A Japanese man puzzled by food mysteriously disappearing from his refrigerator got a shock when he found out a woman had been living in his home for months without permission, police said on Friday. The 57-year-old man living alone — or so he thought — installed a security camera and called the police when he saw images of someone walking around his home while he was out.
A Japanese brewery on Tuesday said it was planning the first "space beer", using offspring of barley once stored at the International Space Station. Researchers said the project was part of efforts to prepare for a future in which humans spend extended periods of time in space — and might like a cold beer after a space walk.
One of the travellers who arrived at Tokyo’s Narita airport over the weekend may have picked up an unusual souvenir from customs — a package of cannabis. A customs official hid the package in a suitcase belonging to a passenger arriving from Hong Kong as a training exercise for sniffer dogs on Sunday.
A Japanese plumber was arrested for calling a toll-free number around 500 times so he could hear a taped female voice, police said on Monday. Hiroyuki Nomoto, a 38-year-old Tokyo resident, was arrested on suspicion of obstructing the business of the company, a food firm based in the city of Takasaki north of the capital.
A stray parrot was reunited with its owner in Japan after repeating his name and address at the local veterinary clinic that took it in, police said on Wednesday. Police captured the red-tailed African Grey parrot earlier this month after a woman called to say it was sitting on a fence in her backyard outside Tokyo, a Chiba police official said.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg stressed his company’s independent spirit on Monday, after a report the social networking site might be sold to software giant Microsoft, which is hunting for ways to beef up its internet business. Asked specifically about the prospect of a sale, Zuckerberg declined to comment.
Drivers in Japan can check on their pets, turn lights off and on and lock their front door, all from inside their cars — with a new car navigation system from Panasonic. The Strada F-Class guides drivers with maps to destinations, but the gadget also links to your home through an internet-linking cellphone.
Meteorologists may not always feel appreciated, but at the Beijing Olympics at least they will have their own contest. Weather agencies from eight countries or territories plan to hold their own competition during the Games in August, squaring off on which one can most accurately predict conditions in Beijing, the Japanese side said on Friday.
Microsoft chairperson Bill Gates on Wednesday played down the chances of a fresh takeover bid for Yahoo!, saying the United States software giant would focus on an independent strategy. "We put a lot of effort into talking to Yahoo! and the conclusion was reached that we should pursue our own independent path," he told reporters during a visit to Tokyo.
Japanese team Super Aguri are pulling out of Formula One racing after prolonged financial difficulties, founder Aguri Suzuki said on Tuesday. ”I have been very happy that I was able to achieve a miracle and become a team owner, but I have to make the difficult decision to withdraw,” Suzuki told a news conference.
Japan and China will cooperate in a -million project to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from a thermal power plant, a Japanese daily reported on Saturday. Under the plan of the project, emitted carbon dioxide from a thermal power plant will be injected into a major Chinese oil field to extract more crude oil, the report said.
World business chiefs gathered in Tokyo on Thursday to discuss ways to tackle global warming as transatlantic tensions emerged over how far industry should go to reduce emissions. The heads of the business federations of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations agreed that climate change needs serious attention.
Old dentures can be stained and unsightly, but for a project raising money for charity, they’re a potential gold mine. The Japan Denture Recycle Association started in December 2006 and so far has recycled 30 000 dentures, generating 18-million yen ( 500) for charity.
Japan has more than 38 000 unofficial middle- and high-school websites that are not overseen by the schools, and harassment, sexual content and violent slang are prevalent among them, an Education Ministry survey showed. ”We didn’t really know what exactly was going on out there,” said a ministry official.
Taking karaoke to a new level, a machine soon to be out in Japan will let people impersonate animation characters, turning them into superheroes — or mischievous smart alecs — for the night. Namco Bandai Games unveiled the prototype machine at the Tokyo International Anime Fair 2008.
Top jewellers De Beers and Swarovski on Thursday opened flagship stores in Tokyo in a bid to lure customers in the highly lucrative but increasingly saturated Japanese luxury market. De Beers, the British-South African diamond giant, and Switzerland’s Swarovski cut the ribbons on the stores blocks away from each other in Tokyo’s Ginza district.
Corporate Japan will join the country’s battle against bulging waistlines next month with the introduction of compulsory "flab checks" for the over-40s and penalties for firms that fail to bring their employees’ weight under control. Health authorities hope the measures will arrest the rise in obesity among middle-aged men and slow soaring medical costs.
Masaaki Shirakawa, the Bank of Japan’s acting governor, has warned that the country’s economy faces an uncertain future. It comes at the end of a week in which the Nikkei share index sank to its lowest level for almost three years. Shirakawa took up the post after Parliament failed to agree on a long-term appointment.
Mieko Kawakami, a former bar hostess and bookstore clerk, was just another obscure singer until she started a blog. Her poetic, street-wise writing stood out so starkly among internet diaries in Japan — which, like those around the world, tend to be more informative or gossipy than narrative — that she is now Japan’s biggest literary star.
Share prices are tumbling and the yen is rising, but Japanese businessman on Monday got one thing to cheer — underwear to tame their bulging waistlines. Wacoal announced on Monday it was making a full entry into the men’s market with undergarments especially for men with a bit of flab.
Sony said this week it will soon sell a record deck that plugs into a computer to let vinyl collectors convert their analogue recordings into digital form. The turntable hooks up with a USB cable to a computer, where special software turns the sound into MP3 or ATRAC format.
Japan is being lined up as a Bledisloe Cup host in 2009 and could become the base for a new team in an expanded Super 14 competition. The Australian Rugby Union (ARU) said initial talks with Japanese officials about bringing the Wallabies and New Zealand All Blacks to Asia’s top rugby nation had gone smoothly.
Boozing into the night might inhibit coherent speech, but a Japanese company bets it will make workers communicate better. And it’s even willing to pay for it. Japan General Estate said on Tuesday it is planning to dole out thousands of dollars a month for its employees to go on the town in a bid to help communication.
Militant environmentalists hurled stinging acid for more than an hour onto a Japanese whaling ship off Antarctica on Monday, hurting three crew members, officials said. Both Japan and Australia, the leading opponent of whaling, condemned the latest attack by the Sea Shepherd group.
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/ 29 February 2008
At Edelstein boarding school, the schoolboys wear lip-gloss, the headmistress has a weakness for homoerotic comic books, and there is only one subject: how to serve female visitors. Welcome to Tokyo’s first schoolboy cafés, the latest in a flurry of eateries in Japan where customers and waiters role play themes from manga comics.
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/ 28 February 2008
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed on Thursday to make Hamas militants pay a heavy price for rocket attacks despite United States concerns about civilians in the Gaza Strip. As five more Palestinians were killed, Olmert held talks in Tokyo with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
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/ 22 February 2008
Japanese professor Yoji Kimura believes laughter is a weapon that in healthy doses can end the world’s wars. The only problem is finding a way to measure it. And so the expert on communications has invented a machine to chart out laughter — and a new unit of "aH" to calculate it.
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/ 22 February 2008
A Japanese man was arrested for trespassing this week after turning up at a high school dressed in a girl’s uniform and a long wig, local police said. Thirty-nine-year-old Tetsunori Nanpei told police he had bought the uniform over the internet and put it on to take a stroll near the school in Saitama.
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/ 19 February 2008
Japan’s top court ruled on Tuesday that pictures by late United States photographer Robert Mapplethorpe are not obscene, putting an end to years of legal fighting. In the 2003 ruling, the Tokyo High Court ruled that the book, which included images of male genitals, went ”against good sexual morality”.
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/ 19 February 2008
Japan’s Toshiba conceded defeat on Tuesday to rival Sony in a long-running DVD format war, ending consumer confusion but leaving about one million people with expensive machines doomed to become obsolete. Toshiba said it will stop selling its HD DVD machines by the end of March.
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/ 18 February 2008
Investors cheered an impending end to a format war for next-generation DVDs on Monday, pushing up shares of both Toshiba, on the verge of abandoning its HD DVD discs, and Sony, the leader of the rival Blu-ray camp. Toshiba shares jumped 5,1% as analysts praised its decision to cut its losses.
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/ 14 February 2008
Japanese police on Thursday heaped praise on a Labrador Retriever who found an elderly man who fallen over in freezing conditions at night, the second time the dog was credited with saving a life. The three-year-old black Lab, named ‘Dor, suddenly started barking when she was taking a walk with her owner in the western city of Iwade one evening last month.