Entertainment
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Do you prefer relaxing at home or going out in
the evening? Why?
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When you go out in the evening, what do you
like to do?
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How popular is this with other people in your
country?
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Is there any kind of entertainment you do not
like? Why? Why not?
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The Yomiuri Shimbun - The education ministry plans to establish a new financial support
system for universities encouraging
students to study abroad, it has been learned.
The ministry aims to promote
the idea of studying abroad to Japanese students, who are often regarded as
being introverted, to foster human resources who will be
motivated to actively participate in the nation's domestic and international
affairs. The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry is
targeting about 40 universities and plans to grant from 100 million yen to 200 million yen in annual subsidies to each institution.
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The government will cancel a cherry blossom viewing party
in Tokyo scheduled for April 14 following North Korea's announcement that it
plans to launch a rocket, Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu
Fujimura said Friday.
The government of
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda made the decision "to prepare for any contingencies," Fujimura said.
Last week, Pyongyang
announced it plans to launch a "satellite" from April 12-16 to mark
the centennial of the birth of Kim
Il Sung, North Korea's founder, on April 15.
The event at Tokyo's
Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden is held annually but also was cancelled last
year due to the March 2011 natural and nuclear disasters.
Around 10,000 luminaries would have attended the
event hosted by Noda, including members of the Imperial family, the Cabinet,
diplomats and other invitees from various fields.
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Colour
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What’s your favourite colour? Why?
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Do you like the same colours now as you did
when you were younger? Why? Why not?
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What can you learn about a person from the
colours they like?
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Do any colours have a special meaning in your
culture?
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TOTTORI — Two toy poodles have been tied up doing promotional events
instead of crime-fighting duties since they became police dogs in Tottori
Prefecture in January.
The female poodles —
Karin, who turns 2 on Sunday, and Fuga, also 2, — passed the police canine exam in November and have been
making TV appearances ever since.
They debuted in mid-January at a Tottori
Prefectural Police event to publicize
110, the emergency telephone number, and took part in an event in February at
a junior high school in the town of Chizu to explain the work of dog trainers.
At the Chizu event,
Karin trained with other police dogs as trainer Makoto Miyamoto told students
what his job is like.
Karin walked beside
Miyamoto and obeying his command, "Wait."
A Labrador retriever
also demonstrated its sniffing skills at the event.
Miyamoto said it
takes three to four years for a police dog to master scent tracking. "It's best for them to get on-site work
experience" to master the skills, he said.
Poodles, which are
used as hunting dogs, carry out orders and learn quickly, according to the
Japan Kennel Club.
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Denim and the tony
Ginza district in Tokyo never before seemed the right fit, but for one day,
they were tailor-made for each other.
An outdoor fashion
show was held in the Ginza district on March 24 to showcase clothes and other fashion items made of quality denim
produced in Japan.
More than 150 models
walked the 100-meter catwalk
covered in denim for the event, the Ginza Runway, on Ginza's central street.
The show, watched by crowds of shoppers and passers-by lining both sides of
the runway, featured about 200 items by popular brands by apparel companies and students at
fashion schools in Japan.
The items ranged
from pastel-colored jeans,
luxurious dresses with frills and kimono, to headwear and bags.
The show was the brainchild of a Ginza department
store and others, intended to cheer people up after the nation marked the
one-year anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11.
The denim made in
Japan was chosen because it is widely used by top fashion houses around the
world because of its high quality.
Children from the
disaster-stricken Sendai and Tokyo’s Chuo Ward, where the Ginza is situated,
made appearances in the show's finale.
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Facebook is 10
million monthly active users
strong in Japan, the company announced today at a marketing conference in
Tokyo.
This figure indicates Facebook has about 10
percent penetration among Japanese
Internet users and is quickly gaining on Mixi, Japan’s most popular social
network. Mixi reported in February that it has 15.2 million monthly
active users.
Japan is one of the
few countries where Facebook has lower than 20 percent penetration. Russia
and South Korea are others, as well as China where Facebook is banned. But Facebook is growing
rapidly in Japan. The latest MAU figures
are double the 5 million the social network reported in September 2011.
Facebook got serious
about Japan in 2010, and developed a number of initiatives to increase usage there. The social network began to
let users syndicate their
Facebook posts on Mixi. It created a job search app for
university students. And it prompted
users to complete “missions” to fill out their profiles. Judging
from a graph shown at fMC Tokyo, Facebook had about 1 million MAU at the
start of 2010 and 2 million in 2011. |
Your country
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Which part of your country do most people live
in?
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Tell me about the main industries there?
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How easy is it to travel around your country?
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Has your country changed much since you were a
child?
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KYOTO — When the Imperial family moved to Tokyo at the
beginning of the Meiji Restoration in 1868, after more than a millennium in Kyoto, many in the ancient capital were convinced the
Emperor was just embarking on a
long visit and would someday return.
Now, more than 140
years later, Kyoto's top political and business leaders are working to have
at least some members of the Imperial family take up residence here again.
The reasons have
less to do with romantic dreams of the past and more to do with modern concerns ranging from safety
from natural disasters to the strengthening of Kyoto's role domestically and
abroad as the center of traditional Japanese culture.
The seven-prefecture Union of Kansai
Governments endorsed a plan to
make Kansai a backup capital in the event of a natural disaster in Tokyo, and
one of the proposals was to relocate
the Imperial family to the region.
Now, however,
Kyoto's political and business leaders are stressing the social and cultural benefits to the city and the
Kansai region of having some Imperial family members in Kyoto.
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Eleven people died
from food poisoning in 2011, the
first fatalities in three years
and the first time the toll has exceeded
10 in nine years, according to health ministry data obtained Saturday.
The victims included
seven people who died of the O-157 strain of E. coli bacteria, five of whom
fell ill amid a rash of cases
linked to raw meat served at a "yakiniku" barbecue restaurant
chain.
However, the total
number of food poisoning cases fell to 1,062 in 2011, while the number of
people who were sickened also dropped
to 21,616. A subpanel of the
Pharmaceutical Affairs and Food Sanitation Council, which advises the health
minister, will be briefed on
further details about the data at a meeting Monday.
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