The Seishun 18 allows unlimited rides on local and rapid JR trains (excluding reserved seats) throughout Japan from Hokkaido in the north to Kyushu in the south. Although the Seishun 18 is not valid on Shinkansens and limited express trains, it is a great way to enjoy travel at a more leisurely pace. This ticket package includes five days worth of travel for only 2,300 yen per day. One person can enjoy the Seishun 18 for five days, or it can be split for use by up to five people. The unlimited rides also include use of the JR Miyajima Ferry for travel from the mainland to the island of Itsukushima, popularly known as Miyajima. The Seishun 18 is a great way to enjoy leisurely travel.

http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/pass/seishun18.html

Please take note of the sales and valid dates.

Price 11,500 yen

Sales dates Monday, February 20 to Saturday, March 31, 2012

Valid periods Spring Thursday, March 1 to Tuesday, April 10, 2012

• The Seishun 18 is valid for five days worth of travel. Any five days within the valid period can be used.
• The five days of travel can be shared by two or more people, though if the ticket is used by more than one person at one time, those people must be traveling together. Each day one person uses the Seishun 18 counts as one day of travel. Therefore, if five people use the ticket on the same day, the ticket will be used up at the end of that day.
• The period of one day begins at midnight and ends at 23:59 that night. If traveling on a train at 23:59 at the end of a day of travel, the valid period of the ticket is extended until the next stop.
• Using the Seishun 18 – Present the ticket at the station or on the train. A station or train staff will stamp it with that day’s date. The Seishun 18 cannot be used in automatic ticket gate machines.

• Unlimited rides on local and rapid trains (excluding reserved seats) within the designated open seating zone on the following transportation services:
  • All JR company lines throughout Japan – JR Hokkaido, JR East, JR Central, JR West, JR Shikoku and JR Kyushu
  • The JR West Miyajima Ferry
• Even in combination with a Super (Limited) Express Seat or other special ticket, the Seishun 18 cannot be used for travel on Shinkansens, limited express trains, express trains or sleeper cars.

Note: The area within the dotted line in the map below is where the Aoimori Railway operates. The Seishun 18 is valid on local and rapid trains between Aomori and Hachinohe Stations. Riders may get off at Noheji Station free of charge, but an additional fare is required to get off at any other station between Aomori and Hachinohe Stations.

TOKYO — Park Gyuri, the 23-year-old lead vocalist for popular all-girl Korean group KARA, will have surgery to remove a polyp on her vocal cords on Tuesday, the group’s agency DSP Media announced Monday.

Gyuri had been complaining of a sore throat since last November, DSP said.

The group kicked off their long-awaited Asia tour in Seoul on Feb 18. The tour, titled “KARASIA,” will also see the girls give concerts in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand, as well as a five-city tour of Japan starting April 14.

KARA’s management said Gyuri will be recovered in time for the Japan tour which sees the girls perform in Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka and Fukuoka — with two concerts at each venue.

The group has appeared at live events many times in Japan, but they usually only sang one or two songs to promote CDs or to meet and greet fans.

Japan Today

http://www.koreantopnews.com/Entertainment/park-gyuri-kara-rocks-/

AICHI — Police said Monday they have arrested a 14-year-old boy in Ichinomiya, Aichi Prefecture, for allegedly stabbing his mother after she confiscated one of his video games.

According to police, an emergency call was received at around 5:40 p.m. Sunday from a woman who told the operator that her son had stabbed her, TBS reported. Paramedics rushed to the scene and found the woman had been stabbed in the back with a kitchen knife.

Following his arrest, the junior high school student was quoted by police as saying that he lost his temper because his mother took away a video game he had bought without telling her, TBS reported.

Doctors said the woman’s left lung was punctured in the attack, but that her injuries are not life-threatening.

Japan Today

OSAKA — Three people were killed and four injured in a traffic accident in Kishiwada, Osaka Prefecture, on Monday night, police said Tuesday.

According to police, the accident took place at around 6 p.m. at an intersection on Route 40 when the 83-year-old driver of a car containing six passengers attempted to turn right and was hit by an oncoming truck, TV Asahi reported.

Police said three passengers were killed at the time of the collision, two women in their 70s and one 82-year-old man. Four others are reported to have sustained injuries, some of them serious.

Police have arrested the car’s elderly driver, identified as Tsutae Takamoto, and are questioning him to find out what happened.

Japan Today

News in Japanese
http://news.tv-asahi.co.jp/ann/news/web/html/220221005.html

FUKUSHIMA — Environment Minister Goshi Hosono, who is also the minister in charge of the nuclear crisis, on Saturday visited the Fukushima village of Kawauchi which straddles the exclusion zone around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

http://www.setyoufreenews.com/2011/08/31/fukushima

In late January, the village told more than 2,500 residents that returning to the town areas outside the no-go zone was safe, following extensive decontamination of radiation fallout. About 90% of residents whose homes were outside the exclusion zone chose to leave when the Kawauchi town hall moved to Koriyama City, about 40 kilometers away.

Hosono inspected ongoing decontamination efforts and met with residents who have already returned to discuss compensation issues with them, NTV reported. He said the government will determine the amount and duration of financial assistance as soon as possible and will make sure that all evacuees continue to receive compensation after they return home.

Mayor Yuko Endo said offices, schools and other public facilities will restart in April. Kawauchi is the first of nine townships whose administrative functions shifted elsewhere to make such an announcement.

About one-third of Kawauchi village lies within the 20-kilometer exclusion zone and remains off-limits.

Since the government announced in December that the Fukushima plant was stable, guidelines have been made for affected towns that would allow residents to return to areas with contamination levels below 20 millisieverts per year, which it says is safe, though further reduction is recommended.

Residents told Hosono that they were concerned about how much compensation they will receive and that if payments were to end when evacuation ends, their lives would be adversely affected, NTV reported.

Hosono encouraged all evacuees to return to Kawauchi as soon as they feel comfortable about doing so.

Japan Today/AP

related news in Japanese
http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20120218-00000048-jij-pol

TOKYO — Emperor Akihito underwent a successful four-hour heart bypass operation Saturday and hopefully should be fit to play tennis again, officials said amid lingering concerns over his declining health.

It was the first surgery for the 78-year-old emperor since 2003—when he had an operation for prostate cancer—after tests showed a narrowing of two of his coronary arteries.

His physicians, a team from the University of Tokyo hospital and the private Juntendo University, said the operation went without a hitch from the start at 11:01 a.m. until the end at 2:57 p.m.

The emperor was awake before he left the operating room at 3:55 p.m. for the intensive care unit.

His wife Empress Michiko and their daughter Sayako Kuroda, a former princess who left the royal household to marry a commoner, visited him about an hour after he came to the ICU and had a brief chat, the palace said.

He might be discharged in two weeks, his doctors said.

“The operation ended smoothly as planned,” Minoru Ono, surgeon at the University of Tokyo, told a news conference.

“His blood pressure is good. No bleeding is seen. His condition after the surgery is just as expected,” he said.

During his recuperation, Akihito’s first son Crown Prince Naruhito will handle official duties such as attending public ceremonies and meeting state guests.

The monarch arrived at the hospital on Friday morning accompanied by Michiko, who stayed with the emperor overnight.

Akihito walked to the operating room with his wife and daughter seeing him off at its entrance.

After his operation, the empress and Kuroda saw him briefly and rubbed his hand.

“I feel good,” the emperor told them, according to Ono.

More than 10,000 people flocked to the Imperial Palace on Saturday to sign books wishing him well at a special tent set up outside the palace gates.

Local press reports had earlier stressed the surgery was a routine procedure that thousands of Japanese undergo every year. But the surgery came amid increasing concerns about Akihito’s health.

A catheter angiogram taken a week ago showed that his arteries had continued to narrow since an examination a year ago, the palace said in a statement.

In November, Akihito, who acceded to the throne in 1989 following the death of his father Hirohito, spent 19 days in hospital with mild pneumonia and underwent surgery for prostate cancer in 2003.

The palace will continue to consider ways to reduce Akihito’s duties, said Ichiro Kanazawa, the palace’s top medical supervisor.

“Fortunately, his heart has become better, so I am hoping that he will be able to play tennis again,” he said. “But as for his work, we have to think of his age, which is not getting younger.”

© 2012 AFP

Japanese
http://mainichi.jp/select/wadai/koushitsu/news/20120219k0000m040043000c.html

2011 3.11

BERLIN — The Fukushima nuclear disaster has come under the spotlight at Berlin’s film festival with three films exploring its impact on Japanese society less than a year on.

The 11-day festival, which prides itself on its generally edgier and more politically-overt line-up over other film showcases, was perhaps a fitting backdrop for the documentaries.

“I’m more than happy to be here because the Berlinale has got a long history of showing all those political, socially conscious films,” Atsushi Funahashi, director of “Nuclear Nation,” told AFP.

He said that although he was sensitized to the nuclear question because his family had been affected by the 1945 allied atomic bombing of Hiroshima, he was unsure at first how to tackle Fukushima.

“First of all, I didn’t know what to do as a filmmaker, but I knew I had to do something,” he said, adding one of his motives had been the difference in data from international and Japanese officials.

He focuses on the exile of residents of Futaba, where the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was based, to an abandoned high school 250 kilometers away.

The story homes in on a mayor whose town no longer exists as he tries to keep the community together.

“No Man’s Zone,” by Toshi Fujiwara, journeys inside a 20-kilometer area which was evacuated after the disaster, as well as surrounding areas, to talk to “normal” people about how their lives were affected.

With slow panoramic sweeps of battered buildings by the sea, thick piles of rubble, boats lying on their side and crumpled cars, the film opens saying that images of destruction are “always difficult to digest.”

It intersperses lingering shots of cherry blossom trees in the spring, cattle and green landscapes with frank conversations with farmers and fishermen who have lost their livelihood.

An older couple talk openly and animatedly about how they want to keep their damaged home despite the cost of repairing it and their experiences of having to stay in a refuge.

“I had a very strange feeling that the people who were directly concerned were somehow very neglected,” Fujiwara said.

Meanwhile, in “Friends After 3.11,” director Iwai Shunji discusses the political, social and economic state of the country with new “friends” that include a nuclear plant engineer, banker and journalists.

“I want to portray Japan’s present and future as told by these ‘friends,’” he said.

The disaster, triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, contaminated the environment and forced tens of thousands of residents around the Fukushima nuclear site in northeast Japan to evacuate their homes.

Many still do not know if or when they will be able to return.

© 2012 AFP