Korehira Watanabe is one of the last 30 remaining swordsmiths in Japan having spent 40 years honing his craft. His life ambition has been to re-create a type of sword called Koto, that dates back to the Heian and Kamakura periods that spanned from 794 AD to 1333 AD, even though there is no written guide or formula for creating the sword. The challenge to hand-craft a sword without any blueprint has been an obsession of Watanabe’s since he was a child.
While there is no set formula to re-create the …

The signals have been developed by Taro Ochiai, a professor at Kyushu Sangyo University, with the first set of traffic lights installed in the southern city of Fukuoka. A second month-long test is to be started in Tokyo before the end of February.
Prof Ochiai began researching the use of light-emitting diodes in 2003, when they first began to be used in traffic lights in preference to regular light bulbs. Drivers with colour-blindness quickly reported that the LED signals were more difficult for them to discern based only on brightness as …

Three of Japan’s biggest electronics companies are to join forces in a chip-making venture, according to reports, days after a swathe of dire results from a sector struggling to compete globally.
Panasonic, which earlier said it expected to lose more than $10 billion this year, is set to hook up with Renesas Electronics and Fujitsu as they look for economies of scale in an increasingly difficult marketplace.
The three companies will spin off their system chip design and development divisions to create a new company in an effort to ensure the survival …

LOOKING OVERSEAS: Small but growing numbers of Japanese entrepreneurs are jumping into the startup scene in northern California.
FACTORS BEHIND THAT: Some venture capitalists believe last year’s earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear disaster that followed compelled many Japanese to take an increasingly uncertain future into their own hands.
AN EXAMPLE: Naoki Shibata, 30, had an executive-level position at online retailing giant Rakuten Inc. and an assistant professorship at the prestigious University of Tokyo. Last June he launched AppGrooves, an iPhone application discovery tool. He says, “If you want to reach a global market, then …

Police wiretapped mobile phones in 10 investigations last year and the eavesdropping led to the arrest of 22 people, a Justice Ministry report to the Diet showed Friday. The 10 investigations involved narcotics trafficking, underworld-conspired murder and gun possession, three of the four areas in which courts issue wiretapping warrants. All 22 arrests involved drug-trafficking cases, according to the report.The police obtained warrants for each instance of cellphone-tapping, allowing them to listen to conversations and read text messages.
Read the rest of the story: Cellphone taps resulted in 22 arrests last …

Given the huge hurdles Facebook has in China where Internet censorship has left it with near zero penetration, the giant tech company is turning instead to markets like India, Japan and South Korea to spur its growth in Asia.
Details scattered throughout its IPO prospectus filed Wednesday show the social networking site intends to grow its user base in India, Japan and South Korea by “continuing marketing and user acquisition efforts and enhancing products including mobile apps in order to make Facebook more accessible.
”Facebook’s penetration rate in India is about 20% …

Japan says it will soon require atomic reactors to be shut down after 40 years of use to improve safety following the nuclear crisis set off by last years tsunami.
Concern about aging reactors has been growing because the three units at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeastern Japan that went into meltdown following the tsunami in March were built starting in 1967. Among other reactors at least 40 years old are those at the Tsuruga and Mihama plants in central Japan, which were built starting in 1970.
Many more of the …

Yahoo appears to be getting closer to giving its frustrated shareholders something they’ve long wanted: a sale of the Internet company’s holdings in China and Japan.
The prospect of Yahoo Inc. finally consummating a deal with China’s Alibaba Group and Softbank Corp., the controlling owner of Yahoo Japan, emerged in online reports published Wednesday by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, both newspapers reported Yahoo is exploring a proposal valued at about $17 billion, or $14 per share. The price reflects Wall …

Japan picked Lockheed Martin’s F-35 jet as its next mainstay fighter on Tuesday, choosing the aircraft over combat-proven but less stealthy rivals, as concern simmers over North Korea and as China introduces its own stealth fighters.
The decision came as Japan and the United States stressed that their security alliance was tight in the face of worry about an unstable North Korea after the death of its leader, Kim Jong-il.
Defence Minister Yasuo Ichikawa said the decision to buy 42 of the stealth aircraft, valued by analysts at more than $7 billion, …

The builders of Tokyo Sky Tree have announced some of the technologies that have been installed to deal with the winter weather, after it was confirmed that chunks of snow and ice had fallen from the upper portion of the structure to the street below between January and March this year.
Read the rest of the story: Locals worried by ice, snow falling from Tokyo Sky Tree ‹ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion.