News On Japan

The Japanese government is bracing for a possible demand from the next U.S. president, Donald Trump, that it shoulder more costs for maintaining U.S. forces in Japan. (Jiji)

A court in Hokkaido sentenced two men to 23 years in prison on Thursday for street racing and killing four and injuring another in the nation’s northernmost prefecture last year. (Japan Today)

A former actor on the popular Japanese TV anime program “Kamen Rider Blade” was attacked by a man with a golf club, police said. (Japan Today)

Japanese manufacturers’ confidence rose for a third straight month to a 15-month high in November, while the mood in the service sector rebounded from a 3-1/2-year low in the prior month, a Reuters poll showed, in a sign of a gradual economic recovery. (Reuters)

The House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Diet, Japan's parliament, on Thursday passed a proposal to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement and approved related legislation. (Jiji)

The Vietnamese government submitted a resolution to the National Assembly on Thursday requesting that plans to build nuclear power plants with Japanese and Russian assistance be scrapped. (Japan Times)

A government survey shows more than half of the corals on Japan's largest coral reef off the southwestern prefecture of Okinawa have died from bleaching. (NHK)

A startup founded by maverick Japanese entrepreneur Takafumi Horie is poised to launch a test rocket as early as January. If the trial succeeds, it will be Japan's first private rocket to reach an altitude of 100km. (Nikkei)

Nintendo will soon end production of its Wii U console for the Japanese market, the company announced on Friday. The game developer launched the console in December 2012, but sales remained low, with fewer hit game titles compared with the previous Wii console. (Nikkei)

Toshiba Corp. said Friday its half-year profit tripled, owing to cost reductions and the sale of its home appliances business, providing a boost to the firm as it tries to turn the page on an embarrassing accounting scandal. (Japan Times)

Tokyo Metropolitan Police have arrested a 36-year-old male nurse who suspected in a series of sexual assaults of women, reports Nippon News Network (Nov. 11) . (tokyoreporter.com)

Ishikawa Prefectural Police have launched an investigation after a stabbing incident at a pachinko parlor in Nonoichi City left one female employee injured, reports the Sankei Shimbun. (tokyoreporter.com)

Around 80 percent of surveyed single working people in Japan, both men and women, often spend their days off alone, an online survey by Citizen Watch Co. has found. (Japan Times)

Police unknowingly employed for a few years a man charged with breaking into a woman's home and sexually assaulting her, the Sankei Shimbun reported on Wednesday. (tokyoreporter.com)

The number of foreign visitors to Japan between January and October has topped 20 million. That's already higher than the annual total for 2015, which was a record high. (NHK)

Tokyo police have arrested a former musician known for singing the theme song of popular animation One Piece, for allegedly stealing guitars from a friend. (Jiji)

Two Chinese hostesses are charged with plying a customer with strong alcoholic drinks and robbing him of 190,000 yen, police said on Wednesday, in a case that could be tied to similar incidents. (tokyoreporter.com)

A man was stabbed in the stomach as he walked along a street in Sapporo at around 8:20 p.m. Wednesday, police said. (Japan Today)

Tokyo Metropolitan Police have arrested the director of a chiropractic clinic in the Ginza area of Chuo Ward for allegedly performing obscene acts on female patients, reports Nippon News Network. (tokyoreporter.com)

Gangsters were growing over 11,000 marijuana plants worth some 2 billion yen in a factory, the biggest bust in 10 years, police said on Wednesday. (tokyoreporter.com)

Latest Images