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Japan Today
10-07-2025
- Automotive
- Japan Today
Japan worried about its aging population… of traffic lights
By SoraNews24 Japan is often cited as one of the countries with the most traffic lights per capita, and most people who live in major cities here would probably agree that there is a crazy number of them. While we can appreciate the importance of controlling the flow of traffic, seeing a row of six or seven red lights in a single 500-meter stretch is a little much. ▼ You've probably heard of Shibuya Scramble, but how about Otemon Scramble in Nichinan City, Miyazaki Prefecture? Image: Pakutaso While having to stop all the time is certainly annoying, there's a much bigger problem with having so many signals. It turns out that much like the human population in Japan, the traffic light population is aging at an alarming rate. According to the National Police Agency (NPA), the lifespan of a traffic light is 19 years, and in a survey conducted last year, a whopping 51,302 traffic lights were found to be 19 or over. This amounts to roughly 25 percent of the some 200,000 lights across Japan and the highest such a rate has ever been. The effect this has on the lights themselves can vary, such as dimming lights, but the biggest safety issue is the entire structure falling down. The NPA says that since 2020, there have been 11 incidents of traffic lights collapsing from deterioration. Granted, one of those cases that we know of was caused by excessive dog pee on the pole, but age is certainly a factor too. ▼ News report on the failing lights Replacing all of these lights would require a significant increase in budget, especially since not enough was spent on maintaining them in the first place. Instead, it appears the NPA is focusing efforts on removing unnecessary traffic lights to reduce the burden. Their goal is to take down 4,200 lights across Japan by 2029, and last year, have managed to get rid of 679. Online comments were happy to hear there will be fewer traffic lights, and yet also angry that governments haven't been doing enough to manage them properly until now. 'Waiting at a red light in the middle of the mountains where no one is around is a serious waste of time.' 'While they're doing all this, the newer LED lights are all going to go bad. It never ends.' 'Japan has too many unnecessary traffic lights, so please remove them.' 'Yeah, some of them are really old.' 'I'd like to thank the lights for their years of service.' 'If you remove the lights, fewer people will run red lights and crime will be reduced, lol.' 'I see traffic lights in so many places where a stop sign would be fine.' 'They should make roundabouts like in Europe.' 'Nice to see our tax money isn't going where it should.' 'I'll take one of those lights. It'd look cool in my living room.' 'Back in the day, local politicians would take pride in installing a new traffic light. Now, there are too many.' 'One time, I took a picture of a traffic light that looked like it was about to collapse and sent it to the police. They gave me a thank-you letter in return.' Source: FNN Prime Online, YouTube/FNNプライムオンライン Read more stories from SoraNews24. -- Should you drive through a red traffic light like this in Japan? Confusing road rule explained -- Japan's National Police Agency plans to introduce fines for bike traffic violations in 2026 -- 'Conbini warp' an increasing traffic problem for businesses and authorities across Japan External Link © SoraNews24
Japan Today
26-06-2025
- General
- Japan Today
Elementary and junior high students speak out on Japan's strangest school rules
By Elliot Hale, SoraNews24 The Japanese schooling system has an ongoing problem, being rife with outlandish rules that simply don't make sense in the modern day: elementary school students not being allowed to put on underwear beneath their gym clothes, or junior high and high school students only being allowed to sneeze three times during class. Despite the many, many complaints that find their way to the boards of education, many of these outdated and oppressive rules persist even today. A recent online survey gathered responses from 1,749 elementary and junior high school students from across Japan to find out what other strange rules schools have that kids are baffled by. You might think that only a minority of the schools cling on to backwards school rules, but you'd be mistaken. A whopping 79.1 percent of respondents answered that their school has rules that are just plain bizarre. For elementary students, the ones that had them the most confused were the ones regarding stationery, with bans being put on items that have a scent or decorated by characters. Above all, though, is the ban on mechanical pencils, despite many junior high schools allowing the use of them. Clearly mechanical pencils are too deadly for young children to wield correctly. ▼ After all, they do look positively lethal. Image: Pakutaso Junior high students, on the other hand, are left more perplexed when it comes to rules about their hair, such as having to tie it up if it touches your shoulders, or only being allowed to have hair ties in specified colors. Dyeing your hair is also completely out of the question at many schools. ▼ Sadly, the common anime setting of a class full of members with vivid hair colors is unlikely to be seen in reality. Image: Pakutaso It doesn't stop there though, with kids highlighting other rules they have to put up with in their daily lives, like socks needing to be of a certain color and length, or underwear having a specific color or pattern. The issue with underwear and gym clothes persists, with several elementary schools prohibiting them from being worn at the same time, and even some junior high schools doing the same. Other rules mentioned were restrictions on keychains, phones, and food and drinks. There were even some students who answered that there were limits on bringing mirrors and brushes to school, as well as some who answered that they weren't allowed to bring sunscreen to school. Rules are only effective if there are appropriate consequences for breaking them, so what happens if a student dares to rebel, and brings some abhorrent sticky notes into the sacred hall of learning? Some responses include a three-warning system, where you get sent to a student guidance counsellor after three warnings, and should you be sent there three times, you're expelled. Others include being forced to write reflection essays, having something confiscated, or being sent home to fix the problem, only being allowed to return once they have done so. However, some of these consequences can end up creating unfortunate or unintended results. One student had their favorite mechanical pencil thrown away that they had brought by mistake, and another couldn't contact their parents after a late club activity due to a smartphone ban. Perhaps the most humiliating of all is having to show your underwear in front of everyone to prove that you're in compliance with the rules. While the effectiveness and necessity of these rules is certainly debatable, the survey brings forth a valuable point: students are able to question the rules that make up their everyday lives and recognize when something doesn't seem to sit quite right with them. Whether it's about their socks, pencils, or hairstyles, children want their voices to be heard. Although many schools seem to be rather reluctant to cast aside these long-held rules, change is happening gradually. So, it might take a while, but hopefully public displays of the underwear young students have got on will become a relic of the past. Source: PR Times Read more stories from SoraNews24. -- Line up in the hall, open your shirts, show your bras – Real instructions from one Japanese school -- Public schools in Japan's Saga Prefecture will no longer regulate/check students' underwear color -- Tokyo junior high school demands students wear white underwear as part of dress code External Link © SoraNews24
SoraNews24
13-06-2025
- Climate
- SoraNews24
Is it OK to drink bottled water after the expiration date in Japan?
The answer may not surprise you but the reason will. Let's say you're at home, going through your disaster preparedness kit, and you find a bottle of spring water you bought a long time ago in case of emergency. Checking by the cap, you see that the expiry date was a few months ago, and decide to use it to water plants or top off the washing machine instead of drinking it. Well, congratulations; you just wasted perfectly good water. Alright, 'perfectly good' might be an overstatement since we're still not sure what the microplastics floating around in there can do to us, and 'waste' is also a little harsh since plants are our friends too. But the point stands that you could have drank that water and it would have been more or less as good as the day you bought it. ▼ Consider drinking that bottle of water rather than keeping it outside to ward off stray cats as some people in Japan do. Image: Pakutaso This is because according to the Secretary General of the Japan Mineral Water Association, the 'expiration date' on bottled water isn't used for the same reason that it's used on perishable food. This is actually the date at which water inside the bottle is expected to have evaporated so much that the bottler cannot guarantee the amount written on the bottle is inside anymore and could be held liable for false labeling. Water bottles in Japan are usually made of a type of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is slightly permeable to water vapor. Some tests have found that when stored at around 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit) around two to three milliliters (0.07 – 0.1 ounces) of water vapor can escape per month. Also, in the hot summer months of around 37 degrees Celsius (99 degrees Fahrenheit), that rate goes up to about 4 milliliters per month. Meanwhile, the Measurement Act of Japan states that the actual contents of a bottle must be no less than two percent under the amount listed on the label for bottles under 500 milliliters (17 ounces) and no less than 10 milliliters less than the labeled amount for bottles 500 milliliters and up. So, bottlers of water simply calculate the rate of evaporation and release through the PET bottle, apply it to the legal threshold, and an expiry date is born, but it's not the water that expires. It's the label on the bottle that does. ▼ Phew… Honey, can you smell this label? I think it's gone bad. Of course, this is a separate subject from contamination from chemicals inside the plastic of the bottle, and it's possible both things could be occurring at the same time. But since evaporation happens rather quickly, would there even be enough time for significant amounts of potentially hazardous chemicals to seep into the water from the plastic? Going by the rate of evaporation found in studies, at two milliliters per month we can expect a 500-milliliter bottle to be empty in 20 years and 10 months. In the case of chemicals from the plastic entering the water, known as 'leaching,' the most worrisome elements are antimony and germanium. Under normal storage conditions, it would take about 71 years for enough antimony to enter the water to surpass Japanese safety standards and about 15 years for the germanium levels to surpass those deemed safe. Mind you these are just the standards, which tend to err on the side of caution, meaning one 15-year-old 500-milliliter bottle of water — wait… 140-milliliter at that point — probably won't send you straight to the ER. Even factoring in things like the lower concentration of water as it evaporates and the diminished leaching as the surface area shrinks, you're still looking at about a good nine years or so before standards are exceeded. One big caveat to all this is that it only applies to Japanese water that has been sterilized to Japanese standards and in bottles made to Japanese standards. Every country has its own standards, including what it considers the allowable limits of antimony and germanium to be, so do your own research before consuming 10-year-old bottles of water anywhere outside of Japan. Microplastics are also still a bit of a wildcard, in terms of their effect on the human body and how rapidly they break down in a typical Japanese PET bottle of water. Most microplastics are said to enter the water during bottling at the factory, so the bulk of it will already be present in a brand-new bottle anyway, with only a relatively moderate increase over time if stored securely. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any studies on microplastic contamination over very long spans of time, such as 10 years. ▼ In other words, if you're worried about microplastics you really shouldn't even be drinking new plastic bottles of water. This information has recently been trending online in Japan and many came out in agreement with it, either using their own theoretical knowledge or personal experiences. Others still felt it wasn't worth the gamble. 'If the water can escape, can't things like bacteria get in?' 'Molecules like water and carbon dioxide are 0.3 nanometers, about the same as gaps in permeable plastic, but a virus is about 20 nanometers so it can't get in.' 'If I leave water out, I just use it for laundry.' 'I'm still just going to use it for cleaning and watering plants.' 'Water is always fine, isn't it?' 'I had some water that I'd been keeping for seven years in case of emergency. I drank it when I replaced it and it was fine.' 'I've been given expired ones before and there definitely seemed like less water inside.' 'If the bottles are breathable I probably shouldn't store them next to the toilet.' 'If the bottle is shriveled that's good because the air pressure outside is collapsing it. If the bottle is old and a normal shape, air has gotten inside and there might be bacteria too.' 'I'm still going to pour it down the drain anyway. Why take a chance?' Whether you're willing to crack open a seven-year-old bottle of Japanese water is entirely up to you, but the key takeaway from all this is that the expiration date written on it has absolutely nothing to do with its quality, so feel free to hang onto it at least a little bit longer than that. Source: Yahoo! Japan News, The Sankei Shimbun, withnews, Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry, Japan Soft Drink Association, Japanese Journal of Food Chemistry and Safety, Food Safety Commission, Hachima Kiko Images: ©SoraNews24 (unless otherwise noted) ● Want to hear about SoraNews24's latest articles as soon as they're published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
Japan Today
31-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Today
Uji matcha tea specialist from Edo period releases a range of sweets for hydrangea season
By Oona McGee, SoraNews24 Ever since matcha began to boom in popularity around the globe, green tea lovers from overseas have had Uji in Kyoto on their bucket list. This region is renowned for its top-quality matcha, and one of the oldest tea purveyors in the area is Itohkyuemon, which can trace its history back to 1832, towards the end of the Edo period (1603-1868) when samurai roamed the land. In the centuries since its founding, Itohkyuemon has been constantly adapting to meet the changing demands of customers, and these days it's become particularly well known for its matcha ice creams and seasonal parfaits. Its most popular seasonal offering is the Hydrangea Parfait, created in honour of Uji's famous Mimurotoji, commonly known as 'Hydrangea Temple' due to its abundance of flowers. ▼ Hydrangeas, or ajisai as they're known in Japanese, bloom during the rainy season. Image: Pakutaso This year, to mark the 13th anniversary of the Hydrangea Parfait, Itohkyuemon is going all out with a campaign called the 'Uji Matcha × Hydrangea Festival 2025'. The highlight of the festival is the Hydrangea Parfait (1,390 yen) which features ingredients like matcha kinton (a sweet bean confection), hydrangea-hued crushed jelly, leaf-shaped matcha cookies and blueberries — all inspired by hydrangeas glistening with raindrops. ▼ Joining the parfait is a limited-time Hydrangea flavor (740 yen) in the popular 'Matcha Parfait Ice Cream Bar' series. There'll also be a 'Hydrangea Mini Parfait', which can be upgraded from the regular mini matcha parfait for an additional 200 yen when ordered with a meal… ▼ …and a Hydrangea Panna Cotta (590 yen) and Hydrangea Kinton (two for 990 yen). All items can be purchased at the Uji Main Store and the JR Uji Ekimae Store, except for the Panna Cotta, which is only available at the Main Store. The Mini Parfait and the Hydrangea Parfait will also be available at the Gion Shijo Store, while the Parfait Ice Cream Bar will have a wider release, available at the Gion Shijo location, as well as the branches at Kiyomizuzaka, Sanjo Teramachi, Byodoin, JR Uji Ekimae, and Kyoto Ekimae. The parfaits and ice cream bars and Kinton are currently on sale, while the Panna Cotta will be available from June 1. That's a whole lot of matcha hydrangea sweets to choose from, but they'll only be available in limited numbers while stocks last, so you'll want to stop by the festival soon to avoid missing out. Related: Itohkyuemon store locations Source, images: Press release (unless otherwise stated) Read more stories from SoraNews24. -- Japanese cafe's gorgeous hydrangea sweets celebrate most beautiful flower of Japan's rainy season -- Japanese Kyoto matcha sweets look gorgeous on Instagram, feel gorgeous on the tongue【Taste Test】 -- Gorgeous matcha ajisai parfait ice cream bars appear just in time for hydrangea season External Link © SoraNews24
SoraNews24
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- SoraNews24
Uji matcha tea specialist from the Edo period releases a range of sweets for hydrangea season
Itohkyuemon leads the way when it comes to matcha ice creams and parfaits. Ever since matcha began to boom in popularity around the globe, green tea lovers from overseas have had Uji in Kyoto on their bucket list. This region is renowned for its top-quality matcha, and one of the oldest tea purveyors in the area is Itohkyuemon, which can trace its history back to 1832, towards the end of the Edo period (1603-1868) when samurai roamed the land. In the centuries since its founding, Itohkyuemon has been constantly adapting to meet the changing demands of customers, and these days it's become particularly well known for its matcha ice creams and seasonal parfaits. Its most popular seasonal offering is the Hydrangea Parfait, created in honour of Uji's famous Mimurotoji, commonly known as 'Hydrangea Temple' due to its abundance of flowers. ▼ Hydrangeas, or 'ajisai' as they're known in Japanese, bloom during the rainy season. Image: Pakutaso This year, to mark the 13th anniversary of the Hydrangea Parfait, Itohkyuemon is going all out with a campaign called the 'Uji Matcha × Hydrangea Festival 2025'. The highlight of the festival is the Hydrangea Parfait (1,390 yen [US$9.69]) which features ingredients like matcha kinton (a sweet bean confection), hydrangea-hued crushed jelly, leaf-shaped matcha cookies and blueberries — all inspired by hydrangeas glistening with raindrops. ▼ Joining the parfait is a limited-time Hydrangea flavour (740 yen) in the popular 'Matcha Parfait Ice Cream Bar' series. There'll also be a 'Hydrangea Mini Parfait', which can be upgraded from the regular mini matcha parfait for an additional 200 yen when ordered with a meal… ▼ …and a Hydrangea Panna Cotta (590 yen) and Hydrangea Kinton (two for 990 yen). All items can be purchased at the Uji Main Store and the JR Uji Ekimae Store, except for the Panna Cotta, which is only available at the Main Store. The Mini Parfait and the Hydrangea Parfait will also be available at the Gion Shijo Store, while the Parfait Ice Cream Bar will have a wider release, available at the Gion Shijo location, as well as the branches at Kiyomizuzaka, Sanjo Teramachi, Byodoin, JR Uji Ekimae, and Kyoto Ekimae. The parfaits and ice cream bars will be available from 23 May, while the Kinton will be available from 26 May and the Panna Cotta from 1 June. That's a whole lot of matcha hydrangea sweets to choose from, but they'll only be available in limited numbers while stocks last, so you'll want to stop by the festival soon to avoid missing out! Related: Itohkyuemon store locations Source, images: Press release (unless otherwise stated) ● Want to hear about SoraNews24's latest articles as soon as they're published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
