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A Japanese menswear company is selling an "anti-swine flu" business suit that it says can reduce the risk of catching the H1N1 virus. Haruyama Trading has developed a wool suit coated with titanium dioxide, which it says breaks down the virus molecules on contact under ultraviolet light, according to Reuters . "If a person with the flu virus coughs, it might get on someone else's suit and from there, another person might get infected," Shinto Hirata, vice director of merchandising at Haruyama told Reuters. "Small children might catch the virus after touching their father's suit. We came up with this...

A Fuji TV morning news show reenacts a crime that took place in Niigata Prefecture: Japanese News

Milan (AsiaNews) – Italy’s financial police (Guardia italiana di Finanza) has seized US bonds worth US 134.5 billion from two Japanese nationals at Chiasso (40 km from Milan) on the border between Italy and Switzerland. They include 249 US Federal Reserve bonds worth US$ 500 million each, plus ten Kennedy bonds and other US government securities worth a billion dollar each. Italian authorities have not yet determined whether they are real or fake, but if they are real the attempt to take them into Switzerland would be the largest financial smuggling operation in history; if they are fake, the matter...

ROME — Two Japanese nationals were detained by Italian financial police last week after trying to enter Switzerland with $134 billion worth of undeclared U.S. bonds, mostly Treasury bonds, an Italian daily said Wednesday. The Japanese consulate general in Milan confirmed that the detention had taken place and said it was trying to confirm with Italian authorities whether the two were indeed Japanese nationals and their identities. According to the report in il Giornale, two unidentified Japanese in their 50s concealed the bonds, including 249 U.S. Treasury bonds each worth $500 million, in a suitcase with a false bottom that...

PARIS (AFP) – In a controversial achievement, Japanese scientists announced on Wednesday they had created the world's first transgenic primates, breeding monkeys with a gene that made the animals' skin glow a fluorescent green. The exploit opens up exciting prospects for medical researchers, they said. It could eventually lead to lab monkeys that replicate some of humanity's most devastating diseases, providing a new model for exploring how these disorders are caused and how they may be cured. "Great advances in pre-clinical research can be expected using these models," the team said. But other voices warned of a potential ethics storm,...

May 19, 2009 “Concept” and “bra” aren’t two words you’d typically expect to go together. After all, a bra is the epitome of simplicity. As Seinfeld's George Costanza said, “Two cups in the front, two loops in the back. How do they do it?” Well, Japanese lingerie maker Triumph International has complicated the humble undergarment with its concept “Konkatsu bra” – a bra that is designed to help Japanese women search for husbands by proudly declaring they're “on the hunt”. Triumph International's Konkatsu Bra takes its name from an abbreviated form of kekkon-katsudo, a Japanese term for “marriage hunting”, which...

Japan's marriage rate is falling and the average age at which women get married is over 28 years, relatively late for a country in which single females were once considered over the hill at 25. Triumph's latest novelty bra features an electronic nuptial timepiece, putting women seeking spouses literally on the clock. "Japanese women are becoming more aggressive than men, working actively to make marriage happen, whereas in the past it was men who led women toward marriage," she said. "The roles have switched completely." Government statistics show nearly 57 percent of women under the age of 34 are unmarried,...

After running up the biggest loss in its history, Toyota executives said Friday that they will focus on selling more small cars to cope with a devastating shift in consumer demand. The Japanese carmaker also disclosed a $7.7 billion loss for the January-March quarter, a bigger loss than General Motors suffered in the same period.

TOKYO – Japanese broadcaster NHK says North Korea has launched a rocket, citing the Japanese government. The report came Sunday morning amid heightened tensions in the region. North Korea had informed international authorities that it planned to launch a rocket sometime between Saturday and Wednesday in order to put a satellite into orbit.

Japanese Held After Bid To Cross Border To North Korea SEOUL (AFP)--South Korean soldiers have detained a Japanese man who attempted to cross the heavily guarded border into North Korea, in what local media described as a one-man peace protest. The Japanese embassy in Seoul confirmed that a Japanese had tried to cross the frontier at the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, which divides the peninsula. Information official Satoshi Nishijima said he had no details and didn't know the man's motive. Yonhap news agency said the 40-year-old approached a barbed-wire fence in the Cheorwon area on Wednesday night but was detained...

"Action packed! These little robots have some fast moves, battling it out for fame and glory. Funny stuff." I can't figure out if this is the coolest robot duel ever -or just a group of drunken unemployed Japanese techies having a good time? Enjoy!

Seattle, WA (LifeNews.com) -- Massive online retailer Amazon.com has dropped its listing for a controversial Japanese video game called Rapelay that involves raping women and forcing them to have abortions. The so-called "rape simulator" game was sold on the web site and included a graphic description of the gameplay. Although a listing for the product is available through online searches, the link to it on Amazon's web page no longer functions. Gaming web sites that have reviewed the simulation describe the "tears glistening in the young girl's eyes" as the player attacks her in graphic detail.

Seattle, WA -- The large online retailer Amazon.com has dropped its listing for a controversial Japanese video game called Rapelay that involves raping women and forcing them to have abortions. The so-called "rape simulator" game was sold on the web site and included a graphic description of the gameplay.

Shortly after Mitsuo Fuchida led the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he discovered just how fortunate he was to be living. Along with the 21 holes that visibly pocked the 39-year-old’s aircraft, a mechanic on the aircraft carrier Akagi found a frayed elevator cable that dangled from Fuchida’s reconnaissance bomber by a single thread. If it had been severed, the inevitable crash could have killed the flight commander — whose radio message "Tora! Tora! Tora!" was the final go-ahead for the attack that drew the United States into World War II.

KATHMANDU (AFP) – A team of Japanese adventurers say they have discovered footprints they believe were made by the legendary yeti said to roam the Himalayan regions of Nepal and Tibet. "The footprints were about 20 centimetres (eight inches) long and looked like a human's," Yoshiteru Takahashi, the leader of the Yeti Project Japan, told AFP in Kathmandu on Monday. Takahashi was speaking after he returned with his seven-member team from their third attempt to track down the half-man-half-ape, tales of which have gripped the imaginations of Western adventurers and mountaineers for decades. Despite spending 42 days on Dhaulagiri IV...

Japanese model the latest styles of adult diapers during a show in Tokyo Thursday Sept. 25, 2008. The show was organized to display the latest styles of adult diapers and raise awareness of some of the issues facing the county's rapidly aging population.

London (agencies) A Desperate dad last night begged medics for help because he is turning naturally into a woman. Pub singer Terry Wright said: “I am a man, not a woman. And I do not want to be a woman. “I just want to get my life back to normal.” Father-of-five Terry, 60, started losing his hair and beard ten years ago. Since then he has developed smooth skin, hot flushes. And kids living nearby taunt him by calling him “She-Man”. Blood tests have revealed Terry has abnormally high levels of the female hormone oestrogen. But doctors who have examined...

This is hilarious. I cant believe they get by with this stuff over there. LINK

TOKYO — Japan celebrated a national holiday on Monday in honor of its children. But Children's Day might just as easily have been a national day of mourning. For this is the land of a slow-motion demographic catastrophe that is without precedent in the developed world. The number of children has declined for 27 consecutive years, a government report said over the weekend. Japan now has fewer children who are 14 or younger than at any time since 1908. The proportion of children in the population fell to an all-time low of 13.5 percent. That number has been falling for...

Japanese balloon bombs: A forgotten history Posted: May 2, 2008 10:47 PM CDT Balloon bombs, sent aloft by Japanese during WWII, reached West Coast, and one proved deadly With hundreds never recovered, still a rare chance of risky encounter By Christian Boris, KTVZ.COM In 1944 and 1945, the Japanese military launched bomb-carrying balloons to strike the American homeland. Many balloons landed in Oregon, including one that killed six people in Klamath County. On May 5, 1945, a group of Sunday school students encountered a balloon bomb snagged in a tree near Bly in Klamath County. Thirteen-year-old Joan Patzke attempted to...