Teo's weekends are usually spent among parks, slides, and trains. At almost two years old, any outing is an adventure, especially if it includes a visit to a train station. Neus Modoro and Kiyofumi Kurata try to make the most of their free days to spend time as a family, whether playing in one of Tokyo's many green spaces, visiting a zoo or museum, or occasionally taking a trip to Osaka to see his paternal grandparents. Theirs is an apparently ordinary family life, but marked by a reality that combines languages, references, and customs from two ends of Eurasia.

At least 35 people have died and more than 200 have been injured by the magnitude 7.1 earthquake that shook the southwest of the Japanese archipelago this Tuesday, according to the latest official figures, making it the deadliest recorded in the country in the last two years. The epicenter was located 20 kilometers from the city of Kumamoto, on the island of Kyushu, and reached the maximum level of the Japanese seismic scale in several areas of the region.

A magnitude 7.1 earthquake shook the Kyushu region, in southern Japan, on Tuesday, causing at least thirteen deaths, nearly 200 injuries, and the collapse of buildings and road networks in the area. One of the places where rescuers are concentrating a large part of their efforts - up to 170 professionals - is a shopping center in the town of Kashima, where a dozen people were trapped. On Wednesday morning, it has already been confirmed that at least two people died during the collapse and subsequent explosion of the center.

Monday was Sea Day in Japan, a holiday when many people flee the summer heat by swimming, surfing and relaxing on the beach. But not Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.

For many years, Japan was an economic anomaly. For decades, the government of the Asian country has been the most indebted in the world, but despite this, it continued to issue debt without problems and place it in the markets, paying a ridiculously low interest rate, sometimes even negative. Now, however, the situation has changed and the Japanese state sees the cost of financing its debt rising ever higher. If this is already a problem under normal conditions, when a country has accumulated debt for so long, if it suddenly becomes more expensive, the headaches for economic authorities multiply.

The Japanese government is preparing a reform that will profoundly transform the country's immigration policy. The Ministry of Justice is working on a new system that would require foreign residents to complete digital courses on language, civics, and daily life in Japan, and would link the granting and maintenance of permanent residency to the accreditation of an advanced level of Japanese. The initiative comes at a particularly delicate moment: Japan, where almost 30% of the population is over 65 and the labor shortage has become one of the main economic challenges, is trying to reconcile the need to attract more foreign workers with a tightening of settlement requirements.

China's decision to restrict the export of rare earths, permanent magnets, and other critical minerals to Japan has turned an industrial dependency known for years into a top-tier problem for the Japanese economy. These materials are indispensable for manufacturing semiconductors, electronic components, batteries, electric motors, or defense systems, so any interruption in their supply threatens some of the most competitive sectors of Japanese industry.

The moment of truth has arrived at the World Cup. And the surprises are coming. Germany was eliminated by Paraguay after an epic duel where both teams gave their all, following different styles. Paraguay, returning to a World Cup for the first time in 16 years, knew how to suffer, reaching the penalty shootout alive, where they surprised as the Germans had never lost a penalty shootout in a World Cup final. In fact, until yesterday they had only missed a single penalty, in 1982. In a single day they missed three. Germany was the cross and Brazil, the face. Ancelotti's team did qualify, although they struggled greatly against Japan.

The ascent to Mount Fuji does not begin at the summit, nor even at the trail that climbs up the mountain. It begins much earlier, when it is still pitch black at the fifth station and the air retains that dry, biting cold that surprises those who have just left behind the mugginess of midsummer in Tokyo. At that hour, groups form almost in silence. Headlamps are adjusted, backpacks are checked, and the final preparations are made before starting the climb.

When the Japanese anthem began to play before the Japan-Netherlands match on the first day of this World Cup, the Japanese coach started to cry. He remained serious, while singing the Kimigayo, but tears streamed down his cheeks. "It's always an emotion to lead my country. Many things have crossed my mind here," he said. The Japanese press deduced, since Hajime Moriyasu (1968) gave no further explanation, that he was referring to being in the United States, as his life, in large part, is marked by the atomic bombs of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

The quiet city of Ebetsu, on the northern island of Hokkaido, has in recent weeks become the epicenter of one of the most serious episodes of community tension experienced recently in Japan. In just over two weeks, a series of fires affected several spaces linked to the local Pakistani community, including a vehicle repair and export workshop and the mosque that serves hundreds of Muslims in the region. Hokkaido police have arrested a 37-year-old man, a resident of the neighboring city of Chitose, on suspicion of being involved in at least some of the attacks.

The Japanese have been able to verify in recent days that Calbee's potato chip bags have suddenly changed their design. Where previously there were bright colors, eye-catching illustrations and intense orange tones, now more sober, almost bare packaging appears, dominated by black and white. The gesture, seemingly minor, responds to a decision that is unusual in the world of food marketing: to minimize ink usage to ensure continuity of supply.

There are images that explain better than any headline what Japan's rugby growth has been. One is of Lomano Lemeki running with the ball under his arm in the 2019 World Cup, in the midst of a victory against Scotland. That day Japan ceased to be a surprise to become a competitive reality, with a team also built with players born outside the country, but fully integrated. Seven years later, some of those names are once again at the center of the focus, but for a very different reason: an uncomfortable debate that goes beyond sport and directly challenges the concept of citizenship.

In Memuro, a small town on the island of Hokkaido, there are Sunday nights when a cafe specializing in French toast relights its lamps when the city is already asleep. Inside, there are no customers looking for a last coffee before going home, but rather mothers in pajamas with crying babies. Some sit in silence while a volunteer takes the child in her arms for a few minutes. Others simply rest lying on mats after hours of sleeplessness. The place reopens at nine in the evening and does not close until six in the morning. It is one of the new yonakigoya, literally houses for night crying.

Japan is moving towards a tightening of controls in strategic technological sectors, a direction that is beginning to generate concern in the business community. Within the framework of the new economic security law and in a context of geopolitical rivalry with Beijing, Tokyo has strengthened mechanisms to protect critical infrastructure and data, especially in areas such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence, or batteries. Although the legal framework does not establish explicit restrictions on international recruitment, various sectors warn that the increase in regulatory complexity and the introduction of stricter security criteria could deter the arrival of foreign talent in areas crucial for the country's growth.

A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck central northeastern Japan this Monday, prompting Japanese authorities to activate a tsunami alert, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA).

Northeastern Japan is on tsunami alert after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake was recorded in the last few hours. The country's Meteorological Agency (JMA) has warned of the possibility of waves up to three meters high in various prefectures, from Hokkaido to Fukushima, and the government has ordered the evacuation of coastal and riverine areas.

As they said at the end of Hell or High WaterSometimes we do crazy things for our children. In the last year, in fact, two of the most talked-about films feature a father on an epic quest to find his lost daughter: Sirado and One battle after another, with a classic narrative structure that comes from Desert Centaurs, clear. A daughter in Tokyo It has less of a sense of adventure and more of injustice, but it's also about a father who does strange things to find his daughter. In this case, working as a taxi driver in Tokyo for nine years (a Frenchman in Japan: a curious and unusual approach to immigration issues) hoping to stumble across her someday, perhaps hailing a fare on a street corner in the Japanese capital.

At Ukedo Elementary School, time didn't freeze with the earth's tremor at 2:46 p.m., but with the ocean's agonizing pounding an hour later. The hands of the classroom clocks, connected to a centralized mechanism that ensured their synchronization, continued moving with mechanical indifference as the outside world crumbled. It wasn't the magnitude 9 earthquake, but the violent arrival of the first tsunami wave, between 3:37 p.m. and 3:38 p.m. on that March 11, 2011, that caused the final rupture. That exact instant, forever etched in the metal and glass of the stopped clocks, marks a point of no return: the moment when the force of nature decided to halt time for an entire town.

The Fukushima fifty, referring to the workers who remained inside the nuclear power plant after the March 2011 tsunami, were actually sixty-nine workers. The round number made for a more attractive headline. Fifteen years after that great catastrophe that caused more than twenty thousand deaths, a documentary pays tribute to that team. They acted convinced that risking their own lives was a debt they owed to the citizens. But the disappointment with Tepco's negligence meant that Japanese society did not perceive them as heroes.