The Japanese government is considering recommending UNESCO approve Mt. Fuji and Kanagawa Prefecture’s Kamakura as World Heritage cultural sites, officials said Tuesday.
A special team of the Council for Cultural Affairs will soon start its screening to decide whether to recommend the two sites as cultural heritages to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, they said.
If the team endorses the recommendation, the government will submit a preliminary written recommendation to UNESCO by the end of September and a final recommendation by the end of next January.
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Japan’s campaign to save energy is finally letting overworked salarymen and women to take advantage of summer in a way that has long eluded them: a long vacation. Spurred by the atypical vacation schedule prompted by the rearranged work hours this summer, major travel agencies in Japan are offering a burst of long vacation packages.
Mainstream travel agency JTB group is offering a series of domestic and international long-term travel packages that are between 14 and 30 days long. But their campaign was inspired by an 11-year-old survey report by the …

An oddly equipped car made its way last week through the rubble in this tsunami-stricken port city. On the roof: an assembly of nine cameras creating 360-degree panoramic digital images of the disaster zone to archive damage.
Google is using its Street View technology in Kesennuma and elsewhere to make a record of the disaster while tracking reconstruction efforts.
It is one of the newest ways that Google, a Web giant worldwide but long a mere runner-up in Japan’s online market, has harnessed its technology to raise its brand and social networking …

OSAKA — A train on the Tokaido Shinkansen Line was halted at Maibara Station on Monday to capture a 1-meter snake found lounging on a passenger seat.

The red-and-black snake, believed to be a nonvenomous Honduran milk snake, was spotted at 8:55 a.m. between Shin-Osaka and Kyoto, according to Central Japan Railway Co.
Read the rest of the story: Snake on seat halts Tokaido bullet train | The Japan Times Online.

Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner flew into Tokyo from Seattle Sunday for test flights as All Nippon Airways prepares to become the world’s first airline to deploy the new fuel-efficient long-haul jet.
The wide-bodied twin-engine plane touched down at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport at 6:20 am on a maiden flight to Asia as its arrival was broadcast live online and crowds of aircraft enthusiasts gathered in and around the seaside airport.
Painted in the ANA colours of white and blue, the 787 taxied to a hangar through an arch of water sprayed from two airport …

A year from now a 70-90 passenger commercial airliner, called the MRJ (for Mitsubishi Regional Jet), produced by Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation in Nagoya, will begin flying in Japan and Indonesia.
During this week, at the Paris Air Show, Mitsubishi Aircraft and Boeing Corp. signed an agreement under which Boeing ground crews will provide maintenance support for MRJ aircraft on a global basis.
Read the rest of the story: Can Japan Succeed in Planes as It Did in Cars?.

It will take only two hours to fly from London to Tokyo, be virtually pollution free, and promises to be no louder than today’s modern planes.
There’s only one catch for prospective commuters – it will be another 40 years before commercial flights take place.
Plans were yesterday unveiled for the first hypersonic passenger jet, which would use three sets of engines to reach 3,125mph, more than four times the speed of sound, known as Mach 4.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2005513/London-Tokyo-2-hours-Blueprints-3-000mph-hypersonic-plane-unveiled.html#ixzz1Q4rdb2ca
Hailed as the heir to Concorde, the aircraft would be propelled by a mixture …

Nile Perch hasn’t always been a leading name in Japanese Fairy-kei fashion. More than 25 years ago it was a simple polo-shirt brand with a fish logo (the Nile Perch) inspired by Lacoste’s famous crocodile insignia. It’s the longevity and growth of Nile Perch which makes it different from other Fairy-kei labels such as 6%DokiDoki and the Tavuchi-led Spank!!!, Monascas Banana, and Ticket to Darling.
If we go even deeper into Fairy-kei, which has been a movement or scene in Tokyo for years now, we can see that there is no …

Kyoto, Japan’s ancient capital, is a laid-back counterpart to Tokyo that was first established more than a thousand years ago. Far to the west, it is a good place to forget the current capital’s woes.
Kyoto’s wide avenues follow a grid pattern that invites easy walking, one of the best ways to explore. Strolls reveal a modern city, but one where traditional touches — a tiny shrine, upswept temple roofs — are never far away.
Read the rest of the story: Travel Postcard: 48 hours in Kyoto, Japan’s ancient capital – Yahoo! …

Japan Airlines Co., the nation’s biggest international carrier, said ticket sales in Europe and the U.S. were lagging behind forecasts and would take a “very long” time to recover from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.“The recovery of demand from Europe and North America has not met our expectations,” President Masaru Onishi said in an interview in Singapore yesterday, ahead of the International Air Transport Association annual general meeting. “We feel it’s going to be a very long, drawn out and slow recovery.”JAL and overseas carriers including United Continental Holdings …