Terra Motors has been working with former engineers from Honda, Yamaha and Panasonic in order to make two-wheeled vehicles that do not pollute, said Toru Tokushige, the president of the company.

“I set up this company three years ago, started to develop products in Japan, design in Japan. Now we start to manufacture in Vietnam two-wheelers and three-wheelers in the Philippines,” he said.

“In Southeast Asia, many people wear masks to protect (themselves) from air pollution. But (the vehicles) are very clean. It is good for environment.”

Because the vehicles use electricity and not gasoline, they could be a revelation for many countries in Asia who are currently struggling with high fuel prices, Tokushige thinks.

One of Terra’s most recent products is a three-wheeled car with a capacity for six people.

Terra’s prime investors are former presidents of Sony, Apple Japan and Google Japan.

Japan to fight air pollution with electric three-wheeled cars published on Tokyo Times

“We do not know if the file was leaked or not, but we cannot deny the possibility given the volume of traffic between our server and external” terminals, the company said on Friday.

The company detected the attack based on the volume of traffic between back end administration systems and the external internet. Around 22 million login names were hacked, more than a tenth of Yahoo Japan’s 200 million members, the international press reports.

In order to prevent such incident to repeat, the company advised users to reset their passwords, despite passwords or identity verification data not being taken, and said it has “updated its security measures”.

It is not clear yet, according to the company’s officials, how long the attack took or how it happened.

Yahoo Japan, a collaboration between Japan’s SoftBank and the US Yahoo!, is currently the top search engine in the country with a 50 per cent market share; Google holds around 40 per cent share.

The company is 35.5 percent held by Japan’s mobile phone operator SoftBank, and 34.7 percent held by U.S. Internet giant Yahoo! Inc.

Around 22 mil. Yahoo Japan email accounts possibly hacked published on Tokyo Times

The Hello Kitty face is displayed right in the middle of the fruit, appearing to have grown that way naturally, the local press reports. In order for the melon to look like this, the design is carved into it while the fruit is still young. Then, as the fruit grows, the rind fills the gaps which were left.

Thus, the melon looks like it has grown naturally wearing the Hello Kitty design, instead of looking like the design was man-made.

The melons were grown on a farm in the middle of Hokkaido, in northern Japan. The owner of the farm claims that due to the unusual temperature shifts between day and night in the region, his fruits become juicier and sweeter.

The Hello Kitty fruits are only sold in Japan and will be difficult to find, as they are made available in extremely limited numbers. They are not cheap either, with one melon costing around Y5,000 or $50.

The fruits will be on sale until July 31st with only 300 total melons being made available.

Japan to sell Hello Kitty melons published on Tokyo Times

The small device can be attached to the iPhone. It includes an atomizer that spreads scents from a scent tank contained within, so the user will have to install the desired scent tank in order to receive the favorite smell.

As well as sending a scent along with a text message or emitting a particular smell when an email lands in the inbox, the makers say the Chat Perf attachment could also be used with games – releasing, for example, the smell on gunpowder when firing a weapon, the international press reports.

One of the representatives from Chaku Perfume shared his ideas to get users started off:

・They could send a smell that matches a favorite scene from one of their games while they are playing with a friend.
・A tourist attraction could give gift-smell tanks to guests of aromatic yaku cedar, sure to get them to come again.
・Users could receive the sweat smell of their favorite idol during a concert, fans caught up in the moment would go wild!
・They could include a pleasant scent with a news letter.

Chaku Perfume says it will release its device in September, as now Chat Perf is still in prototype form. The gadget will connect to the phone’s headphone jack, thus becoming compatible with Android devices.

The device is expected to cost around Y5,000 ($50). However, there was no detail provided about the scent tanks’ price.

Chat Perf transforms regular phones into smelly ones published on Tokyo Times

The movie tells the story of a father who works too much, Ryota, and his wife who is left behind and who invests her energy into their six-year-old boy Keita.

Their get totally confused when a phone call from the hospital where Keita was born announces them that a nurse switched the baby with another one after he was born.

The other couple struggles financially to raise three children. After finding out the news, both couples go through a test period with meetings and sleepovers to prepare to take permanent custody of their natural sons.

Ryota starts to reject Keita and to focus more on the other boy due to their biological connection.

“The main character is very proud, very arrogant,” the director said. “I wanted to show a contrast with the other father to trigger some upheaval in the values of the main character, who wants to be successful at any price,” said Koreeda, a frequent Cannes guest.

The film criticizes the merciless get-ahead mentality of Japan’s professional class, showing the way children suffer because of their parents’ ambition.

“Like Father, Like Son” is one of 20 films competing for Cannes’ Palme d’Or top prize. The award ceremony will be held on May 26.

Cannes Film Festival salutes Japanese drama on baby swap published on Tokyo Times

Hashimoto, who is the co-leader of the nationalist Japan Restoration Party and Osaka mayor, said women forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers during World War II were a military necessity.

Around 200,000 women from Korea, China and the Philippines were brutalized and forced to provide sex services in brothels to Japanese military forces, historians say.

The survey was conducted last weekend by the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper and it included 1,550 households.

A separate survey among 3,600 households by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, 75 percent of voters said the comments were “problematic”, while 20 percent said they had little or no problem with them, according to the international press.

China, South Korea, the Philippines and the United States condemned Hashimoto’s opinion, with the latter condemning the politician’s comments as “outrageous”. In response, Hashimoto said that American soldiers abused Japanese women for seven years, during their occupation after Japan surrended in 1945.

Majority condemn Hashimoto’s remarks on sex slavery – poll published on Tokyo Times

Sugi started to learn the latte art only last April and now works on two or three cups a day, reaching a total number of about 800 cups so far. She uses chocolate syrup, cocktail syrups and toothpicks to draw the manga characters, according to the local press.

Drawing on coffee is the same thing as drawing on paper, Sugi says. The artist recommends looking at the subject and drawing it as you go. Mistakes cannot be repaired, so the best thing is to understand what went wrong and try to avoid it the next time, she says.

Sugi learns from other people doing latte art on Twitter, as they are often happy to help and give any advice.

Various forms of latte art are spreading recently, with Japanese barista Kazuki Yamamoto sharing photos of 3D latte artworks on Twitter, which can be seen here.

Latte artist creates manga-inspired caffeinated drinks published on Tokyo Times

The bus goes on two different routes, one is the “Tokyo Sky Three Course”, while the other one is the “Kameido Course”. Both of them take tourists around the city, showing off Japan’s culture and history.

However, the most interesting part comes when the bus goes from land to water, a process called “splash point”. As the bus approaches the point of entry to the water, passengers are encouraged to shout “splash” at the top of their lungs, an experience that brings them closer to a ride similar to the one of an amusement park attraction.

The service, dubbed “Sky Duck Tokyo Splash Tour”, launched on March 2013 and has been fully booked since its first day of operation, according to the local press.

The “Tokyo Sky Three Course” is the first sight-seeing tour in Tokyo that includes areas such as Kameido, Kinshicho, and Oshima.

“Up until now there have been various tours that focus on well-known places such as Asakusa or Ueno but by introducing areas that tourists do not often get a chance to see, it is possible to give sightseers a real feel for everyday Japanese life and the landscape of the town,” a Hinomaru Bus spokesperson said.

Japanese ‘land and water’ bus makes waves among tourists published on Tokyo Times

“I have weak hearing and poor sight. I have problems all over my body,” she said. “But I am still young in spirit,” says amateur actress Etsuko Shigemoto, 87. “I have already reached the afternoon of my life, but it is wonderful to spend my last days with the company. I really like acting. This is what I live for,” she said.

“Drama makes me vigorous. I am too busy to get senile. I still feel as if I was 20 years old and now my dream is to become a good actor,” said actor Kiyoshi Takahashi, 85.

Director Yukio Ninagawa, 77, said the acting experience is not necessarily required for his employees. His project is rather an “experiment” that would see older people take roles not usually open to them, such as the lead in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, according to the international press.

“To ordinary theatre people, it is an unconventional group,” said Ninagawa.

The experiment proved to be a revelation for the director, who says older actors are capable of creating a greater range of emotions simply due to their age, deeper wrinkles or sagging cheeks.

“You cannot obtain such expressions before you are 60,” Ninagawa said. “It is meaningless for youngsters to pretend to have that.”

After Saitama Gold Theatre had five successful productions in Japan, Ninagawa is taking now his actors abroad, in Paris, to play “Ravens, we shall load bullets!” from May 30 to June 1.

“I do not expect the whole of the audience will appreciate it,” Ninagawa said. “I only hope that people in Paris will say: ‘Hey, grandmas and grandpas have come from the Far East as a group and did what they called drama, but it is inspiring’.”

Saitama Gold Theatre’s amazing elderly team published on Tokyo Times

Entrepreneur and toy travel agent Sonoe Azuma takes stuffed animals to various highlights and then posts photos and text in real-time on her Facebook page for $20 to $50 per trip.

During a recent package tour, the 38-year-old entrepreneur took her clients – a small toy dragon, frog and mouse, mailed in by owners from the United States and Japan – to Tokyo’s popular Asakusa Kannon temple, according to the international press.

“I wanted to provide adventures for everyone, including people who are physically challenged,” she said. “If their stuffed animals could travel all over the world, I thought it would be a communication tool.”

Azuma’s newly launched Unagi Travel offers four to five trips every month.

“I try to treat (the toy) as a person,” said Azuma, who starts every tour by seating the toys at a conference table for an “orientation,” complete with homemade tour pamphlets.  She then takes pictures of the toys in various circumstances such as relaxing with a glass of beer or having a tea cake.

From her point of view, running package trips for teddy bears, Pokemon dolls and Disney characters has plenty of upside: No whiny customers. No clueless tourists gone missing. No bathroom or meal breaks. And reservations are quite easy to make:  a single ticket for the tour guide and her purse-sized menagerie is enough.

Although she did not recover the money she spent on starting the business, Azuma is convinced that things will get better, as she thinks there are many people that would be pleased to send their stuffed animal abroad instead of the owners going there by themselves.

“Lots of people have a special stuffed animal in their lives,” she said.

Stuffed animals to go on voyage with Japanese travel company published on Tokyo Times