Japan marked 500 days to go until next year's Tokyo Olympics on Tuesday with events scheduled in the capital and surrounding areas to set the mood for the games.
For many foreigners, working in Japan is a dream come true. Experiencing the culture first-hand by living here and participating in daily life rather than just observing it in passing. But what happens when the grim realities of working life creep into your amazing Japanese experience? What happens if the company work for goes bankrupt, issues layoffs, moves or merges and you lose your job while living here without a follow-up gig on the horizon?
Nobuyasu and Ayako Arimune are so obsessed with rugby they named their dog "Richie" after former All Blacks skipper Richie McCaw and unsurprisingly they can't wait until the World Cup comes to their sleepy home town of Fukuroi in Shizuoka Prefecture later this year.
Japan's Emperor Akihito has begun a series of rituals leading to his abdication on April 30. The first ceremonies were held at the three Imperial sanctuaries on the palace grounds in Tokyo on Tuesday.
The Justice Ministry plans to require foreign workers entering the country using the new work visas to submit medical certificates, informed sources said.
An Ethiopian Airlines passenger jet bound for Nairobi crashed minutes after take-off on Sunday, killing all 157 people on board and raising questions about the safety of the Boeing 737 MAX 8, a new model that also crashed in Indonesia in October.
With Japan keen to flaunt Tokyo 2020 as the "Reconstruction Olympics", people who fled the Fukushima nuclear disaster are being urged to return home but not everyone is eager to go.
The public support rate for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's cabinet has fallen slightly to 43.3 percent, while some 69 percent want a local referendum that rejected a plan to relocate a U.S. base within Okinawa Prefecture to be respected, a Kyodo News survey showed Sunday.
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