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Tourists drive rental go-karts while dressed up as game characters through the streets of Shibuya and other areas of Tokyo in December 2018.
COMMENTARY
Sep 6, 2023

A 10-year tourist boom and all I got was this lousy 'Mario Kart'

Like cockroaches in a nuclear apocalypse, seemingly nothing can destroy the "Mario Karts": not legal action, not the government and not even the pandemic.
Journalists tour the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and the tanks that contain contaminated water on Aug. 27
COMMENTARY / Japan
Sep 6, 2023

We need to put low-dose radiation into perspective

Public fear of the effects of low-dose radiation isn’t backed by science. The Fukushima water release shows, once again, that better education is needed.
A screenshot of the Nigetore app (left) five minutes after the start of practice evacuation using a 15-minute setting for “preparation time.” On the right, two screenshots show the outcomes of drills and a map indicating an evacuation route with tsunami inundation areas highlighted.
JAPAN / Science & Health / Regional Voices: Kyushu
Sep 11, 2023

Tsunami evacuation app offers realistic quake preparation experience

Personal tsunami evacuation drill app Nigetore allows users to choose their own evacuation routes and evaluate their success.
An activist in Seoul protests Japan’s plan to release treated wastewater from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
PODCAST / deep dive
Sep 7, 2023

Anger at Fukushima’s wastewater; hope in its renewables

Good news and bad news out of Fukushima.
Kazuki Paul Tsuyukusa with his dog Sunny in Fukuoka
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Sep 9, 2023

Kazuki Paul Tsuyukusa: 'It’s better to live without being noticed everywhere.’

A former rikishi, Kazuki Paul Tsuyukusa has swapped his sumo stable for the life of a salaryman.
Children try to salvage their belongings from the rubble of their house after a demolition drive by the authorities at a slum area near the upcoming G20 Summit main venue in New Delhi, in June.
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Sep 8, 2023

Many slums disappear from Indian capital ahead of G20 summit

In 2021, housing minister Hardeep Singh Puri, told parliament that 13.5 million people lived in the city's unauthorized colonies.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin shakes hands with India's Defense chief Gen. Anil Chauhan during a reception in New Delhi in June.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics / FOCUS
Sep 9, 2023

India’s military studying options for any China-Taiwan war

Defense chief Gen. Anil Chauhan — India’s top military commander — commissioned a study to examine the wider impact of any war over the island.
Viola Todorovic at the place where she was held captive and subjected to torture during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship. She was 19 years-old when she was disappeared by the secret police.
WORLD / Politics
Sep 11, 2023

Chile political prisoners reclaim torture sites to preserve coup memory

These places have become focal points of shared memory as victims and their families look to gain more control over the past
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi shakes hands with U.S. President Joe Biden upon his arrival at the Bharat Mandapam convention center for the Group of 20 summit in New Delhi on Saturday.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics / ANALYSIS
Sep 11, 2023

At G20 summit, India sought to loosen China’s grip on Global South

The U.S. and other G7 members stayed largely in the background at the gathering, allowing India to take a global leadership role.
Bottles of whisky sit on display behind the bar at the Door XXV private club in the Golden Equator Group office in Singapore.
BUSINESS / Companies
Sep 13, 2023

Asia takes over the world’s whisky market

Yearslong efforts by Pernod, Diageo and other major whiskey producers to get Asian drinkers to spend more on their premium spirits are finally paying off.
Visitors inspect a BYD electric sedan at a motor show in Munich
BUSINESS / Companies
Sep 14, 2023

Did Europe just start a trade war with China over electric cars?

The EU launched a probe into Beijing’s financial support for the EV industry amid fears that Chinese exports are putting auto jobs at risk.
The incoming and outgoing presidents of Johnny & Associates, Noriyuki Higashiyama and Julie Keiko Fujishima, bow at a press conference on Sept. 7.
PODCAST / deep dive
Sep 14, 2023

Johnny’s talent agency has admitted to a past of abuse. What next?

Karin Kaneko joins the show to update us on how the story is unfolding.
The Tigers toss manager Akinobu Okada into the air as they celebrate after winning the Central League pennant on Thursday at Koshien Stadium in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / Sac Bunts
Sep 15, 2023

Akinobu Okada pushed right buttons to guide Tigers to CL pennant

Akinobu Okada led Hanshin to its first Central League pennant since 2005, and now anticipation grows over what comes next.
A visitor looks at portraits of former United Nations Secretaries-General at U.N. headquarters ahead of the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Friday.
WORLD / Politics / FOCUS
Sep 17, 2023

World disappointed by the U.N. now looks elsewhere for answers

If the body's strongest members keep resisting reform, the Global South may have no choice but to seek new options, including those offered by China.
U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House in Washington on Sunday
WORLD / Politics
Sep 18, 2023

Can Joe Biden and a wad of cash win rural America for Democrats?

Billions of dollars in federal funding have flowed to rural areas' infrastructure since Biden took office.
Masanobu Ogura (center left), then-minister in charge of policies related to children, receives a petition from Hiroki Komazaki (center right), founder of nonprofit organization Florence, in Tokyo on Sept. 1.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal / FOCUS
Sep 18, 2023

Debate grows in Japan over proposed background checks for teachers

The Children and Families Agency is proposing to make screening for criminal convictions mandatory for people looking to work in schools or nurseries.
A specialist removes a Kirin 9000s chip fabricated in China by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) from a Huawei Technologies Mate 60 Pro smartphone earlier this month.
BUSINESS / Tech / ANALYSIS
Sep 20, 2023

U.S. likely to tighten tech curbs as China advances chip production

The chips powering a new Huawei phone represent a jump forward in China’s chipmaking capability as it boosts efforts to catch up with rivals.
A woman with HTLV-1 from Okinawa Prefecture talks about her experience of being turned away at a clinic outside the prefecture.
JAPAN / Science & Health / Regional Voices: Okinawa
Sep 25, 2023

Website aims to shed light on little-known blood cancer virus

Awareness of HTLV-1, a virus that causes adult T-cell leukemia and other diseases, is low in Japan. A website called Hot Lives aims to change that.
Does a person have a duty to alert others when they see wrongdoing in a company? Or is it better to leave the gods untouched lest you be cursed?
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Sep 21, 2023

A culture of silence vs. a culture of speaking up

The scandal at talent agency Johnny & Associates was made worse by a culture of “keeping the lid on a stinky thing.”
Leaves of marijuana plants from which hemp fibers are extracted at Japan's largest legal marijuana farm in Kanuma, Tochigi Prefecture, on July 5, 2016
PODCAST / deep dive
Sep 21, 2023

Does a university cannabis scandal point to a larger trend?

A drugs scandal at Japan’s biggest university draws attention to a troubling statistic: Cannabis use among young people is on the rise.
Sogo & Seibu’s flagship store in Ikebukuro is closed due to a strike on Aug. 31. 
COMMENTARY / Japan
Sep 19, 2023

As goes the Sogo department store, so goes Japan

The number of department stores located outside Japan's 10 biggest cities has dropped by 30% in the past decade.
Several factors are pushing up Japan’s land prices: foreign tourism, a return of manufacturing to the country and the change in work practices after the COVID-19 pandemic.
EDITORIALS
Sep 22, 2023

Rising land prices are a cause for celebration and concern

The government said real estate prices across Japan rose 1% from the preceding year, the first such national increase in over three decades.
Yuki Tsunoda in action during qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix on Saturday at Suzuka Circuit.
MORE SPORTS / Auto Racing
Sep 23, 2023

Tsunoda thrills home fans in qualifying ninth for Japanese GP

Still, it was Max Verstappen’s day, as the Red Bull ace wowed the 79,000 fans at the racetrack on his way to pole position in 1:28.877.
Max Verstappen celebrates leading team Red Bull to their second consecutive constructors’ title at the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka Circuit in Mie Prefecture on Sunday.
MORE SPORTS / Auto Racing
Sep 24, 2023

Tsunoda fails to score points in Japan GP as Red Bull clinch title

Max Verstappen took the chequered flag for the Honda-powered Red Bull, clinching the team’s second consecutive constructors’ title.
A boat piloted by a Philippine fisherman is intercepted by Chinese coast guard boats as they tried to enter the Scarborough Shoal in disputed waters of the South China Sea.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Sep 25, 2023

With bullhorns and water cannons, Chinese ships wall off the sea

The world’s most brazen maritime militarization is gaining muscle in the South China Sea, waters through which one-third of global ocean trade passes.
The city of Tamura, Fukushima Prefecture, is known as a haven for insects such as rhinoceros beetles.
JAPAN
Sep 28, 2023

'Insect tourism' launched in rural Fukushima city

Tamura, located in the center of the Abukuma plateau, is known as a haven for insects such as rhinoceros beetles and stag beetles.
People take part in a protest against the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's redevelopment project for the Meiji Jingu Gaien district in Tokyo in February.
JAPAN / Society
Sep 25, 2023

Petitioners try to halt razing of thousands of trees in historic Tokyo park

Tokyo's percentage of public green space is far lower than other major cities such as New York, Seoul and London.
An aerial view of part of the 95,000-hectare Rio Preto-Jacunda State Nature Reserve, in Rondonia State, Brazil, after it was burned down, on Sept. 6.
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability
Sep 25, 2023

Arson turns Amazon reforestation project to ashes

A project that replanted trees in an illegally deforested nature reserve in Brazil was allegedly torched by land-grabbers.
Selcuk Bayraktar, chairman of Turkish defense firm Baykar and son-in-law of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, attends the presidential swearing-in ceremony after Erdogan's election win in Ankara on June 3.
WORLD / Politics
Sep 28, 2023

Erdogan’s son-in-law makes Turkey a world leader in lethal drones

Baykar's new generation of unmanned combat aircraft will fly faster and farther, while carrying more weapons than its existing models.
Mark Zuckerberg speaks onstage during the Meta Connect Developer Conference in Menlo Park, California, on Wednesday.
BUSINESS / Companies
Sep 28, 2023

Meta unveils AI assistant and Facebook-streaming glasses

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the products as bringing together the virtual and real worlds while emphasizing lower costs.

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?