The government and ruling parties plan to exempt delivery and takeout foods from the upcoming consumption tax hike, senior coalition members said Tuesday. The Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito have agreed to subject all food products except those served at restaurants to a lower tax rate when the government raises consumption tax to 10 percent […]
The number of foreigners visiting Japan has hit a record annual high of nearly 18-million in only the first 11 months of this year. Officials at the Japan National Tourism Organization say the figure for January to November exceeded 17.96 million. That’s up 47.5-percent from the same period last year, and 4.5-million more than the […]
Toshiba is expected to solicit early retirements and transfer workers, the sources said. Toshiba Corp. is considering slashing several thousand jobs in Japan and abroad as the scandal-hit industrial conglomerate aims to restructure its loss-making personal computer, television, and white goods businesses, sources close to the matter said Tuesday. Toshiba is expected to solicit early […]
Construction of a mammoth 7.7-kilometer tunnel cutting through the Southern Japan Alps will begin Dec. 18 as part of an ambitious project to link Tokyo to Nagoya with a maglev train line by 2027. Twenty-five kilometers of tunnel are required in total, but the first stretch will be the biggest hurdle facing Central Japan Railway […]
Police in Kakogawa City, Hyogo Prefecture, said the body of a woman found on a sandbar in the Kakogawa River on Dec 12 has been identified as that of Mashiro Oyama, a 20-year-old part-time employee who lived in Fukita City, Osaka Prefecture. Police said Oyama had been bludgeoned to death before being dumped in the […]
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 […]
