JR East will phase out magnetic short-distance train tickets in spring 2027, replacing them with QR-code paper tickets. We break down the environmental and cost reasons, why almost no one will notice, and the small ritual that is quietly disappearing.
In greater Tokyo, families now wait one to two weeks to cremate the dead. As Japan's annual deaths head for a 2040 peak, new crematoriums stall on local opposition while a private near-monopoly drives up prices in the capital's 23 wards. A look at the limits of death-care infrastructure in the world's oldest society.
A stray calico named Tama once saved a doomed rural rail line. Now Japan's Wakayama Electric Railway plans to turn the whole route into 'Nyanderland'—a cat nation with passports, visas, and a queen.
In Anicom's 2026 dog ranking, small mixed-breed 'MIX' dogs took first place for a second straight year with 30,061 entries, ahead of Toy Poodles and Chihuahuas. A look at the rise of small designer mixes, Japan's growing shelter-adoption culture, and why a pet insurer's annual dog census makes the news. What's the most popular dog where you live?
Japan's 2025 property investment topped the 2007 record, with foreign investors at 39%. We break down Tokyo's 0.9% office vacancy, 7.5% rent growth, and why the Japan-West interest rate gap is pulling global capital in.
Japan's Koroyawa floor stays hard when you walk and softens only when you fall. Science Tokyo proved it prevents elderly hip fractures using a world-first simulation built from a real patient's CT data.
Yokkaichi City handed its reservoir grass-cutting to nine goats, dropping annual costs from $5,000 to $3,100. Meet the hungriest grounds crew in Japan and the quiet comeback of goat grazing.
A hard drive on a concrete pillar in a Tokyo canal, rumored to hold trillions of yen in Bitcoin, was finally identified as an enterprise HGST drive. Then, a day after going viral, someone took it. The math, the law, and the vanishing act.
Japan's food exports hit a record 1.7 trillion yen in 2025, a 13th straight high, while its calorie-based self-sufficiency stays at 38%. Why both are true: wagyu, green tea, the 27% feed rate and the 64% production-value figure, explained for global readers.
Five classic Japanese picture books, including one written by Empress Emerita Michiko, have been translated into Ukrainian and donated to schools and libraries. Behind the project is Shikosha, a small Japanese publisher founded by a war widow in 1948.
Shionogi has launched EndeavorRide, Japan's first prescription video game for childhood ADHD, covered by public health insurance. We unpack the Phase 3 results, the rise and fall of the US original EndeavorRx, and why a healthcare system can decide whether a game-as-medicine lives or dies.