At around 2:10 p.m. on 14 June, the Nozomi No. 176 Superexpress Shinkansen headed to Tokyo from Hakata made a regular stop at Kokura Station in Kyushu’s northernmost city of Kitakyushu, where a large crack on its bonnet was discovered. Despite the damage, the train continued on its journey, travelling over the Kanmon Strait to the main island of Honshu, where the vehicle underwent a more thorough inspection at Shin-Shimonoseki Station in Yamaguchi Prefecture.

Japanese research vessels harpooned, killed and necropsied 333 Antarctic minke whales during an annual hunt last summer — and 122 of those whales were pregnant.

BBC

The city of Sapporo began issuing cards serving as proof of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender partnerships on Friday, responding to calls from couples seeking portable evidence they can present in emergencies and other situations. The city in Hokkaido started authenticating partnership oaths submitted by sexual-minority couples in June last year, but had only issued a certificate in the form of an A4-size (21 cm by 29.7 cm) document.

Coca-Cola has launched its first alcoholic drink, a lemon flavoured alcopop, in Japan in a bid to tap new markets and consumers. In a global first for the US drinks giant, three fizzy lemon drinks went on sale on Monday. The product aims at a growing market of young drinkers - especially women.

This might be the one time in your adult life when it’s appropriate to say “Nice melons” to a stranger. Over the weekend, a pair of Yubari melons sold for a record-breaking ¥3.2 million (US $29,436) at an auction held in the city of Sapporo. The two melons were bought by Shinya Noda, the president of a fruit and vegetable packing company.

TOKYO — The U.S. military says an Air Force F-15C fighter jet has crashed in waters south of Okinawa in southern Japan.

Hit Japanese products, from the Walkman to Pokémon, have long captivated us, but Japan's most influential export might be its own lived experience.

Japan has notified the World Trade Organization that it reserves the right to take countermeasures against U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

People who are short on relatives can hire a husband, a mother, a grandson. The resulting relationships can be more real than you’d expect.

The number of children in Japan fell for the 37th consecutive year to a new record low, the latest data showed Friday

It is a scene that plays out each weekday morning across Tokyo. Suit-clad office workers, gaggles of schoolchildren, and other travelers gamely wend their way through the city’s sprawling rail stations. To the casual observer, it is chaos; commuters packed shoulder-to-shoulder amid the constant clatter of arriving and departing trains. But a closer look reveals something more beneath the surface: A station may be packed, yet commuters move smoothly along concourses and platforms.

Japanese whaling vessels returned to port on Saturday after catching more than 300 of the mammals in the Antarctic Ocean without facing any protests by anti-whaling groups, officials said.

A Japanese worker has been reprimanded by her boss for “selfishly breaking the rules” after she became pregnant before it was her “turn”, according to media reports. The woman was working at a private childcare centre in Aichi prefecture, north Japan, when she found out she was pregnant.

On April 1, 2018, Japanese toy-maker Bandai announced a new lineup and innovative figurines. Nekobusou, or “Armored Cats” in English, were essentially adorable kitty transformers that could wrap themselves with lethal killing machines.

So many Japanese people die alone, there's a whole industry devoted to cleaning up after them.

In Japan, a phenomenon known as “shrinkflation” — an important economic countermeasure against inflation for businesses — has been catching the attention of consumers. The term, coined by American economist Pippa Malmgren, describes what happens when manufacturers have to contend with higher costs but don’t want to increase the prices of their products. What they do instead is decrease the size or amount of the product while maintaining a steady price.

Japanese engineering researchers say they have created a tiny electronic light the size of a firefly which rides waves of ultrasound, and could eventually figure in applications ranging from moving displays to projection mapping.

Japan is taking steps to help aging business owners find buyers for their companies rather than shut them down for lack of suitable successors. By doing so, it seeks to protect jobs and economic value as the population ages and shrinks. The country has 2.45 million small and midsize businesses run by those at or over the average retirement age of 70, roughly half of which are without successors. An even larger number are run by those aged 65 to 69. Around 28,000 businesses closed their doors in 2017, according to Tokyo Shoko Research -- a 30% increase in 10 years.

Japan has again been forced to confront its work culture after labour inspectors ruled that the death of a 31-year-old journalist at the country’s public broadcaster, NHK, had been caused by overwork. Miwa Sado, who worked at the broadcaster’s headquarters in Tokyo, logged 159 hours of overtime and took only two days off in the month leading up to her death from heart failure in July 2013.

A research team led by Teruyuki Hirano of Tokyo Institute of Technology's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences has validated 15 exoplanets orbiting red dwarf systems. One of the brightest red dwarfs, K2-155 that is around 200 light years away from Earth, has three transiting super-Earths. Of those three super-Earths, the outermost planet, K2-155d, with a radius 1.6 times that of Earth, could be within the host star's habitable zone.

Japan's third-largest electricity provider is emerging as one of the first major companies in the world to trial a promising bitcoin payments technology. Revealed exclusively to CoinDesk, Chubu Electric Power Co. has entered into a proof-of-concept with local bitcoin and Internet of Things (IoT) startup Nayuta, one that finds it exploring how bitcoin payments can be made via the Lightning Network, an in-development protocol that promises to cut costs for bitcoin users.

Japan has the world’s oldest population, with more than a quarter of its citizens aged 65 or older. The ageing population has already put a strain on Japan’s financial system and retail industry. But in recent years, another unexpected trend has been unfolding: In record numbers, elderly people in Japan are committing petty crimes so they can spend the rest of their days in prison.

Japan is believed to be preparing to execute as many as 13 members of a doomsday cult in what could become the country’s biggest round of hangings in the past decade. Tuesday marked the 23rd anniversary of Aum Shinrikyo’s sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway, which killed 13 people and caused illness among thousands of others.

Visitors on boats enjoy Someiyoshino cherry blossoms at Chitorigafuchi Imperial Palace moat in Tokyo.

The USS Lexington was discovered in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Australia (by 800 km). The ship took part in the Battle of the Coral Sea and will actually be left on the ocean floor since the US Navy considers it a war grave.

Japan is more focused on a securing major trade deal with the European Union than pursuing an agreement with a post-Brexit Britain, a senior minister has said. Shinichi Iida, minister for public diplomacy and media, said his country's "first and foremost priority" was rubber-stamping its historic trade agreement with Brussels – the largest the EU has ever signed – before work could begin on establishing lucrative free trade deals with the UK.

America's national pastime is the most popular sport in Japan, but it's also more than that.

Lightning lights up the ash cloud above Shinmoedake peak as the volcano erupts between Miyazaki and Kagoshima prefectures, southwestern Japan, in a photo taken by a remote camera and released by Kyodo News, April 5, 2018.

A 112-year-old Japanese man born months before Albert Einstein published his theory of special relativity was recognized on Tuesday as the world's oldest man.

The deposit, found within Japan’s exclusive economic zone, contains more than 16 million tons of the elements needed to build high-tech products.

If President Trump decides to re-enter the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Japan, the biggest economic player in the deal, would welcome him with open arms, a top Japanese diplomat told Axios on Wednesday, before Trump directed his top advisers to take a fresh look at the deal.

An employee of Tokyo Electric Power Company says even a flood barrier would not have prevented tsunami from inundating the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant following the huge earthquake in 2011. The employee was testifying at the Tokyo District Court on Tuesday in the trial of 3 former TEPCO executives, including former chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata. The 3 are accused of professional negligence resulting in death and injury, in connection with the nuclear accident.

For the past few years, because of my interest in The Great Span of human history, I've been tracking the last remaining people wh