Ibaraki has become the first prefecture in Japan to pay residents a cash reward for reporting illegal foreign employment. Inside the design, the governor's defense, the backlash from lawyers, and the farming-economy contradiction underneath it all.
Japan's PM Takaichi wants to scrap food consumption tax for two years, but POS vendors say the register overhaul takes a year. Why does changing a number take so long? We compare Japan's tangled POS systems with the US, where a tax change takes an afternoon. The twist: America's speed is a side effect of its chaotic tax code.
Corn and mayonnaise on pizza, bread and salad is everyday food in Japan but baffles the world. A look at Hokkaido's corn history and what makes Japanese mayo so different.
On June 1, Shibuya became the first of Tokyo's 23 wards to fine street littering on the spot, 2,000 yen a pop, with 10 penalties on day one. But this is a country that spent decades removing its public bins. Inside Japan's awkward don't-litter-but-good-luck-finding-a-bin paradox.
Akita Prefecture has adopted environmental DNA surveys that estimate whether bears passed within 1km upstream in the past 24 hours from a single glass of river water. We explain how it works, its limits, and how it compares with grizzly-detection efforts abroad.
An unpermitted mosque facing removal in Japan exposes the real problem: the issue isn't faith, it's the permit, and the lawful route to building one is often blocked. A look at Japan's rising Muslim population, its population decline, and the legal path that was never built.
Japan's 2025 census preliminary count puts the population at 123 million, down 3.1 million in five years, the steepest drop since records began. The country fell from 11th to 12th in the world, overtaken by Ethiopia. We translate that number into cities you can picture, then compare how South Korea, Italy, and China face the same cliff, and ask whether Japan's immigration, birth-support, and regional-revival policies are working.
Tourists are buying Japanese knives in record numbers, and makers are posting all-time-high profits. But there's a tier money can't fast-track—where top chefs wait years. Meet three masters: Sakashita, Nenohi, and Yu Kurosaki.
In Japan's science city of Tsukuba, a coffee roaster and the KEK physics lab created five drip-bag blends named after subatomic particles, each tuned to the particle's real character. Why visiting researchers love them as souvenirs.
While matcha sells out worldwide, the kyusu, the side-handled teapot once found in every Japanese home, is quietly disappearing. What a kyusu is, where its odd shape came from, why it fell out of use, and why you should try a cup brewed in one when you visit Japan.
Electronics giant Panasonic hosted a Tokyo adoption event where 193 rescue dogs and cats met would-be families. A look at why a tech company backs animal welfare, and the company-NPO-newspaper model behind it.