Japan

FUJIYOSHIDA, Japan, Sept 9 (Reuters) - On a grey, rainy Saturday a steady stream of tour buses arrive at a base station of Japan's Mount Fuji depositing dozens of lightly dressed foreign tourists in front of souvenir shops and restaurants.

The scene evokes a theme park image, not the veneration most Japanese would expect below the 3,776-metre (12,388 ft) mountain worshipped as sacred by the Japanese, and a source of pride for its perfectly symmetrical form.

TOKYO, Sept 7 (NNN-NHK) – Tropical Storm Yun-yeung, formed over the seas south of Japan, is likely to hit eastern Japan’s Pacific Ocean side and make landfall tomorrow, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA).

The weather agency said, Yun-yeung was travelling north-northeast over the sea south of Japan, at about 25 km per hour, as of 9.00 a.m. local time today, adding that, extremely heavy rain accompanied by thunder is expected in eastern and northern Japan through Saturday.

TOKYO, Sept 6 (NNN-NHK) — Japanese prosecutors today indicted a man over an explosives attack on Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, during an election event in western Japan in Apr, after concluding that the suspect is mentally fit to be held criminally responsible.

Ryuji Kimura, 24, faces charges including attempted murder, with investigative authorities determining through tests that the homemade pipe bomb used in the attack was lethal.

The indictment of Kimura followed a three-month psychiatric evaluation by prosecutors that ended on Friday.

TOKYO, Sept 7 (NNN-NHK) – Toyota Motor Corp. said yesterday that, the suspension of operations at all 14 of its group’s vehicle assembly plants in Japan, late last month, was caused by server malfunctions in its computer system, during regular maintenance work.

The Japanese automaker carried out the maintenance on Aug 27, to clean up the database of the system for processing production and parts orders. An error occurred because there was not enough disk space for the work, causing the system to halt.

TOKYO, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Japan launched its lunar exploration spacecraft on Thursday aboard a homegrown H-IIA rocket, clearing a path to become the world's fifth country to land on the moon early next year.

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said the rocket took off from Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan as planned and successfully released the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM). Unfavourable weather led to three postponements in a week last month.

TOKYO, Sept 5 (Reuters) - China turned down Japan's proposal that it take part in the International Atomic Energy Agency's system in which countries excluding Japan can analyse the results of sea water monitoring off Fukushima, Kyodo news agency said on Tuesday, citing unnamed diplomatic sources.

Japan started releasing treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant into the ocean late last month despite strong opposition from China.

TOKYO, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) -- Japan's agriculture minister on Thursday referred to the Fukushima nuke wastewater released into the ocean as "contaminated water" instead of the term "treated water" insisted by the Japanese government, which triggered criticism from the government.

"We exchanged information on the subsequent evaluation of contaminated water," Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Tetsuro Nomura told the reporters after his meeting with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the latter's official residence.

TOKYO (AP) — The U.S. ambassador to Japan visited a city in Fukushima on Thursday and had a seafood lunch with the mayor, talked to fishermen and stocked up on local produce to show they are safe after the release of treated radioactive wastewater from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea, backing Japan while criticizing China’s ban on Japanese seafood as political.

TOKYO, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- The average retail gasoline price in Japan climbed to a record high level by rising for the 15th consecutive week, industry ministry data showed Wednesday.

The national average price for regular gasoline as of Monday rose 1.9 yen from a week earlier to 185.6 yen (1.3 U.S. dollars) per liter, the highest level since comparable data became available in 1990, according to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

TOKYO, Aug 29 (Reuters) - Japan threatened on Tuesday to take China to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to seek a reversal of Beijing's ban on all of its seafood imports after the release of treated radioactive water from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters that Japan would take "necessary action (on China's aquatic product ban) under various routes including the WTO framework".