Four Japanese citizens, including municipal politicians, landed Tuesday on islands in the East China Sea at the centre of a bitter territorial dispute with Beijing, authorities said.
The group sailed to the uninhabited islets, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, aboard a fishing boat and stayed there for more than two hours, according to the Japan Coast Guard.
The move came as Japan and China commemorate the 40th anniversary of normalisation of diplomatic ties this year and attempt to improve their sour relationship.
Three people aboard the fishing boat, which sailed Monday from Ishigaki in Japan's far southwest, landed on one of the islands around 9:30 am (0030 GMT) while the fourth followed 20 minutes later, a coast guard spokesman said.
Of the four, two were identified as Hitoshi Nakama and Tadashi Nakamine of the Ishigaki municipal assembly, while the identity of the other two were not immediately known, he said. (AFP)
Public dismay with the Japanese government's response to this year's triple disaster - earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown - is driving some to become more politically engaged, helped by social and alternative media.
While still fledgling, it is the kind of grassroots activism that some say Japan needs to shake up a political system that has allowed the country's problems to fester for years.
Mrs Mizuho Nakayama, for example, is one of a small but growing number of Internet-savvy activist mums.
Worried about her two-year-old son and distrustful of government and television reports that seemed to play down radiation risks, she scoured the Internet for information and started connecting with other mothers through Twitter and Facebook, many of them using social media for the first time. (todayonline.com)
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda took office in September, becoming Japan's sixth prime minister in five years. One thing that people will pay attention to is whether he can stay in power for more than 12 months - something four out his five immediate predecessors failed to do.
Whether he succeeds depends in part on whether he can win the next presidential election of his Democratic Party of Japan, set for the fall of 2012, and whether he can lead the ruling party to victory in a general election that may take place this year. Since Noda is already struggling with falling approval ratings, these are by no means certain, and Japan may yet see a seventh prime minister in six years.
Short-lived administrations are not a recent phenomenon, said political analyst and writer Ushio Shiota. In fact, the average term of Japan's past 62 prime ministers is just two years. (Japan Times)
There are many incentives for buying a home. One of them is to simply get out of paying rent - but that isn't to say that once you own your residence there aren't costs that have to be paid on a regular basis.
If it's a house it must be maintained, and if it's a condominium there are monthly management and repair fees that can add up to as much as the rent of an apartment.
Then there's property tax, which in Japan is made up of a koteishisan-zei (fixed-asset tax) and a toshikeikaku-zei (municipal tax). Though everyone knows property owners have to pay the authorities for the privilege of owning that property, the obligation doesn't always figure into a potential buyer's financial plan. Whenever we inspect properties we ask the real-estate agents how much the annual tax is, and many times they say they don't know, which seems strange. Understanding the tax liability is as important as understanding the payment terms of the housing loan. (Japan Times)
Apple Stores in Japan have continued the fukubukuro or "mystery bag" tradition, where sealed bags of merchandise are offered on New Year's Day at a hefty discount. If you're extremely lucky, you'll come away with a piece of coveted merchandise. Apple has been doing this in Japan since 2005.
The bags this year cost 33,000 yen, MacNN reports, which is about US$428 as of this writing. Items spotted in the bags both this year and in the past include the following:
* Headphones
* Cases
* An 8 GB iPod touch
* Various high-end accessories
* Speakers
* A special 2012 New Year's t-shirt
The exceptionally lucky shoppers got to walk away with a MacBook Air or an iPad 2. (tuaw.com)
Dealers in London are witnessing growing interest from buyers in Japanese antique netsuke and "inro" as new world records are set at auctions.
London-based auction house Bonhams announced world-record prices for a netsuke (a miniature carved ornament once used to attach purses or other articles to kimono sashes) and an inro (a traditional Japanese portable case consisting of nested boxes) at the November sale of a collection belonging to Swiss art collector Harriet Szechenyi.
Experts say this represents an enduring and growing fascination in the West for the intricate, well-crafted possessions that formed part of traditional Japanese attire up to the 19th century. (Japan Times)
Historically, Japan has undergone major social change only when it was thrust upon the country from outside - prime examples being after its defeat in World War II and after the arrival of U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry's warships in 1853 that essentially forced the country to open up to the rest of the world.
Grassroots activism had only limited success. It took nearly 50 years to win compensation for most victims of the chemical company in Minamata, Kumomoto Prefecture, that dumped mercury into the water, causing the rare neurological disorder that came to be known as Minamata disease.
But while the March 11 quake and tsunami also assaulted Japan from offshore, the homegrown disaster that came in their wake - the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant - has prompted a groundswell of activism among an ever-Internet savvy public less inclined to automatically defer to authority and official safety proclamations. (Japan Times)
