Finding your everyday reason for living, or ikigai, could lead to a longer and better life.

At least 65 people have died and more than 22,000 are treated in hospital amid record temperatures.

Jeongja Han dumps a drawer of pens and lighters into a plastic garbage bag while her client, a recently widowed woman in her mid-50s who asked not to be named, sits on a stool, watching. The woman’s husband died in a car accident a few weeks ago, leaving her to clean out the spacious two-bedroom apartment they occupied for 30 years in Tokyo’s trendy Ebisu neighborhood. They had no children to lay claim to heirlooms or nostalgia, so her directions to Han were simple: “Get rid of everything.”

Two Japanese national research institutes said Saturday they have succeeded in using artificial intelligence to identify early-stage stomach cancer with a high accuracy rate. The breakthrough may help extend the lives of more cancer patients in Japan, where stomach cancer is one of the leading causes of death. According to Riken and the National Cancer Center, it took AI only 0.004 seconds to judge whether an endoscopic image showed early-stage cancer or normal stomach tissue. AI correctly detected cancer in 80 percent of cancer images, while the accuracy rate was 95 percent for normal tissue.

Japan and the European Union have signed a massive trade deal that creates an open-trade zone for more than 600 million people. The EU and Japan account for about one-third of GDP worldwide. The deal has been in the works for years, but the parties reached an agreement in principle a year ago, several months after President Trump pulled the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a major trade deal with Japan and 10 other nations.

The European Union and Japan signed a landmark deal on Tuesday that will eliminate nearly all tariffs on products they trade. The ambitious pact signed in Tokyo runs counter to President Donald Trump’s moves to hike tariffs on imports from many U.S. trading partners. It covers a third of the global economy and markets of more than 600 million people.

One of Japan’s leading whisky bloggers discusses the shortage of good Japanese single malts, the state of the country’s whisky industry, and how to order a highball.

The Square Enix developed Nintendo Switch exclusive JRPG Octopath Traveler is more popular than the publisher once thought. Published by Nintendo internationally and by Square Enix in Japan, Octopath Traveler is facing stock issues in many regions with fans claiming to not being able to get their hands on the game. Square Enix who as aforementioned publishes the game in Japan also apologized and suggested that fans either buy the game digitally or buy a download card to play the game.

Tokyo-based translation firm 8-4’s mission is to reduce cultural gaps between countries, and infuse games with local personality

In Japan

One of my favorite places to visit in Disney World is the main store at Epcot's Japan Pavilion. It's a lovely place filled with food, toys, and plenty of video game/anime paraphernalia -- with a micro history museum to boot. Oh, and it's always packed with Pokemon (and Dragon Ball) merch year after year.

The rain may have stopped in Japan, but the country is facing a long recovery process after floods and landslides killed at least 122 people in the southwest, officials said Tuesday. At least 27 people are missing, said the nation's Fire and Disaster Management Agency. With emergency rain warnings lifted, the country is turning its focus to search and rescue efforts. Police, fire departments and the military are scouring affected areas for those unaccounted for.

Parts of western Japan hit by deadly floods and landslides face unprecedented danger, officials warn, with more downpours expected. Scores of people have died, while about 1.5 million people have been ordered to leave their homes and three million more advised to do so. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says the rescue effort is a "race against the clock".

Hundreds of thousands of people across a wide swathe of western and central Japan were evacuated from their homes on Friday as torrential rains pounded the nation, flooding rivers, setting off landslides and leaving at least two people dead. The Japan Meteorological Agency said the rainfall was "historic" and warned more rain was set to batter already saturated parts of the nation through Sunday.

The Samurai Blue of Japan were eliminated from World Cup play on Monday. But the crushing defeat by Belgium didn't stop the Japanese national team from cleaning their locker room until it was spotless, and leaving behind a note thanking Russia for hosting them. A tweet from sports correspondent Tancredi Palmeri showing Japan's immaculate locker room and a one-word thank you note has gone viral, with more than 12,000 likes and 6,000 retweets as of Tuesday morning. Palmeri noted that the photo was uploaded by a delegate from FIFA, the organization that runs the World Cup.

An octopus, who correctly predicted all of Japan's World Cup results, has been killed and turned into sashimi. The mollusc, named Rabio, was hailed as psychic after an experiment in a paddling pool. But Kimio Abe, the fisherman who caught Rabio, felt he'd make more money selling it for food than from its clairvoyance.

Megumi Yokota was just 13 when she disappeared. On her way home from badminton practice at her junior high school, she vanished somewhere along the eight-minute walk to her house in this seaside town. It was just after sunset on Nov. 15, 1977, and the weather records from that day show a calm sea and clear sky.

There’s a moment in BBC2’s documentary Japan’s Secret Shame where Japanese journalist Shiori Ito returns for the first time in three years to a Tokyo hotel, where she alleges she was raped by a prominent TV broadcaster and reporter. “I can already feel that my body is reacting,” she says in the programme. It’s night-time, similar conditions to the evening of the alleged attack. “It’s the light I remember, this light,” Ito adds, looking up at rows of hotel windows. There’s a pause. “I have to go.”

A rocket developed by a maverick Japanese entrepreneur and convicted fraudster exploded shortly after liftoff Saturday, in a major blow to his bid to send Japan's first privately backed rocket into space. Interstellar Technologies, founded by popular internet service provider Livedoor's creator Takafumi Horie, launched the unmanned rocket, MOMO-2, at around 5:30 a.m. from a test site in Taiki, southern Hokkaido.

The 82-year-old had lived on the tropical island of Sotobanari since 1989, but was recently taken to hospital after being spotted looking weak