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New tourism minister Nariaki Nakayama wasted no time putting his foot in it.

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Tourism minister apologizes for gaffes

Tokyo stocks gave up early modest gains to close sharply lower Tuesday due to falls in key Asian equities and anxiety about Japan’s political landscape following Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s abrupt announcement Monday that he will resign.

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Tokyo stocks plunge after Fukuda’s resignation announcement

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda announced on Monday evening his sudden resignation from the post at an emergency press briefing held in the Prime Minister’s official residence, the Kantei. Fukuda, 72, cited the political deadlock between the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the oppositional Democratic Party of Japan. LDP’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Aso Taro is widely expected to be elected to take Fukuda’s place, the Mainichi Shimbun reports. Fukuda’s resignation comes only a year after the previous Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe’s. Abe left his party in a weak state due to a weak stomach after the Upper House election had given the opposition a majority in one of LDP’s worst elections ever.

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Fukuda resigns as Prime Minister, Aso expected to succeed

Torrential rain lashed the Kanto and Tokai regions overnight and in the predawn hours of Friday, leaving one person in Aichi Prefecture dead and three missing, while about 500,000 households were advised to take shelter.

More here: Torrential rain pounds eastern, central Japan, leaving 1 dead

Large lotus ponds along the way occupied areas not readily drained, and the fringing fields between the rice paddies and the untilled hill lands were bearing squash , maize, beans and Irish potatoes. Many small areas had been set to …

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Farmers of Forty Centuries Return To Japan

HIROSHIMA — Atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima are helping with the planned construction of a memorial park in South Korea dedicated to South Korean A-bomb victims.

More here: Japan A-bomb survivors to help with memorial park construction in S. Korea

Legendary anime director Hayao Miyazaki’s latest movie, “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea” sold an estimated 1.5 billion yen ($13.9 million) worth of tickets during its three-days opening weekend in Japan last week. The movie failed to top the box office record of Miyazaki’s 7 year old Academy Award winning film “Spirited Away” but came closer to his production company Studio Ghibli’s previous movie, “Tales from Earthsea”, directed by his son Goro Miyazaki. “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea” is the story about 5-year-old Sousuke and his sudden meeting with half-goldfish, half-human girl Ponyo by the shore of a quiet seaside town. The two meet after Ponyo has escaped from her mysterious father’s underwater tower in a dazzling intro scene where she rides on the back of a giant jellyfish. Ponyo immediately falls in love with Sousuke and decides she wants to become a human, a decision that ends up bringing unexpected consequences to the sleepy town. The story shares more than just the main character with Danish author H.C. Andersen’s novel “The Little Mermaid,” but Miyazaki has revealed that he originally wanted to base the movie on the children’s book “Elta the Frog” by Japanese author Rieko Nakagawa. He also mentioned Wagner’s “The Ring of the Nibelung” and Natsume Sousuke’s “The Gate” as sources of inspiration. Every single scene in the movie is entirely hand drawn, marking a return to the old for Miyazaki, who has been using CGI to enhance his works since “Princess Mononoke” in 1997. But the animation is at the same time a new start for the 67-year-old director, with its light, watercolor-inspired fluidness. Unlike several recent Studio Ghibli movies which featured a darker, grimmer streak, “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea” is a light-hearted story unlikely to bring as much as an unpleasant thought to even the smallest toddler. The movie is unusually colorful, even for an anime, with nearly every scene filled to the brim with fantastical fish creatures and gorgeous underwater backdrops. Critics have been quick to call the movie “an instant classic” and “yet another masterpiece by Miyazaki,” but it has also been criticized for its unusual dramaturgy. A critic on the popular Japanese movie site Eiga.com claimed that “hardly anything happened during the movie”, and that it surely marked the end for the long, successful history of Studio Ghibli. No official date has yet been announced for the North American theatrical release of the movie, but U.S. fans can expect to be able to quench their thirst for overly cute goldfish girls sometime next year.

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‘Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea’ brings in 15 billion yen during opening weekend

A total of 963 people applied to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to become astronauts, after the agency began accepting applications for the first time in 10 years, officials said.

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963 apply to become JAXA astronauts

The United States will continue to press for the release of Japanese citizens abducted decades ago by North Korea as it seeks the resumption of disarmament talks with Pyongyang, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Monday.

Continue here: Rice says U.S. won’t forget Japanese abductees

Over a dozen threats of murder and other crimes were posted on the Internet following the random street killings in Tokyo’s Akihabara earlier this month, police said.

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Flood of ‘Akihabara-style’ murder threats posted on Internet