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.

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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 Japan.

Read the rest of the story: Japan Public Pension Fund to Sell $48 Billion as Nation Ages.

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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 in lifelike poses. They seem to be swimming in ice.

Read the rest of the story: Marine life frozen in time at Japan’s Ice Aquarium.

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One recent sweltering summer’s day, a tour bus from Tokyo pulled up at a sun-kissed beach at Atami, a Pacific coast resort southwest of the metropolis, and disgorged more than a dozen excited, iPhone-clutching young men.

The determined youngsters, paying scant attention to the bikini-clad girls frolicking on the sand, instead headed straight for a bronze statue that depicts Kanichi and Omiya, a couple from an old love story set in Atami.

The focus of the men’s attention—and of their smartphone cameras—was a tiny black and white square, a two-dimensional barcode that, thanks to "augmented reality" (AR) software, brought to life the object of their desire.

"Look, it’s like I’m in a snapshot with her," said Shu Watanabe, 23, as he showed off his iPhone display, featuring himself next to the image of a doe-eyed cartoon character named Rinko, a smiling high school girl.

Read the rest of the story: Japan resort a hot spot for men with virtual girlfriends.

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A company employee in Nagano Prefecture calculated the value of pi to five trillion digits this month using a self-made personal computer, beating the record set by a French engineer who calculated it to about 2.7 trillion digits late last year.

To calculate the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, to an undetermined number of digits, Shigeru Kondo, a 55- year-old resident of Iida, assembled a computer with 32 terabytes of hard-drive capacity and used an application made by Alexander Yee, a 22-year-old student at a U.S. graduate school.

After Kondo repeated tests via e-mail, he began the computation on May 4, and the work lasted 90 days and about seven hours until it was completed on Aug. 3, including verifications, following difficulties including a power outage. He plans to apply for the Guinness Book of Records.

Read the rest of the story: Man in Nagano computes value of pi to 5 tril. digits.

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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 national soccer team coach.

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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?.

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A show of outlandish sculptures by a cult Japanese artist in the historic Chateau of Versailles near Paris has enraged traditionalists who say it dishonours France’s past.

From September 14 to December 12, visitors to Versailles will see eye-grabbing multicoloured statues in silver, fibreglass and metal by Takashi Murakami alongside the chateau’s ornate murals and chandeliers.

"The Chateau de Versailles is one of the greatest symbols of Western history," Murakami said in a statement on the museum’s website.

"The Versailles of my imagination… has become a kind of completely separate and unreal world," he added. "That is what I have tried to depict in this exhibition."

Versailles enthusiasts however branded it an outrage to their beloved museum in the posh Paris suburb.

"Murakami and company have no business in the Chateau of Versailles!" reads a message on the website Versailles Mon Amour, dedicated to a petition which it says has gained more than 3,500 signatures.

Read the rest of the story: Japan pop artist’s Versailles show sparks protests.

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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 Italian man in his 30s who lives in Tokyo said he filed a lawsuit against two credit card firms and a restaurant in Roppongi he had never visited after receiving account statements from the firms last fall notifying him that he spent about ¥370,000 at the restaurant.

Read the rest of the story: Credit card scam targeting foreigners on rise in Roppongi.

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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 accompanied by the franchise’s first drama series. However, the games have already had two live-action works – one was released directly to DVD, while the other was the feature film "Ryu ga Gotoku: Gekijoban" directed by Takashi Miike.

Saito plays the main character in the drama, who is also the protagonist of the new game. Takuya Ishida (23) and Hideo Ishiguro (21) play his junior and his close friend, respectively. The cast also features retired kickboxer Masato (31) in his first regular drama role and actor Koichi Iwaki (59), who also provided a voice for the game. Rock band RIZE will do the show’s theme song, titled "MUPPET."

The 11-episode series will begin airing on TBS and MBS on October 5, in both networks’ 1:25am time slot (1:55am for the first episode on TBS). In conjunction with the broadcast, exclusive images will be available for the PlayStation 3 and the PSP through the PlayStation Store. A manga version of the story has also been announced, starting on September 18 in Weekly Young Magazine.

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