Category Archives: Japan

US troops in Okinawa ordered to wear masks as Covid cases rise

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Military personnel must wear face coverings off base after virus surges among civilians in Japan

US troops in Okinawa prefecture have been ordered to wear masks off base amid criticism that military authorities failed to tackle a fresh Covid-19 outbreak among service personnel that has taken hold among the local civilian population in Japan.

Okinawa is at the centre of the country’s latest outbreak, with cases surging in recent days from 51 on Saturday to at least 980 on Thursday – a record daily caseload for the southern island.

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Sony to start electric car firm as it ‘explores a commercial launch’

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Tokyo-listed shares in Japanese group rise after it shows off second concept vehicle

Sony has revealed plans to start an electric car company, making it the latest electronics manufacturer to target the automotive sector.

The Japanese tech firm is “exploring a commercial launch” of electric vehicles, and will launch a new company, Sony Mobility Inc, in the spring, its chairman and president, Kenichiro Yoshida, told a news conference before the Consumer Electronics Show in the US.

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North Korea has launched possible ballistic missile, say Japan and South Korea

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Regime conducts first such launch of the year, with South Korea’s military saying the missile appears to have landed in the sea

North Korea has fired what could be a ballistic missile early on Wednesday, the first such test by Pyongyang of the new year.

The South Korean Joint Chiefs of staff and the Japanese government said the projectile “appears” to be a ballistic missile, with South Korea saying it landed in the East Sea.

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No contact required: Covid fuels vending machine revival in Japan

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After decades of decline, jidō hanbaiki are back in fashion with public wary of human interaction

After a brief wait to the faint whirr of moving machinery parts, the tiny cardboard box that drops into the plastic-covered tray is reassuringly warm. Inside is a perfectly passable burger in a chewy white bun, topped with a blob of ketchup and diced fried onions.

No human interaction occurred in the making of this transaction. The Guardian’s alfresco lunch came courtesy of one of dozens of vending machines in Sagamihara, an unglamorous town near Tokyo.

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Japan’s whaling town struggles to keep 400 years of tradition alive

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The resumption of killing whales for profit for the first time in over 30 years is offering little cause for celebration

You don’t have to look far to find evidence of Wada’s centuries-old connection to whaling. Visitors to the town on Japan’s Pacific coast are greeted by a replica skeleton of a blue whale before entering a museum devoted to the behemoths of the ocean.

At a local restaurant, diners eat deep-fried whale cutlet and buy cetacean-themed gifts at a neighbouring gift shop. At the edge of the water stands a wooden deck where harpooned whales are butchered before being sold to wholesalers and restaurants.

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Japan hangs three men on death row in first executions since 2019 – reports

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Japan has resisted calls for abolition of the capital punishment, and the latest executions are the first under the new prime minister, Fumio Kishida

Japan has hanged three men in the country’s first executions for two years, media reports said on Tuesday, amid criticism of its use of the death penalty.

The Kyodo news agency said the justice ministry had identified the men as Yasutaka Fujishiro, 65, who murdered seven of his relatives in 2004, and Tomoaki Takanezawa, 54, and Mitsunori Onogawa, 44, who were convicted of killing two employees of a pachinko parlour in 2003.

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‘Peeing is very easy’: Japanese billionaire returns to Earth after documenting life on ISS

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Yusaku Maezawa spent 12 days at the space station, marking Russia’s return to space tourism after a decade-long pause

A Japanese billionaire has returned to Earth after 12 days spent on the International Space Station, where he made videos about performing mundane tasks in space including brushing his teeth and going to the toilet.

Online fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant Yozo Hirano parachuted on to Kazakhstan’s steppe at around the expected landing time of 03.13 GMT on Monday, along with Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, Russia’s space agency said.

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Rahm Emanuel leads confirmed Biden nominees in late-night logjam break

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Ex-Obama chief of staff will go to Japan after deal for vote on Russia pipeline sanctions ends Republican Senate resistance

The former Obama White House chief of staff and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel was among more than 30 ambassadors and other Biden nominees confirmed by the Senate early on Saturday.

The Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, broke a Republican-stoked logjam by agreeing to schedule a vote on sanctions on the company behind the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that will deliver natural gas from Russia to Germany.

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Japanese firefighters battle deadly blaze at Osaka clinic – video

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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

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Osaka building fire: fears 27 people have died in Japan blaze

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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.

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Scientists use ostrich cells to make glowing Covid detection masks

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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.

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Japanese fashion tycoon to blast off for ISS as Russia revives space tourism

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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.

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Can you say Squid Game in Korean? TV show fuels demand for east Asian language learning

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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.

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Screen sensation: the single-shot thriller bringing time-travel into the Zoom era

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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.

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Man rescued 22 hours after capsizing off Japan coast – video

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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

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Pandemic hits mental health of women and young people hardest, survey finds

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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.

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‘I was anxious at first’: how Covid helped vaccine-sceptic Japan overcome its hesitancy

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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.

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Japan’s former princess Mako begins new life as ‘commoner’ in New York

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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”.

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Japan death row inmates sue over same-day notification of execution – report

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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.

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