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Japan's isle of white in Sapporo

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Wild and remote, cold and barely inhabited, Hokkaido is unlike any other place in jam-packed Japan. Most of the country's northernmost island consists of wilderness, hot springs, forests and national parks, all contributing to a palette of striking mountain and coastal scenery. The island's capital, Sapporo, began in the 19th century as an administrative centre designed to discourage foreign incursions, but American and European advisers helped chart its future economy. Possessing few ancient historic relics like Nara, Hiraizumi and Kyoto do Sapporo instead has wide streets, mostly modern architecture and lots of parks, gardens and scattered green belts. But it's mid-winter, when the greens shed their colour and up to 6m of snow tumbles down, that Sapporo really shines, attracting two million visitors to the glittering Sapporo Snow Festival. (adelaidenow.com.au)

Japan study: Big quake could hit Tokyo 'within 4 years'

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Japanese researchers have warned of a 70 percent chance that a magnitude-seven earthquake will strike Tokyo within four years, a report said Monday -- much higher than previous estimates. Researchers at the University of Tokyo's earthquake research institute based the figure on data from the growing number of tremors in the capital since last year's March 11 earthquake off northeast Japan, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported. According to the meteorological agency, an average of 1.48 earthquakes with magnitudes ranging from three to six have occurred per day in and near Tokyo since March. (gmanetwork.com)

Japan manufacturers brace for euro zone breakup: Reuters poll

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Japanese manufacturers are bracing for a possible breakup of the euro zone, according to a Reuters poll released on Monday, with 65 percent saying they see a need to prepare for the currency block's partial or complete collapse. Europe's two-year old sovereign debt crisis, which has left Greece teetering on the edge of default, has taken a heavy toll on Japanese corporate sentiment as exporters struggle with a strong yen and slower growth in China. When manufacturers were asked if they are considering changing business plans in Europe, 31 percent of those responding said they are in the process of doing so or have already made changes. Of those firms, 90 percent said they could scale back operations or have already done so. (Reuters)

Foreign minister to handle parental abductions

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Responsibility for collecting data on parental abductions to Japan and settling cross-border child custody disputes resulting from failed international marriages will rest with the foreign minister, new guidelines said Sunday. The guidelines, drafted by the Foreign Ministry ahead of Tokyo's signing of the Hague Convention, state that the foreign minister can ask local governments, police, schools, childcare facilities and shelters for abuse victims to determine the whereabouts of abducted children. The Hague Convention is an international treaty spelling out procedures for settling international child custody disputes. Japan is the only member of the Group of Eight major countries that hasn't joined the convention. (Japan Times)

Japanese filmmakers tackle the 3/11 tragedy

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"If one was to be poisoned by radiation, if he or she did so out of their own will and conviction I believe it to be perfectly fine. But you can't force that onto the children. The children, you must distance them from the poisoned areas." So says Koide Hiroaki, Associate Professor at Kyoto University's Nuclear Test Facility and a prominent anti-nuclear campaigner, in the documentary Friends After 3.11, which will have its international premiere at next month's Berlin International Film Festival. Also being unveiled at the festival are two other Japanese films dealing with the March 11, 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power station and ensuing tsunami. Funahashi Atsushi's Nuclear Nation: The Fukushima Refugees Story, will have its world premiere in Berlin. Produced by Documentary Japan, it's described as a portrait of a mayor without a town who tries desperately to keep together a community scattered across various emergency shelters in the Tokyo suburbs. In the process, he questions old certainties. (sbs.com.au)

Health ministry aims to get smoking rate down to 10%

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The health ministry is drawing up a plan to reduce the smoking rate in Japan to around 10 percent, almost half the 23.4 percent in 2009, officials said Monday. The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry aims to insert the numerical target into its fiscal 2013-2022 health promotion plan, and in its basic plan for anticancer programs for the next five years, they said. It is expected that smokers who want to quit will reach around 40 percent in the upcoming survey, due partly to price hikes, and that the reduction target will be set on the assumption all of them will quit. (Japan Times)

School says it's responsible for deaths / Principal admits failure to protect 84 people killed, missing in March 11 disaster

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The Ishinomaki municipal board of education and the principal at Okawa Primary School in the city of Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, have admitted responsibility for events that led to the deaths of up to 84 people killed by the Great East Japan Earthquake. The board had been reexamining evacuation measures taken by the school after 74 students and 10 teachers were killed or went missing as a result of the March 11 tsunami. During a meeting with parents on Sunday, the board for the first time admitted there were problems with the school's evacuation instructions and apologized for the lack of guidance to students during the disaster. Since March 11, parents of children who died had accused the school of being irresponsible and complained that education authorities had failed to provide adequate explanations regarding the tragedy. (Yomiuri)

Tainted stone tied to 60 buildings so far

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Crushed radiation-tainted stone quarried near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant was used to build 60 houses and condominium buildings in Fukushima Prefecture. The number could climb to over 100 if more studies on the crushed stone, which was shipped from a quarry in Namie, are conducted, government sources said Sunday. The quarry shipped 5,725 tons of stone between the March 11 start of the triple-meltdown crisis triggered by the earthquake and tsunami, and the time in April when the government designated Namie as part of the nuclear exclusion zone. (Japan Times)

Japan puts reserves to work in global financing role as economy slips

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Japan is crafting ways of using the $1.2 trillion it holds in currency reserves, the world's second-largest, to help bolster its role in international finance as economic stagnation diminishes its share of global output. Last month, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda sealed an agreement in New Delhi making about $15 billion of Japan's reserves available to India if needed. Noda also oversaw a deal with China in the same month to expand use of the yuan and yen in bilateral trade and purchase Chinese bonds. At home, officials are deploying ¥10 trillion in a fund aiding companies in overseas acquisitions. (Japan Times)

Tokyo 'has 70% chance of powerful earthquake within four years'

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Experts in Japan have warned that the chances of a powerful earthquake striking Tokyo in the next four years could be as high as 70%, a more alarming scenario for the city's 13 million people than predicted by the government. The earthquake research institute at Tokyo University said that in the worst case, a quake of magnitude 7 would hit the southern part of metropolitan Tokyo by 2016, while the chances of a similar disaster occurring within 30 years are as high as 98%. The government, by contrast, estimates the possibility of an earthquake that size striking the capital at 70% in the next three decades. The warning comes less than a year after a magnitude-9 earthquake off the country's north-east coast triggered a tsunami that left about 23,000 people dead or missing. (guardian.co.uk)

Hitachi to outsource flat-screen TVs

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Hitachi Ltd. said Monday it will end in-house production of flat-screen TVs by the end of September and outsource them to foreign manufacturers as it downsizes its TV business. The major electronics company, which began TV production in 1956, plans to transfer TV output to Taiwan and China to cut costs and up its profit structure. Nevertheless, the firm will keep the Hitachi brand name and continue engaging in TV operations, including development and sales, it said. (Japan Times)

Base worker admits traffic death guilt

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A civilian employee of the U.S. Air Force in Okinawa indicted over a fatal vehicle collision last January pleaded guilty Monday at the opening of his trial, which is a first under a new bilateral arrangement on the handling of personnel at U.S. bases. The Naha District Public Prosecutor's Office indicted Rufus James Ramsey III in November after the United States and Japan agreed to change the operational implementation of the Status of Forces Agreement, which governs the handling of U.S. service personnel in Japan, to conditionally grant Japan jurisdiction over crimes involving nonmilitary personnel at U.S. bases. (Japan Times)

Brothers reunited in Japan after 6 decades apart

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They no longer speak the same language, but two brothers separated nearly 60 years each think the other hasn't changed a bit. Japanese-American Minoru Ohye celebrate his 86th birthday Monday with his only brother after traveling to Japan for a reunion with him. The brothers were born in Sacramento, California, but were separated as children after their father died in a fishing accident. They were sent to live with relatives in Japan and ended up in different homes. The reunited brothers hugged in a hotel room and exchanged gifts of California chocolate and Japanese sake. The American brother wore his trademark baseball cap and jeans. The Japanese bother wore a suit and tie. But the same bright eyes and square jaws were a dead giveaway that they were brothers. They both loved golf and had back pains. They thought the other hadn't changed a bit. (AP)

Women chase opportunities overseas

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The cosmopolitan cities of Shanghai and Hong Kong are attracting motivated Japanese women who are disillusioned by the hidebound culture of the business world at home. Many Japanese women trying their luck there are apparently enjoying successful careers, or at least having a good time preparing for one. Yoshie Nagashima, 39, decided to take a chance in China nine years ago when she was working for a major Japanese electronics maker. In Japan, she was frequently accused of being too pushy, and whenever she received a favor from her boss it invited jealousy from her male colleagues. (Japan Times)

Is this Japan's favourite western cosplayer? Maybe!

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Whenever Japanese bulletin boards discover bad Western cosplay, forum users begin piling on the bad cosplay photos, saying foreigners just cannot cosplay. (This is incorrect.) But then, inevitably, somebody usually pulls out a Maridah photo, pointing out that some of the best cosplay ever is not Japanese. Who's Maridah? She just might be Japan's favourite Western cosplayer. While she's not yet a "name" cosplayer in Japan yet like Ushijima Good Meat, California-based Maridah is so popular in Japan perhaps because she specialises in the character Saber from the Fate/stay series. It's not a character widely known in the West, and the attention she lavishes on Saber makes Maridah unusual. It also doesn't hurt that she is Saber's spitting image. (Kotaku)

Internet goes underground

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Japanese etiquette frowns upon the use of mobile phones in buses or trains, and it is rare to see someone speaking on a phone while using public transport, despite the excellent coverage in urban areas. There remain some dead spots, though, where mobile phones cannot be used and the Internet remains inaccessible - chiefly while riding the subway lines between stations. Change is coming soon to this area in major cities where such subway networks are in use, including Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. Starting this year, passengers will be able to use the Internet through their mobile phones, even while traveling tens of meters underground, and may send and receive messages. (majirox news)

Japan premier announces sales tax hike plan

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Japan's prime minister told parliament Tuesday he will move to double sales tax, warning that the future of the world's third-largest economy depends on turning the rising tide of public debt. Yoshihiko Noda has staked his premiership on the issue and in his policy speech opening the new session of the Diet said he would submit legislation by the end of March that will ramp up the cost of everything from rice to Rolexes. However, underlining the huge task ahead of Noda, the Bank of Japan also on Tuesday lowered its growth forecasts for the economy, predicting a contraction in the year to March 31, and slower growth than first tipped in the next year. Less than five months into the job, Noda is trying to sell the deeply unpopular tax rise to a sceptical public, and avoid becoming the sixth prime minister in as many years to disappear beneath the waves of Japan's viciously factional politics. (AFP)

Exporter Japan eyes first trade deficit in 3 decades

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Japan probably produced its first trade deficit last year in more than three decades as energy imports surged to cover for the loss of nuclear power following the Fukushima disaster, a major blow to an economy built on its exports prowess. For decades Japan used an exports-orientated economic policy to build up global brand names such as Toyota, Sony and Canon and a manufacturing might that was the envy of the world. Official trade figures due for release on Wednesday are expected to show that Japan swung to a deficit for the first time since 1980, as utilities purchased fossil fuels for power stations to make up for the loss of nuclear power. (Reuters)

BOJ sees recovery delayed as Europe bites but skips easing

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The Bank of Japan forecast the economy will contract in the current fiscal year but kept policy steady on Tuesday, expecting exports to emerging markets and reconstruction after last year's earthquake will help fuel a steady recovery later in 2012. BOJ Governor Masaaki Shirakawa, however, warned that Europe's sovereign debt crisis remained the biggest threat to Japan's recovery prospects, already clouded by recent yen rises against the euro and slowing global demand for Japanese goods. "At present, Europe's debt problem poses the biggest risk for the global economy, including Japan's. If the situation worsens further, it may trigger a global credit crunch," Shirakawa told a news conference after the BOJ's widely expected decision to hold off on additional monetary easing. (Reuters)

Japan stocks up on weaker yen, receding worries over eurozone

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Japanese shares edged up Tuesday after market sentiment was lifted by the yen's fall against the euro and receding fears about the eurozone debt crisis. The benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average gained 19.43 points, or 0.22 per cent, to close at 8,785.33 while the broader Topix index was up 0.61 points, or 0.08 per cent, at 757.4. Tokyo stocks opened higher after overnight gains on European markets. European finance ministers met overnight to consider measures for combating the debt crisis. (monstersandcritics.com)
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