in Japan. The all-new Roadster is the sixth model in Mazda’s new-generation lineup of vehicles that feature the full range of Skyactiv technology and KODO-Soul of Motion design. This lightweight open-top two-seater front-engine rear-wheel drive […]
