Nipponica

The vice governor of the western Japan prefecture of Hyogo said Friday that he will resign over the death of a prefectural government official who created and distributed a document about alleged harassment and other problems with Governor Motohiko Saito.

Vice Governor Yasutaka Katayama submitted a letter of resignation on Friday and will leave office at the end of this month. Since assuming his current post in 2021, Katayama has been supporting the 46-year-old governor.

Following on from the initial story, the Vice Governor is taking the fall for the alleged harassment that led to the death of a prefectural employee. Governor Saito refused to resign.

"Working with Pacific island nations, Japan wants to further contribute to the promotion of the rule of law in the region," Justice Minister Ryuji Koizumi said at the beginning of the meeting.

Japan venturing back out into the Pacific to be a balance against Chinese influence in the region.

Being one of Kurokawa's earliest works, it is also a representative example of the "Metabolism" architecture movement.

Each room is highly independent of the other, and although the design makes it technically possible to replace each room (capsule), in practice, it has never been done because of the difficulty of replacing only some of the capsules. It was intended for the capsules to be replaced every 25 years (the first time in 1997) since completion.

This is a really cool preservation tech demo that shows the interior of a section of Nakagin before it was demolished in 2022

"Pokemon x Kogei - Playful Encounters of Pokemon and Japanese Craft" began on July 6 at the MOA Museum of Art in the city of Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture. On display are around 70 pieces of artworks including ceramics, lacquerware, metalwork and textiles created by 20 artists representing contemporary Japan -- ranging from those designated as a living national treasure to young people. The works create a new charm for the Pokemon franchise with their unique textures and presence.

I need a metal Eevee now.

The landslide in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture, occurred as the weather agency warned of heavy rain mainly in western Japan, calling people to be on high alert for landslides and flooding in low-lying areas.

The National Center for University Entrance Examinations will prohibit the use of smart glasses, a type of electronic device that takes the form of a pair of eyeglasses, starting from next January’s Common Test for University Admissions.

On July 13, a symposium titled "The Two Suzukis Who Gave Birth to the Constitution -- Postwar History Beginning in Fukushima" organized to shed light on a fragment of Japan's postwar history and explore the future of the Constitution will be held in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture. One of those two is Yasuzo Suzuki (1904-1983) from Minamisoma, and the other is Yoshio Suzuki (1894-1963) from Shirakawa.

The symposium will be held at Ukifune Bunka Kaikan hall from 2 p.m. on July 13. Admission is free, up to a maximum capacity of 300 people. Applications can be made through a dedicated form accessed by QR code, or by emailing the event secretariat at info@kenriken.jp.net.

Forty-seven nations are currently planning to construct Type A self-built pavilions at the 2025 World Exposition in Osaka, people familiar with the matter said Wednesday.

Initially, 60 nations planned to build Type A pavilions for the event, but many of them have faced difficulties in securing deals with contractors mainly due to soaring prices of construction materials.

Deadline: April 2025.

Graphcore is the latest UK tech company to be bought by SoftBank, which acquired the Cambridge-based chip designer Arm for £24bn in 2016.

SoftBank remains the biggest shareholder in Arm after its listing in New York last year. It also recently led a $1bn (£774m) investment in the British self-driving technology startup Wayve.

The trip to Etorofu Island by Deputy Prime Minister Yury Trutnev was the first visit to the four Russian-held, Japanese-claimed islands by a Russian minister since President Vladimir Putin's fifth term in office began in May.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry said it has lodged a protest with the Russian Embassy in Tokyo over the visit.

This is the border dispute that is the last existing conflict of the Second World War. Japan and Russia never signed a peace treaty and there any movement towards one has stalled after the beginning of the 2022 Ukraine War.

Kotera is specifically accused of allegedly assaulting a first-year junior high school player (then 12 years old) on the team by punching him dozens of times in the face and stomach and stepping on his face and chest between around 11 p.m. on May 11 and 5 a.m. the next day, causing him to suffer a sprained neck and other injuries that would take up to a week to heal.

Absolutely disgraceful.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced in March 2023 that Japan would seek to accept 400,000 international students by 2033. Speaking at a meeting of the government’s Council for the Creation of Future Education, Kishida emphasized that “it is important to make further investments in people to realize a new form of capitalism.” In other words, the goal of accepting 400,000 foreign students can be regarded as part of his "new capitalism" policy.

In a related development, in February this year, the Kishida government decided to expand employment opportunities for foreign students who graduate from certified vocational schools in Japan by granting them a residency status equal to university graduates.

Interesting article that goes into the history of the Japanese government's push for more international students beginning in the 1980s. These various government programs, including the one that originally brought me to the country (Global 30), are something that I would like to cover more of and how these targets of hundreds of thousands of international students just don't mesh with the graduation prospects these students would likely have. More to come.

Visitors, who had waited a long time for the reopening of the museum’s iconic artwork “The Swimming Pool,” enjoyed looking up and taking photos from the bottom of the “pool.”

A special exhibition, entitled “Lines — Aligning your consciousness with the flow,” is now underway, while a cafe restaurant and a museum shop have switched back from shortened to regular hours.

A Japanese high court on Wednesday approved an official gender change for a transgender woman who has not undergone confirmation surgery as legally required, in a rare decision.

The clause requiring gender confirmation surgery is "suspected of being unconstitutional" as it forces an individual to choose between undergoing surgery or giving up on gender change, the Hiroshima High Court said.

One more step. Also major props to all these Japanese courts that have been delivering similar ruling and pressuring the central government to act and legalized LGBT rights nationwide.

A record 56 people filed their candidacies for the July 7 gubernatorial election, but only 48 posters could be displayed on each of the official election campaign boards erected around Tokyo. The commission instructed the 49th person to file their candidacy and those that followed to attach their posters outside of the campaign board frame using plastic file folders.

Kawai, 43, argued, "The gubernatorial election, where not all candidates could display posters under the same conditions, was unfair and should be nullified." He stated that if his objection is rejected, he will pursue legal action.

Death to the stupid election poster boards already.

Saito's refusal came after the prefectural employee union submitted a complaint to the prefectural government earlier on Wednesday effectively demanding his resignation over the death of the official.

The late official, a former head of a regional branch of the prefectural government, created a document claiming that gifts from Hyogo Prefecture companies are piled up at the governor's home and that his power harassment is exceeding what officials can handle.

Pretty damning accusations by the union and the official that passed away.

The meeting is being backed by the cross-party Japan-Tibet Parliamentary Association, which is headed by former education minister Hakubun Shimomura and aims to boost support for Tibet.

The legislative body of Tibet’s government in exile will run the meeting, with around 90 people including lawmakers and scholars to come from 26 countries. The Dalai Lama, exiled supreme leader of Tibetan Buddhism, is planned to deliver a speech online

In an effort to support local and surrounding residents who wish to get married, this north Japan city has opened an online marriage support center. The service is like a local government-run "dating app," so to speak, and requires an interview and photo ID to join.

A city official in charge of the service said, "We hope that many men and women will use this service as it provides a safe and secure environment for their partner hunting activities." According to the Sapporo Municipal Government, this is the first such service among local governments in Hokkaido.

Insert Grindr joke here.

Operations at Hawaii’s Hilo International Airport were halted when security screeners spotted two items that looked like grenades in a bag belonging to a man from Japan.

Officers evacuated the terminal area Tuesday morning while a bomb squad determined the grenades were inert, according to a Hawaii Police Department statement. Airport operations resumed about an hour later.

Nothing to declare, apparently.

A woman who was swept out to sea while swimming at a beach in Japan has been rescued about 80km (50 miles) off the coast, 36 hours after she went missing, officials have said.

The 21-year-old Chinese national, buoyed by a rubber ring, had been swimming at Shirahama Ohama beach at about 7.30pm on Monday with a friend, the coast guard said on Thursday.

Literally one of my worst nightmares.