h on Friday after a European
Central Bank liquidity operation this week underpinned market
sentiment, but it failed to hold above 9,800 for a third day as
market players warned of a correction.
While investors continued to pick up real estate companies
and financials, they took profits in recent gainers like
automakers.
The benchmark Nikkei climbed 0.7 percent to
9,777.03, bringing its weekly gain to 1.3 percent. The index,
however, failed to top technical resistance near
9,838, a 61.8 percent retracement of its fall from February to
November last year.
(Reuters)
Nikkei hits 7-month closing high, fails to top 9,800
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Japan watchdog orders Adidas to stop price fixing
Adidas said it would step up its compliance efforts in Japan after its unit there received a warning from the Fair Trade Commission saying it unlawfully pressured retailers to stop them from offering discounts on Reebok EasyTone sneakers.
The German sporting goods company and its wholesalers stopped shipments or threatened to halt deliveries of its products to Japanese retailers who cut prices, the anti-trust watchdog said in a statement on its website on Friday. (Reuters)
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Japan refiners eye force majeure clause for Iran contracts
Japanese buyers of Iran crude may ask Tehran to include a force majeure clause in contracts if they are unable to pay Iran or lift Iranian oil due to lack of insurance cover for tankers under European Union sanctions , industry sources said on Friday.
Some oil refiners are set to demand the clause when they start negotiations for term contracts that start from April to avoid unexpected difficulties in lifting Iranian oil, the sources said.
Japan's main shipping insurer will only be able to provide a fraction of the coverage to tankers transporting Iranian oil under new EU sanctions starting in July, and sources say that Japanese shipping firms would likely find it hard to carry crude from Iran unless the issue is resolved by then. (Reuters)
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There is still pent up consumer demand in Japan: expert
While economic data out of Japan on Friday showed that the country was still mired in deflation, with consumer prices falling 0.1 percent year on year in January, one expert thinks there still exists pent up demand among Japanese consumers.
"Consumers in Japan are flushed with cash, waiting to spend the money," Glen Wood, Partner and Head of Sales at research firm Ji Asia, told CNBC. "Any sign of inflation [cnbc explains] and the Japanese consumer will spring back to life."
He added that Japanese consumers were postponing their spending at the moment on the expectation that prices would fall further, but once there is an indication that prices are set to rise consumers could start spending again. (cnbc.com)
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Tepco wants six-year 10% hike, then 5% cut
Tokyo Electric Power Co. and the fund helping it with nuclear disaster compensation might hike power rates once for six years before cutting them 5 percent in fiscal 2018, sources said Friday.
The utility's plan, which entails further restructuring based on additional loans from creditor banks, is designed to persuade creditors to give it more loans. But its feasibility is unclear because it depends on restarting now-idled nuclear plants and other unforeseeable factors. (Japan Times)
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Japan tones down S Kurils rhetoric
Under the agreements signed at the end of WWII, the South Kuril Islands became Russian. Japan has never agreed with this, and its claim to the South Kurils remains the main obstacle to clinching a postwar peace treaty between Moscow and Tokyo.
In the latest twist to the dispute, Japan has shifted from branding the islands 'illegally occupied' to describing them as 'held without legal justification.' According to Russian diplomatic spokesman Alexander Lukashevich, the Foreign Ministry is looking into this change in tone and will soon give its reaction to it. (ruvr.ru)
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Cancer, heart disease, stroke deaths plunge to 50-year low
Death rates from cancer, heart disease and cerebrovascular diseases that lead to strokes are at their lowest levels in more than half a century, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said earlier this week.
The nationwide survey of the three main causes of death is conducted every five years. The rates are calculated per 100,000 people in different age groups living in each prefecture.
Cancer was the No. 1 killer. Among men, the national rate was 182.4 out of 100,000 people, a 15.3 point drop compared with 2005. The rate among women was 92.2 out of 100,000, a 5.1 point drop. (Japan Times)
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Narita set to open bizjet terminal
Narita Airport Authority said Friday it will open on March 31 a terminal for users of business jets.
The terminal for business executives and others flying into Narita aboard business jets is the first in the Tokyo metropolitan area, although Central Japan International Airport near Nagoya and Kobe Airport have such facilities, it said.
The facility, located in a building housing Japan Airlines Co.'s operations center near Terminal 2, will have its own lounge as well as immigration and customs. (Japan Times)
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Low-budget airlines swarm in Japan
A new discount airline in Japan, Peach Aviation Ltd., launched its business this week with two more low-cost services soon to follow, industry analysts said.
Peach began with flights between Kansai and Nagasaki, Kyodo news reported Friday.
Peach, partly owned by All Nippon Airways Co., plans to cut costs by charging for meals, blankets and other extras -- in essence, minimal service for minimal prices.
Stressing its no-frills approach, the airline describes its service as "flying trains."
Quick on its heels, JAL, the Qantas Group and trading house Mitsubishi plan to launch a low-cost airline in July called Jetstar Japan Co. Not to be outdone, AirAsia Japan Co., another discount service, is expected to open in August. (UPI)
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Nissan reportedly considering a revival of the Datsun name
Could Datsun rise again?
Sources in Japan say that Nissan is considering a revival of the brand name that was discontinued in 1986, save for a special edition pickup truck sold in Japan in 2001.
According to Dow Jones, someone familiar with the plan confirms that Nissan is actively studying the idea of bringing the Datsun name back for use on a line of low-priced vehicles to be manufactured and sold in emerging markets. This would allow the company to tap into the cache of the recognizable name without tarnishing the image of Nissan with "cheap" cars. (foxnews.com)
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Prosecutors: Ozawa report was dodgy
Prosecution authorities were aware early last year that a prosecutor had compiled a false investigative report from depositions taken from an aide of ruling party kingpin Ichiro Ozawa, who is on trial for allegedly conspiring to file a false political funds report, sources said Friday.
Masahiro Tashiro, who was part of an elite investigative team at the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office, worked on the investigative report after questioning the aide, Tomohiro Ishikawa, currently an independent lawmaker, in May 2010.
Ishikawa was tried separately over the falsified funds report and got a suspended sentence. (Japan Times)
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Caterpillar buys Japanese distributor
In yet another effort to enhance its business in Japan, Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) announced that Caterpillar Japan Ltd. has acquired Caterpillar Tohoku Ltd. Caterpillar Tohuku's 400 employees and its three subsidiaries will now come under Caterpillar Japan.
Cat Tohoku was independently owned and operated for more than four decades. It provides sales, rental, service and aftermarket support for Caterpillar machines in the Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi, Akita, Yamagata and Fukushima territories.
The acquisition will help Caterpillar Japan in restructuring its distribution network in Japan. (zacks.com)
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Is Japan's enrollment season really a problem?
The University of Tokyo -or Todai as it is locally called - is considering changing its enrollment from spring to autumn to be more in sync with universities around the world, 70 percent of which are said to have enrollments in the fall.
The move is controversial, however, as "societal concerns" come into play.
As one Japanese friend said, "I have a strong attachment in April to the beautiful scenery and fullness of cherry blossoms at the start of the academic year."
And, it's not just the blushing cherry blossoms that pose a problem. Tulips are also a harbinger of the new school year in Japan. (Japan Times)
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China moves to stop Japan's illegal maritime surveying
China's maritime authority said Friday it will boost surveillance in the East China Sea, and stop Japan's illegal survey activities in accordance with the law to safeguard the country's sea rights.
The remarks made, by an official with the East China Sea branch of the State Oceanic Administration (SOA), came after two vessels of the Japan Coast Guard were discovered conducting survey activities in China's territorial waters in the East China Sea.
Japan's move has severely infringed upon China's sovereignty, and runs contrary to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and relevant Chinese laws, the official said. (China Daily)
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Bullying, child abuse at record highs
Legal affairs bureaus nationwide handled a record 3,306 bullying cases at schools last year, up 21.8 percent from the previous year, the Justice Ministry said Friday.
Cases of child abuse also reached a record, at 865, up 12.2 percent, the ministry said.
Of the total, 491 cases were reported by people affected by the March disaster, including children who were bullied at schools after having to move out of the disaster zone, the ministry said. (Japan Times)
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German vessel sets out to explore quake-struck seafloor off Japan
One year after the devastating Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, Japanese oceanographers and geologists are teaming up with German scientists to uncover any traces that the the magnitude-9 quake might have left on the sea floor. The scientists will search for geomorphological evidence of what exactly happened on 11 March last year during the two-and-a-half-minute rupture that released massive amounts of seismic energy and triggered a deadly tsunami off the northeastern coast of Honshu. Scientists suspect that the extraordinary force of the tsunami, which killed some 20,000 people, may have been the combined result of the sea floor rising with a jolt by up to five metres and of quake-triggered slides of the Japanese continental shelf. (nature.com)
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Toyota denies CNN report of '06 memo on sudden acceleration worries
Toyota Motor Corp. denied a CNN report that engineers told the carmaker in 2006 they found faulty software that led to sudden unintended acceleration in tests.
CNN, citing an internal memo, reported tests of a preproduction model showed the fail-safes for the electronics that governed the vehicle's cruise control needed to be improved. Toyota said it deliberately introduced the error to test its systems and CNN had mistranslated the document.
(Japan Times)
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The hardcore world of Japanese tattoos will make you stronger
"I used to be into video games during the PS2 era," Benny Her says, as he buys a green tea espresso at convenience store in Osaka's fashionable youth district, Americamura. "But then I started apprenticing and didn't have any free time."
That apprenticeship was a huge gamble. And Benny Her didn't look like a gambler. He looks like a guy I knew at uni - comfortable clothing and puffy hair. And when he pulled up on his pink bicycle, wearing an anime sweatshirt and carrying a messenger bag, he could've easily passed for a foreign exchange student, maybe studying to get a masters or a PhD.
And then you notice a red ink peeking from underneath his sweatshirt. Red link that leads to a dragon. A red dragon that covers his arm. A blue dragon covers his left. It doesn't stop there: His chest, ribs, both sleeves and legs are covered in Japanese tattoos. (kotaku.com.au)
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Japan's tsunami victims learning from an earthquake island's rebuilding mistakes
On the night of July 12, 1993, the remote island of Okushiri was ripped apart by a huge earthquake and tsunami that now seem an eerie harbinger of the much larger disaster that struck north-eastern Japan in March last year.
Islanders still recall with horror how a wall of frothing black water raced out of the darkness to consume entire communities, leaving almost 200 people dead.
In the five years that followed, the Japanese government rebuilt the island, erecting 10.7-metre concrete walls on long stretches of its coast, making it look more like a fortress than a fishing outpost. (Sydney Morning Herald)
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Japan eyes new space mission to sample an asteroid
Space engineers in Japan are scoping out an ambitious follow-up to the country's Hayabusa mission, which snagged samples from the asteroid Itokawa and returned them to Earth in 2010.
The successor spacecraft, known as Hayabusa 2, would carry out an aggressive study of another asteroid. The probe would drop off two landers, blast the asteroid with an impactor and send more samples back to Earth for close-up inspection.
Earlier this year, Tokyo-based NEC Corporation announced it had started designing the new asteroid explorer for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). (Space.com)
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