月: 2025年9月

1. The latest survey by Japan’s agriculture ministry shows rice prices fell for the first time in three weeks in August. The decline came as more supplies of lower-priced grain from government stockpiles reached store shelves.
2. Scorching heat gripped wide areas of Japan again on Tuesday. Weather officials warn that the mercury may approach 40 degrees Celsius in some inland areas of the Kanto region in the afternoon.
3. North Korean media say the nation’s leader Kim Jong Un has left the country and crossed the border into China. The Korean Central News Agency reported that Kim left North Korea on Monday on a special train to attend events including a large-scale military parade in Beijing. Chinese officials say the parade on Wednesday is to mark the 80th anniversary of China’s victory over Japan at the end of World War Two.

1. Monday is Disaster Prevention Day in Japan. The government staged an anti-disaster drill based on the scenario of a massive earthquake striking the Nankai Trough off Japan’s Pacific coast. September 1 commemorates the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, which left more than 100,000 people dead and missing in and around Tokyo. This year’s drill assumed a magnitude 9,1 quake had occurred off Wakayama Prefecture, western Japan. It supposed that violent jolts had struck many regions in western and eastern Japan with a major tsunami warning issued mainly for areas along the Pacific.
2. Weather officials in Japan are forecasting another sweltering day in much of the country in much of the country on Monday, with temperatures expected to soar to dangerous levels in the regions of Kanto-Koshin, Tokai, Hokuriku, and Kinki. The mercury rose to 40 degrees Celsius in Nagoya on Sunday. It was the ninth day this year that highs in the country have hit 40 degrees or more, and marks a new annual record.
3. Russia’s attacks on towns and cities across Ukraine have neighborhoods into rubble and left behind millions of tons of debris. One Japanese company sees reconstruction hopes in the devastation and has started a project to turn the war waste into materials to help rebuild Ukraine. Tagawa Sangyo in Fukuoka Prefecture specializes in making plaster and has teamed up with the UN Development Programme and a Turkish construction company.