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.
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.
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.
A 59-year-old Japanese psychiatric counselor set a world record of sorts on Sunday by reciting ”pi,” or the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, to 83 431 digits. ”I thank you all for your support,” Akira Haraguchi told reporters and onlookers when he finished the overnight 13-hour feat at a public hall in Kisarazu in Tokyo’s southern suburbs at 1.26am.
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.
Japan is set to lift its last blanket ban on female employment and let women work in mines and tunnels, defying not only traditional male attitudes about protecting women but also superstition. Women are barred from working in mines and pits or constructing tunnels under the Labour Standard Law of 1947.
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.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents the world’s airlines said on Tuesday it had set up a fund to improve safety in Africa which witnesses a disproportionate number of deadly air crashes. The fund by the billion-a-year industry will begin with two million dollars.
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.
One million yen ( 360) may seem a fortune for a bottle of liquor, but a Japanese seller said on Friday its premium whisky distilled over half a century has been such a hit it stopped accepting orders within a day. Suntory announced the sale of the liquor, Yamazaki 50 Years, billed as ”a jewel of single-malt whisky”, on its website on Wednesday afternoon for 50 bottles only.
The world’s biggest fish market, Tsukiji in the heart of Tokyo, on Monday closed its famous tuna auction to tourists whose oos and aahs at the jumbo seafood has proven too much for merchants to handle. Fishmongers say the excited tourists are distracting them during tuna auctions and also touch the fish, which has raised sanitation concerns.
A gray whale swam into Tokyo Bay on Thursday, surprising nearby holidaymakers who got a rare view of the creature as it spouted water. The lone whale, about 10m long, was seen swimming close to Sodegaura, an industrial city on Tokyo Bay, said Kazutoshi Arai, deputy curator of the nearby Kamogawa Sea World aquarium.
A senior Boeing official on Wednesday brushed off the threat of European rival Airbus SAS’s ”superjumbo,” saying orders for Boeing’s smaller, more fuel-efficient Dreamliner were robust. Boeing vice president Wade Cornelius said the Airbus A380 requires heavy investment but would likely command only a small market.
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.
Three years of renovation have transformed the Japanese Prime Minister’s residence from a crumbling, vermin-invested pile into a state-of-the-art ecological home. The building, built in 1929, is being touted as proof of Japan’s commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. According to officials it is the first home to be powered by clean-energy fuel cells.
Testy relations between China and Japan were further strained this week when Tokyo signalled its intention to explore gas fields in the contested seabed between the two countries. The Japanese Trade Ministry started accepting bids from companies to drill in a region just east of what Tokyo describes as a median line separating the countries’ exclusive economic zones.
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.
Japan on Sunday marked the 10th anniversary of a gas attack that killed 12 people and injured about 5 500 on the Tokyo subway as the cult responsible apologised anew for the worst terror act in the country’s modern history. The Aum Supreme Truth released nerve gas on five trains during the morning rush hour on March 20 1995.
A powerful earthquake jolted southern Japan on Sunday, killing an elderly woman and injuring at least 381 people, disrupting transport and prompting a tsunami warning that was later cancelled. Buildings swayed, and aftershocks continued to rattle the region. Genkai, an island off the coast of Kyushu, was evacuated after homes collapsed and roofs caved in.
At about 8am on March 20 1995 commuters on packed subway trains in central Tokyo sensed something was wrong. They started to cough and struggle for breath. Some of those who made it on to platforms and upstairs to street level collapsed, foaming at the mouth and coughing up blood.