Tokyo News

Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara’s plan to have the metropolitan government purchase the Senkaku Islands continued to cause ripples Wednesday, with both China and Taiwan quickly issuing statements criticizing the move. More >

With a scoop of a net Tokyo chef Naohito Hashimoto selects a poisonous blowfish, considered a delicacy in Japan, and with a few deft strokes of his gleaming knife starts the delicate process of preparing it for a customer.

In moments, Hashimoto has separated the edible parts of the fish from organs filled with a poison more deadly than cyanide. For more than six decades, dicing blowfish in Tokyo has been the preserve of a small band of strictly regulated and licensed chefs, usually in exclusive restaurants.

Construction of the Tokyo Sky Tree, the world’s tallest communications tower and second-highest building, finished yesterday, two months late because of the quake and tsunami that struck Japan last March.

Tourist bosses in the country hope the 634-metre tower will be a big draw for foreign visitors, whose numbers have plummeted in the aftermath of the disaster and the nuclear crisis it sparked.

A Tokyo zoo ran an emergency drill for staff on how to respond if large animals should escape. The video above shows two staff members of the Ueno Zoological Gardens clad in a papier mâché rhinoceros costume.

Staff and police surround the “rhino” with a net and pretend to tranquilize and capture it.

Zoo officials are concerned about the real possibility of animals escaping from enclosures in a country like Japan that is prone to earthquakes. These annual drills prepare the staff for such an event but without any real danger.

Tokyo faces the possibility of being hit by a massive earthquake within the next four years, according to Japanese researchers. The University of Tokyo’s Earthquake Research Institute predicts there is a 70% probability that the capital’s metropolitan area will experience a magnitude-7 quake within four years and a 98% probability within the next 30 years.

Nearly one year ago, a magnitude 9.0 quake struck off Japan’s central Pacific coast, triggering a devastating tsunami and aftershocks that left more than 15,700 dead, according to a government report in December on Japan’s recovery from the catastrophe. About 4,500 were listed as missing.

There’s nothing like an earthquake to ring in the New Year. That thought crossed the minds of many Tokyoites on Jan. 1 as a magnitude 7.0 trembler shook us out of our holiday slumber.

Really, if there’s any developed nation that was glad to see 2011 end, it was Japan. The radiation crisis caused by the March earthquake and tsunami was but the biggest news in a year that included deepening deflation, credit downgrades, the resignation of a fifth prime minister in as many years and an Olympus Corp. scandal that spooked investors the world over.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s plan to double the sales tax by the middle of the decade suffered another setback on Tuesday as lawmakers bolted from his ruling party in protest over the proposed rate increase to 10%. More >

Nexon Co., a creator of games for Facebook Inc., fell on its first day of trading after holding Japan’s biggest initial share sale this year as investors worried that the social-gaming market may be saturating. The developer of titles including “Zombie Misfits” declined 2.3 percent to 1,270 yen at the close in Tokyo trading. The stock debuted at 1,307 yen, compared with its IPO price of 1,300 yen.

“The opening price was 7 yen higher than the offer price; I was relieved to be honest,” President Seung-woo Choi told reporters in Tokyo. “The Japanese market is stable. That’s one of the reasons we chose Japan” for the listing, he said.

Traces of radioactive cesium thought to be from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have been detected in Japanese baby formula as concerns about food safety continue.

Meiji, the Tokyo company that makes the formula, announced the recall of 400,000 cans of it as a precaution but said the levels of cesium detected were well below the government’s safety limits. Tests found a combined 30.8 becquerels per kilogram of cesium 134 and cesium 137, the company said, compared with the government limit of 200.

Tokyo Electric Power Co is likely to give up its plan to build the first reactor at its Higashidori nuclear plant in northern Japan, due to financial difficulties as it compensates those affected by the radiation crisis at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, the Yomiuri newspaper said on Thursday.

The company began work in January on construction of the 1,385-megawatt No.1 unit at the plant, which was due to start operations in March 2017. The work has been halted following the radiation crisis, however.