By the middle of the century, if all goes according to plan, a maglev shinkansen will be in operation between Tokyo and Osaka, reducing a 100-minute trip to just over an hour.As with the current bullet train lines, stations will be built in cities along the way.
But where the train will stop between Nagoya and Osaka has become the subject of a growing struggle between the cities of Kyoto and Nara, both of which see a maglev station as a critical way to boost tourism revenue, not to mention a …

Radioactive cesium was detected in 51 food products from nine prefectures in excess of a new government-set limit in the first month since it was introduced April 1, according to data released by the health ministry Tuesday.
The limit was exceeded in 337 cases, or 2.4 percent of 13,867 food samples examined by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.
Cesium exceeding the previous allowable limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram was detected in 55 cases, while the new limit of 100 becquerels was exceeded in 282 cases.
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McDonald’s Japan on Sunday opened its largest store in Japan. The Harajuku Omotesando Branch occupies 795 square meters and seats 328 customers.
It will soon feature a new “Mac Cafe” inside where customers can order coffee made to suit their individual preferences. The cafe is to open in July, ahead of other branches, in an attempt to appeal to a more adult market than usual.

A beachcomber on British Columbias Haida Gwaii islands has discovered what may be the first piece of debris from the Japanese tsunami to arrive in Canada.
Peter Mark was riding his ATV, exploring an isolated beach on Graham Island on April 18, when he made a spectacular find.
“You just never know what youre going to stumble upon when you go for a drive, and lo and behold you just come across something thats out of this world,” he said.
Mark found a large white cube, like the back part of a moving …

President Barack Obama met Monday with Japans sixth prime minister in five years to try to strengthen ties with the Pacific economic power still struggling after last years earthquake and tsunami that triggered a nuclear power plant meltdown.
The president and visiting Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda started bilateral talks at the White House, to be followed by a working lunch and then a joint news conference.
Japans volatile domestic politics, amid economic sluggishness and the March 2011 tsunami-triggered nuclear crisis, have made continuity a challenge in relations between the World War …

Under suspicion of violating the law against juvenile porno, Ochiai Koji, a staff member of Narashi city in Chiba Prefecture who works at an elementary school within the city, was arrested. He is also suspected of forcing a 15 year old girl in who lives in Kanagawa prefecture to take 4 naked and other obscene pictures and send it to his mobile phone which he saved.
According to the Metropolitan Police department, the accused Mr. Ochiai made himself out to be a high school student and posted on “Twitter” sending messages …

A Taiwanese court on Thursday handed down a three-year suspended sentence to a Japanese-Taiwanese star for attacking a Taipei taxi driver in a case that has captivated celebrity watchers for months.
Singer-actress Makiyo received a lighter sentence than the four-year jail term prosecutors had sought as the Taipei district court found her guilty of common assault rather than aggravated assault, a court official said.
Her friend Takateru Tomoyori, a Japanese citizen, got a four-year suspended sentence for injuring the driver in the assault in Taipei on Feb 2.
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The United States and Japan announced on Thursday a revised agreement on streamlining the U.S. military presence on Okinawa that will shift 9,000 Marines from the southern Japanese island to Guam and other Asia-Pacific sites.The new plan, unveiled days before Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda meets President Barack Obama in Washington, helps the allies work around the central but still-unresolved dispute over moving the Futenma air base from a crowded part of Okinawa to a new site that has vexed relations for years.”I am very pleased that, after many years, …

Japanese astronomers said Wednesday they had found a cluster of galaxies 12.72 billion light-years away from Earth, which they claim is the most distant cluster ever discovered.
Using a powerful telescope based in Hawaii, the team peered back through time to a point just one billion years after the Big Bang, the birth of the universe.
“This shows a galaxy cluster already existed in the early stages of the universe when it was still less than one billion years into its history of 13.7 billion years,” the team of astronomers said in …

JAPANESE political kingpin Ichiro Ozawa has been cleared of fundraising fraud charges.The 69-year-old veteran once dubbed the “shadow shogun” is now expected to step up his destabilisation campaign against current Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and his allies.Mr Ozawa – a former leader of the Democratic Party of Japan – had been indicted for allegedly falsifying the accounts of his fundraising body to conceal its use as a slush fund for political donations.His aides had said the mistake was purely technical and their boss had not been aware of it.
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