A traditional ritual at a shrine in Fukushima Prefecture saw participants attempting to catch free-running horses with only their bare hands.The event took place on Monday, the last day of a 3-day traditional summer festival, in the Odaka district of Minamisoma City. Earlier this month, the government lifted an evacuation order on the district. It […]
Fountain at the park resembles a Poke ball when viewed from above. Hundreds of Pokemon Go players have been flocking to a park here since Saturday night, dubbing the hotspot “sacred ground” due to the resemblance one of the park’s features has with a key part of the game. Players were glued to their smartphones as they […]
Foreign tourism is on track to break the record set in 2015 after an estimated 11.71 million visited Japan in the first half, up 28 percent from a year ago, the Japan Tourism Agency said Wednesday. Last year saw 19.74 million people visit. The boom is being stoked by government tourism measures including eased visa […]
Yokohama District Court sentenced a 28-year-old Japanese male babysitter on Wednesday to 26 years in prison for charges including the murder of a two-year-old boy under his care in 2014. Presiding Judge Takao Katayama said, “The accused abused his position as a babysitter to commit a very malicious act.” At his trial with lay judges, […]
The Kyoto State Guest House in Japan’s ancient capital has begun accepting tourists all year round in a bid to draw more people from inside and outside the country.Japan’s second state guest house for welcoming foreign dignitaries was built in traditional Japanese style. Until now, the facility was open to the public for only about […]
A traditional Japanese hot-spring hotel opened on Wednesday in the heart of Tokyo’s business district.The luxury Hoshinoya Tokyo has 84 tatami-mat rooms and a natural-spring spa pumping thermal waters from a depth of 1,500 meters. Guests are required to remove their shoes at the first-floor entrance. Traditional Japanese lodging is rare in this area of […]
Suspect told police, ‘I love unagi, to pay money is bothersome’. Hyogo Prefectural Police have arrested an elderly man for the theft of packages of grilled eel from a supermarket in Nishinomiya City, reports the Sankei Shimbun (July 18). At 6:55 p.m. on Sunday, police caught the man, 83, with eight packages of unagi no kabayaki, or […]
The rainy season appears to be over in western and central Japan as well as Kyushu, the Meteorological Agency said. The regions, which cover major cities including Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima and Fukuoka, are now officially set to enter the hot and humid summer season, the agency said Monday. The weather agency warned that with […]
Hikers on Japan’s highest mountain, Mount Fuji, can now use free Wi-Fi at all lodging facilities along the 4 routes to the peak, and at the summit.The Fujisan Wi-Fi is available at 49 locations, including an information center on the 5th station of the mountain. Mount Fuji straddles Yamanashi and Shizuoka prefectures and is on […]
The operators of Tokyo’s Haneda Airport were forced to close a runway for more than 9 hours on Monday after a Hawaiian Airlines plane made an emergency landing.Transport officials say flight 458 took off from Haneda in the early morning, bound for Honolulu. But it returned less than an hour later to make an emergency […]
