To do that, it's putting in place the kinds of family-friendly policies experts say are needed around the world.

It’s just a prototype for now.

Mars’s twin moons may soon get a visitor. We’ve never landed anything on Phobos and Deimos, but we have taken pictures of their surfaces from orbiters around Mars. Now, a mission headed by JAXA, the Japanese space agency, is set to launch a rover to one of these small moons in 2024 – the final destination is yet to be decided.

In the wake of a slew of fatal accidents involving elderly drivers, the government plans to create a new driver's license system that limits senior citizen

The governments of the United States and Japan have agreed to further cooperation in space which could include flying Japanese astronauts to the moon. At a joint press conference in Tokyo May 27 with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, President Donald Trump mentioned cooperation in space exploration as one outcome of their meetings during the president’s visit to the country.

The Japanese Space Agency's Hayabusa 2 shot a cannonball at Ryugu and is ready to scoop up some of the ejected rock.

This week, Japanese railway company JR East showed off its new Alfa-X, a high-speed bullet train that is designed to achieve a top speed of 400kph, or 249mph, which would make it the fastest commercial train in the world. In day-to-day operations, the train would shuttle passengers at 360kph, or roughly 224mph.

During the week of April 22, Switch and PlayStation 4 sales were extremely close in Japan. The two were at 8,042,166 units and 8,047,754 units sold respectively. Now that the latest data from Japan (via Famitsu) has come in, we can now say that Switch has reached another major milestone.

スウィングガールズ

New data shows Japanese citizens prefer whale watching to whale meat.

Japan's space agency wants to create a moon base with the help of robots that can work autonomously, with little human supervision. The project, which has racked up three years of research so far, is a collaboration between the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the construction company Kajima Corp., and three Japanese universities: Shibaura Institute of Technology, The University of Electro-Communications and Kyoto University.

Japan has an increasing percentage of young adults with no history of heterosexual vaginal intercourse. Public health experts at the University of Tokyo completed the most detailed analysis of national fertility survey data to date to understand trends in sexual experience over the past three decades. "Previous news reports about virginity rates among Japanese young adults were a bit sensationalist, only included never-married individuals, and did not distinguish virginity rates by age group," said Dr. Peter Ueda, an expert in epidemiology and public health and leader of the research project.

Twenty-five-year-old Sotaro Ito lives in a 9.46-square-meter apartment with a loft in the capital's retro-hip Koenji district...

Japan will develop its first-ever computer virus by next March as a defense measure against cyberattacks, sources have said. The Defense Ministry is considering malware that can break into a computer system, hoping such a computer virus could work as a deterrent against cyberattacks, the sources said Monday.

Luckily, the days of needing to memorize phone numbers are over.

Following Wednesday’s Media Create charts, today the firm released its weekly analysis, going more in-depth into the impressive local performance of Marvel’s Spider-Man. We learn that the game was almost sold out, selling 96.17% of the total initial shipment. Media Create estimates that a considerable number of purchasers resorted to buying the digital download version of the game on the PlayStation Store, because there were shortages at retailers.

Sleeping where I worked blurred my work-life boundaries

It’s a good day for science and science fiction when Harold Ramis’ Multiplicity can finally be proven to be complete bullshit. And I’m …

A device which zaps your tongue with electricity sounds more like some cruel and unusual torture method than it does something folks might do for enjoyment. But you’d be wrong — at least when it comes to the electric tongue zapper created by researchers at Meiji University in Japan. They’ve been working on technology they call “unlimited electric gum,” able to electrically simulate flavor sensations when a person chews a stick of specially created “gum.”

Two typhoons followed by warm weather may have triggered Japan’s iconic trees to blossom months ahead of schedule

Under crisp blue skies, about 1,000 well-wishers turned out at the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo Monday to catch a glimpse of Japan's Princess Ayako and her groom Kei Moriya on their wedding day.

Esanbe Hanakita Kojima, as the island is called, may have been eroded by wind and ice floes

Japan is full of bizarre tales about crypto zoological creatures and things that go bump in the night. Here are five of them.

Japan’s primary financial regulator has formally granted the cryptocurrency industry with a self-regulatory status by allowing an industry body to police domestic exchanges. The Financial Services Agency (FSA) on Wednesday approved the Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association (JVCEA), a body comprised of all 16 licensed domestic cryptocurrency exchanges, to become a ‘certified fund settlement business association.’

The Japanese public is happier about the economy than at any time in nearly two decades, though few think the next generation will have it as good. People's biggest fear is automation, not foreigners, taking jobs from local workers. While 44% of respondents to a Pew Research Center survey said the current economic situation is good, 15% answered that today's children will be better off than their parents.

Yoshitaka Sakurada is responsible for ensuring the 2020 Olympic Games are not hacked.

Japan's government is planning to develop a so-called "super city" where cutting-edge technologies will undergo fast-track testing to study their feasibility. Government officials have drawn up a basic plan that calls for the city to be developed on a former industrial site, with people invited to serve as residents.

Wannabe homeowners in Japan are about to get the deal of a lifetime. The Japanese government is launching a program to reduce the number of abandoned homes across the country by offering them for sale for nearly nothing, or actually nothing, according to Insider. According to a 2013 report, there are about eight million houses that have been left abandoned all over Japan.

An intricate system of dams, levees and tunnels defends the Japan’s capital. Will it be able to cope with climate change?

A cafe staffed by robot waiters controlled remotely by paralysed people has opened in Tokyo, Japan. A total of 10 people with a variety of conditions that restrict their movement have helped control robots in the Dawn Ver cafe. The robot's controllers earned 1,000 yen (£7) per hour - the standard rate of pay for waiting staff in Japan.

Japan has decided to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission in a bid to resume commercial whaling, government sources said Thursday. However, the country is unlikely to catch whales in the Antarctic Ocean even after its IWC pullout, as the government is mulling allowing Japan's commercial whaling only in seas near Japan as well as the country's exclusive economic zone, the sources added.

One conservation group warns that the move shows "a troubling disregard for international rule".

If you’re living in Japan and modifying save data on Nintendo Switch, you’d probably want to stop whatever you’re doing right now. Japanese lawmakers have recently passed an amendment to the Unfair Competition Prevention Law. The amendment, in layman’s terms, has made the modification of video game save data illegal in Japan.

The robot revolution will have to wait at the Henn na Hotel in Japan, which is laying off low-performing droids after they created more work by annoying and confusing guests and piling up in the repair shop.

Japan’s Olympic organisers have unveiled a proposal to make medals out of recycled mobile phones and discarded computers. The move is part of the organisers’ efforts to create an environmentally “sustainable” foundation for the summer games, which will take place in the Japanese capital in 2020. The proposal will result in gold, silver and bronze medals being created from recycled precious metals obtained from discarded electronics, ranging from phones to computers.