246,616 Climbers To Mount Fuji

(Kyodo) KOFU, Yamanashi Pref. — Fine weather helped iconic Mount Fuji attract 246,616 climbers in July and August, up about 20,000 from last year, an official from the city that hosts the main starting point in Yamanashi Prefecture said.

More Than 100 Poisonous Spiders Discovered

AMAGASAKI, Hyogo--Authorities on Thursday exterminated more than 100 poisonous redback spiders spotted near the Inagawa river the day before, police said. According to the police, a local man spotted a swarm of spiders at about 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture and reported it to police. Police officers rushed to the scene and found more than 100 spiders inside a drainage pipe in a river wall about five meters high located along a walkway.

A survival skill in shrinking Japan: Learn English

Japanese billionaire Hiroshi Mikitani decided two years ago that the employees at his company, Rakuten Inc., should work almost entirely in English. The idea, he said, was a daring and drastic attempt to counter Japan's shrinking place in the world. "Japanese people think it's so difficult to speak English," Mikitani said. "But we need to break the shell."

Lessons from Japan: Not all companies sink in hard times

Japan and its stock market have been a tough sell for the better part of two decades - and with good reason. Nearly a generation after the collapse of its property and market bubbles in the late 1980s, the country remains hobbled by soaring deficits, debt and periodic bouts of deflation and despair. There was a time when economists regarded Japan as an anomaly among developed countries - a thankfully rare example of what can happen when timid politicians face an overwhelming financial and economic crisis armed with ineffective policies and an unwillingness or inability to tackle contentious fiscal, banking and market reforms.

German customs demand $475,000 for Japanese musician's violin

German customs seized a $1.2 million violin from a Japanese professional musician and are demanding she pay almost $475,000 to get it back, reports said on Wednesday. Belgium-based Yuzuko Horigome was transiting through Frankfurt Airport last week after performing in Japan, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said. When she tried to walk through the green gate for travelers arriving in the EU with nothing to declare, customs officers stopped her and said she needed to pay 190,000 euros in duty on her 1741 Guarnerius violin.

Airport Automated Face Recognition Tests Begin

A facial recognition test program began at automated gates for immigration at Narita and Kansai airports on Monday. In the tests, the faces of incoming and outbound travellers will be automatically checked against passport photographs at the immigration gates. The tests target Japanese travellers and are intended to improve the performance of the automated gate system. One such gate is installed at each of four international airports--Haneda, Narita, Central Japan and Kansai. The system has so far checked travellers’ fingerprints for identification.

Low Number of Babies Born in Japan Recorded

Fewer babies were born in Japan in the last year than any other on record, pulling down its population for the third year in a row, according to government statistics released this week. As of the end of March, Japan had more than 260,000 fewer people than a year earlier, the biggest drop of the Japanese population yet, according to Japanese media. The baby bust has continued year after year despite Japanese efforts to nudge up the numbers: The government has doled out payments for couples with children and subsidized daycare. Japanese towns publicly herald the number of local births in city signs. Engineering students even crafted a cooing robotic baby years ago in hope of setting biological clocks ticking.

4 Held Over Software to Copy DVDs

Four employees, including one executive, of a Tokyo-based publisher were arrested Tuesday for allegedly selling a DVD-copying guidebook bundled with software able to remove DVDs' copy protection. The Metropolitan Police Department arrested Yoshiaki Kaizuka, 43, an executive of Chiyoda Ward publisher Sansai Books Inc., and three other company employees on suspicion of violating the Unfair Competition Prevention Law, and sent papers on the firm to the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office. According to a senior police official, these are the nation's first arrests over the distribution of software to remove copy protection.

Expected Workforce in 2030 to Fall by 8.45M

The number of employed people may drop by as much as 8.45 million by 2030 from the 2010 figure of 62.98 million, according to a labor ministry panel of experts studying the country's employment policy. In its report unveiled Monday, the panel emphasized the need for the government to help women and young people find and secure jobs because the decline in employees is likely to hinder the nation's economic growth. The estimate of a maximum contraction of 8.45 million was made on the basis of assumptions that economic growth will remain at zero percent and the number of working women and elderly will remain unchanged through 2030.

Female Cops in Japan Hits Record High

The number of female police officers in Japan has hit a record high of 17,686, with women making up 6.8 percent of all police officers across the country as of April this year, a National Police Agency (NPA) report has shown. The record figures were reported in the nation's White Paper on Police 2012, which was released on July 24. Since 2002, over 1,000 female police officers have been hired each year as part of a bid to revitalize and enhance police forces across the nation. The NPA said it will seek to expand recruitment of female officers. "Female officers' abilities are utilized in investigations into sex crimes and spousal violence cases, as well as in supporting the victims of those crimes," the white paper said.

Visit Ancient Temples of Japan with Google's World Wonders Project

A new site from Google puts its Street View tools to work to showcase some of the most storied and beautiful places on Earth. Google unveiled this morning a new undertaking from its Cultural Institute called the World Wonders Project. On the site, viewers can explore a map with pins marking famed places around the world and then, aided by visuals from Google's Street View technology, they can go in and explore "in 360 degrees just as if you were there." The project currently includes 132 destinations from 18 countries in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. No sites from Africa have yet been included, and the offerings from South America and Asia are noticeably sparse. Google did not say how it had made decisions about what to highlight, but that the selection would expand over time. Partners including UNESCO and World Monuments Fund provided information that runs alongside the virtual destinations.

Married Women in Japan Want to Work

Married women want to work, according to a government survey that will form the basis for a 2012 white paper on children, child rearing and mothers. The survey results, released early, show an astounding 86 percent of women want to continue working after having children, though most find it almost impossible to do so. Only 11.6 percent indicated they do not wish to seek employment. Most women said they wanted to start working again as soon as possible after giving birth, though they were keenly aware of the importance of being with their young children. The largest percentage of mothers, 23.8 percent, said they wanted to start work again as soon as possible. Another 22.1 percent said they would prefer to wait until their children enter kindergarten or nursery school, and another 20 percent said they would like to start after their children enter elementary school.

Trying to Look Pretty is the Trend for Young Japanese Men

Young Japanese men are starting to resemble their female counterparts when it comes to the pursuit of beauty, with the nation awash in salons dedicated to male grooming and products such as hair removal creams, electric nose-hair trimmers and face-firming masks targeting the image-conscious man. Men in their 20s and 30s today were teenagers when the now-common expression "ikemen" - meaning a good-looking man - was a new buzzword. The advent of the term and a social phenomenon lionizing ikemen have given males of this particular age group a belief that looking pretty is pretty cool. At the same time, gaining a more attractive look is a way to compensate for a lack of self-confidence.

AirAsia Japan to Offer 5 yen Promotional Fares for Domestic Routes

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- AirAsia Japan Co., a budget airline owned partly by All Nippon Airways Co., said Wednesday it will start selling one-way tickets on its website for 5 yen for 10,000 seats on three domestic routes in a special campaign ahead of its inaugural flight scheduled for Aug. 1. The promotional tickets are available for flights linking Narita International Airport near Tokyo to Sapporo, Fukuoka and Naha in Okinawa Prefecture. The Tokyo-Sapporo and Tokyo-Fukuoka flights will commence on Aug. 1, while the Tokyo-Okinawa route will start on Aug. 3. The special tickets will be sold for four days from Thursday to Sunday for flights from Aug. 28 to Nov. 28. AirAsia Japan said the minimum regular fare for the Tokyo-Sapporo and Tokyo-Fukuoka routes will be 4,580 yen and 5,180 yen, respectively. The minimum fare for the Tokyo-Okinawa route will be 6,680 yen. Passengers will be charged an additional 150 yen in commission, the airline said.

Pet Shops Banned from Displaying Cats, Dogs after 8 p.m.

An Environment Ministry ordinance took effect Friday banning pet shop operators from displaying cats and dogs after 8 p.m. to relieve the animals of stress, following criticism by animal rights' groups of outlets that stay open until late at night. According to the new ministry order based on the animal welfare and management act, cats and dogs can be shown to customers at pet shops between 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. As a provisional measure effective for two years, the ministry allows "cat cafes," where customers can pet cats, to operate until 10 p.m. if the animals are more than 1 year old and can move freely around the premises.

Japanese men getting fatter, women thinner

Japan is facing a queer problem - men are getting fatter by the year while women are getting thinner. Latest estimates released by the country's cabinet office on Wednesday says that 31.2% men aged 20-60 years are presently obese (body mass index over 25) as against 25.3% in 1995. In comparison the ministry of health, labour and welfare's 2010 National health and nutrition survey found that 29% of women in the 20s were too thin (body mass index less than 18.5). In fact just five years before (2005), 21.9% women in their 20s were found to be too thin. (India Times, May 26) Source: http://newsonjapan.com/html/newsdesk/article/96558.php

The Worldwide Triumph of English

By GWYNNE DYER LONDON — The second president of the United States, John Adams, predicted in 1780 that "English will be the most respectable language in the world and the most universally read and spoken in the next century, if not before the end of this one." It is destined "in the next and succeeding centuries to be more generally the language of the world than Latin was in the last or French is in the present age." It was a bold prediction, for at that time there were only about 13 million English-speakers in the world, almost all of them living in Britain or on the eastern seaboard of North America. They were barely 1 percent of the world's population, and almost nobody except the Welsh and the Irish bothered to learn English as a second language. So how is Adams' prediction doing now?

74 people visit eye clinics after observing eclipse

TOKYO — MAY. 22, 2012 - 04:00PM JST  At least 74 people sought help for eye problems at eye clinics in 18 prefectures across Japan after observing the annular solar eclipse on Monday, the Japanese Ophthalmological Society reported on its website Tuesday. Doctors and education officials had warned of eye injuries from improper viewing beforehand. Education Minister Hirofumi Hirano demonstrated the use of eclipse glasses in a televised news conference on the weekend. The society said most of the complaints were solar retinopathy due to not properly using special protective glasses. Of the 74, 16 were children younger than 12.

Harry Potter heads to Universal Studios Japan

Harry Potter has conquered the world with books and then with movies. Now he's doing the same with theme parks. Universal Studios Japan on Thursday will unveil plans to build the first international version of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, the blockbuster attraction that has drawn millions of fans to Universal's Orlando resort and is coming to Los Angeles. The Osaka destination -- expected to begin construction in the next few weeks with a planned opening in late 2014 and an expected cost of about $500 million -- brings Hogwarts Castle and rides including Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey to the boy wizard's biggest market outside of the United States. The eight Potter movies grossed nearly $900 million in Japan -- more even than in his home country of Britain. Products including magic wand chopsticks have made the Harry Potter brand Japan's most successful movie-based consumer products line of the last decade.

PayPal, Softbank to Form Japan Joint Venture, Launch PayPal Here Service

PayPal and Softbank said Wednesday they will form a new joint venture to pursue online transactions business in the country. The two companies said they will each invest ¥1 billion (US$12.5 million) in the newly established firm PayPal Japan which will be a 50:50 joint venture. The companies also said they would launch PayPal Here, a platform that uses small card swiping attachments to allow smartphones to be used as mobile credit card readers, in Japan. For Softbank, which owns Yahoo Japan, a portal with dominant domestic auction and shopping properties, the deal will provide access to an established global e-payment platform. Yahoo Japan is largely independent from its troubled cousin in the U.S.