Japanese automobile giant Toyota Motor Corporation said on Tuesday it would recall more than 210 000 Land Cruiser Prado sports utility vehicles worldwide, owing to a problem with their rear-axle shafts. The parts, which could develop cracks because of insufficient tenacity, would be replaced with fortified shafts, the top Japanese motor company said in a statement.
Japan’s top mobile operator, NTT DoCoMo, said on Thursday it will start a next-generation service letting cellphone users download music videos, aiming to outdo rivals’ success with online music. The new service, which will start as soon as June, uses a high-speed data transmission technology to allow downloads at 10 times the speed of DoCoMo’s third generation handsets.
Japan will have to adjust its eating habits with the implementation of a 50% price increase on disposable chopsticks imposed by Chinese suppliers before exports cease altogether, a media report said on Tuesday. In March, China’s government imposed a ban on the disposable eating utensils as a measure to protect forests.
Movie fans bored with hi-tech sound effects and graphics will soon be able to experience cinematic smells after a Japanese film distributor announced it is showing the world’s first fragrant films. The system will offer six kinds of aroma depending on the scenes being shown.
Sony shares rose on Thursday following a newspaper report that the Japanese electronics giant is set to beat its own profit forecast thanks to strong sales of flat-panel televisions. Sony could exceed its operating profit forecast of ¥100-billion ($844-million) by 10 to 20% in the year to March, the <i>Nihon Keizai Shimbun</i> said.
Japanese steelmaker Kobe Steel said on Wednesday it has co-developed a way of producing high-grade steel from low-cost materials, a technique that it hopes to sell to other companies. Kobe Steel has built an experimental plant in the United States state of Minnesota with two of its US partners, electric furnace steelmaker Steel Dynamics and iron-ore producer Cleveland-Cliffs.
The dollar extended losses in Asian trade on Wednesday following Iran’s announcement that it had joined the nuclear states, with the market cautious also ahead of United States trade data, dealers said. The dollar fell to ¥118,03 in Tokyo morning trade from ¥118,21 in New York late on Tuesday.
Nintendo said on Wednesday it would launch its "brain-training" software, a megahit in Japan, in the United States and Europe in hopes of winning customers who do not like video games but worry about aging. The software is billed as checking the ages of players’ brains by quizzing them on maths, reading and other simple tasks.
The race to set the industry standard for high-definition DVDs swept into Japan’s stores Friday as Toshiba put on sale its first next-generation player. Supporters of the HD DVD format pushed by Toshiba and NEC are vying with the rival Blu-ray format, led by Panasonic and Sony, in a replay of the VHS-Betamax battle between two types of video cassette tapes in the late 1970s.
A Japanese burglar who thought he was lucky to find an unlocked door on Friday was shocked to be arrested by 20 massive sumo wrestlers who were staying at the building. Konoshin Kawabata (48) was rummaging inside a room in Osaka in the early hours when he was suddenly confronted by wrestler Dewanosato, who stands 180cm tall and weighs 131kg.
Six-year-old Shino Katagiri does not start primary school until April, but her mother is already putting her into classes — on how to defend herself against violent attackers. As an adult self-defence instructor plays the bad guy, the terrified little girl huddles into a chair and refuses to take part in the lesson her mother has brought her to.
Sony’s painful restructuring drive is progressing well but reform efforts are still at an early stage, the group’s president said in an interview published on Wednesday. "I think we’ve made sizable progress in regaining confidence and improving earnings but in my mind, our reform is still in its early stages," said Ryoji Chubachi.
German media giant Bertelsmann is making preparations to sell its music company holdings including a 50% stake in Sony BMG, the world’s second-largest music group, a report said on Monday. The <i>Financial Times</i> cited unnamed people briefed on the plans as saying the company has arranged for investment banks to prepare the disposals.
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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/ 17 February 2006
Hitomi Terada is in the mood to shop. The 18-year-old has no credit card and very little cash on her, but that doesn’t matter: all she needs to shop at her favourite mall is the cellphone that rarely leaves her sight. Two or three days later the goods arrive at her home, along with the bill, which she pays at her local post office.
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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.