News On Japan

Record-breaking stew in Yamagata

Sep 17, 2018 (NHK) - Thousands of people in Yamagata City in northern Japan have been getting an early taste of autumn and setting a world record at the same time.

An organizer prepared a giant pot of a local specialty called "imoni". They simmered three tons of taro, 1.2 tons of beef and 3,500 sheets of konjac with soy sauce and sugar in a 6.5 meter-wide pot.

They used excavators to serve it to people who had been waiting since early in the morning.

One man in his 40s said imoni makes him feel as though fall has arrived.

A woman in her 50s from Miyagi Prefecture, east of Yamagata, said she comes every year and wants to go home and cook the stew herself.

An official from Guinness World Records announced that the event had set a new mark for bowls of stew served in 8 hours. The final tally: 12,695.

News On Japan
POPULAR NEWS

Temples that have long shaped Japanese life and culture are increasingly closing and being put up for sale as falling numbers of parishioners and a shortage of successors leave many religious institutions unable to continue operating.

Typhoon No. 13, which formed on the afternoon of July 27, is expected to intensify rapidly into a violent storm as it draws in clusters of highly developed clouds, though forecasts remain sharply divided over whether it will eventually approach Japan.

UNESCO has formally added the Asuka-Fujiwara capital sites in Nara Prefecture to its World Cultural Heritage list, bringing the number of World Heritage properties in Japan to 27.

The Sumida River Fireworks Festival, a summer tradition in Tokyo's historic downtown districts, was held across Taito and Sumida wards on July 25, with about 20,000 fireworks lighting up the night sky following a day of intense heat.

Multiple rare earth elements essential for high-tech products have been confirmed in mud extracted from the deep seabed off Minamitorishima, Japan's easternmost island.

MEDIA CHANNELS
         

MORE Society NEWS

Keigo Higashino, the Naoki Prize-winning author whose prolific career produced such bestsellers as Journey Under the Midnight Sun and The Devotion of Suspect X, died of colon cancer in the early hours of July 23, his publisher said. He was 68.

A wave of pear thefts has prompted police and farmers to strengthen patrols as growers warn that stolen fruit is likely being resold online or from roadside vehicles.

Kozo Okamoto, a member of the Japanese Red Army who took part in a 1972 mass shooting at an Israeli airport, has died at age 78 in Lebanon, where he had lived for decades under political asylum.

Average life expectancy in Japan rose for both men and women last year for the first time in two years, with Japanese women retaining the world's top ranking for the 41st consecutive year.

A 61-year-old unemployed man has been arrested after allegedly subjecting a quiet Kyoto neighborhood to years of relentless radio broadcasts and amplified guitar music, leaving nearby residents with sleep disorders and other health problems.

The Japanese government is considering requiring certain stalking offenders to wear GPS tracking devices under a new system that would alert victims when an offender approaches their home, workplace or another protected location.

A police officer shot and wounded a 21-year-old man who allegedly robbed a convenience store in Koshi, Kumamoto Prefecture, and then approached officers with a kitchen knife on the evening of July 22.

An unexploded U.S.-made bomb believed to date from World War II has been discovered at a housing construction site in a residential district of Minoh, Osaka Prefecture, potentially requiring the evacuation of nearly 5,000 people during its disposal.