Japans

By FOSTER KLUG and MARI YAMAGUCHI (Associated Press) TOKYO (AP) — A large passenger plane and a Japanese coast guard aircraft collided on the runway at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on Tuesday and burst into flames, killing five people aboard the coast guard plane, officials said. All 379 people on Japan Airlines flight JAL-516 got out safely before the Airbus A350 was fully engulfed in flames, Transport Minister Tetsuo Saito confirmed. The pilot of the coast guard’s Bombardier Dash-8 plane escaped but the five crew members…

It has been a good year for the Nintendo Switch. The hybrid console received critically acclaimed exclusives like Pikmin 4, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Super Mario RPG. Recently, Nintendo revealed the top 30 most downloaded games on Japan’s eShop in 2023. The list doesn’t come with too many surprises, although if you haven’t been paying attention, it may be unexpected to see Pikmin 4 clinching third place. It didn’t cause too much of a splash in the West, but Famitsu lists reveal that it has been…

By Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) December 26, 2023Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) aims to demonstrate “landing where it is desired to land,” pin-point landing technique and obstacle detection technique. Credit: JAXAThe Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced that the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) was successfully inserted into lunar orbit at 16:51 (Japan Standard Time, JST) on December 25, 2023.The lunar orbit of SLIM will be inserted into an elliptical lunar orbit…

New reports have surfaced that suggest the United States and Japan are currently in talks to include a Japanese astronaut on a future Artemis mission. The U.S.-led exploration program would act as a stepping stone for Japan’s first moon astronaut, giving Japan a huge leap forward in terms of its space exploration efforts.Sources told The Japan Times that the two countries are currently in final arrangements and that the Japanese astronaut could be aboard the second Artemis mission to land on the lunar surface.…

Yoshihiro Yauji, seen placing a piece of metal into a forge, believes 'blades are the foundational root of Japanese culture' Blacksmith Yoshihiro Yauji pulls a piece of glowing metal from the forge in a Japanese village, continuing a tradition dating back centuries to when the region was renowned for crafting swords carried by samurai. He places the…

Japan's space industry opened potentially an udder-ly new chapter on Thursday with a start-up testing a prototype rocket engine that runs on fuel derived purely from a plentiful local source: cow dung. The experiment saw the engine blast out a blue-and-orange flame 10-15 metres (30-50 feet) horizontally out of an open hangar door for around 10 seconds in the rural northern town of Taiki.The liquid "biomethane" required was made entirely from gas derived from cow manure from two local dairy farms, according to…

Nissan Sakura mini EV (Source: Nissan) A new breed of electric vehicles is drawing inspiration from Japanese kei cars, tiny cubes-on-wheels that are highway-legal but not likely to pass muster with US or EU safety standards. But what if we loosened up those standards to help lower prices, enabling broader adoption of EVs to people who don’t have 30 grand or more to spend on a car? That is, at least, one of the ideas that French automaker Renault’s head Luca de Meo has put on the table.…

Japan will soon become a hotter ticket for many fans. Universal Studios has revealed that a Donkey Kong Country area will open in Spring 2024. Nintendo and Universal (which hosts the theme park at its Osaka location) haven't shown off actual footage of the new zone yet. Instead, they opted to make the announcement with .Perhaps the main attraction of the new area is a ride called Mine Cart Madness, named after in the 1994 SNES game Donkey Kong Country. After being blasted out of a barrel cannon, you'll take a mine cart…

Japanese electronic parts maker TDK Corp will manufacture lithium ion (li-ion) battery cells for Apple iPhone models in India, a minister said on Monday.Apple has been touting India as its next big growth driver as it looks to move some production away from China.It began assembling iPhone models in the country in 2017 through Wistron and later Foxconn, and has a total of 14 suppliers in India.TDK will set up a manufacturing facility in the northern state of Haryana, creating several thousand new jobs, Deputy Minister for…

You may have heard of the Japanese phenomenon of “kei cars”, which are pint-sized vehicles designed to fit into a local regulatory window that allows for much smaller, lighter cars and trucks to operate legally on roads. For decades, the result of those regulations has helped spawn some of the most interesting and often cutest miniature vehicles in the world. Now, one Japanese automaker plans to bring its own kei car to the US. Meet the PUZZLE from HW ELECTRO. Less of a kei car and more of a kei…