TOKYO — The head of the International Monetary Fund arrived in Tokyo on Friday, where she will meet Japan’s finance minister and the central bank chief for talks likely to be dominated by Europe’s debt crisis. IMF chief Christine Lagarde, on a trip that has also taken her to […]
A citizens’ group from Tohoku came up with the idea of planting the trees every 10 metres (32 feet) along the 173 km (107 miles) of the coastline that was most seriously affected by the tsunami, which in places reached a height of more than 132 feet. Read more
A supercomputer being developed in Kobe has broken its own record as the world’s fastest computer, achieving its performance goal of 10 petaflops, or 10 quadrillion computations per second, its developers said. The 10.51-petaflop performance in early October by the supercomputer being jointly developed by Fujitsu Ltd. and the Riken […]
By Tetsushi Kajimoto and Antoni Slodkowski TOKYO | Mon Oct 31, 2011 7:52am EDT (Reuters) – Japan sold the yen for the second time in less than three months after it hit another record high against the dollar Monday, saying it intervened to counter excessive speculation that was hurting the […]
A number of matchmaking events involving Buddhist monks, who are permitted to marry and have families in Japan, have taken place in the capital. Read more
TOKYO — A survey conducted by Recruit online through its wedding magazine Zexy shows that 36% of single Japanese women have become more positive about marriage since the March 11 disaster. Read more
Debris from Japan’s tsunami approaching Hawaii. (KITV/ABC) Some 5 to 20 million tons of debris–furniture, fishing boats, refrigerators–sucked into the Pacific Ocean in the wake of Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami are moving rapidly across the Pacific. Researchers from the University of Hawaii tracking the wreckage estimate it could […]
TOKYO — It is said that a Japanese person is born Shinto, marries Christian and dies Buddhist, but really it’s an oversimplification. As a social experiment, find a personals site where Japanese can select their religion from a list. You’ll see that a great deal select “agnostic.” On top of […]
The publication of the Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe guide brings the total of three Michelin star restaurant to 29, four ahead of France. Those of us who have been trying in vain to find a decent restaurant in France for the last ten years will think this tacit acknowledgement […]
MINAMISANRIKU, Miyagi Pref. — A house more than 300 years old on the Miyagi Prefecture coast that barely withstood the March earthquake and tsunami will be relocated all the way to Kagawa Prefecture, where it will be restored in a museum. Silk producer Shigeyuki Endo, the 61-year-old owner of the […]
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TOKYO — The Transportation Ministry has imposed new restrictions on air traffic controllers after a Haneda Airport controller caused a security panic last month by posting the flight details of Air Force One. In line with the restrictions, air traffic controllers will be forbidden from posting job details on blogs, […]
Source/Credit: CNN Tokyo (CNN) — An extraordinarily high level of radiation was detected in one spot in a central Tokyo residential district Thursday, prompting the local government to cordon off the small area, local officials said. Radiation levels were higher in Tokyo’s Setagaya ward than in the evacuation area around […]
The devastating earthquake that struck Japan earlier this year was powerful enough to slightly alter the pull of gravity under the affected area, scientists have found. Anything that has mass has a gravity field that attracts objects toward it. The strength of this field depends on a body’s mass. Since […]
BOSTON — A team of Japanese scientists who invented a fire alarm that smells like wasabi were among the winners of this year’s Ig Nobel prizes that were handed out for head-scratching scientific discoveries Thursday at Harvard University. The Japanese team won the chemistry prize for the alarm that emits […]
Japan and Saudi Arabia on Sunday signed a memorandum on Japan’s cooperation in infrastructure building for the water business in the country, government officials said Monday. read more
Aug 29 (Reuters) – Japan’s next prime minister Yoshihiko Noda compares himself to an eel-like fish and admits his looks won’t get him anywhere in popularity contests, but many say his calm and expertise are exactly what the nation needs at a time of crisis. Noda, until now finance minister in Prime […]
Source/Credit: Huffington Post While looting often becomes an issue post-disaster, it’s been the exact opposite in Japan. Since the March earthquake and tsunami that leveled much of Japan, thousands of wallets containing a total of $48 million in cash have washed ashore — and been turned in, ABC reports. In […]
Source/Credit: PBS NewsHour JOHN SPARKS: This is the end of the road. Beyond a well-staffed checkpoint lies the 20-kilometer evacuation zone, a no-man’s land that surrounds the Fukushima nuclear plant. We were stopped, our papers checked. Then the police waved us through. We had won rare access to a world […]