With water that is neither sea nor fresh, Okayama University of Science is trying to farm salmon through its entire life cycle on land. If it works, the university calls it a world first. We unpack the technology behind it, why salmon is the hardest fish to farm this way, a 250-year-old salmon town's role, and the global scramble for farmed salmon.
On June 2, JR East expanded its UK vending business from stations to airports, acquiring around 800 airport machines for a fleet of 1,800. Here's why its touch-screen vending stalled in Japan—and why Britain may be the better bet.
The world's first factory built to mass-produce diamond semiconductors has opened in Okuma, the Fukushima town that hosts the wrecked Daiichi nuclear plant. How a material researchers chased for 40 years found its purpose in the place that needed it most.
Researchers from Tokyo University of Science and Yokohama National University built a photocurable resin that hardens with light and melts back to liquid with heat. Using anthracene photodimerization, it recycles 10-plus times with no initiators or additives.
Kagawa, Japan's self-styled udon prefecture, throws away thousands of tons of noodles a year. Two teams found wildly different uses for the waste: a small factory that turns it into electricity, and a professor who turns it into surprisingly tough paper grown by microbes, now made at a welfare facility for Marugame's traditional fans.
Honda's full-scale eVTOL demonstrator, designated F1, completed its first flight in the US, hovering for about 90 seconds. Instead of going all-electric, Honda chose a gas-turbine hybrid built for 400km-plus intercity range. Here's the contrarian bet, and the F1 and HondaJet technology behind it.
Ultra-pure water is the invisible backbone of chipmaking, so clean that a stadium of it may hold less impurity than a single sugar cube. Three Japanese firms, Kurita, Organo and Nomura Micro Science, lead the world. We unpack their technical edge and the contest with global rivals like Veolia.
In May 2026 Toyota canceled the Lexus LF-ZC, its next-gen EV—but it killed the car, not the tech. Why investment in gigacasting and solid-state batteries continues, compared with Tesla's own gigacasting retreat.
On May 29, 2026, Mitsubishi unveiled a mid-to-long-term vision reviving the Pajero after seven years and turning it into a series. With a ~1 trillion yen ($6.3B) investment, a hybrid pivot, and Nissan-built US vehicles to dodge tariffs, the comeback rides a global wave of heritage-SUV revivals.
What is NTT, one of Japan's largest telecom conglomerates, really building behind a decade of re-consolidation and its coming split of Docomo? We lay out the facts, then predict the 'final form' that emerges and the backbone it plans to earn from, comparing it with AT&T's failed media bet, SoftBank's reinvention, and India's Reliance playbook to find the real key to whether it works.
Light travels faster through air than glass. By hollowing out the core, OKI, Lightera and Keio University demonstrated a world-first wideband single-fiber bidirectional link. Commercialized, it could cut network power by up to 90 percent. We unpack the race, where Microsoft is already in via its Lumenisity buy, as AI devours electricity.