Raymond Chuang comments

First things first: find out where the best nihonshu come from (in general). Some say start with Uonuma in Niigata Prefecture, around Akita in Akita Prefecture and Yamagata Prefecture.

The flooding damage is a bit shocking, to say the least. Kurashiki was hard hit because the Takahashi River (and the Oda River north of Kurashiki) way overflowed their banks. It could be quite a while before train service on the San'yo Main Line is restored because there have been several landslides on the route in the Okayama area.

The scary part is many rivers in western Honshu from Shiga Prefecture west are now raging torrents--and road/railroad bridges are threatened because the level of those bridges are often not much higher than the top to the river bank.

It's very likely all train services in the Keihanshin (Kyoto/Nara/Osaka/Kobe) region will not start up until tomorrow (18 June 2018), given the fact the earthquake was 6.1 on the Richter scale and only 13 km below ground level. JR West, Hankyu, Keihan, Hanshin, Nankai, Osaka Subway and Kyoto Subway lines will have to be inspected for the rest of today.

An update: according to the US Geological Survey website, the earthquake (Richter scale 5.3) happened about 1 km south-southwest of the town of Takatsuki, and the epicenter depth below the ground was only around 15.4 km below ground level. We may see visible damage in Takatsuki and Ibaraki, another Osaka suburban community southwest of Takatsuki.

May want to check around the town ot Takatsuki, which was very near the earthquake epicenter. Takatsuki is a major stop for JR West and Hankyu commuter trains and also a substantial bedroom community for Osaka itself.

I would LOVE to see Toyota develop a version of the new JPN Taxi specifically for the US market. The new taxis in New York City based on the Nissan NV200 commercial van is just way too big a vehicle for a taxi, in my opinion.

@Disillusioned, if I were living in Japan right now and could own a car, my car of choice would be a Honda Fit 13G. Almost the same size as the larger Kei-car models, the car has enough power for Japanese driving conditions, seats four comfortably and is vastly safer than most Kei-cars (it's gotten good crash ratings even on the stringent EuroNCAP crash tests). I should know--I drive the US-market Fit EX here in the USA and love the car. In fact, you wonder has any Japanese media company been bold enough to write stories about the potential crash dangers of Kei-cars recently or even in the past.

I think the problem is that the Tokyo to Sapporo and Tokyo to Fukuoka routes are proving to be a lot more popular than people think since the Hokkaido Shinkansen to Sapporo won't open until 2035 (!) and a lot of people don't wan't to be stuck on a Shinkansen train for five hours between Tokyo and Hakata stations. No wonder why Narita Airport is expanding, and they may need more expansion at Haneda, too.

It will be interesting to see if they retain the Sanzenri drug store there.

Let's see how long before various JR companies that run Shinkansen trains will require ekiben sellers to specifically label foods that are allowed on the Shinkansen. And the labeling has to be done in both Japanese and English.

I'm actually surprised incidents like this don't occur MORE often, given the narrow streets of many parts of Tokyo.

Michelin over a decade ago showed something similar, but it appears durability is still an issue for such a radical tire design.

That must have been quite a engine fire to completely gut the bus like this. Kudos to the driver for getting everyone off the bus quickly, though.

What makes summers in Japan so miserable is the 60-plus percent humidity that accompanies temperatures of over 30 degrees C. (86 degrees F.). Small wonder why window and split air conditioners are so common in central to western Japan. And it explains why many Japanese who can afford it have second homes in Hokkaido for the summer or vacation there.

In the end, the location of Legoland in Nagoya may prove to be its undoing. Why? Because within the city of Nagoya itself, there are not that many tourist attractions that appeal to foreigners to start with besides the Noritake Garden and the SCMaglev railroad museum. Tokyo Disneyland/Disney Sea and Universal Studios Japan benefit from the huge number of foreign tourists in the Kanto Plain and Keihanshin region in addition to easy access from the #1 and #2 populated areas of Japan. (Indeed, every now and then Japanese news programs run stories about why Nagoya isn't attractive to tourists, even from within Japan.)

Now, if Legoland Japan had been built in Saitama Prefecture or somewhere just east of Osaka, I think it would have been far more successful, in my opinion.

I'm not surprised at this. In fact, I expect most major universities in Japan to be located around mostly Sapporo, Sendai, the entire Kanto Plain, the Keihanshin region (Kyoto/Nara/Osaka/Kobe), Okayama, Hiroshima, and Fukuoka within the next 15-20 years.

There's a reason many of the light bulbs in my house are now LED. First, they use very little power for the amount of light--you get the equivalent of a 60 W incandescent light bulb with only circa 7 watts of power draw. Secondly, they don't generate anywhere near the heat of incandescent bulbs, so that saves on air conditioning in summer. Thirdly, they don't contain even small amounts of poisonous mercury like you have with compact fluorescent bulbs. Finally, LED bulbs are no longer expensive--I can get 60 W equivalent bulbs for around US$2 per bulb at a local retailer, and they last up to 50,000 hours.

By the way, LED lighting is now very popular for street lighting. They use a small fraction of the power consumption of gas-vapor lamps used for street lighting in the past, and the LED color temperature can be "tuned" to also reduce light pollution outside of urban areas, too.

I think even with streamlined visa applications and lower airfare costs, the poor Brazilian economy and the public perception of a high crime rate are scaring potential foreign tourists away from the country.

There is one major concern about this new Silk Road--it goes through some of the most politically unstable parts of the world and the sea route goes through areas with serious sea piracy problems. I'm actually surprised China didn't sign a major deal so its good travel through mostly Russia instead, for example paying for upgrades to the Trans-Siberian Railway to increase freight capacity.

Here's the problem with this campaign: almost every building within central Tokyo post-date World War II. There are only a very small number of neighborhoods (most notably Yanesen, which is northwest of Ueno Park and reachable by a short walk west from JR East Nippori and Nishi-Nippori Stations) that survived the firebombing raids, and even these neighborhoods saw a lot of development post World War II. The slogan would be much more appropriate for Kyoto and Kanazawa, both of which have many historic buildings that are hundreds of years old.

THIS is why the passenger railroad companies plus both Tokyo Metro and Toei Subway are building platform barriers as fast as possible in the Tokyo region. Such barriers will be enough of a deterrent that station personnel will have enough time to stop these acts of suicide.

I'm actually surprised McDonald's Japan didn't do this at least ten years ago....

That's certainly the case on Honshu from Kyoto west and on all of Shikoku and Kyushu, where there are enough sunny days to justify such an investment (where's all the solar power installations on Shikoku and Kyushu?). But I'm not so sure on Honshu north of Sendai and on Hokkaido, where heavy snowstorms and long winters could make solar power a lot less effective (people forget that Hokkaido and much of the Sea of Japan side of Honshu get major snowstorms coming from Siberia in winter).

I think both Airbus and Boeing are already looking at replacements for the A320neo and 737 MAX that won't look anything like what we see now. The new airplanes that will be even quieter and burn far less fuel than before.

I'm actually surprised that only now has Willer Express stepped forward to offer such an excursion tour--a tour that could go to the more remote scenic regions of Japan not reachable even by rail lines.

I think a lot of the issues with people looking down on British cuisine comes from the fact right across the English Channel is a country with one of the world's finest cuisines, that of France (we can thank Auguste Escoffier for that!).

If you look carefully, there are some important aspects of British cuisine that have become well-known--the breakfast of eggs, toast, some meats and potatoes comes from England, hence the name English breakfast. Indeed, crumpets and scones are a distinct English product that have become well-known worldwide (the so-called English muffin is kind of a crumpet derivative).

There is one thing Niantic needs to do: get the servers for playing Pokemon Go running on a web hosting service deigned specifically for high-volume services, so the game runs reasonably smoothly.

Except for bars and izakaya restaurants, smoking should be banned at every public space in Japan. There's a reason why Starbucks took off in popularity in Japan: its strict smoking ban attracted a lot of customers, especially female--proof that a no-smoking food establishment does have a clear place in that country.

I'm actually surprised Maricar didn't ask for Nintendo's permission in the first place. They could have set up operations in Kyoto (NIntendo's corporate headquarters are located there) and turned it into a major attraction for that city.