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/ 22 October 2007
A postcard mailed by a Japanese soldier from a World War II battlefield in Burma reached his friend 64 years after it was sent, thanks to a Japanese exchange student and the family of a former United States soldier who kept the card. The card travelled from Burma, Nagasaki, Arizona and Hawaii before finding Shizuo Nagano (80).
Nintendo’s ”Wiimote” is getting a cushion cover. The Japanese game maker’s Wii machine has become a global hit among players young and old alike. To help prevent accidents and soften possible blows, Nintendo is shipping for free rubbery silicone covers for the handheld devices.
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/ 29 September 2007
A strong earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7,1 hit near the United States Pacific territory of Guam on Sunday, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said, but island media said there were no immediate reports of injuries. Guam’s Pacific Daily News said the quake could be felt in high-rise buildings on the island.
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/ 27 September 2007
A Japanese dairy company on Thursday announced the launch of super-premium milk for stressed-out adults — at the price of $43 for a bottle of 900ml, or one quart. Tokyo-based Nakazawa Foods will launch the "Adult Milk" line of products in October, targeting "adults who live in a stressful society", the company said in a statement.
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/ 25 September 2007
Yasuo Fukuda, a seasoned moderate lawmaker, was chosen as Japan’s Prime Minister on Tuesday, then tapped veteran ministers from his predecessor’s Cabinet to confront a resurgent opposition keen to force an election. The Liberal Democratic Party chose Fukuda as its leader to revive party fortunes after a disastrous year of scandals.
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/ 23 September 2007
Japan’s ruling party on Sunday picked Yasuo Fukuda, who seeks warmer ties with Asian neighbours, to succeed Shinzo Abe as prime minister in an effort to revive the party’s fortunes and fill a political vacuum. Fukuda will be chosen as prime minister on Tuesday by virtue of the ruling camp’s huge majority in Parliament’s Lower House.
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/ 14 September 2007
Japan’s first lunar orbiter successfully blasted into space on Friday on the most extensive mission to investigate the moon since the United States’s Apollo programme began nearly four decades ago, officials said. A domestically developed rocket launched with no glitches from a small island in southern Japan.
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/ 12 September 2007
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe abruptly announced his resignation on Wednesday after a year in power dogged by scandals, an election rout and a crisis over Japan’s support for United States-led operations in Afghanistan. The hawkish Abe, who took office promising to boost Japan’s global security profile, had seen his clout dwindle.
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/ 12 September 2007
The head of Microsoft’s gaming business in Japan promised more role-playing game software on Wednesday to attract fans in a market where its Xbox 360 console has struggled against offerings from Nintendo and Sony. Takashi Sensui, who heads Xbox operations in Japan, said Japanese prefer role-playing games.
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/ 5 September 2007
Japanese electronics maker Casio said on Wednesday it will launch a series of digital cameras specially designed for YouTube, the blockbuster video-sharing website. The new Exilim series has four models, all installed with a function to shoot and save videos in the best form to upload on YouTube, the company said.
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/ 5 September 2007
For those fed up with the family photos where one person is perpetually frowning, a new Japanese camera is said to automatically weed out pictures when a person isn’t smiling. Electronics giant Sony said on Wednesday it will begin sales this month of the compact "Cyber-shot T" series that can detect a smile and immediately drop the shutter.
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/ 5 September 2007
With her dyed-brown long hair and tight designer jeans, Shoko Tendo looks like any other stylish young Japanese woman — until she removes her shirt to reveal the vivid tattoos covering her back and most of her body. The author of Yakuza Moon, Tendo says that police efforts to eradicate the gangsters have merely made them harder to track.
Inmates at a major Japanese prison found marijuana growing naturally on the grounds, but instead of getting high, they went to the wardens. The prisoners found about 300 hemp shoots growing on the exercise ground of Abashiri Prison, located on Japan’s northern-most island of Hokkaido, Jiji Press and the <i>Yomiuri Shimbun</i> said.
Recovering Japanese giant Sony said on Wednesday it will introduce a new line-up of flat-screen televisions, including the largest on the market, in a bid to boost its mainstay electronics sales. Introducing 15 new models of its Bravia line, Sony said its top-end flagship model with a 70-inch (1,78m) screen will be the largest flat television commercially available.
South African swimming team captain Gerhard Zandberg was on top of the world after taking the 50m freestyle honours in the fastest time swam by a South African this year, at the International Swim Meeting in Tokyo, Japan, on Friday. Port Elizabeth’s Shaun Harris won the 50m freestyle B final in 22,87 seconds.
Smog is menacing Japanese cities for the first time in 30 years and cropping up in rural areas for the first time ever, alarming the government and prompting experts to point the finger at neighbouring China. Warnings for high levels of hazardous smog have been issued in a record 28 prefectures so far this year.
Sharp showed a 29mm-thick prototype TV on Wednesday, which the Japanese electronics maker said was the thinnest, lightest and lowest energy-consuming liquid crystal display (LCD) in the world. The 25kg display, which has a tuner and other TV features encased in its panel, weighs about half of current LCD panel TVs and consumes about half their power, according to Sharp.
A plane belonging to Taiwan’s China Airlines exploded and caught fire soon after landing on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa on Monday, but officials said all 165 people on board had escaped safely. The Boeing 737-800 plane, which had just arrived from Taipei, was already being evacuated when the left engine exploded.
Japan offered remorse for past atrocities on the anniversary on Wednesday of its World War II surrender as top leaders steered clear of a shrine at the heart of friction with neighbouring countries. Sixty-two years after Japan capitulated in the deadliest conflict in history, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged that his country would not return to war.
The world’s oldest person, a Japanese woman who counted eating well and getting plenty of sleep as the secret of her longevity, died on Monday at age 114, a news report said. Yone Minagawa, who lived in a nursing home but was still sprightly late in life, died "of old age" on Monday evening, Kyodo News reported.
A powerful typhoon slammed into southern Japan on Thursday, injuring three people, disrupting air and land traffic and cutting power to thousands of houses. Packing winds of up to 144km/h and bringing heavy rains, typhoon Usagi landed on the coast of Kyushu Island shortly before 6pm local time from the Pacific, the meteorological agency said.
Hawkish Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to stay in his post despite a crushing defeat for his ruling camp in an upper house election, but policy gridlock loomed and Abe’s grip on his job was still uncertain. Voters outraged at a string of government scandals and gaffes and the bungling of pension records stripped Abe’s coalition of its upper house majority.
The Japanese love technology so much that now even sex toys are on the cutting edge. The "gPod," a phallic-shaped vibrator, is designed to respond automatically to sounds picked up by an accompanying handset, which can plug into anything from a telephone to a music player to a television.
A senior Japanese power-company official defended on Wednesday the speed with which the public was notified about damage at a quake-hit nuclear plant that resulted in a radioactive water leak. The Tokyo Electric Power Company has come under fire for being slow to inform the public about damage at the plant.
Sales of Sony’s PlayStation 3 (PS3) have finally topped the one million mark in Japan eight months after its launch, lagging well behind those of Nintendo’s Wii, research showed on Wednesday. Sony had sold just over 1,01-million PS3s as of July 15 since the console’s launch in Japan on November 11, according to Enterbrain, a Japanese publisher that tracks video-game console sales.
Manchester United are hopeful of sealing the ”over-complicated” transfer of Argentina striker Carlos Tevez from West Ham within the next week or so, according to chief executive David Gill. United are determined to make Tevez their fourth summer signing following the arrivals of Owen Hargreaves, Nani and Anderson.
Japan’s capital braced for a powerful typhoon on Sunday that killed five people and forced tens of thousands to evacuate across the country. Authorities warned that Typhoon Man-Yi, packing sustained winds of 108km/h and gusts of up to 162km/h, could continue to wreak havoc as it moved up the Pacific coast toward Tokyo.
A strong typhoon lashed southern Japan with high winds and heavy rain on Saturday, killing a boy, injuring dozens and forcing thousands of people to evacuate homes. Man-Yi struck the southernmost main island of Kyushu after storming through the islands of Okinawa on Friday, moving north-east at 35km/h.
A powerful typhoon struck the southern Japanese islands of Okinawa on Friday, pounding them with torrential rains and high winds before it heads north towards the nation’s main islands. Up to 500mm of rain was expected to fall on some parts of Japan’s southernmost main island of Kyushu by Saturday morning.
A powerful typhoon headed north towards Japan on Thursday, threatening to rake the southern islands of Okinawa and the country’s main islands with torrential rain and high winds. Typhoon Man-yi was 600km south of the Okinawan city of Naha at 1pm (4am GMT) and moving north north-west at 25km/h.
Envelopes with cash have been left in public restrooms across Japan, officials said on Wednesday, as the bizarre form of anonymous charity turned into a nationwide phenomenon. A day after two small cities on the main island of Honshu reported finding cash in men’s rooms in public buildings, officials across Japan disclosed that they too had discovered such mysterious packages.
Japan’s defence minister resigned on Tuesday over remarks that appeared to accept the 1945 atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe quickly tapped a woman for the post to try to quell the furore ahead of an election this month.