Nipponica

Leading Japanese retailer Aeon will take on 4,000 skilled foreign workers groupwide by fiscal 2030 amid severe labor shortages in Japan's food service sector, Nikkei has learned.

The Aeon group currently employs around 1,500 under Japan's Specified Skilled Worker program, which targets foreign workers with specialized skills in shorthanded industries. They work largely at food-processing plants that supply Aeon supermarkets.

Of the 71 toilets at Tawaramoto Elementary School in Tawaramoto, Nara Prefecture, nearly half, or 34, are the squat type. The elementary school has lagged behind other counterparts in the town in adopting Western-style toilets, and new students have voiced their dislike of squat toilets, saying that they are "dark and scary."

As a westerner that has had a few dark and scary moments in one of these, I side with the kids.

Executives from South Korea’s Naver and Japan’s SoftBank Group said they would jointly own the operator of Line, a South Korean-developed messaging app popularized in Japan. They gave the project a code name that emphasized cooperation: Gaia.

But late last year, cracks started opening in the Naver-Softbank venture.

Paywalled, but a good retelling of a century of strained relations between Japan and South Korea through the tale of a little green app called Line. For me, the cute stickers are the only good part of the Line ecosystem. The messaging portion of the app remains much like it was a decade ago and competitors like WhatsApp and Messages are taking laps around it. But it is still the king of text communication in Japan and no one seems able to topple it.

Unless the current situation in which Okinawa is forced to make sacrifices on the grounds of security is changed, the rift between the central and prefectural governments will only deepen. The national government must amend its stance of forcing decisions on Okinawa and engage in sincere dialogue.

This is a good explainer about the burden placed on Okinawa Prefecture by the central government and how the local people are basically powerless to stop it.

"An increasing number of people (within the LDP) are feeling a sense of crisis that if this situation continues, there will be a change of government," Suga, still a prominent figure in the LDP, said in an online program broadcast Sunday.

When Suga returns from the dead to shit on you, you know the game is up.

Japan stands ready to take appropriate steps against volatile yen moves at "any time," a senior finance ministry official said Monday in a fresh warning, as the currency neared levels at which authorities have previously intervened to slow the yen's decline.

“In classical music, you play what’s written on the music sheet. Onigiri is the same,” he says. “You don’t try to do something new.”

A delightful read on one of Japan's core food staples.

Only 10.4 percent of the Japanese public want Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to win the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's leadership race slated for September and continue serving as premier, the latest Kyodo News poll showed Sunday.

At this point, he should see if the number could go any lower just for the sport of it.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant, a sprawling 4.2-million square meter complex by the sea, was once the crown jewel in Japan’s strategy to boost atomic power to 50% of the country’s energy mix by 2030. Inside, a framed certificate from Guinness World Records acknowledges the facility’s potential output of 8.2 gigawatts as the most globally.

Right now that output — which would be enough to power more than 13 million households — is zero. The seven reactors at KK, as the facility is known, were shuttered after the 2011 tsunami and meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 plant in the Tohoku region that prompted the government to rethink its dependence on nuclear energy.

Fascinating article about this one plant in Niigata but also the general pulse of the population on nuclear energy, the total fecklessness of Tepco, and government officials avoiding being the one in charge of allowing power generation to resume.

"It is inadequate...that Japan has not established domestic laws to punish war crimes or crimes against humanity," ICC President Tomoko Akane said at a recent press conference in Tokyo. She is the first Japanese to lead the independent judicial body, which is based in The Hague.

Did not realize Japan was not a party to this treaty until I saw this article. Very surprising, curious, and troubling considering the nation's brutal treatment of Chinese during the Sino-Japanese Wars.

Residents of the Noto Peninsula in central Japan have been witnessing a curious surge in tourists, a mere five months after the region was severely damaged by a major earthquake.

While some see the boost in tourism as a positive -- a way for people to grasp the reality of the situation in the region amid growing concerns of a drop in visitors following the New Year's Day temblor -- others argue the trend of people traveling to the remote peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture is a form of "dark tourism."

There are people that are bringing supplies or other aid, as cited in the article. But the “dark tourism” is very real and a similar phenomenon to the proliferation of true crime stories and podcasts that flooded the market since the Serialification of the medium.

A memorial service, attended by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, was held at the Peace Memorial Park in Itoman, the site of the final stage of the battle, where the names of 181 people were added to the list of the war dead inscribed on monuments, bringing the total to 242,225.

Attended by PM Kishida who stated that he was working on easing the burden of the presence of US military for the Okinawa people.

For generations, “nommunication” – or drinking with colleagues after work – has been credited with fostering corporate spirit in Japanese firms, releasing office tensions and building close professional relationships.

Now, a new study suggests that despite the well-documented risks to health, smoking performs a similar function in the Japanese workplace.

Having lived in Japan before and after the 2020 indoor smoking ban, izakayas are much much MUCH more tolerable to be in for long periods of time. Smoking will go out of style as the older generations leave the workplace. So, let's say, by the year 2100?

Set in pandemic-era Tokyo, the film focuses on a young woman (Yukino Takahashi) whose boyfriend has absconded, leaving her broke and feeling broken. She drifts into sex work, taking the professional name Kotone.

She quickly transforms from a lost-looking waif wandering down Kabukicho streets to a wised-up sex worker who takes nothing and no one at face value. She works at a “cafe” where masked women sit staring at their smartphones while men on the other side of a large window make their selection, which a male employer conveys to the chosen woman. The newly formed couple then retires to a private room.

Currently, the Justice Ministry only allows online birth registration when submitted with a digitally signed birth certificate. Due to the additional complexity of processing documents with digital signatures, no municipalities have accepted digitally signed birth certificates, effectively requiring all birth registration papers to be submitted or mailed to local government offices.

Under the new system, local governments will be able to receive birth certificates in a digital form directly from medical institutions starting as early as fiscal 2026.

While I hope that this system will launch without issue, a rush of fake births registered to this system could be the solution to the population crisis.

The minor "NHK Party" allowed anyone who donated to the party to use their space on the campaign boards for the July 7 election. The group's leader Takashi Tachibana stated in a regular press conference on June 21, "We were able to raise a very big issue. I consider it a great success."

I do find the large poster boards that go up at every election to be a bit archaic, but in their defense, it does give equal footing to all candidates in a contest. Perhaps it could be done better using a different medium while still maintaining the uniform presentation for each contender.

Flight JL2154 bound for Osaka was carrying 47 people — including five crew members — when it was forced to return to Aomori because of the message in the cockpit that suggested the left engine had caught fire, the carrier said. No injuries were reported in the incident.

Safety record maintained. Great job JAL.

Gen. Eric Smith, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, told Nikkei on Friday that a new unit established in November on the Japanese island of Okinawa is designed to "counter PRC [the People's Republic of China] aggression" in order to protect Japan and others in geopolitically sensitive areas.

"It's designed to provide long-range sensing and long-range fire, using mobile missile batteries that are capable of striking adversaries' ships in the strategic sea lines of communication," Smith said in an interview in Washington, adding the unit's purpose is "to protect the Japanese home islands, in order to protect the Philippines, in order to protect [South] Korea."

So, assuming this new unit (stated in the article to be comprised of 2,000 troops) is new deployments to Okinawa, the planned relocation of other US military stated for December will be quickly replaced in this new initiative. The circle of life continues.

It might have felt counterintuitive to shun the bright lights of the capital in favor of a quiet, provincial city better known for its love of gyōza potsticker dumplings. But four decades down the line, Otowa is now the founder-patriarch of one of the best-regarded French restaurants in the country.

Housed in a striking modern, free-standing property a short drive from the city center, Restaurant Otowa is sophisticated and elegant, yet calm and relaxed. Its light-filled dining room is large enough to hold 80 people for special functions, though it usually seats about 50.

Time for a field trip up north.

“Japanese users have long preferred platforms like Twitter that allow you to be anonymous over something like Facebook that makes it mandatory to use your real name,” Moreno says. “Virtual reality experiences like VRChat are an extension of anonymity. Some users even use voice changers. They are able to create a representation of themselves that they want to show to the world.”