Twenty-seven people are feared dead after a fire swept through a mental health clinic in the Japanese city of Osaka, the local fire department said.
The blaze is being treated as suspected arson, the Kyodo news agency said, quoting police sources saying that a man who appeared to be in his 60s had been seen carrying a paper bag leaking an unidentified liquid
Continue reading...Footage shows dozens of firefighters working on the eight-storey building that housed mental health services and medical care
Twenty-seven people were feared dead after a blaze at a building in a commercial district of the Japanese city of Osaka on Friday, the local fire department said.
Television footage showed dozens of firefighters working inside and outside the eight-storey building after the blaze was extinguished.
Continue reading...Japanese researchers use bird antibodies to detect virus under ultraviolet light
Japanese researchers have developed masks that use ostrich antibodies to detect Covid-19 by glowing under ultraviolet light.
The discovery, by Yasuhiro Tsukamoto and his team at Kyoto Prefectural University in western Japan, could provide for low-cost testing of the virus at home.
Continue reading...Yusaku Maezawa to become first space tourist sent to space station by Russia in more than a decade
The Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has said he can barely contain his excitement on the eve of blasting off to the International Space Station in a prelude to a more ambitious trip around the moon with Elon Musk’s SpaceX planned in 2023.
The 46-year-old fashion magnate and art collector has been training at a space centre outside Moscow before becoming the first space tourist to travel to the ISS in more than a decade.
Continue reading...Japanese and Korean are in top five choices in UK this year at online platform Duolingo
Whether it’s down to Squid Game or kawaii culture, fascination with Korea and Japan is fuelling a boom in learning east Asian languages. Japanese is the fastest growing language to be learned in the UK this year on the online platform Duolingo, and Korean is the fourth fastest.
Most of the interest is driven by cultural issues, the firm said in its 2021 Duolingo language report, which will be published tomorrow and analyses how the 20 million downloads of its platform are used.
Continue reading...It was shot in a week and premiered to 12 people, but micro-budget sci-fi movie Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes has become the breakout success of the year
“We made the film in seven days, shooting non-stop from six in the evening to six in the morning. It was hell. We were always tired. And the cast and crew were always picking on me because my brain would just go completely dead at 2am every day.” Japanese film-maker Junta Yamaguchi is talking about his first feature film, Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, which was shot almost entirely inside a real cafe in Kyoto. “We couldn’t film anything during their opening hours.”
But Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes isn’t your average small-scale indie film. It’s a nicely innovative time-travel yarn that asks: in our world of remote working and Zoom calls, what if the face staring back at us from our computer was a version of ourself two minutes in the future? It’s also the latest example of the nagamawashi (long-shot) film, the micro-genre currently putting no-budget Japanese cinema on the map after the success of One Cut of the Dead – the 2017 zombie horror-comedy that became an international cult sensation, grossing over $30m (£22m) worldwide from a $25,000 budget.
Continue reading...Dramatic footage released by the Japan coastguard shows the rescue of a 69-year-old man in rough seas after spending 22 hours drifting in open water.
The man, whose name has not been released, was alone on a boat off Kagoshima prefecture in the south-west of the country on Saturday afternoon when it capsized.
He managed to call a colleague on the island to alert him, but was not found until nearly a day later, the coastguard said, when rescuers spotted him sitting on the engine of his capsized boat, clasping a propeller part
Survey also finds adults aged 18-24 and women more concerned about personal finances than other groups
Young people and women have taken the hardest psychological and financial hit from the pandemic, a YouGov survey has found – but few people anywhere are considering changing their lives as a result of it.
The annual YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project found that in many of the 27 countries surveyed, young people were consistently more likely than their elders to feel the Covid crisis had made their financial and mental health concerns worse.
Continue reading...Japan ranks among the most Covid-immunised countries, but only months ago the story was very different
Early this year, as Japan’s coronavirus cases began another ominous rise, the country seemed determined to confirm its reputation as a vaccine backwater.
Held up by additional clinical trials, its Covid-19 vaccine rollout lagged behind that of the UK and other countries by several months. And when it finally started offering shots in February, doses were administered at an achingly slow pace, beginning with medical staff and older people. Tens of millions of others were convinced they would have to wait many months before coming within arm’s reach of a health worker’s needle.
Continue reading...Mako Komuro arrives with husband in US, leaving behind her royal status after months of public outcry and frenzied media attention
Japanese former princess Mako Komuro has arrived in the United States with her husband, Kei Komuro, swapping ancient imperial rites for the bright lights of New York after leaving the royal family and relinquishing her royal title.
The pair tied the knot in Tokyo last month in muted fashion, following years of public attention over a minor financial scandal involving Kei Komuro’s mother, which Mako Komuro said caused her “sadness and pain”.
Continue reading...Lawyer for two inmates says practice of giving prisoners notice of only a matter of hours is ‘extremely inhumane’
Two death row inmates in Japan are suing the government, claiming that the practice of not informing inmates of the time of their execution until only hours beforehand is “inhumane”, local media have reported.
The prisoners aredemanding change and seeking compensation.
Continue reading...Pupils out of school due to Covid up in week before England half-term; Greece public health body says 6,700 new infections recorded in 24 hours
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has issued some data in the UK, suggesting that the number of Covid deaths is raising. The bulletin states:
The number of deaths from all causes in the UK in the week ending 22 October 2021 (Week 42) was 12,935, 15.4% above the average for the corresponding week in 2015 to 2019. Deaths were above the five-year average in all UK countries.
Of all deaths registered in the week ending 22 October, 974 involved coronavirus (Covid-19), 82 more than the previous week (a 9.2% increase). Deaths involving Covid-19 accounted for around 1 in 13 deaths (7.5%).
The policy will remain for a long time. How long it will last depends on the virus-control situation worldwide.
Continue reading...A 24-year-old man was arrested after brandishing a knife and starting a fire on a train in Tokyo on Sunday night. The incident occurred on a Keio Line train near Kokuryo station in the western Tokyo city of Chofu. Seventeen people were injured, including a 72-year-old passenger who was stabbed on the train.
Continue reading...Conservative LDP along with coalition partner Komeito retain control of parliament, defying expectations
Japan’s ruling conservative party defied expectations in Sunday’s general election, with a comfortable victory that will boost the prime minister, Fumio Kishida, as he attempts to steer the economy out of the coronavirus pandemic.
Kishida’s Liberal Democratic party secured 261 seats in the 465-member lower house – the more powerful of Japan’s two-chamber Diet – slightly down on its pre-election 276 seats.
Continue reading...Japanese media report man in Batman villain costume stabbed people and started a fire
A man dressed in Batman’s Joker costume has been arrested for attempted murder after a knife and fire attack on a train in Tokyo, according to Japanese media, with at least 17 people reportedly injured and one in a serious condition after being stabbed.
Witnesses told national broadcaster NHK of the bloody attack which happened on Sunday, when the Japanese capital was full of Halloween revellers, many in costume.
Continue reading...A Japanese artist has filmed herself trying to swim in a sea with a layer of pumice rocks about 30cm deep in the water. The stones are believed to have travelled almost 1,500km from an eruption in the Pacific's Ogasawara Islands in August
Continue reading...Drone footage shows vast amounts of pumice pebbles, spewed out months ago by an undersea volcano, clogging up a fishing port in Kagoshima prefecture, in southern Japan. The pumice has so far affected 19 ports in Kagoshima, and 11 on Okinawa, putting hundreds of fishing boats out of action and damaging the tourism industry.
Continue reading...Polls show the LDP may struggle to hold on to its sole majority in the 465-seat chamber
The party that has governed Japan almost without interruption for nearly seven decades is expected to win Sunday’s general election, but the new prime minister, Fumio Kishida, could emerge with his authority damaged.
Kishida, who became president of the ruling Liberal Democratic party (LDP) last month, is hoping to capitalise on a dramatic fall in coronavirus cases in Japan in recent weeks and engage voters with promises of a “new capitalism” that will redistribute wealth to the country’s struggling middle class.
Continue reading...Dozens of fishing vessels and ports have been damaged, with tonnes of the floating pebbles being removed from coastlines every day
Vast amounts of pumice pebbles, spewed out months ago by an undersea volcano, has clogged dozens of ports and damaged fishing boats along Japan’s southernmost coastlines.
Deputy chief cabinet secretary Yoshihiko Isozaki said on Friday that the pumice had so far affected 11 ports on Okinawa and 19 others in the Kagoshima prefecture, on Japan’s southernmost island of Kyushu, and forced the central government to establish a disaster recovery task force.
Continue reading...Government facing ridicule over ‘Abenomasks’ as it denies wasting large amounts of taxpayers’ money
Wearing masks may be near-ubiquitous in Japan, but the government has come under fire after it was revealed that more than 80m face coverings it procured at the start of the coronavirus pandemic are still in storage, at a huge cost to taxpayers.
The government secured 260m washable cloth masks early last year to distribute to every household in Japan after public anxiety over the virus emptied stores of medical versions.
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