The Japanese professor Hiroshi Ishiguro became famous with spectacular robots that he accurately modeled himself to the pore. 'The more human the robot, the easier we communicate with it,' he says.
Israel seems to have committed a diplomatic blunder of size. A Japanese delegation of diplomats, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his wife Akie included, were served the dessert in a shoe during a dinner: a coarser insult is hardly imaginable for the Japanese.
The Japanese island of Mukaishima is under the spell of an escaped prisoner. The thief has been managing for ten days to stay out of the hands of the police force that is hunting him. He repeatedly complained during that period, the newspaper Asahi Shimbun reports.
A Japanese man is suspected of having killed five people. He was arrested Saturday after three bodies were found and the police later found two more victims, reports The Japan Times. The 38-year-old man has known the murders, police say. He would have killed all the victims in the same house.
North Korea has directly told the United States for the first time that it is prepared to discuss the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. That should happen when North Korean leader Kim Jong-un meets US President Donald Trump, a senior US official said Sunday.
A nuclear reactor in the southwest of Japan was taken out of use after a week, after a leak was discovered on Friday. According to owner Kyushu Electric Power no radioactive radiation is released.
A South Korean is suspected of having killed his new bride by injecting her liquid nicotine. The 22-year-old man and his 19-year-old wife were on their honeymoon in Japan when he injected her well. The police suspect him that he wanted to claim her life insurance of 114,000 euros.
The United States and China were also the main trading partners of the European Union in 2017. Approximately one third of the EU's total trade is with those two economic superpowers, according to figures from the European statistical office Eurostat.
At least three mountaineers have been fatally attacked in Japan. Four others were injured, reports Japanese media.
Like almost every year, Japan enjoys the first cherry blossoms in an almost religious way, which is regarded as one of the country's trademarks. But the cherry trees in the country are threatened by the invasion of a beetle that has come over from the Asian mainland. The number of trees can be decimated within a few years.
Exactly 23 years after the fatal attack with sarin in the Tokyo subway, speculations in Japan grow that the responsible cultists are quickly executed. Thirteen people were killed in the attack with nerve gas and thousands of people became ill.
United Airlines conducted an internal investigation after a German Shepherd of the Swindle family- on a separate flight- had not flown to the destination of Kansas, but to Japan.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his finance minister Taro Aso are under increasing pressure in connection with an alleged scandal about the sale of land from the state. The land would have been sold for a friend's price to a school that has links with Abie's wife, Akie. This week it was announced that the Ministry had removed passages from documents relating to the sale.
The South Korean government sends special envoys to Japan and China. The leaders of these countries are being updated on the outcome of the recent talks with North Korea, the South Korean news agency Yonhap reports.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is going to the United States for a talk with Trump next month, prior to his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Abe welcomed the 'change' in the North Korean position on Friday and talked about 'opening a dialogue based on denuclearization.'
The proposed meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is historical in advance. It has not happened before that the leaders of both countries looked each other in the eye.
The controversial decision of a primary school to introduce very expensive uniforms has gotten completely out of hand in Japan. Several students who wore Armani uniforms were attacked on the street. The school management is forced to hire security personnel: at school and in the nearby neighborhoods.
The authorities in Japan prefecture Fukushima have had cartoons made because of the nuclear disaster in 2011. The animated films have to try to disprove stories that circulate abroad about the radioactive contamination of agricultural and fishery products from the area, the public broadcaster NHK reports.
Dietitians warn worldwide for the Cinderella challenge, or the Cinderella diet.
The police in Japan found more body parts of a missing woman in a mountainous area around the cities of Osaka and Tokyo. That is what Japanese media report. An American tourist is the perpetrator.
The Japanese police took an American tourist for questioning after a chopped-off head was found in his holiday apartment. The police suspect that it is the head of a Japanese woman who had been seen in the company of the American and later reported missing.
Japanese agents have arrested two men in Tokyo after the headquarters was fired from a pro-North Korean organization. The police report that several bullets were fired at the building from a vehicle, reports Japanese media.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US President Donald Trump want to keep pressure on North Korea on its core program. The two agreed that Wednesday night in a telephone conversation that lasted an hour, reports the newspaper The Japan Times.
Due to the harsh winter weather of the past few days, five people have died in Japan. They are mostly older people who became victims. In Niigata, a ninety-year-old man was killed when he ended up in a snowy ditch.
The American president Trump wants to privatize the international space station ISS, instead of getting it out of business in 2024. The Washington Post newspaper claims to have relied on documents showing that space agency NASA is 'expanding international and commercial partnerships over the next seven years to enable human presence in space.'
The 113-year-old Francisco Núñez Olivera, who was the oldest man in the world, died on Monday night.
The net is increasingly closing around bitcoins. Countries restrict trade in the so far unregulated crypto coins and financial derivatives. That can lead to a crash, warn asset managers.
Eleven countries around the Pacific will sign the new TPP free trade agreement in March without the United States. Washington stepped out of the treaty a year ago.
Several people were injured, probably after a volcano erupted at a ski resort in Japan. One skier was surprised by an avalanche after the eruption on Mount Kusatsu-Shirane, but he is now in safety, reports national broadcaster NHK.
His novels and travel stories from Provence made him world famous: the British bestselling author Peter Mayle is dead. Mayle died on Thursday at the age of 78 after a brief illness in a Southern French hospital, publisher Alfred A. Knopf reported on Twitter.
