Wild monkeys caused injuries to 43 people from Aug. 22 to Aug. 25 in the neighboring Shizuoka Prefecture cities of Mishima and Susono. Reports of monkey sightings in areas of Mishima including residential communities near the Hakone mountain range began coming to authorities in June. From Aug. 22 to Aug. 24, 26 people were reported to have been attacked by monkeys. On Aug. 24, the city set up a task force to try to capture the monkeys.

Roller slide at Kodomo no Kuni park. Notice the on-foot technique used by the family in front.
My daughter and I riding the long roller slide in Kodomo no Kuni (Kids Country) park in Machida, Tokyo Japan. Just wish there wasn’t anyone in front of us so we could get some speed out of it.

Big Slide in Awase Okinawa

Super roller slide Japan

This video is from GaijinGuide and what follow is the rider’s description and playfully painful video of the experience.
The slide comes in at an incredible 82 meters …

The Tokyo metropolitan government has an anime to highlight anime as a major sightseeing attraction and has filled it with great sightseeing spots.
The 11-minute video is subtitled in seven languages, including English and Chinese. It can be found on the capital’s English website under the Tourism, Culture and Sports section.
The subtitles are also available in French, Spanish, German, Italian and Korean. Tokyo spent a cool 49 million yen to create the anime entitled, "Welcome to Tokyo".
See the site: Welcome to Tokyo

Rice farming has sustained the people of northern Japan’s Inakadate village for two thousand years. Today, the ancient rice fields are the source of food and art.
Up close, the stalks of rice look like any other found in a rice paddy. CBS News correspondent Celia Hatton reports there are several varieties planted here, each with different colored leaves. Combine them together and an enormous 15,000 square foot image is revealed.
Every year, a local art teacher produces a computerized sketch. It’s transferred onto a grid, and mapped with thousands of dots. …

An 18-meter-tall "life-size" statue of Gundam, a giant robot featured in the classic Japanese sci-fi animation series, made a fresh appearance Saturday at an event in Shizuoka City to mark the 30th anniversary of the release of the first Gundam plastic model kit.
The statue was erected at the Shizuoka Hobby Fair outside JR Higashi- Shizuoka Station in the city’s Aoi Ward after first appearing in the Odaiba waterfront area in Tokyo last year to mark the 30th anniversary of the broadcasting of the "Mobile Suit Gundam" TV series, which started …

A rare flower that has bloomed after a gap of almost 20 years has attracted thousands of visitors to the botanical garden in Tokyo.
Standing at more than 5ft (1.52m) tall, the Amorphophallus titanum is native to Indonesia’s Sumatra island.
At full bloom the plant emits a pungent smell which one visitor described as “like raw garbage that had grown rotten”. It thrives at the edges of rainforests near open grasslands. Though found in many botanic gardens around the world it is still indigenous only to the tropical forests of Sumatra. Due …

Researchers have created a baby bot in the hope that it’ll lead to an intelligent robot that can live with humans. The tiny androids are also being tested to help scientists understand more about the early stages of child development.

Peter Bethune final told his side of the story after being incarcerated in Japan. He had not so kind words for Japan and even less for his home country of New Zealand. He’s a man though that sees injustice for what he believes in and isn’t afraid of the politics. It’s something that human spirit will not fail to recognize or to hear when he speaks.

An average baby — sort of — since Yotaro is a robot. His inventors hope he will help Japan’s sagging birth rate, among the lowest in the world.

“A robot can’t be human but it’s great if this robot triggers human emotions, so humans want to have their own baby,” said Hiroki Kunimura, the project leader for the Yotaro robot.

Micro-houses are about life reduced to it’s elegant essentials. No that’s a line any architect can fall in love with. Micro-house owners just call them cozy.