A fire broke out at a nuclear power plant in western Japan on Wednesday, but there was no radiation leakage, authorities said. Two workers were injured. It took firefighters in protective suits nearly two hours to reach the flames because of thick smoke, and another two hours to put out the blaze.
The 2006 football World Cup is bringing the Japanese economy a windfall of -billion in television sales, tourism and other spin-off economic activities, a survey said on Thursday. Japan’s top advertising agency, Dentsu, said that if Japan reaches the semifinals or final the total will swell to ,6-billion.
The latest version of the legendary video game Final Fantasy was launched in Japan on Thursday, with its creators comparing the intricate work to great architecture. The launch of the mythological role-playing game, played on the PlayStation 2, comes four years after the 11th edition of the game.
Sony will delay the launch of the PlayStation 3 by half a year until November, a report said on Wednesday, boosting Microsoft’s efforts to win a bigger share of the multibillion-dollar video game industry. The next-generation home video game console is one of Sony’s core products and its success against Microsoft’s already-launched Xbox 360 is considered vital to its revival after a profit slump.
Sony said on Tuesday it would appeal a United States court ruling that found the Japanese giant infringed on a small US firm’s patent over its hot-selling PlayStation, whose next-generation version is out this year. A US District Court threw out last week Sony’s appeal of a costly 2005 ruling that said the conglomerate illegally used technology of game machine developer Immersion.
North Korea may have fired two ground-to-air missiles near its border with China on Wednesday, a Japanese news report said, citing unidentified sources. Pyongyang was believed to have launched the missiles ”in the direction towards China,” Kyodo News agency reported, citing an Asian security source.
Japanese researchers have succeeded in making the sweet smell of vanilla come out of the last thing people could imagine — cow dung. In a world-first recycling project, a one-hour heating and pressuring process allows cow faeces to produce vanillin, the main component of the vanilla-bean extract.
For all the talk of a globalised world, America’s national pastime of baseball still baffles most of the planet. The inaugural 16-nation World Baseball Classic opening this weekend in Japan is the latest bid to globalize the sport described almost a century ago as America’s secular religion.
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/ 24 February 2006
Matsushita Electric Industrial’s newly appointed president on Friday expressed confidence that the company and its partners would win the battle for dominance in next-generation DVD players. Fumio Otsubo, named on Thursday as head of the Japanese electronics giant behind the Panasonic brand, said he would uphold his predecessor’s policy of promoting the Blu-ray standard.
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/ 16 February 2006
The Nintendo DS handheld video-game machine will work as a portable TV with a data reception card that shows digital broadcast set to start in Japan in April, the company president said on Wednesday. An internet browser feature is also in the works for the machine, which has two screens, including one touch panel.
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/ 13 February 2006
The dollar was caught in a ”tug-of-war” against the yen in Asian trade on Monday as the market focused on the prospects for monetary tightening in both the United States and Japan, dealers said. The US currency, however, was supported against the euro by expectations that eurozone interest rates are set to stay put for now, they added.
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/ 13 February 2006
Police raided a major Japanese manufacturer on Monday for allegedly exporting advanced machines that can be used to build nuclear weapons after one of the firm’s devices was found in Libya. Officers searched the headquarters and plants of precision equipment maker Mitutoyo after it exported the machines to China and Thailand, police said.
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/ 7 February 2006
Japan learned on Tuesday that the wife of the emperor’s second son is pregnant, throwing a sudden question mark over controversial moves to end male-only succession in the world’s oldest monarchy. No boy has been born to the imperial family since 1965, spelling crisis for an imperial line that legend holds has been uninterrupted for more than 2 600 years.
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/ 1 February 2006
A Japanese has been arrested for allegedly ordering the murder of his wheelchair-bound father by hiring an amateur hitman on an internet bulletin board, police said on Wednesday. Tomitaka Nomoto (49) and unemployed, had a history of beating his 76-year-old father Tsutomu, who nagged him to get a job.
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/ 31 January 2006
Robots were once an emblem of Sony’s technological prowess. But now the electronics giant is putting its robodog to sleep and firing its "ambassador" humanoid in a bid to return to financial health. Sony announced it would stop making entertainment robots just as it reported record profit for the December quarter in a sign of a possible turnaround.
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/ 30 January 2006
Canon said on Monday it marked record high profit and sales for the year to December thanks to robust sales of digital cameras and colour printers, projecting a better performance this year. The company said its group net profit for the year to December gained 11,9% from a year earlier to an all-time high of ¥384,1-billion ($3,3-billion).
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/ 25 January 2006
Japanese police are investigating a 57-year-old fortune teller who has effectively started a harem and is living with 10 women, media reports said on Wednesday. The man has repeatedly married and divorced the women, all in their 20s or 30s, but they all live together in a house in Tokyo along with at least one child, the reports said.
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/ 24 January 2006
In the latest issue of a leading Japanese organic food magazine, readers learn how to bring up children to select the freshest vegetables and discover the health virtues of avocados, cauliflowers and chrysanthemums — and there is a feature extolling ”organic” whale meat.
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/ 23 January 2006
Police on Monday raided Yamaha Motor on suspicion that the Japanese company tried to export illegally to China agricultural-use helicopters that can be converted for military purposes. While the major motorcycle maker denied any wrongdoing, police and customs mobilised 280 investigators to search 20 locations.
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/ 23 January 2006
A Japanese court on Monday sentenced a former assistant nurse to three years and eight months in prison for manually pulling 49 fingernails and toenails off of six female patients in 2004. The Kyoto District Court ruled that Akemi Sato (32) committed cruel and selfish crimes against her patients, most of whom had almost no physical strength to resist.
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/ 22 January 2006
It began with a tip-off to the media that the offices of one of Japan’s top internet entrepreneurs were going to be raided. Soon dozens of reporters were camped outside, a whiff of scandal in the air. Two days later, the Tokyo stock market was in turmoil and more than -billion had been wiped off the market value of Japanese companies.
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/ 18 January 2006
The Tokyo Stock Exchange closed early on Wednesday for the first time ever to prevent a system crash from heavy trading volumes as investors took fright at claims of fraud at internet trailblazer Livedoor. The exchange operator suspended trading in all shares 20 minutes ahead of the scheduled close of Asia’s largest bourse.
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/ 16 January 2006
A six-year-old boy was killed and another child seriously injured after being hit by snow that fell from the roof of their kindergarten in north-eastern Japan, police said on Monday, as reports put the death toll from extreme weather at 100. The boy died in hospital late on Monday.
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/ 16 January 2006
It may be the Year of the Dog, but in Japan man’s best friend has seen better days with a bitter winter leaving the canine population suffering indoors, veterinarians said on Monday. Dogs have suffered a greater number of cases this winter of cystitis, a bladder inflammation, since the snow has kept them from going for walks.
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/ 13 January 2006
Friday the 13th proved to be bad luck for the Tokyo stock market, which saw the latest in a series of mishaps. The Japanese investment banker Daiwa Securities SMBC mistakenly placed a sell order for 25 000 shares of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial instead of another firm after an employee interchanged the names.
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/ 13 January 2006
Nikon, the iconic Japanese camera maker, has put another nail in the coffin of traditional photography with plans to stop selling most of its film models in favour of hot-selling digital cameras. Nikon said it will end production of all but two of its eight single-lens reflex analogue models and axe all of its non-digital compacts, signalling the end of its more than 50 year history of selling film cameras.
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/ 12 January 2006
It’s been said laughter is the best medicine, but no one has yet proved it. Now a Japanese scientist is unlocking the secrets of the funny bone, which he believes can cheer up people’s genes. Geneticist Kazuo Murakami has teamed up on the study with an unlikely research partner: stand-up comedians.
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/ 11 January 2006
Kim Jong-Il has no chance to see it, but thousands have flocked to an exhibition in Tokyo of happy family photos of a Japanese girl kidnapped by North Korea, fuelling anger against his regime. Megumi Yokota was snatched away in 1977 when the then 13-year-old schoolgirl was on her way home.
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/ 26 December 2005
Rescuers on Monday pulled the body of a fourth passenger from the twisted and snow-blown wreckage of a train that crashed in northern Japan after derailing during a blizzard. Five carriages of the six-carriage train left the tracks in strong winds late on Sunday north of Tokyo.
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/ 19 December 2005
Never tired of sampling new ways to travel, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi whizzed around the grounds of Parliament on Monday in an eight-wheeled car billed as the world’s fastest electric sedan. "It is comfortable to ride in," Koizumi said after being taken for a 10-minute spin in the vehicle, dubbed the Eliica.
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/ 19 December 2005
The film is set in Japan, the characters are quintessentially Japanese and the actress in the title role is … Chinese. Memoirs of a Geisha is the latest film highlighting how few Japanese have made it in Hollywood. Based on a novel that raised hackles in Japan for allegedly depicting the traditional hostesses as prostitutes, the movie had a lukewarm reception on its opening weekend in Japan.
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/ 16 December 2005
Fifa chief Sepp Blatter on Friday said clubs tolerating discrimination should be expelled from competitions or relegated from their leagues and players like Paulo Di Canio should be thrown out of the game. Blatter, in Japan for the World Club Championships, said there was no place in football for discrimination or extremism of any kind.