Japan's AMAGOI moonshot starts field trials over Toyama Bay in December 2026, seeding winter snow clouds with dry ice. Its own published flight log shows how hard it is to prove anything worked.
Tokyo's resident registry shows the city added 75,018 people during 2025, and 62,478 of them were foreign residents: 83 percent of the growth. Count only Japanese residents and Tokyo is down 3,238 over five years.
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?
A 200,000-yen temple room and a 100-million-yen tax finding surfaced at Koyasan in the same week. Where that price actually sits, why Japanese law taxes the bed but not the offering, and how to book a night.
JR East opened public voting on three successors to the Suica penguin, and about 58% of Japanese posts turned negative. What they object to, why the 2018 Takanawa Gateway vote poisoned the well, and why it may not last.
Get out of bed if you are not asleep in 20 minutes. That rule belongs to CBT-I, which a University of Tokyo analysis puts at 41% remission against 28% for pills. Japan covered it in June 2026, after rejecting it in 2024.
Japan recorded 86,473 IVF births in 2024, about 1 in 8 of its 686,173 births. Treatments fell to 550,265 while the multiple-birth rate rose to 4.15 percent, and the 2022 insurance reform helps explain both.
Hokkaido University and Japan's forestry institute modelled all 349 ski areas in the country. At 4°C of warming, only seven stay open 100 days a year on natural snow. At 2°C, 53 do.
In spring 2026 a meter-tall mat of watercress smothered a suburban river in Matsuyama. Japan calls it a priority-control invasive species, yet farms ship 362 tons a year. How New Zealand, Australia and the US see it.
Saint Seiya creator Masami Kurumada sued his ex-manager on September 2, 2026, over 4.686 billion yen (about $29.3 million) allegedly embezzled. A trusted editor walled him off for 25 years, his lawyers say.
Japan's Children and Families Agency asked 100,000 young people about marriage. 35.1% of unmarried respondents said they have no intention of marrying, but only 53.1% of that group said they do not want to.