A warning to all smokers in Japan.  Starting tomorrow, you are going to be paying more for your habit:
The retail prices of cigarettes will be raised in July due to a tax hike. The prices of most cigarettes will be raised by 20 yen per package. However, those of popular brands such as Mild Seven [...]

Are you living in a poorly-constructed house in Japan?  Are you worried about what will happen when the next big earthquake strikes?  Well, don’t worry anymore, a Japanese company has a solution for you:

A quake proof shelter!  It only costs 300,000 yen, and can be built inside of an already-existing house!

The shelter is strong enough [...]

Looks like JR is going to add some new toys to their bullet trains:
Passengers on the famous Japanese Shinkansen “bullet trains” will be able to surf the Internet while traveling at 300 kilometers per hour, thanks to a new service planned by the railway operator. But there’s going to be quite a wait until the [...]

Kyodo News reports:
Aya Ueto, 20, is the recipient of the 12th annual Beautiful E-line Award, presented by the Japan Association of Adult Orthodontics. Past winners of the award, which is a PR effort to promote the importance of orthodontics, include Rie Miyazawa, Ryoko Yonekura and Hiromi Kuroki and Maki Mizuno.

Nice smile
If I had to [...]

It was a touching day for a South Korea family yesterday, as Kim Young-nam, the South Korean abductee who is believed to have married Japanese abductee Megumi Yokota, was allowed to meet his mother:
A South Korean man allegedly abducted by the North met his mother for the first time in 28 years Wednesday amid concern [...]

Coming to an eikaiwa near you… 
It is a great day for Irish people without a college degree:  they can now experience the fun of teaching English in Japan through a newly-established working holiday visa program!   I dare say it is the biggest ireland-related news story since the discovery of a leprechaun in Alabama!
At this rate, [...]

I recently came across an interesting website that the combinations of various characters and radicals in Chinese characters reveals something amazing: the ancient Chinese people knoew about the bible and worshipped the same God that the Jews did.

Here is an example of some of the amazing evidence found in the dramatic flash animation.  To write [...]

So you think you know a lot about drinking pis, do you?

Ever had kimchi flavored Coolpis?*  Looks great, doesn’t it?
*Coolpis is an unlicensed South Korean rip-off of the Japanese drink Calpis.  Sadly, Calpis does not come in a kimchi flavor.  I guess some original ideas do spring from theft…

Japanese artist’s drawing of a vessel bringing IKEA furniture to Japan 
The world’s leading source on Japan news, Fibretofurniture.com, is reporting amazing news today:
Japan : Advent of Ikea Furniture to open passage to the world!
Experts are comparing the arrival of the leading International furniture brand, Ikea, in Japan to that of US Commodore Matthew Perry’s ‘black [...]

I noticed the following story on Japan Zone today:
But the undisputed champion is Mino Monta (61), and it’s now official. The latest issue of Forbes magazine mentions Mino in an article related to its annual Celebrity 100. The local media has picked this up as though he were the first Japanese to appear in the [...]

A recent Japanese TV report (NTV) on North Korea touched on the issue of Kim Jong-Il’s sons, with specific focus on Kim Jong-chul, the apparent successor to Kim Jong-Il. Here are some highlights from the video clips (1 & 2):

Kim Jong-chul is pretty young. The above photo shows him with his daddy in 1981. [...]

Octopus balls dumplings 
A lot of news outlets seemed to have picked up an article on the international expansion of takoyaki restaurants.  Here is an execerpt from Mainichi’s version:
If Morio Sase has his way, hungry teenagers around the world will soon be snacking on something more exotic than McDonald’s hamburgers: takoyaki, or octopus dumplings.
With already over [...]