Stories from and

‘AFTER 25 Conference': Tokyo and Berlin Discuss Creative Culture

  26 January 2014

As Berlin and Tokyo mark 20 years of friendship as sister cities, representatives of two creative industries, including Chairman of the Club Commission of Berlin Marc Wohlrabe and Takahiro Saito, a lawyer and member of Let's Dance, a consortium that fights against Japan's dance regulations, will come together for the AFTER 25 conference on...

Creating Japanese Food With Ingredients from Crete

  17 January 2014

Five prominent Japanese chefs and five of their Greek counterparts got together at a hotel in Crete on January 14, 2014 to create ten dishes representative of the respective origins using local products. At the culinary event dubbed “CRETE delicious” [el], Japanese chefs demonstrated how Cretan products can be incorporated...

Japan Scores Well on Internet Freedom Status Report

  17 January 2014

U.S. based watchdog organization Freedom House compiled a report on Freedom on the Net 2013 and included the report on Japan for the first time. Japan was evaluated as “Free”,  where the constitution protects all forms of speech and prohibits censorship, and Internet and digital media freedom are generally well established. For...

‘Abita’, Animated Short Film About Fukushima Children

  10 January 2014

“Abita”, an animated short film about Fukushima children who can't play outside because of the radiation risk, delicately illustrates their dreams and realities. The film, produced by Shoko Hara and Paul Brenner, won the award for Best Animated Film at the International Uranium Film Festival in 2013. Shoko Hara, a...

Top 10 YouTube Videos of 2013 in Japan

  20 December 2013

RocketNews24 has compiled a list of the top 10 YouTube videos in Japan for the year 2013. The list includes a video uploaded by a popular Japanese idol girl group AKB48, a video of two cute kids showing off their new toys, and a video of a shocking moment of...

Japan's Open Data Catalog Launches Beta Version

  20 December 2013

Data.go.jp, a website that aggregates publicly available data by Ministries and Agencies of the Japanese government, launched its Beta version on December 20, 2013. Datasets by 21 governmental organizations and 567 groups are available under Creative Commons License Attribution 2.1 Japan detailed in the Terms of Use. This comes as a...

Protesters March Against Nuclear Plant's Re-Start on Japan's Kyushu Island

  20 December 2013

About 1,800 people marched on December 15, 2013 in protest of the re-start of the Sendai Nuclear Power Station [ja], according to the protest organizer. After two years of the plant's operations being suspended, Kyushu Electric Power Company applied for a review in July from the Nuclear Regulation Authority with the intention...

Refuse to Pay Pension Premium? Japan Could Seize Your Assets

  18 December 2013

The Japan Pension Service has announced that people who refuse to pay the national pension premium could have their assets seized if they still refuse to pay. Japan's young population have been reluctant to pay for national pensions mostly because they believe the system will be broken by the time...

UNESCO Honors Japanese Cuisine as Intangible Cultural Heritage

  13 December 2013

The United Nations cultural agency UNESCO has officially recognized Japan's traditional cuisine “washoku” as “Intangible Cultural Heritage” among its 14 new listings. Overjoyed after reading the news, Japanese twitter user Komachi jokingly commented that her regular habit is now part of renowned heritage: 私、3日にいっぺんくらいは無形文化遺産作ってる!と言えるわけですね。 「和食」無形文化遺産に登録決定…ユネスコ(読売新聞) – Y!ニュース http://t.co/Fxvh0uoCNO — komachi (@komatchr)...

1,000 Days Since 2011's Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

  6 December 2013

December 4, 2013 marked the thousandth day since a powerful earthquake triggered a tsunami that hit the island of Japan on March 11, 2011, killing more than 15,000 people, devastating parts of the country, and causing a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. According to a survey conducted last...

Japan's Open Data Policy Still Needs Work

  21 November 2013

Even though the Japanese government is working toward advancing its open data policy, the country has a ways to go, ranking 30th out of 70 countries, according to an index compiled by Open Knowledge Foundation. Masahiko Shoji of Open Knowledge Foundation Japan writes: 日本は、政府支出、企業登記情報、交通時刻表、立法の分野で低い評価を受けました。また、どの項目もオープンライセンスの採用については「Yes」の評価を得ませんでした。これらの課題は6月に発表されたG8諸国における速報の時点と同じであり、日本の取り組みが大きくが進んでいないことを表しています。 Japan's open data on government spending, company register,...

Journalists Fear Japan's Proposed Secret Information Protection Act

  26 October 2013

The cabinet of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe approved a bill [ja] on October 25, 2013 to impose tougher penalties on civil servants, lawmakers and others who leak national secrets and harm national security. The so-called Secret Information Protection Act has been unpopular among Japanese press, human rights advocates, and citizens...

Japan: OpenStreetMap Aggregates Typhoon Info

  18 October 2013

OpenStreetMap users volunteered their time to create a crisis map of Izu Oshima island [ja], a small island to the south of Tokyo where more than a dozen of people were killed by mudslides triggered by this week's deadly Typhoon Wipha. The red dots on the map represent reports submitted by users, which give...

Massive Anti-Nuclear Protests Held in Tokyo

  15 October 2013

On October 13, 2013, thousands of people marched down the streets of Tokyo to protest against nuclear power. In a rally dubbed Goodbye Genpatsu [ja], Japanese people demanded the end of nuclear power plants and the use of more environmentally friendly sources of energy. Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the 1994...

Mapping Earthquake Reconstruction in Tohoku, Japan

  7 October 2013

TPFsquare, a project by a group of volunteer professionals based in Tokyo, compiles a list of efforts to rebuild areas affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 into single map. The project, which is available in English, seeks to aggregate various reconstruction projects in different locations so that...