In the name of ‘scientific research’ the Japanese fleet has recently killed a large number of Minke whales in the Antartic Ocean. Four ships from the country’s Institute of Cetacean Research returned to their home port after 115-days long expedition capturing 333 whales including more than 200 pregnant females. Japan has been illegally hunting whales for decades.The Japanese government claimed that this mass slaughter is a part of their ‘scientific […]

JAPAN’s centenarians are no longer to depart this life with a silver dish in their mouths. This month the health ministry said it would stop giving commemorative silver cups for drinking sake as 100th birthday gifts, because Japan’s super-ageing population has made the tradition too expensive for the state. Each silver sakazuki dish costs around ¥8,000 ($64). Now Japan’s cup runneth over(budget). The ministry plans to downgrade to a cheaper […]

HIROSHIMA: Bells tolled in Hiroshima on Thursday as Japan marked 70 years since the atomic bombing that helped end World War II but still divides opinion today on whether the total destruction it caused was justified. Prime minister Shinzo Abe and foreign delegates were among the tens of thousands gathered in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park to observe a moment of silence at 8:15 am local time (2315 GMT), when the […]

A Japanese city has vowed to preserve a pine tree that survived the country’s devastating tsunami but is now rotting, it’s reported. The tree withstood the enormous wave which struck the coastal city of Kesennuma in 2011, killing hundreds of local people. It was badly damaged in the disaster, losing most of its branches, but its new shape attracted many visitors who thought it resembled a dragon. The tree was […]

A giant flower, said to be one of the world’s oldest and largest species, has bloomed at a Tokyo park for the first time in five years, it’s reported. The 2-metre-high (6.5 feet) Titan arum rarely flowers and is notoriously difficult to propagate. The Jindai botanical gardens in the city of Chofu have extended their opening hours especially to allow hundreds of visitors to see the flower, which only blooms […]

When it comes to aging and staying slim, it seems as though Japanese women – and Asians in general – have hit the genetic jackpot. Many a comedian has speculated on how you never see an ‘old Asian lady’ and their slight frames are just well-known. And it’s not just an amusing stereotype. It’s actually true – Asian women for the most part do seem to age particularly well and […]

The feline fanciers who made internet cats such a big hit have been left drooling over pictures from a remote island in Japan where there are six cats to every human. Aoshima, located in the Miyazaki Prefecture in southern Japan, has been christened ‘Cat Island’ and has turned into a tourist’s delight over the years. This report by Reuters says that the cats were initially brought to this elderly fishermen’s […]

TOKYO: In the US, hanging out in a cafe with animals is such an exotic concept that people can’t get enough of it. A pop-up cat cafe in New York last year had lines down the block. Online reservations for another Manhattan cat cafe are almost fully booked more than two months ahead. But in Japan, cat cafes are just the start. You can hang out in rabbit cafes or […]

Tokyo : Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has come out publicly today and decried the situation in Fukushima as the birth of a newborn baby boy with a third eye has fueled a wave of public unrest denouncing the Japanese government and its handling of the situation, reports the Tokyo Daily this morning. The birth of the baby suffering from a pineal gland malformation due to acute radiation syndrome (ARS), or […]

  In what could be seen as the rising importance of Indian education on the global platform, local students in Japan are now going to Indian schools in the country to learn English. According to this report in The Indian Express, the Global Indian International School (GIIS) in Tokyo is one of the many Indian schools which Japanese are taking a great interest in. In GIIS, 35 percent of the […]