Angola paid about ¥17 million to a Japanese subcontractor it never owed. Osaka's Expo hosts say they have no legal basis to pay. Behind the gap: a law that stops at wages and a relief bill that lapsed.
A TV report treated visitors sitting on Ginza's pavements as a manners problem. Benches had been tested on the same avenue days earlier. Road rules and anti-homeless design help explain why seats are scarce.
Japan halted new foreign hires for restaurants on April 13, 2026, near a 50,000 cap. Job changes stay legal, and one placement firm found 46.4% of July hires moving into big-city prefectures, up from 31.9% in March.
Tochigi police drop scent discrimination from their police dog exam after zero call-outs in 2025, as searches for missing people doubled from 61 to 120. Who do police dogs look for where you live?
Niitsu in Niigata was Japan's top oil field a century ago. Oil still seeps from old wells whose pipes no one can find, and taxpayers fund the cleanup, unlike in Alberta, where the industry pays.
Yamanashi wants to charge for off-season helicopter rescues on Mount Fuji, 8,000 yen per five minutes. Its own document calls it a package against reckless climbing. Is free rescue too cheap, or does a meter delay calls?
Japan culled 1,381,700 deer and wild boar in fiscal 2024, and 5.6 percent of that mass became meat. The rest goes to a hole in the ground or an incinerator, and the capacity is not there. Scotland does it differently.
A 50-stop organ built by 18th-century methods has been finished at a Yamazaki Baking hall near Tokyo. It takes five people to sound right, at a moment when Japan's public halls are struggling to keep theirs.
Shingo, a village of 1,919 in northern Japan, has had a tomb of Jesus since 1935, declared by a promoter of a forged chronicle. Almost nobody there believes it, yet the Shinto rite hit its 62nd edition in 2026.
Murakami's salmon run fell from 55,000 fish to 1,400 in a decade. Now the town is spending about $32,000 to attempt what Norway and Chile have not: closing the life cycle of chum salmon entirely on land.
Takasaki pays 300 yen per beetle. Kawashima paid 100 yen and closed two and a half months early after handing out 7 million yen for 70,000 insects. Taiwan ran almost the same scheme, and cancelled it.