Japan’s Upper House of Parliament voted down legislation to split up and sell the country’s postal service on Monday, prompting Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to follow through on a threat to call snap elections that could shake the ruling party’s grip on power.
On the eve of the anniversary on Tuesday of Nagasaki’s devastation 60 years ago by the ”Fat Man” atomic bomb, a steady stream of tourists flowed past the horrific exhibits at the city’s memorial museum. There is a clock, its glass smashed and bent hands frozen at exactly 11:02, the moment of the blast.
Downloads at Apple’s iTunes Music Store have reached a million tunes in Japan in just four days, the company said on Monday. Apple Computer, which has scored a hit in Japan with its iPod portable music player, started its music download service in Japan last Thursday with one million songs.
As they lay dying amid the ruins of their city, the victims of the Hiroshima bomb craved one thing above all — water. On Saturday morning cups of water were brought as symbolic offerings as, 60 years to the day after the city was vapourised, Hiroshima remembered its dead.
A day before the United States dropped the world’s first nuclear weapon on Hiroshima, Akie Yoshikawa remembered the sky was full of American B-29 bombers and they were flying like ”swallows”. But she was not particularly concerned.
A Japanese mugger with a fetish, who longed for his boyhood friend’s eyeglasses, was arrested with 154 pairs of glasses or contact lenses he allegedly seized by force, police and reports said on Friday. Construction worker Toru Nagasawa was caught after allegedly punching a man and forcing him to take off his contact lenses.
Japanese scientists are preparing to dig deep inside the Earth for the first time in human history to unlock the mysteries of life in an attempt to figure out how civilisation came to be and how to save it. The researchers will collect the first samples of the Earth’s mantle for clues on the primitive organisms that were the forerunners of life.
A powerful typhoon drenched eastern Japan with rain on Tuesday, narrowly missing Tokyo but delaying flights and traffic and causing a sea accident. Typhoon Banyan hit Japan at Kamogawa city in Chiba prefecture, 70km south-east of Tokyo, shortly after 8pm, the meteorological agency said.
It was once embraced as the answer to the construction industry’s prayers: a cheap, light and easily obtainable substance that would make buildings stronger, warmer and more resistant to fire. A quarter of a century has passed since the world was emphatically warned that asbestos was also a killer.
After conquering Earth, instant noodles have now headed into space with Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, who brought a new zero-gravity version aboard the United States space shuttle Discovery. Nissin Food, which invented instant noodles, developed a special ball-shaped noodle that space-travellers can eat with a fork.
A powerful typhoon approached the Tokyo region on Tuesday, delaying flights and traffic and causing a sea accident as Japan braced for downpours. Typhoon Banyan was near Miyakejima island, 180km south of Tokyo, and racing up at 30kph at 8am GMT, the meteorological agency said.
English superstar David Beckham was mocked on Tuesday for accusing a Japanese player of spitting in his face as Real Madrid were humiliated before their Asian fans by a lowly J-League team. ”Beckham enraged!” two Japanese tabloids blared in identical headlines with pictures of the English captain pointing an accusatory finger at Tokyo Verdy player Kazuyuki Toda.
Seven-year-old Masaaki Tanabe spent that hot and humid summer playing in the gardens of the industrial promotion hall, beneath the striking green dome which had become a local landmark. In those days Hiroshima, set against rolling mountain peaks and spread across a delta dotted by bridges, was known as the ”city of water”.
Japan is living up to its reputation as a safe country with the World Exposition, where only four of the 12-million visitors have been pickpocketed, the event’s chief said on Thursday. Even some of those may have simply misplaced their belongings, expo secretary general Toshio Nakamura said.
Japanese people hoping their bank accounts carry a bit more cash could see their hopes come true with an automated teller machine that doubles as a slot machine, a regional bank said on Wednesday. Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank will on August 8 introduce slot games that run during the wait as cash machines process transactions.
A doctor has been arrested for applying a painkiller to help a Japanese gangster chop off a businessman’s little finger, a mob rite meant to prove character by enduring pain, police said on Tuesday. Gangster Kyoji Kakutani (49) had reportedly invested in the businessman’s company and when the firm went bust demanded the 44-year-old’s pinkie.
Japan and South Africa agreed on Thursday to consider a pact to promote trade, raising the possibility the fast-growing nation will become the first African country to have a free trade pact with Japan. Japan’s exports to South Africa surged 33,9% to 314,4-billion yen (,8-billion) in 2004, with growing shipments of automobiles and auto parts.
Hello Kitty, the moon-faced, mouthless white cat which comes on dolls, credit cards, laptops and vacuum cleaners as a global icon of cuteness has now advanced into the world of chess. Unlike the staid traditional black and white, the two camps facing off on the Hello Kitty chessboard are pastel pink and blue.
A series of disasters including the Indian Ocean tsunamis has meant strong sales for the Iridium global satellite telephone service which has been launched in Japan, a company official said on Friday. Demand from government offices, utilities and hospitals, using the handset as emergency tools, has increased.
Tests by Japanese electronics maker Sharp have found an air-purifier using plasmacluster ion technology was 99% effective in killing-off the bird flu virus in a controlled environment. Plasmacluster have ions also proved effective against 26 other kinds of harmful airborne substances, including bacteria, mould fungi, viruses and allergens.
Japan launched a nationwide probe on Friday into thousands of mysterious, sharp-edged pieces of metal in different sizes found jutting out of roadside guardrails across the country. Japanese media have been debating whether the shards were planted by pranksters or if they could all have been formed by car fragments in crashes.
He may be leader of the world’s second-largest economy, but Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi conceded on Tuesday that his powers stop at imposing fashion. Koizumi has encouraged his Cabinet to take off their ties and jackets this summer to save electricity on air conditioning.
A monkey is on the loose in Tokyo, hanging out at train stations, frightening children and leading to a wild chase by television crews hoping for a glimpse of the unusual visitor to the metropolis. The monkey, believed to be a Japanese macaque, was first spotted on April 30.
A bid to set a universal standard for next-generation DVDs that could ease the lives of consumers is proving difficult, with wide gaps between Sony and Toshiba on which technology should be used, Toshiba’s negotiator said on Monday. The two Japanese giants have each promoted their own next-generation DVD system.
Rescuers on Tuesday pulled three survivors and more bodies from the wreckage of a Japanese train as the death toll rose to 76, with a new derailment raising fresh safety concerns following recent rail privatisation. With hundreds of residents watching, rescuers squeezed into flattened carriages in a last effort to find survivors.
A packed commuter train jumped the tracks in western Japan on Monday and hurtled into an apartment complex, killing 54 people and injuring more than 417 others. Investigators are focusing on whether excessive speed or the actions of the inexperienced driver caused the crash.
Shares in West Japan Railway (JR West) slumped 3,85% on Monday on the news that at least 50 people were killed when a commuter train it operates derailed and smashed into an apartment building. Four carriages were derailed in the collision, leaving more than 300 people injured, police said.
Lonely people longing for pictures of their loved ones to speak will now have their dream answered by raising a finger. A Tokyo day-care company will next week begin marketing a "talking picture", which can play messages when the reader uses a scanner that reads invisible barcodes on the photograph.
The safety of a Japanese neighbourhood was on Wednesday put in the hands — briefly — of a robot, which became police chief for the day in a campaign to promote safe driving. T63 Artemis, named after the Greek moon goddess Artemis, helped its subordinate human officers distribute fliers on traffic safety at the train station
A firm has said that its ”oxygen therapy” has proved popular enough to warrant expansion. Customers can read, listen to music or simply sleep during a 40-minute treatment in the blue, body-sized capsules that are inflated with high-pressure oxygen, aroma and reputedly therapeutic negative ions.
Japan boasts both the world’s longest average life expectancy — 81,9 years — and has 23Â 000 people aged 100 or more. The United States is still ahead, but what’s surprising in Japan’s case is that its centenarian population has doubled in just five years, and will reach nearly one million — the world’s largest — by 2050, according to United Nations projections.
Rescuers searched on Monday for survivors of a powerful earthquake in southern Japan that killed one woman, injured hundreds and caused several thousand people to flee their homes. More than 100 aftershocks were felt after Sunday’s earthquake, which measured seven on the Richter scale.