JR East unveiled on Monday a new “resort train” that will allow passengers on the Yamagata Shinkansen Line to soothe their feet.
The carriage, which was shown to the media in the city of Yamagata, will make its debut July 19, allowing tourists to enjoy the landscape along the train line while soaking their feet in an “ashiyu,” or warm-water foot bath.
The Abe administration will press ahead with divisive plans to loosen restrictions on the Self-Defense Forces, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Monday, a day after a lone demonstrator set himself on fire in protest outside a busy Tokyo railway station.
Hundreds of people outside Shinjuku Station witnessed the man with a bullhorn on Sunday afternoon yelling opposition to the changes for about an hour while perched on a girder above a footbridge. He then poured flammable liquid on himself and lit it.
Mexican Javier Aguirre has agreed to become Japan’s new coach following the resignation of Alberto Zaccheroni after his side’s World Cup flop, local media reported on Monday.
The 55-year-old Aguirre, who led Mexico to the last 16 of the World Cup in 2002 and 2010, will reportedly pocket around $2.45 million a year — more than twice what his predecessor was on.
自民、公明両党は１日午前、国会内で「安全保障法制整備に関する与党協議会」（座長・高村正彦自民党副総裁）を開き、集団的自衛権行使を限定的に容認する憲法解釈見直しなどに関する政府の閣議決定案について正式合意した。
An unidentified man in a black suit tried to commit suicide by setting himself on fire in front of hundreds of people on a bridge near the south exit of JR Shinjuku Station in Tokyo on Sunday afternoon.
Police said the man, who appeared to be in his 60s, was seriously injured but is expected to survive. He was being treated at a nearby hospital, a police spokesman told The Japan Times later in the day.
North Korea reportedly launched two short-range ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan on Sunday morning, boosting tensions ahead of another round of talks Tuesday with Tokyo on the abduction issue.
According to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, South Korean military officials said two missiles with a range of 500 km were fired from Wonsan, on North Korea’s eastern coast, between 4:50 a.m. and 4:58 a.m.
Farmers in Fukushima try to convince skeptical visitors that their crops are safe from radiation. Blood trickles from the nose of a reporter who visits the area.
These are two story lines found in manga — those ubiquitous comics for adults and teens — that have taken up Fukushima on an unprecedented scale even as Japanese film largely avoids the topic.
The deeply indebted public entity concurrently running two airports in the Kansai area might set a minimum bid of over ¥2 trillion when it puts the rights to operate the facilities up for sale, sources familiar with the matter said Sunday.
The money will allow New Kansai International Airport Co., which runs Kansai International Airport and Osaka International Airport, to pay off about ¥1.2 trillion in debt, the sources said.
Power utilities are increasingly worried that their aging thermal power plants will start developing problems in the summer, when electricity demand is at its peak, as they attempt to offset the loss of nuclear power caused by the Fukushima disaster.
In fiscal 2013, glitches and other problems caused a total of 169 shutdowns at thermal power plants, according to reports from nine of the country’s 10 regional utilities, excluding Okinawa Electric Power Co.
