Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has surpassed 200,000 copies sold in Japan, with 64,000 of those sales occurring in 2018. The game sits at 75th place for the year in Japan, one spot behind Dragon Ball FighterZ on Nintendo Switch and one spot ahead of Attack on Titan 2 for PlayStation 4. This is especially impressive considering the game came out at the tail end of 2017, when the majority of its sales took place.

The number of suicides in Japan dropped 3.4 percent from a year earlier to 20,598 in 2018, down for the ninth year and the lowest in 37 years amid economic recovery, preliminary data by the National Police Agency showed Friday. The number of suicides per 100,000 people fell to 16.3, a record low since the survey began in 1978, but an increase of girls aged 19 or younger who killed themselves raised concern, according to the data.

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.

Dawn is an inspirational marriage of technology and humanity.

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

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.

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.

There is nothing to prepare us for the shock to the senses in the National Gallery of Victoria's latest exhibition combining the works of M. C. Escher with Japanese design firm nendo.

Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan president, Atsushi Morita, finally addressed the censorship regulations that Sony has employed for PS4 games, speaking at the Japan Studio “Fun” Meeting that took place in Tokyo, Japan on December 1st, 2018. The event was themed around a celebration of SIE Japan Studio’s projects, but was also open to some fan questions. The news was picked up by Ebitsu.net, which briefly covered some of the topics Morita addressed while at the meet-and-greet.

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

A 64-year-old man had been arrested and fined after stealing a roll of toilet paper in Shimane Prefecture. The incident occurred in September at a hospital in Okinoshima, located in Oki District, Shimane Prefecture. Okinoshima lies on an island off the west coast of Japan, and has an estimated population of around 14,849. According to reports, the man was found guilty of stealing a roll of toilet paper from a male restroom at the hospital and fined 200,000 yen. The toilet paper was valued at 30 yen.

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.

Shrouded in mystery, the gigantic Daisen Kofun mound in Japan is thought to hold the remains of a 5th century emperor.

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.

Less than a month after releasing the iPhone XR, Apple Inc. is moving to offer subsidies to mobile-network operators in Japan to shore up sales of its least-expensive new smartphone, people familiar with the matter said.

The US refused to join a new global cybersecurity agreement this week—maybe because it was created by French president Emmanuel Macron, with whom President Trump isn’t on great terms with. On the same day, internet traffic that was supposed to route through Google’s cloud servers instead went haywire, traveling through unplanned servers based in the likes of Russia and China. Hack? No, as Lily Hay Newman explains, though the cause was still worrisome.

In early September, the island nation of Japan was doing Japan things. One day, Typhoon Jebi roared ashore near Osaka and Kobe, breaking historical wind records. Early the next morning in Tokyo, as thick clouds from Jebi’s outer bands raced overhead, an offshore earthquake rattled softly but perceptibly through the city. The capital city’s skies remained a bleak gray a few hours later as we entered the headquarters of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in the city’s bustling Shinagawa area.

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

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.