Nipponica

Japan’s Defense Ministry on Tuesday began its first full-scale U.S. base relocation work on the Oura Bay side of the Henoko coastal area in the city of Nago, Okinawa Prefecture.

The work, which involves the construction of seawalls on the Oura Bay side with soft ground, is part of the project to build a replacement facility for the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma air station in the Okinawa city of Ginowan. The ministry plans to fill in the area surrounded by the seawalls with soil.

A Mexican man was found to have landed on one of the Senkaku Islands in Ishigaki, Okinawa Prefecture, on Friday, after apparently drifting in a canoe, the Japan Coast Guard said.

The man was picked up by a helicopter and taken to a hospital in the prefecture. He was quoted as saying that he had been drifted after leaving Yonaguni, Japan’s westernmost island, by canoe.

A new challenger enters the ring...

The main mutation of the virus currently spreading is KP.3, a subvariant derived from the omicron strain. KP.3 has strong transmission capabilities and can evade immunity, so even those who have been vaccinated or previously infected need to be cautious.

Of the past 10 waves of COVID-19, four have peaked in August. The virus has been replaced by new variants approximately every six months, and experts believe that the trend of infection spread in summer and winter will continue for the foreseeable future.

Foreign residents are increasing in number in southwestern Japan's Kyushu region as well as in Yamaguchi and Okinawa prefectures at a rate exceeding the national average amid a labor shortage.

The trend emerged in the Vital Statistics released on July 24 by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, based on basic resident register data as of Jan. 1, 2024. It comes as the population of Japanese nationals continues to dwindle in these areas.

Masanori Matsugawa, mayor of the Okinawa Prefecture city of Ginowan, was found dead at a hotel in Tokyo on July 26, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) told the Mainichi Shimbun.

Matsugawa, 70, is said to have arrived in Tokyo on July 24 to conduct official duties. He is believed to have died from illness.

U.S. Forces Japan said Monday it will create a "new forum for cooperation" with Okinawa's government and local residents, amid criticism over recent revelations of cases of alleged sexual assault involving U.S. military members in the southern island prefecture.

The forum, to be launched in coordination with Japan's central government, will "serve as a venue for the constructive exchange of ideas in the pursuit of shared goals," U.S. Forces Japan Commander Lt. Gen. Ricky Rupp said in a press release.

Over a year has passed since the PDAS-X06 unmanned experimental aircraft, part of a space travel project, crashed into the sea off Shimojishima Airport in the city of Miyakojima, Okinawa Prefecture.

PD Aerospace, the Nagoya-based developer of the aircraft, aims to realize space travel by manned spacecraft from the airport under the Shimojishima Spaceport Project, which was signed between the company and Okinawa Prefecture in September 2020.

Under the project, the company’s spacecraft, which is designed to fly to an altitude of 100 kilometers, will allow passengers to experience a state of weightlessness for about five minutes. Originally, the company had planned to launch space travel in 2025, sending 100 passengers to space that year and gradually increasing capacity to 1,000 by 2030.

With this story and the previous one about Hokkaido Spaceport, Japanese industry is making up for lost time in the new space race. While JAXA is far from a small player in the industry, it is small in comparison to the legacy space states. But, experimentation like this could be vital to the next generation of spacecraft and there could be a breakthrough in the testing on Miyako.

Okinawa prefecture has been the hardest hit by the new strain of the virus, with hospitals reporting an average of nearly 30 infections per days. The KP. 3 variant has accounted for more than 90 per cent of Covid-19 cases nationwide, the Fuji News Network reported, leading to renewed concerns about bed shortages at medical facilities.

This thing is far from over and, to dust off a phrase from 2020, turning into the new normal. Mask up.

Craftspeople have now started laying tiles, which are made from mudstone and red clay sourced from the prefecture.

Carpenters plan to cover the roof with about 60,000 tiles by the end of this year. The reconstruction of the main hall is scheduled to be completed by autumn of 2026.

Great that the castle restoration is progressing. I was lucky to visit it before the fire and I hope that the restoration is just as majestic.

A U.S. Air Force member in Okinawa Prefecture pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges related to the alleged kidnapping and sexual assault in December of a girl who was under the age of 16.

The case did not come to light until late June, around three months after his indictment, as local police decided not to disclose the incident. That decision has inflamed strong and long-existing anti-base sentiment in the prefecture, which hosts the majority of U.S. military facilities in Japan.