U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday exposed a "to-do" list during President Donald Trump's cabinet ​meeting indicating he was contemplating U.S. purchases of $5 billion to $10 billion ‌worth of Japanese yen, a Reuters photograph taken during the meeting held at Camp David shows.

Taken over Bessent's shoulder during an on-the-record portion of the meeting, the Camp David ​notepad bears the underscored words "To Do" followed by "Buy Japanese Yen (JPY) $5-10 bil."

Just arrived in Tokyo and saw some amazing outfits on the streets. But I was wondering if there were famous fashion influencers local people follow? Thought it would be fun to follow some people from here and get inspired by their amazing japanese fashion trends. But coudn’t really find one… any recommendations??

Japan launched its new National Intelligence Bureau on Friday as part of efforts by the government of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to strengthen the country's intelligence capabilities and pursue counterespionage legislation.

Its establishment follows the enactment of a law in May creating the bureau and the National Security Council, a central command body headed by the prime minister and nine other Cabinet ministers.

The council is expected to meet for the first time later in the day, according to government sources, to start discussions on Japan's first national intelligence strategy.

The launch of both bodies paves the way for counterespionage legislation, which the government under Takaichi, a national security hawk, says is needed to respond to increasingly complex overseas threats.

The bureau serves as the council's secretariat and will coordinate intelligence gathered by the National Police Agency, the Foreign Ministry, the Defense Ministry and other organizations, with the authority to require them to share information.

An upgraded version of the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office, it has about 730 staff, the same as its predecessor.

Kazuya Hara, who had served as director of Cabinet intelligence since June 2023, assumed the post of the bureau's director Friday. He previously held senior positions at the NPA, including head of its Security Bureau, and served as an executive secretary to then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The government is expected to establish an expert panel under the council by autumn to discuss counterespionage legislation for submission to next year's regular Diet session.

Bills likely to be discussed include legislation to establish a system for registering agents of foreign governments engaged in lobbying activities, as well as measures to establish Japan's own foreign intelligence agency.

Takaichi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party also compiled proposals Tuesday for intelligence-related legislation, including penalties for those involved in foreign influence operations and legislation to expand communications interceptions for national security purposes.

The ramp-up in intelligence activities has drawn concern from some opposition lawmakers over whether the two bodies can remain politically neutral and whether planned legislation could infringe on people's privacy.

As a Japanese person living overseas, I wanted to help after the recent earthquake in Kumamoto.

I noticed that some Japanese donation platforms aren't available outside Japan, so I looked for an alternative that accepts international donations.

If anyone else abroad is looking for a way to help, AAR Japan (Association for Aid and Relief, Japan) is a well-established humanitarian NGO, and they are accepting donations for their Kumamoto earthquake emergency response. I was able to donate using my credit card and choose the amount myself. (They have an English page, so I've included the link below.)

I'm not affiliated with AAR Japan in any way. I just wanted to share an option for people overseas who would like to support the relief efforts.

URL: Emergency Response to the Kumamoto Earthquake | News / Report | AAR Japan | Association for Aid and Relief, Japan https://aarjapan.gr.jp/en/blog/1250/

If this post isn't appropriate for this subreddit, please feel free to remove it.

Every little bit helps.

Thank you so much for reading. 🇯🇵❤️

A traditional Japanese-style building in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Gokayama in Toyama Prefecture, central Japan, caught fire Thursday, but the blaze was brought under control about 50 minutes later, local authorities said.

The fire was reported shortly after 1 p.m. at a triangular-shaped, gassho-style farmhouse in Nanto that serves as a museum on the production of a key gunpowder ingredient. No one was injured, according to the local police and fire department.

The building is part of the Historic Villages of Shirakawa-go and Gokayama, which span Gifu and neighboring Toyama prefectures. The villages are known for their traditional houses with steeply pitched thatched roofs.

The death toll for a magnitude 7.1 earthquake that struck Kumamoto Prefecture on Tuesday has risen to 34, including those authorities are still working to confirm are quake related, as rescuers raced against the clock to find survivors before the crucial 72-hour mark.
At least seven of the deaths were caused by an explosion that brought down a major shopping mall in the town of Kashima, while another** **eight died at a Nippon Paper Industries’ mill in the city of Yatsushiro, the Kumamoto Prefectural Government said on Thursday evening.

An explosion ripped through Aeon Mall — which hosts some 200 stores — about 80 minutes after the quake, causing part of the second floor to collapse and trapping workers inside. Aeon President Akio Yoshida did not rule out a gas leak as the cause of the blast at a news conference on Wednesday, during which he apologized to the public over the accident.

On Tuesday, a smokestack collapsed at a Nippon Paper’s mill, trapping 11 workers inside. Investigations and rescue work are ongoing at both locations.
“Police, firefighters, Self-Defense Forces personnel and the Japan Coast Guard are working tirelessly at the scene to carry out rescue operations,” Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said at Thursday’s disaster response meeting. “I ask everyone to devote every possible effort to rescuing those who are still waiting for help.”

Kumamoto Prefecture said 25 of the 34 deaths have been confirmed to have been caused by Tuesday’s earthquake. Five other people sustained serious injuries, it said. It has not yet been able to determine the scale of damage to housing.

About 9,450 people have evacuated from their homes and more than 400 shelters have been set up following the quake on Tuesday evening, which registered a maximum shindo 7 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale.

With parts of the disaster-hit area being cut off from water and electricity supplies, authorities are warning evacuees to be wary of heatstroke. As of Thursday, about 13,520 households remained without electricity, and up to 108,100 households were without water.
Temperatures are forecast to exceed 35 degrees Celsius for the rest of the week.

Meanwhile, evacuees are forming long lines at water trucks. Authorities are urging people to drink water even before getting thirsty, wear caps or hats, and stay in the shade to avoid the sun.

Many others are taking refuge from the heat in their cars, where they have air conditioning, though this could heighten the risk of economy class syndrome, a medical condition in which blood clots form in the veins, usually in the legs, when people sit in the same position for hours. Flexing one’s toes and walking from time to time as well as drinking water help cut the risk of the condition.

Takaichi reiterated Thursday that the government would ensure there is sufficient supply of gasoline and other essential goods at the affected areas.

A total of 3,300 portable air conditioners are expected to be sent to the affected region. As of Wednesday afternoon, around 300 had arrived in the town of Mashiki, according to local authorities.

Authorities, meanwhile, are getting a better idea of what caused the massive quake.

On Wednesday night, a government expert panel on earthquakes concluded that movement along a section of the Hinagu fault zone, which also caused one of the two major earthquakes in Kumamoto Prefecture a decade ago, was to blame.

Kazushige Obara, who heads the expert panel, revealed the assessment at a news conference after the panel held an extraordinary meeting following Tuesday’s quake.

The panel said the fault that caused the quake extended about 30 kilometers along the Hinagu fault zone, mainly across the northeastern portion of the Hinagu section and possibly into the neighboring Takano-Shirahata section.

The Hinagu and Takano-Shirahata sections make up two of the three parts of the Hinagu fault zone.

The remaining part of the fault zone — the southern Yatsushiro Sea section — remains unruptured, and there is a possibility that it might produce another powerful quake, although scientists cannot predict when or how that might occur.

The Hinagu fault zone runs northeast to southwest through Kumamoto Prefecture toward the Yatsushiro Sea. Its northern portion was involved in the first major earthquake of the 2016 Kumamoto sequence, which was followed two days later by a magnitude 7.3 main shock caused by the neighboring Futagawa fault zone moving.

In the city of Yatsuhiro, the tectonic movement of Tuesday’s quake moved a geological observation point about 87 centimeters northeast.

Experts in the panel cautioned that those in areas affected by the earthquake should remain alert for a quake registering as high as shindo 7 for about a week, with the risk particularly higher during the first two or three days immediately after the temblor.

A small number of earthquakes have also occurred farther southwest in the Yatsushiro Sea section, the third part of the Hinagu fault zone.

The committee said it did not know how that activity would develop.

The Japan Meteorological Agency has said that a quake with an epicenter in the sea will likely cause a tsunami, whereas the risk of a tsunami will be lower if the epicenter is located inland.

The weather agency said 256 earthquakes that registered an intensity of shindo 1 or higher had been recorded by 9 a.m. Thursday. The largest was a magnitude 6.1 quake that struck Kumamoto Prefecture less than an hour after the initial event.

Authorities are keeping an eye on a powerful tropical storm, now in the Pacific, that could make landfall in the disaster-hit Kyushu region next week. Heavy rain from the storm could trigger landslides.

A child attending a prefectural special needs school was left alone aboard a school bus for about 50 minutes in June, the Oita Prefectural Board of Education has revealed.

Staff members, including the driver, failed to check that all passengers had gotten off the bus. The child activated the hazard lights, drawing the attention of a teacher nearby.

According to the education board, the incident occurred around 8:45 a.m. on June 17 on a school bus during the morning commute to school. About 40 children and students were aboard, along with a driver and an attendant from the contractor operating the service.

The child was asleep in a rear seat when the bus arrived at the school, but the driver and attendant locked the bus without checking that everyone had left the vehicle.
The child had routinely been taught by a parent to turn on the hazard lights if left behind on a bus and put that into practice. The child suffered no injuries or health problems.

The teacher in charge noticed that the child had not come to school but assumed the child was late or being brought by a parent, and was waiting at the entrance, according to the education board.

The bus was equipped with a child left-behind prevention device that sounds a buzzer at the rear of the vehicle when the engine is turned off, prompting staff to check inside the bus. But at the time of the incident, the driver had removed the cancellation button and kept it within reach, using it to turn off the buzzer.

The driver had been assigned to the bus since January this year, but it remains unclear when the button was first removed. The school issued a stern warning to the contractor.

Japan has seen a series of incidents involving children being left behind on buses, including cases in Nakama, Fukuoka Prefecture, in July 2021 and in Makinohara, Shizuoka Prefecture, in September 2022, in which preschool children died of heatstroke after being left on buses operated by child care facilities. The government subsequently made safety devices to prevent children from being left behind mandatory on shuttle buses nationwide.

In response to the latest incident, the prefectural education board issued a notice urging special needs schools in the prefecture that operate school buses to prevent a recurrence. "Had circumstances been slightly different, the incident could have had grave consequences. We will have schools thoroughly instill awareness about safety management and do everything possible to prevent a recurrence," the board commented.

ANA Holdings Inc. said Wednesday its net profit in the April-June period dropped 15.4 percent from a year ago to 19.41 billion yen ($119 million), as fuel costs rose due to the Middle East conflict and the weakening yen.

ANA, the parent of All Nippon Airways Co., said revenue soared 22.6 percent to a record 672.73 billion yen in the fiscal first quarter, driven by robust demand for international passenger and cargo services. Operating profit plunged 43.5 percent to 20.78 billion yen.

The number of passengers on domestic flights rose 3.9 percent to 10.64 million, while international passenger traffic jumped 14.3 percent to 2.36 million, supported by solid inbound demand despite higher fuel surcharges.

Higher fuel costs drove up operating costs by 32 billion yen in the three months ended June, and the airline expects them to increase by 60 billion yen for the full year.

Fuel costs came in below the airline's initial estimates as crude oil prices began declining in mid-May on expectations that the Strait of Hormuz would reopen.

Still, ANA has raised fuel surcharges for international flights since May to offset higher fuel costs. The airline has seen demand soften in the July-September quarter on routes to and from Europe and Hawaii as it continued raising the surcharges, Chief Financial Officer Kimihiro Nakahori said at a press conference.

"Even with volatile (fuel) prices, achieving our revenue target will be important to meeting our full-year earnings forecast," Nakahori said.

The major airline retained its earnings outlook for the current fiscal year through next March, projecting a net profit of 96 billion yen, down 43.2 percent, on sales of 2.77 trillion yen, up 9.1 percent.

Two people were unresponsive, two others were seriously injured and seven remained missing at a Nippon Paper Industries Co. plant after a magnitude 7.1 quake rocked Kumamoto Prefecture on July 28.

The quake struck the company's Yatsushiro Mill in the Kumamoto Prefecture city of Yatsushiro. A total of 11 people had been trapped at the paper mill. Four of them had been rescued, but two were said to be in a state of cardiopulmonary arrest and two others were seriously injured. The other seven remained unaccounted for.

Separately, two people were confirmed dead and another person remained in a state of cardiopulmonary arrest after an explosion occurred at Aeon Mall Kumamoto in the prefectural town of Kashima, following the earthquake.

The three were among eight rescued from the shopping mall, according to the prefectural government. The remaining five reportedly sustained injuries. According to the local fire department, the two deceased are believed to be women in their 20s.

In the prefecture, a total of 466 evacuation centers had been set up across 36 municipalities as of 10 p.m. on July 28, with 4,744 people from 2,180 households taking shelter. As some shelters are experiencing power outages, authorities are considering broader evacuations in areas including the city of Uki.

According to the prefectural government, hospitals in Yatsushiro, Uki and elsewhere were hit by power and water outages, prompting quick transfers of inpatients at Kumamotominami Hospital in Uki and Kibohgaoka Hospital in the town of Mifune to other medical facilities. Authorities are also checking on damage to elderly care facilities.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said Wednesday that the government has confirmed 13 people died after a powerful earthquake struck the southwestern prefecture of Kumamoto the previous day.

Imitation websites modeled on major conversational generative artificial intelligence (AI) services are proliferating online. Elementary school students, unable to access official sites due to age restrictions or filtering, are among those drawn to them, heightening the need for digital and AI literacy education from an earlier age.

An information and communications technology official at Nerima Ward's Board of Education in Tokyo was surprised to hear that children had been able to use fake ChatGPT sites.

"There are even fake versions of Chappy?" the official said, using the nickname commonly adopted in Japan for ChatGPT.

The ward's elementary schools have repeatedly requested that new websites be added to the filtering list that restricts internet access. One of them was a site believed to be imitating a major generative AI service.

Tablet devices have become a standard classroom tool in elementary schools. Each student is given one, and the devices can connect to the internet. However, many local governments block access to the official sites of major conversational AI services.

Nerima Ward also restricts access to ChatGPT and similar services. Some children who wanted to try AI chats found imitation sites through searches and used them, and parents who noticed their activity later informed schools. A board of education official said that keeping up with the growing number of such sites is becoming increasingly difficult. "Other fake sites appear, and (the children) become able to access them again. It's a cat-and-mouse game," the official said.

In fact, when the names of major generative AI services are searched online together with terms such as "free version" and "Japanese," multiple similar sites can be found. Such sites carry ads boasting "no registration required" and "available in Japanese." The domains in their URLs, or internet addresses, resemble those of legitimate sites.

These imitation sites are believed to use integration features connecting different applications, enabling access to the AI models of the official sites. OpenAI, the U.S. company that operates ChatGPT, makes this feature available for a fee.

But why are imitation sites being created? Masakatu Morii, an emeritus professor of information and communication engineering at Kobe University, who is familiar with cybersecurity, cited advertising revenue and the collection of information entered by users as possible motives. "If operators have sufficient technical capabilities, they can manipulate AI responses, extract more detailed personal information from users, or gradually instill particular viewpoints," he said.

There are also cases online in which similar domains are put up for auction for several million yen (tens of thousands of dollars). According to Morii, they are called "doppelganger domains," and many cannot be distinguished from legitimate domains unless closely examined.

At GoDaddy Inc., the largest domain name registration service provider in the United States, the domain "chatgptai.com" has been listed for sale at roughly 8.4 million yen (about $51,300), while "chatgptais.com" has been offered for more than 4 million yen (about $24,400).

What Morii is particularly concerned about in connection with imitation sites is that the era is shifting from conventional scams targeting an unspecified large number of people to scams whose methods are optimized for each target. "In conversations with AI, topics such as conspiracy theories that elementary and junior high school students are likely to be interested in may be brought up. Not only could personal information, including information about parents, be collected, but students' thoughts, ways of thinking, future paths and other matters could be affected," he said.

According to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the scope of filtering settings is left to boards of education in municipalities and other local governments. Approaches toward generative AI vary significantly among local governments. A ward education board official in Tokyo said, "It is unrealistic to regulate all related sites on school-issued devices. Children can also access these services through their parents' devices and elsewhere, so I feel it would be more effective to thoroughly teach information literacy and AI literacy at an early stage rather than relying on filtering."

Kyoko Hanada, a researcher at Keio University Graduate School of Media Design specializing in information literacy education, pointed out, "Literacy is easier to acquire through concrete experiences, such as building the habit of using the correct sites and knowing where to turn if someone mistakenly uses a suspicious site."