· December, 2013

Stories about Japan from December, 2013

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...