Workers in Japan who want to leave their jobs — but don't want to face the stress of quitting in person — are turning to a company called Exit.

Leading Japanese mining company GMO Internet has stopped mining Bitcoin Cash (BCH) once again, reports indicate. According to company documents recently made public, the top bitcoin mining firm stopped mining bitcoin cash in July and previously in April. The documents published by Trace Mayer of the Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast show that GMO mined 0 BCH last month, down from 62 coins in June and a high of 287 in February.

North Korea has said it is freeing a detained Japanese tourist on humanitarian grounds. There is very little information available on Tomoyuki Sugimoto, but he was known to have been arrested earlier this month. North Korea has not said why he was arrested, only that he was breaking the law. Japanese media said he could have been filming a military facility. Tourists visiting North Korea are strictly monitored at all times.

Black markets and American wheat imports popularized ramen.

President Donald Trump’s tariff policies reflect a serious misunderstanding of the importance of free trade and Japanese companies’ contributions to the U.S. economy, Japan’s trade minister said Thursday. Hiroshige Seko, the minister of economy, trade and industry, warned in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press that Tokyo might take action if the U.S. fulfills threats to levy a 25 percent tariff on Japanese auto imports. He gave no details but didn’t rule out retaliatory tariffs.

North Korea has agreed to allow International Civil Aviation Organization staff to conduct an on-site inspection to ensure the safety of international flights from the country’s missile launches, according to officials with the Montreal-based U.N. agency. An official with North Korea’s General Administration of Civil Aviation gave the assurance when high-ranking ICAO representatives visited the country in May, ICAO officials said.

In some incredibly sad news for the world of Pokémon, it’s been announced that Unsho Ishizuka, the voice actor for the iconic Professor Oak in the original Japanese anime, has passed away.

Municipalities across Japan are reaching out to the social recluses known as hikikomori to help them find their place in society without focusing solely on getting them back into the workforce. Japan has some 540,000 people aged 15 to 39 who, aside from taking care of small chores, cut themselves off from the outside world for six months or longer at a time, according to a 2016 government estimate.

Tepco suspended the sale of souvenirs at its crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant Wednesday — just eight days after launching the products — following public outcry that it was looking to profit from the 2011 disaster. Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. had been selling plastic file folders imprinted with pictures of the Nos. 1 to 4 units at the crisis-hit plant at two of the facility’s convenience stores since Aug. 1, after receiving requests for memorabilia from visitors and workers.

In Japan, ghost stories are not to be scoffed at, but provide deep insights into the fuzzy boundary between life and death. By Christopher Harding.

Mazda Motor Corp, Suzuki Motor Corp and Yamaha Motor Co conducted improper fuel economy and emissions tests on their vehicles, Japan’s transport ministry said on Thursday.

Beachgoers in Kamakura City, Japan, received quite a shock on Sunday when a 34-foot blue whale washed up dead on the beach. The Washington Post reported that experts claimed this is the first time a blue whale has ever been recorded on Japanese shores. The cause of the mammal's death is reportedly unknown. Civil engineers were called to the beach to move the whale ashore for examination.

Shigeaki Mori was 8 when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He survived and committed himself to uncovering the names of all those who died — including 12 American POWs.

Japan retakes the No. 2 spot with a valuation of $6.17 trillion as China’s stock market takes a beating from a slowing economy and the trade war with the U.S.

The Education Minister of Japan has condemned gender discrimination following reports that Tokyo Medical University allegedly rigged entrance exam scores to lower the ratio of female students.

Japan’s government is to urge companies to give employees Monday mornings off in its latest attempt to improve the country’s poor record on work-life balance. The economy, trade and industry ministry believes that “Shining Mondays”, part of a wider campaign to address the punishingly long hours many Japanese are expected to work, will give employees a much-needed lie-in at the start of the working week...

Apple has announced that it will repair any Mac, iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, iPod, or Thunderbolt Display directly damaged by heavy rains in Japan in July, free of charge, so long as the product is actually repairable.

In rapidly graying Japan, living till you're 100 is no longer a milestone for many: Miyako Chiyo, the oldest person in the country and world, died Sunday aged 117, according to the country's Health Ministry. Chiyo was born on May 22, 1901 and clinched the title of oldest living woman in Japan from Misao Okawa, then the country's oldest person, when she died, also aged 117, in April 2015.

A Japanese city has been forced to clarify it is not in fact recruiting ninjas, following reports that it was facing a shortage of skilled assassins. Local officials in Iga, which styles itself as the birthplace of ninja-dom, had received a flood of applications from around the world. But they said in a statement (in Japanese) that they were not officially hiring any, "so please be careful". The mix-up apparently began with a report by a US broadcaster.