Japan

Japan's Diet has enacted a bill into law that paves the way for divorced parents to share custody of their children. The current system allows only either of the couple to exercise parental rights.

The SDP factory produces LCD panels for televisions, and its suspension will mean Japan no longer has the capacity to produce large panels.

In 2021, the government panel presented the proposals, which call for allowing female members to retain their Imperial Family status after marriage and for allowing male members in the paternal line of former Imperial Family branches to be adopted into the Imperial Family.

Tourism to Japan has been booming since pandemic-era border restrictions were lifted, and the government has been working hard to boost visitor numbers.

Prime Minister Kishida announces support for company's second plant in Kumamoto

A Japan Airlines plane caught fire on the runway at Haneda Airport on Tuesday evening, and firefighting efforts are underway.

A powerful 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck the country's central region on Monday.

One survey found Kishida’s ‘disapproval rate’ was at 79 per cent, the highest since the newspaper started conducting such polls more than seven decades ago.

The dynamic pricing scheme allows the prices of vending machine items to be raised when demand is high and lowered when sales are low.

The choice came as tax hikes and cuts were heavily covered in the news and discussed among policymakers.

All traces of a massive pop star once dubbed the “Japanese Madonna” are being scrubbed from the internet, some five years after she retired from public life at the age of 40.

(snip)

Now, after five years of absolute silence, fans have noticed an even more extreme update: Amuro’s official YouTube channel, housing all her dozens of music videos has been deleted. All of her solo music has also been wiped from streaming services: Search “Namie Amuro” on Spotify or Apple Music, and you’ll see just a handful of her collaborations with other artists, with no sign of anything from the dozen albums she released through her career.

As you might expect from a major railway hub for one of the country’s most visited cities, Kyoto Station is filled with souvenir stores. From sweets to miscellaneous goods, there’s such a wide selection on offer you’d think they have all the main products from Kyoto in stock, so when our reporter Udonko was planning a trip to the city, she did some online research beforehand to find out which souvenirs she should buy.

As she scrolled excitedly through all the recommendations online, a question suddenly popped into her head. Out of all the many souvenirs at Kyoto Station, which would be the cheapest one to buy?

Pivoting her search to find the answer to her question, she jotted down some ideas before making her way to Kyoto Station, located beneath the iconic Kyoto Tower.

Kyoto Station is directly connected to various complexes such as the Isetan department store building, Kyoto Theatre, and an underground shopping mall, but as this was way too much ground to cover, Udonko limited her search to the area inside Kyoto Station outside the Shinkansen ticket gates.

Since she was only looking for souvenirs, she decided to be strict with her search, passing on items that don’t show a connection to Kyoto, even if they might be cheaply priced.

Though she planned well before her visit, one thing she didn’t plan for were the crowds, because with this being fall foliage season, Kyoto Station was packed with tourists from all over the world.

Fighting her instinct to avoid the crowds and abort the mission, Udonko persevered, making her way to the Omiyage Kaido (“Souvenir Highway”).

Hunting for souvenirs was fun at first, but as she stopped by more and more souvenir hot spots to check the prices of their wares, she found herself becoming mentally and physically drained.

In the end, Udonko spent about two hours wandering around the area before finding what she believes to be the cheapest souvenir at Kyoto Station…

▼ …Miyako no Toryanse!

Negative reaction to unfair comparison between ryokan and hotel experiences prompts video takedown.

Dropping slow process in early clinical trials would make medicines available sooner

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The recent suicide of an actress from Japan's all-female musical theater company Takarazuka Revue was due to overworking and bullying

Japan's real wages dropped 2.4% in September from a year earlier.

Eruptions from an undersea volcano have apparently created an islet in the Ogasawara island chain more than 1,000 kilometers south of Tokyo in the Pacific Ocean, officials said.

A rise in the antics of nuisance influencers in Japan, who are accused of duping train ticket collectors and pretending to be homeless to get cash, has caused consternation in the country as tourism number near their pre-pandemic levels.

A railway company in Japan is investigating allegations that a group of four popular foreign YouTubers had travelled long distances by train without paying. One of the suspected fare dodgers posted a video to his 2.38 million subscribers over the weekend showing him and three others evading rail staff and blagging free food.

Tight security is in place in Tokyo's vibrant Shibuya district just days before Halloween, with the famous Hachiko dog statue covered with a white curtain bearing the message that the area is "not a venue" for events.

And if you’d rather have a 60,000-yen comb, this Asakusa shop has some of those too.

Buck-Tick vocalist Atsushi Sakurai died on Oct. 19 after he was rushed to the hospital following a brain hemorrhage

The rise in nuisance influencers comes as tourism numbers in Japan near their pre-pandemic levels

Step back in time at this old-school Japanese kissaten.

TOKYO -- Despite widespread approval of the Kishida government's move to request the breakup of the controversial Unification Church, Cabinet support

Employees got the weight of each Sumo wrestler from the Nihon Sumo Kyokai website and discovered that both JL659 and JL2465 on the 12th would be off weight and balance. [...]

JAL operation contacted other departments and in the early hours of the 12th, JAL decided to operate an additional unscheduled flight on HND-ASJ just for sumo wrestlers.

News link (in Japanese)