Within the Japanese business community there are whispers of a sense of paralysis or "hopelessness", and the fear that if decisive action is not taken, some of the companies that were the engine for Japan's postwar growth could fall into irreversible decline. "Japanese companies cannot keep doing what they have been doing," says Hiroshi Mikitani, the founder of e-commerce giant Rakuten, equivalent to the Japanese version of Amazon.com
The country's electronics sector has been hit by the success of South Korea's Samsung and LG, which assemble products in lower-cost countries such as China, Indonesia and Thailand. There have also been lack of ambitions since the bubble burst, for instance, Japan already had web-surfing handsets nearly a decade before the iPhone, yet local producers failed to tap overseas markets.
Japanese electronics giant NEC has just announced it would cut 10,000 jobs as it projected to lose more than a billion dollars (100 billion yen) for the fiscal year ending this March. Gaming giant Nintendo unnerved investors by reporting a US$838 million losses (its original projection was $260 million losses), the worst year since it began making games 30 years ago. (zimbabwemetro.com)
A Shinto ritual was held Monday on the frozen surface of Lake Suwa in Nagano Prefecture to make predictions on weather, social trends and crop harvests based on a streak of elevated ice cracks observed Saturday for the first time in four years.
A priest from nearby Yatsurugi Shrine, together with devotees, checked the exact location of the streak of cracks and performed a purification rite. The predictions will be made later at the shrine by comparing data with past records.
The natural phenomenon, known as "omiwatari," occurs after ice on the surface of the lake repeatedly expands and contracts in concert with temperature changes from day to night, causing the cracks to rise.
In mythology, omiwatari is believed to trace the path taken when the male god at the shrine on the southern coast of the lake visited the female god at the shrine on the lake's northern coast. (Japan Times)
Leaden winter skies lour on a coastguard boat as it cuts its way through the seas off Japan's tsunami-wrecked shores.
Somewhere under these unforgiving grey waters lie hundreds, perhaps thousands of bodies; the unfound, unclaimed dead of one of the country's worst ever disasters.
Even though the hunt on these sullen seas goes on every day, Yoshifumi Suzuki says none of his coastguard colleagues has seen a single corpse since the partial remains of a man were untangled from a fishing net in November.
But they are not prepared to give up.
"If we don't do this, nobody will," Suzuki said.
"We want to continue the search until we find the very last one. I want to return people to their families not because it is my official duty, but because it is my duty as a human being."
"The (missing) person is in the mind of his or her family but they still want proof that the person lived in this world. I think it's hard for them to accept the reality" without a body, he said. (AFP)
Question: What am I doing outside my home at 6 a.m. with a gas can, a pump, and stalactites under my nose?
Answer: I'm swearing.
I know, this is only half the answer, but at zero degrees Celsius my brain has the tendency to freeze up. Give me a minute to thaw out and I'll elaborate later . . .
According to some people, Japan is already living in the future. I beg to differ. While Japan is a technological giant and our rabbit-hutch houses are bursting with the latest electronic gadgets, the quality of life in this country could be much better if we enjoyed the same basic services people take for granted in the West. Even in Italy - where I come from - the seemingly never-ending recession rarely prevents many people from enjoying rather high living standards. After all, the average Italian lives in a well-built house, with plenty of space to stretch out and relax, and plenty of free time to actually enjoy it.
Japan, on the other hand, may still be the world's No. 3 economic power, but all too often its people seem to lead relatively poor lives, spending their whole day stressing out on the job, getting drunk afterwards, then going back to houses so small that the washing machine has to sit on the balcony or outside the front door. (Japan Times)
As we travel down the road toward the 20-kilometer (12-mile) exclusion zone, the entryway is blocked by half a dozen police officers and a large sign flashing red lights. The sign reads: "Keep out. Don't enter."
This is Japan's exclusion zone. No one lives here, a place where 78,000 people once lived. Nearly a year after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster, the exclusion zone remains off-limits due to high levels of radioactive contamination.
My goal today is to see the town of Tomioka, a farming and factory community which sits in the southern section of the exclusion zone. It's a town that was once home to 52,000 people.
It's hard to imagine that many people once lived here, as we drive into the center of town. That's what strikes you first about the exclusion zone -- what you can't see, the people. Even though I know the residents have been evacuated, it is still eerie to be in a town where it seems the people have simply evaporated. Bicycles near a bus stop lie tipped over, as if owners forgot to retrieve them. Cars sit in a shopping center, seemingly waiting to have groceries loaded into them. A 7-Eleven convenient store sits in disarray, the items shaken from the shelves from the March 11 earthquake. These communities are complete ghost towns, frozen in time. (CNN)
Jin Sato is the mayor of a town that no longer exists.
Minamisanriku, a quiet fishing port north of Sendai in northeastern Japan, disappeared last March 11. Sato nearly did too. The disaster started at 2:46 p.m., about 80 miles east in the Pacific, along a fault buried deep under the seafloor. A 280-mile-long block of Earth's crust suddenly lurched to the east, parts of it by nearly 80 feet. Sato had just wrapped up a meeting at the town hall. "We were talking about the town's tsunami defenses," he says. Another earthquake had jolted the region two days earlier-a precursor, scientists now realize, to the March 11 temblor, which has turned out to be the largest in Japan's history.
When the ground finally stopped heaving, after five excruciating minutes, Minamisanriku was still mostly intact. But the sea had just begun to heave. Sato and a few dozen others ran next door to the town's three-story disaster-readiness center. Miki Endo, a 24-year-old woman working on the second floor, started broadcasting a warning over the town's loudspeakers: "Please head to higher ground!" Sato and most of his group headed up to the roof. From there they watched the tsunami pour over the town's 18-foot-high seawall. They listened to it crush or sweep away everything in its path. Wood-frame houses snapped; steel girders groaned. Then dark gray water surged over the top of their building. Endo's broadcasts abruptly stopped. (National Geographic)
In the town of Yashiro, 27km outside of Osaka, washing machines, air conditioning units, television sets and refrigerators hum along conveyor belts with the precision that defines the Japanese term kaizen (continuous improvement). These appliances, however, are not on their way to delivery trucks and trains that will take them to retailers. Instead, each unit has reached the end of its life cycle and is about to be disassembled, shredded and even pulverised.
The PETEC (Panasonic Eco Technology Centre) complex is a clean, ultra modern and relatively quiet facility. It is also a leading example of resource recovery. Since 2001, over 1.4bn appliances have been recycled, producing enough materials to manufacture 95 jumbo jets, the equivalent of 81 of the Great Buddha statue at Nara and 158,000 cars from reclaimed aluminium, copper and steel. Machines capture noxious gases that comprise cooling refrigerants. New developments will improve the capture of rare earth metals from high end electronics. Resins including polypropylene and polystyrene are recovered thanks to technology that can quickly sort and separate various types of plastics. (Yomiuri)
On the night of July 12, 1993, the remote island of Okushiri was ripped apart by a huge earthquake and tsunami that now seem an eerie harbinger of the much larger disaster that struck northeastern Japan last March. Islanders still recall with horror how a wall of frothing black water raced out of the darkness to consume entire communities, leaving almost 200 people dead.
In the half decade that followed, the Japanese government rebuilt the island, erecting 35-foot concrete walls on long stretches of its coast, making it look more like a fortress than a fishing outpost. The billion dollars' worth of construction projects included not just the hefty wave defenses but also entire neighborhoods built on higher ground and a few flourishes, like a futuristic $15 million tsunami memorial hall featuring a stained glass panel for each victim.
But today, as Japan begins a decade-long $300 billion reconstruction of the northeast coast, Okushiri has become something of a cautionary tale. Instead of restoring the island to its vibrant past, many residents now say, the $1 billion spending spree just may have helped kill its revival. (New York Times)
After decades of tacit acceptance, Japan's yakuza gangs are facing their biggest challenge: not from the police, but from ordinary citizens who are under pressure to shun the mob or be named and shamed.
Tokyo recently became the last of Japan's 47 prefectures to introduce local laws aimed at depriving crime syndicates of income by targeting firms that knowingly do business with them. Under the nationwide ordinances, firms that help the yakuza earn money will be warned, and their names made public if they refuse to sever their ties. Repeat offenders face fines of up to 500,000 yen (£4,200) and company officials can face jail terms of up to a year.
The idea, say law enforcement officials, is to shame businesses into turning their backs on the mob. "It is going to be more difficult for the yakuza to collect funds," said Akihiko Shiba, a former police superintendent who is now a lawyer specialising in corporate compliance. "Police once concentrated on the gangs themselves, but the new approach is clamping down on those who help the gangs make money." (guardian.co.uk)
The eponymous 12-page article was written by Manabu Oshima, a reporter for the Sankei newspaper.
The article focuses on matters of imperial succession, and its timing is hardly surprising. The Emperor, who turned 78 on Dec. 23, was hospitalized for three weeks in November with bronchial pneumonia. A cancer survivor, the increasingly frail monarch nonetheless put in the busiest year of his 23-year reign, making numerous helicopter flights to console survivors in disaster-stricken areas since March 11.
Oshima points out, however, that as long as the current law recognizing only males as imperial heirs remains in effect, when the current Crown Prince becomes Emperor, his former rank will become vacant, since he has no male offspring. (Japan Times)
Fukushima was just emerging from the snows of winter when the disaster hit - a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, the strongest in Japan's recorded history, followed by a tsunami.
The wall of water destroyed much of the northeastern coast on March 11. In the northeast region of Fukushima, a different disaster was brewing: Three reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant were melting down, irreparably damaged by the super tremor.
Now, as the snows are beginning to fall again, the government has announced the plant has attained a level of stability it is calling a "cold shutdown." As many as 3,000 workers - plumbers, engineers, technicians - stream into the facility each day.
The tsunami's destruction is still visible. Mangled trucks, flipped over by the wave, sit alongside the roads inside the complex, piles of rubble stand where the walls of the reactor structures crumbled and large pools of water still cover parts of the campus.
In the ghost towns around Fukushima Dai-ichi, vines have overtaken streets, feral cows and owner-less dogs roam the fields. Dead chickens rot in their coops. (AP)
Croupiers and poker players could fuel Japan's recovery from the March earthquake and tsunami as the country moves closer to legalising casinos.
A cross-party group of MPs wants to resurrect a 2006 campaign to put casinos on the same legal footing as betting on horse, speedboat and bicycle racing.
The cost of rebuilding the north-east coastline, estimated at $245bn, has given fresh impetus to the campaign, which has the support of a growing number of influential politicians including four former prime ministers. Members of the 150-strong group have met senior police officials in an attempt to calm fears that casino resorts of the kind springing up elsewhere in Asia will fall under the influence of the yakuza - Japan's answer to the mafia.
"Some members of the Diet are now insisting that casino legislation be passed," according to Gaming Capital Management, a US-based group that funds casino construction. "Casinos are a great taxation source and can contribute a lot under current financial difficulties related to the earthquake recovery process." (telegraph.co.uk)
Christmas, with its sparkly, over-glitzed trees, a cherry-cheeked Santa Claus and the ritual of gift-giving is irresistible to the Japanese who have taken to celebrating Christmas on a superficial level. You can hardly blame them for wanting to participate in such an entertaining religion.
But the Japanese have adjusted Christmas to their own liking. Santa-san enters the house through the window and brings one gift to each child on Christmas Eve, which he leaves on the child's bed. Christmas also plays a romantic role, a type of Valentine's Day for couples. But there is plenty of Christmas spirit too -- decorations, Christmas carols piped into shopping malls, and of course Christmas sales. And there is one stellar biped who has stuck his neck out to represent Christmas in Japan: the chicken. Chicken is the official Christmas dinner and most families order KFC to spread the Christmas joy. (huffingtonpost.com)
Japan has taken some steps forward since the one-two punch of the earthquake and tsunami that hit the country in March. But the long-term health of the economy, which has continued to decline over the past several years, is facing a new threat that looms larger every day: Japan needs more workers. Birthrates have been plummeting - faster, in fact, than in other developed country - even as the number of older citizens is soaring. As recently as 1990, working-age Japanese outnumbered children and the elderly by 7 to 3. By 2050 the ratio will be 1 to 1. As the population grows old and feeble, the country needs to look to the growing number of educated Japanese women.
Japanese women constitute nearly half (48%) of university graduates. Yet this tranche of talent is woefully underutilized: Only 67% of college-educated women are currently employed, and many of them either languish in low-paid, part-time jobs or are shunted into dead-end "office-lady" roles serving tea for male managers and dusting their desks at the end of the day. (Time)
Drugs, and drug culture, are common and prevalent in much of the West.
Kanagawa Prefectural cops arrested Ryuji Ota, 20, and nine others for supposedly trafficking in illegal stimulants. This past Oct., Japan's Sankei Newspaper reported, Ota and his accomplices apparently sold 0.05 grams of an illegal stimulant (the paper did not specify) to a 39-year-old male in Fujisawa City, Kanagawa for ¥5,000 (US$64).
Using a coded lingo for its online business dealings, the group apparently sold drugs via 2ch. According to the report, the group sold drugs to 4,500 individuals between Apr. and Nov. of this year, with proceeds totaling ¥110,000,000 or $1.4 million. (Kotaku)
Japan's crime syndicates, the yakuza, are pictured as nine-fingered killers covered in elaborate full-body tattoos and wielding nunchuks. To be more precise, these gangsters can gamble on the financial market better than Wall Street brokers, or deliver aid to populations in need more efficiently than the Red Cross itself.
The yakuza were reportedly the first to react to Japan's devastating earthquake and tsunami last March. In the disaster's immediate aftermath, they dispatched at least 70 trucks loaded with supplies worth more than $500,000, according to Jake Adelstein, a well-known crime reporter in Japan. In fact, they like to refer to think about themselves as ninkyo dantai or "humanitarian groups."
"They are always in place when a disaster happens," Adelstein tells Metro. "Since Japan is in a hurry to reconstruct, eliminating organized crime elements from reconstruction and waste disposal is simply not possible."
Given a strict code of conduct that forbids its members from street crimes, prostitution and big heists, yakuza gangsters have traditionally been tolerated by Japanese society. (metronews.ca)
The $21 billion funeral industry is changing as more Japanese households are cutting down on the expensive business of dying during the global economic downturn.
Many Japanese are choosing cheaper funerals as the aging population is growing. In fact, Japan has the highest proportion of elderly citizens over the age of 65 (23.1%), according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication. Last year, 1.2 million people passed away.
With the average funeral (including the ceremony, cremation, flowers, urns and donations for the Buddhist monks) costing an average of about 2.8 million yen ($37,000), more people are seeking out less expensive alternatives.
According to some, it is a good time to work in the funeral industry. In 2009, Aeon Corp, one of Japan's biggest retail chains, went into the funeral business, normally the domain of the Buddhist temples. Aeon has partnered with 400 funeral companies and provides services through them. The company goal was to reduce funeral costs by making bulk purchases of funeral-related items. Aeon are forecasted to have 100,000 funeral customers the next three years. (majirox news)
For Miyoshi Takei, being blind turned out to be just a minor obstacle when it came to playing tennis. In fact, it's what impelled him to try in the first place.
"I wanted to hit a ball that was flying through space as hard as I could, even though I couldn't see it," he once said. If only there was some way he could hear it.
Encouraged by his high school teacher, and after much trial and error, he created a spongy, lightweight ball that rattles so players can track it with their ears. A new sport was born -- blind tennis.
The first national blind tennis championships took place in Japan in the fall of 1990, and there are now hundreds of players in Japan as well as some in the countries he visited to introduce the sport: Britain, Korea, China, Taiwan and, recently, the United States, Russia and Australia. Takei won many national titles but did not compete in this year's 22nd annual Blind Tennis Open held in Tokorozawa, Saitama on November 20. (CNN)
A cosmetic company is investigating whether DNA from ancient peoples may be influencing modern Japanese people's propensity to get freckles and age spots.
Tomonori Motokawa, chief researcher of Pola Orbis Holdings Inc., is working with the National Museum of Nature and Science to investigate why there appear to be two distinct groupings in the Japanese population of MC1R protein genes in melanin-producing cells. One of the groupings appears to be associated with age spots.
His hypothesis is that the Jomon Pottery Culture, an ancient culture known to have been present on the Japanese archipelago from about 15,000 years ago, and the Yayoi Pottery Culture, which appeared in the third to fourth century B.C., are the sources of the different genes. (Asahi)
MY friend rolls her eyes when I suggest an excursion to Akihabara, the consumer electronics district that's a magnet for geeks and gamers in Tokyo.
"It's just like 100 JB Hi-Fi shops all going off at once," she says.
The area around Akihabara station was once a thriving black market in radio parts but today looks much like any of the Japanese capital's retail areas, though not as high-rise as some and with more cartoon signage than most. But where's all the cool stuff?
I stumble upon a mall where a television crew is filming young actors bouncing about in wacky costumes for a game show. A producer tells me not to take photos, even though other people are snapping away on smartphones.
Trying to photograph Akihabara's colourful characters is problematic, particularly the cute little girls dressed as French maids handing out leaflets at a nearby corner. They cover their faces and effectively tell me to shove off. I wonder if it's because their parents don't know what they're doing for pocket money after school. (The Australian)
Early into his turn as Japan's leader last summer, former Prime Minister Naoto Kan pledged to "minimize unhappiness" in Japan. Should the ex-leader have free time in his post-PM days, he may want to devote his attention to Osaka.
Out of Japan's 47 prefectures, Osaka came in dead last in a new study that set out to rank the country's regions by happiness - despite the area's reputation as being a breeding ground for comedians.
According to the study released Wednesday by Hosei University, the third-largest prefecture by population received poor marks in all of the four main categories used in its assessment - safety, lifestyle and family, health and work opportunities. The study analyzed some 40 socioeconomic factors ranging from crime to marriage and employment rates from April to September this year.
From its no-nonsense fast-food fare to its plain-spoken dialect, Osaka is like Japan's colorful loud aunt, with a vibrant character not lost on the study's researchers. "There is plenty of time for hobbies, amusement, rest and relaxation. We sense there is room to enjoy life," the report's authors wrote. (Wall Street Journal)
But the 42-year-old lawyer jokes that he does not take any chances, adding with a smile, "I never stand near the edge of the train platform."
The dark and sometimes dangerous triad of ties among gangsters, businesses and politicians has a long tradition in Japan, which helps explain why a scandal engulfing Japan's Olympus Corp has stirred up media and market talk of possible yakuza links, despite company denials and a lack of evidence.
Ousted Olympus CEO Michael Woodford has told Reuters he will not return to Japan to meet investigators due to "security issues," although he declines to spell out his fears. And Facta, a Japanese magazine that broke the Olympus story, says a Cayman Islands firm linked to some Olympus deals had indirect ties to "anti-social forces" -- a common euphemism for organised crime. (Reuters)
By day, Kenichi Watanabe runs an insurance agency. By night, he's an arm wrestler -- and on a recent Saturday, he's preparing to do battle.
Under a moonlit sky, Watanabe and his opponent face off across an arm wrestling table in a bustling pedestrian street in Sendai, a northern Japanese city hit hard by the March quake. Watanabe is lean and cut, like a lightweight boxer, but his rival looks a couple of weight classes bigger.
They grip hands and adjust elbow positions. Biceps bulge, forearm veins pop. Lights from arcade and karaoke signs dance across their faces as they lock eyes and await the "Go" signal.
"Come on, you can do it!" says a female voice among the crowd of some 30 onlookers.
Welcome to "Street Arm," an event held in the middle of Sendai's entertainment district, in which anyone from beginner to pro can step up and take a shot at arm wrestling. (AP)
The introduction of stricter anti-gang laws in recent years has forced the yakuza, Japan's underworld organisations, to diversify and seek new sources of income.
That change in direction has meant more criminal involvement in the boardroom.
The Japanese authorities have stamped out sokaiya - mob-sponsored racketeers who threatened to disrupt shareholder meetings unless they were paid off.
But investigators are alarmed at renewed yakuza interest in the stock market, with threats of violence being used by gangs to gain inside information before investing their money.
In addition, gang members are reportedly swotting for exams on recently introduced legislation to avert costly lawsuits.
n recent months the yakuza, led by the 40,000-strong Yamaguchi-gumi, have attempted to cash in on the rebuilding effort in the region destroyed by the March tsunami. They were also at the centre of a match-fixing scandal in sumo wrestling, and instrumental in the resignation of one of Japan's best-known TV celebrities. (guardian.co.uk)
An elderly couple here are learning to live with a strange lawn ornament dumped in their front yard seven months ago in the tsunami that devastated Japan's northeast coast.
A 230-ton tugboat that is high and wide enough to cast a shadow over their house has become a tourist attraction, but Kinichi Oikawa, 82, and his wife, Shizuko, 80, want the boat owner to get the vessel off their property.
But the owner of the Kazumaru No. 1 tugboat, which used to fight fires and haul massive freighters around the Ofunato harbor, cannot afford to move it.
"We never imagined that a boat from the ocean below would end up in front of our house," said Mrs. Oikawa, whose home has acquired the nickname the "tugboat house."
When the couple felt the magnitude 9.0 earthquake on March 11, they remembered past tsunamis that hit Ofunato in 1933 and 1960. They immediately ran up a hill to high ground.
As they trudged through debris to reach their home the next morning, they saw the boat. It appeared to be floating in an inland sea of wreckage. (Washington Times)