Nipponica

Sanae Takaichi, former economic security minister, was elected leader of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party on Saturday and is likely to become the first female prime minister within two weeks, succeeding the outgoing Shigeru Ishiba.

She defeated Agriculture Minister Shinjiro Koizumi in a run-off that was held after none of the five candidates was able to secure a majority in the first round of voting.

She is also the first female president in the LDP’s 70-year history. The arch-conservative was close to the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, another right-wing LDP leader. She has publicly stated that she sees former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as her role model.

Good to see the trend line of horrible election results is continuing.

Octopus mobile app users can now make payments at millions of merchants across Japan in a move that will bring convenience to many Hongkongers planning to visit the country.

This is using the PayPay system to register payments. It’s kinda crazy that PayPay is becoming a quasi-open network for payments in the country but I’m all for it if they continue to integrate foreign systems.

The municipal government said Thursday that it was no longer able to secure a spectators' gallery for the fireworks because a related "open base" event at the Yokosuka base was called off amid the government shutdown.

The U.S. Navy base has been one of the venues for members of the public to see the annual fireworks display for years. The city was expecting that half of the roughly 190,000 spectators it had hoped to attract this year would view the event from the base.

The one kind of boom that will be cut by this government.

In January, the government decided to recognize same-sex partners under 24 laws and ordinances including the spousal violence prevention law and the land and building leases law.

Meanwhile, the government maintains the position that same-sex partners are not covered by 120 laws and ordinances, including those related to taxes and social security.

As the article cites, 120 more unequal laws to go. The Japanese government will do anything to not alter marriage laws but if we do this piecemeal, maybe this is the way to backdoor equality.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Wednesday was given an award for the celebrity who looks best in glasses in the political category.

The 68-year-old Japanese leader, who has decided to step down after about a year in office following setbacks in national elections, is the first sitting prime minister in 29 years to be chosen as the politician with the "best dressed eyes" after Ryutaro Hashimoto, according to the award presenter.

"Sometimes good things happen in life," Ishiba, who called the award "unexpected," said at the ceremony held as part of a major trade show for optical and eyewear-related products in Tokyo.

Hey, give the guy one place where the public likes him.

Analysts and tourism officials say the slowdown points to deeper structural shifts in Japan’s outbound travel patterns, though some US states are reporting modest gains and looking to high-profile events and celebrity appeal to reignite interest.

At the Tourism Expo Japan 2025 in Nagoya, which concluded on Sunday with nearly 127,000 visitors, only three US states – California, Washington and Hawaii – hosted stand-alone booths. That marked a significant pullback from previous years, when Alaska, Oregon, Florida and major cities such as New York and Chicago were also prominently represented.

“The outbound tourism market to the US is very tough, although there are some small increases to the mainland,” said Masakazu Yamaguchi, head of Japan sales for Delta Air Lines and a member of the Visit US Japan promotion organisation.

The weak yen and safety concerns were always a concern but now both have exponentially increased in recent years. Bad news for Hawaii but will the rest of the country even notice?

Repeated sightings of brown bears near a residential area in this northern Japan city's Minami Ward have prompted city authorities to call for caution.

On Sept. 30, the Sapporo Municipal Government released an image of a brown bear spotted at about 3:50 a.m. the same day by a surveillance camera set up on a forest road in the ward's Fujino district. The footage showed a brown bear walking by itself. It remains unclear how big the bear was as its full body was not shown.

All technically correct but it is important to note that southern Sapporo City is largely rural and mountainous so it isn’t like these sightings are in the urban city proper.

Star Flyer will resume regular international flights to and from Japan next year, anticipating traffic from Taiwan as domestic business passenger numbers languish.

The regional airline, which is based on Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu, has not flown scheduled flights on international routes since March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. "We will restart international flights sometime in 2026," President Osamu Machida told Nikkei. "We want to take advantage of Kyushu's proximity to Asia."

More competition in international routes, the better.

Toyota Motor Corp. on Thursday officially launched Woven City, a cutting-edge demonstration site where participants including companies from a range of industries will work together to develop new products and services.

The site in Susono, Shizuoka Prefecture, will host experiments on auto-related technologies such as autonomous driving and other diverse themes including food, educational methods and air conditioning.

Toyota is among the 20 companies and individual “inventors” participating in the project. Major air conditioner manufacturer Daikin Industries, Ltd. will conduct experiments to create “pollen-free spaces,” and coffee product maker UCC Japan Co. will use cameras to analyze the movements of cafe users to investigate the effect of coffee on people’s creativity and productivity. Toyota has high hopes that harnessing the technologies and knowledge of each participating company will help lead to the development of new products and services.

Been following this for a long time. This is essentially a Japanese EPCOT with a heavy focus on the automotive industry. The key to success is if ten years from now, there is still innovation going on here. Otherwise it will just be a boondoggle for 2025 tech.

The scheme, which would have promoted international exchanges through observation and training, was not intended to encourage accepting immigrants or to issue special visas.

Despite this, the four cities received numerous complaints, leading the municipalities to request either a change in the name of the project or a complete review of the program’s scope.

The management and PR of this program was a cluster from day one. Ultimately, this was just a rebranded ‘sister city’ arrangement, but poor communication convinced people that it would allow open immigration from these four African countries. Complete disaster.