Japan and India agreed several high-profile deals Saturday including on high-speed rail, defence technology and civil nuclear cooperation, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in New Delhi. (AFP)
MISHIMA, Shizuoka Prefecture--The nation's longest cable-suspended pedestrian bridge is set to open to the public here on Dec. 14, offering breathtaking views of Mount Fuji, Suruga Bay and the peaks of the Izu Peninsula. (Asahi)
A laser was apparently aimed at the driver of a waiting shinkansen bullet train in late November in western Japan, an official of West Japan Railway Co. said Saturday, following similar incidents targeting flying aircraft in Okinawa and elsewhere. (Kyodo)
Schoolgirls in Japan this year scored the highest average mark on record in nationwide physical performance tests that began in 2008, the Sports Agency said Friday. (Jiji Press)
While Japan is slowly coming to realize its need to address human rights issues for sexual minorities, with a few municipalities moving to recognize same-sex couples as legitimate, the change is giving some local assembly members a sense of crisis. (Japan Today)
An independent panel promoting ethical standards in broadcasting said Friday a documentary aired by Japan Broadcasting Corp (NHK) last year that reportedly included a fake interview presents "grave problems" in terms of broadcasting ethics and urged the public broadcaster to abide by a code of ethics. (Japan Today) 
Every year thousands of people make the journey to Japan from countries around the world in order to work and study. Most of these people tend to stay for only the short-term. They stay for a few semesters of school or maybe a few years working an...

We find ourselves often giving recommendations of products to learn foreign languages with, and we thought it'd be useful to compile a list for your reference.
We have included a number of our own products, only where we are convinced that they...
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The History
It was snowing that night of December 14, 1703, but the 46 samurai didn't seem bothered in the slightest. They walked silently from Ryogoku—not far from where the sumo arena, Kokugikan, now stands—to Sengakuji Temple in ...
Returning a friend's bike around 9:45PM, an unfamiliar voice resonates behind me… “Good evening.” Who is talking to me, and why!? I turn my head to investigate the peculiar voice. It's a male cop trailing me on his bike! I awkwardly return h...

Everyone here at Inside Japan Tours loves a soak in one of Japan's many wonderful and famous hot springs (onsen) – in fact, we've written about onsen etiquette and our favourite hot spring baths a few times before.
However, tour leader Richard ...

The last thing I expected to hear after settling into my seat at Gofukuza, a kabuki theater in Osaka, was Lady Gaga. She reverberated through the theater as kabuki actors, dressed in their customarily drastic makeup and ornate costumes, performed ...

The Gishi-sai Festival is a winter festival held at Sengaku-ji Temple, a Sōtō Zen Buddhist temple located in the Takanawa neighbourhood of Minato-ku, Tokyo.
Every year on December 14th, the temple holds the festival to commemorate and honour t...
Being both ecologically-minded and frugal, I am not keen on buying drain filters. I mean who ever even hear of such a thing before coming to Japan? Alas, I have found a solution to my kitchen sink woes. I hate pantyhose. Japanese ones make me feel...
Turbulent currents. Skulls and bones. Natural geometries. Solar and lunar imagery. These are some of the recurring motifs in the work of Yuki Ideguchi, a Japanese painter who creates vibrant and hypnotic compositions. Although only 29, the young...

Online manga, mostly of the illegal kind, has been a big thing over the past decade. They dominate almost all of search results when someone searches for manga. But like most Google search results, they aren't of the greatest quality (I can sa...



































