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Billions of Japan's Post-Quake Relief Funds Didn't Help Victims
A major Japanese newspaper has revealed that billions of yen meant to employ people in areas devastated by a powerful earthquake and resulting tsunami off the northeastern Japan in 2011 were funneled...
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Japan's WordPress Communities Celebrate 10 Years
WordPress communities in Japan celebrated the 10th anniversary of the open source blogging platform. Events were held in Sapporo, Kagawa, Tokyo, Chiba and Osaka. There are 40 local WordBench [ja]...
View ArticleJapanese Official Suspended Over Twitter Comment
A Japanese reconstruction official in charge of helping victims of the 2011 post-tsunami meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant has been taken off duty after sharp-eyed journalists unearthed...
View Article‘Code For Japan’ in the Works
Among others, Haruyuki Seki, a software developer at Georepublic Japan[ja] and social media consultant Hiroyasu Ichikawa are currently working toward the launch of Code For Japan [ja], an organization...
View ArticleJapan's Most Evil Corporations
A committee of labor activists and journalists have announced the nominees for Japan's most evil corporation in 2013 [ja]. Eight corporations and organizations that lost their employees to overwork and...
View ArticleJapan: Winny Developer Dies at 42
Isamu Kaneko, the Japanese developer of file-sharing software Winny, died due to an undisclosed illness on July 8, 2013 at the age of 42. He was charged in 2006 with “assisting” Winny users to violate...
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Club-Goers Rebel Against Japan's Dance Regulation
In Japan, dancing in the wrong place at the wrong time can get you in trouble. Japanese law requires that public venues be licensed to permit dancing. Clubs and dance halls that are unlicensed can be –...
View ArticleFormer Fukushima Plant Manager Passes Away
Masao Yoshida, the manager at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant at the time of the accident in Japan, died on July 9, 2013. He had esophageal cancer. Many people expressed condolences on social...
View ArticleWeb Popularity of Japan's Candidates Ranked
In the midst of Japan's first election campaign where politicians are officially allowed to use social media, freelance engineer Masahide Mori [ja] has compiled a ranking [ja] based on the number of...
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Data Visualization: Electric Japan
Electrical Japan [ja], a website by researcher Asanobu Kitamoto [ja] lets you explore electric power plants and energy consumption in Japan through data-visualization. Screenshot of power plant...
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Foreign Words Invade Traditional Japanese
A 71-year-old man is suing Japan's public broadcaster NHK for the mental distress they have caused him through their excessive use of foreign words. He is literally lost in translation, in his very own...
View ArticleFukushima: No Place Like Home
‘No Time for Anger [de]’, a visualization journal by a team of Swiss media reporter and designers, illustrates Fukushima two years after the triple catastrophe of the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami...
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Japanese Railway to Sell Customers’ E-Ticket Data
Japan's largest rail company has announced that it will be partnering with Japanese multinational engineering and electronics conglomerate Hitachi to gather data from its e-ticketing system, strip it...
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African Fabric Kimono Belt Supports Mothers in Earthquake Disaster Area
A group of Japanese mothers in Sendai city is producing special kimono belts with fairly-traded African fabrics. Yumi Nakano, who organizes the fundraising [ja] by requesting a donation in exchange for...
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Japanese Users Break Tweets Per Second Record
Japan's netizens broke the world record for tweets per second on August 2, 2013, flooding Twitter with the magic word “balse” [バルス] from the 1986 anime film Castle In the Sky as the movie was broadcast...
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New York Times Doesn't Understand Fukushima's Radiation Risks – Japanese Blogger
When TEPCO inspected the radiation level in the bottom flange of the tank on August 22, 2013, it was 100 mSv/h. But the result on August 31 revealed it is 1,800mSv/h dose equivalent at 70 micrometer....
View ArticleTokyo to Host 2020 Olympics
Tokyo was awarded the 2020 Summer Olympics after the members of International Olympic Committee have voted on September 7th to select the host city. Tokyo 2020 reacts to the news #olympics2020 #BA2013...
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Tokyo's Hope for Improvements by 2020 Olympics
A poster advertisement in Shibuya, Tokyo. Image by Danny Choo on flickr under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic On 7 September 2013, Tokyo was awarded the 2020 Summer...
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Planned Olympic Canoe Racing Course Threatens Tokyo Park
Photo of Kasai Rinkai Park by Flickr user Yuichi Sakuraba (CC BY-NC 2.0) More than 13,000 people have signed a Change.org petition [ja] urging Tokyo governor and the Japanese Olympic Committee not to...
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Should Japan's Children Be Reading This Comic About a Hiroshima A-Bomb Survivor?
A watch stopped at 8:15 in the morning when atomic bomb was dropped. Taken at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum by Flickr user Fidel Ramos (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) One Japanese city's attempt to restrict access...
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