Japan’s public TV broadcaster is to resume live sumo broadcasts, after canceling coverage of July’s Nagoya tournament over a betting scandal that hit the country’s ancient sport.
NHK officials said Thursday the station will televise the Sept. 12-26 Autumn Grand Sumo Tournament as usual.
NHK did not air live broadcasts of the Nagoya tournament, saying that the betting scandal generated viewer disgust. It was the first time since 1953 that live broadcasts weren’t shown on NHK.
Read the rest of the story: NHK to resume live broadcasts of sumo.

Japan’s public pension fund, the world’s largest, will sell about 4 trillion yen ($48 billion) in assets this fiscal year to fund rising payouts as the nation’s population ages.
That follows asset sales of 720 billion yen, all in Japanese bonds, in the fiscal year ended in March, Takahiro Mitani, president of the Government Pension Investment Fund, said in an interview in Tokyo yesterday.
“Insurance premiums rise little by little every year, but it isn’t catching up with the increase in payouts,” said Mitani, a former executive director at the Bank of …

Turn on the TV in Japan and you’re bound to see someone slicing up a tuna on a cooking show while commentators ooh and aah. It’s no wonder, then, that during the current heat wave frying Tokyo, people are heading north for chills and eye candy in the form of giant fish popsicles.
The Kori no Suizokukan (Ice Aquarium) in Kesennuma, northeastern Japan, packs about 450 specimens of marine life frozen in large columns of ice bathed in blue light. Some 80 species, including saury, octopuses, crabs, and skipjack, are preserved …

Former Juventus and AC Milan coach Alberto Zaccheroni was appointed to lead Japan’s national football team on Monday.
The Japan Football Association has made Zaccheroni the first Italian and the sixth foreigner to coach Japan.
The 57-year-old Zaccheroni takes over from Takeshi Okada, who stepped down after taking Japan to the round of 16 at the World Cup in South Africa.
Japan plays Paraguay and Guatemala at home on Sept. 4 and 7, with more friendlies against Argentina and South Korea scheduled in October.
Rad the rest of the story: Alberto Zaccheroni hired as …

Japan is known as the biggest consumer of tuna. Be it raw for sushi or sashimi or fried, broiled or canned, tuna is an important element of the food culture.
But concerns are growing because tuna is disappearing, and this is putting Japan in a difficult diplomatic position.
How much tuna does Japan consume annually, and how does the rest of the world feel? Following are basic questions and answers:
How many types of tuna are there?
Read the rest of the story: Does Japan’s affair with tuna mean loving it to extinction?.

Foreigners who visit restaurants and bars in Tokyo’s Roppongi entertainment district are increasingly becoming the targets of credit card fraud in which they are charged for payments they did not make.
According to Azabu Police Station, which oversees the district, it has received more than 100 consultation requests from foreigners over such scams since last year, mostly involving people from Europe and the United States.
The number of Chinese tourists visiting the area has been sharply on the rise recently and they could also become targets of such fraud, the police said.
An …

The hit video game series "Ryu ga Gotoku" (released in English as "Yakuza") is getting a live-action drama adaptation of its newest installment, "Kurohyou: Ryu ga Gotoku Shinshou," which is being released for the PlayStation Portable on September 22. The show will star actor Takumi Saito (29).
The video game series, which started out on the PlayStation 2 in 2005, is a mix of action and adventure set in the yakuza world. "Kurohyou" will be the franchise’s first game for a handheld console, and it was decided that it would be …

We all know Japan is second only to Singapore when it comes to keeping things clean, so it’s little surprise to see the country’s captains of industry come up with a futuristic vehicle called the Solarve Bus (a contraction of "Solar Vehicle") that’s sparkly both inside and out.
Sanyo and Ryobi teamed up to outfit (Japanese) the standard road-going bus with solar panels on the outside to generate power and some nifty air scrubbers in the cabin for the passengers to enjoy cleaner air.
Read the rest of the story: The Solarve …

NHK reported this week that a Kyoto prefecture public relations office that deals with complaints and citizen requests is using dummies to increase work efficiency.
The five upper-body-only mannequins sit on the staff desks facing the employees to ensure they don’t relax. Each is given a name, age, gender and occupation. Yoshiko Naniwano, for example, is a 66-year-old lady from Osaka who came to visit Kyoto for sightseeing. She has some complaints to make. Another is a 32-year-old woman raising her kids. And there’s a 24-year-old graduate student who is …

Japan opened up the secretive world of its capital punishment system to the public Friday, offering journalists a rare tour of Tokyo’s main gallows in an effort to stoke debate about a practice widely supported here.