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Japan may lift work visa restrictions for foreign nurses and dentists, to help care for its fast-ageing and shrinking population, the government said Monday. The immigration bureau is considering a plan to abolish visa limits for hundreds of nurses from the Philippines and Indonesia that currently restrict them to working in Japan for only seven years.

At first glance, Yokote's Bondon Matsuri in Northern Japan may seem rather innocuous. Tall decorative pools are paraded through the streets where later they are taken up a mountain and offered to a Shrine for the sake of a good harvest.

More than 100 rotting pig carcasses discarded in the Qiantang River in China are threatening the health of 3 million locals, Chinese Global Times said on Monday.

Since last Wednesday, a salvage team has already removed 100 rotting pig corpses from the river, which provides drinking water for more than 3 million people living downstream.

Chinese woman Zhang Ruifang, aged 101, has become a star in her Linlou village, Henan province. The elderly woman grew a horn on her forehead, above her left eye a year ago. Now the woman grows another horn – above the right eye, Express Gazeta wrote.

Japanese-born giant panda "Xingbang" is seen in the quarantine room at the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Base in Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, March 16, 2010. Giant panda "Xingbang", which was born by "Meimei" on Aug. 23, 2005 in Japan, returned to China on Tuesday.

Or perhaps brothers, twins even? Took this shot on my way back to Shibuya from Harajuku.

Railway passengers will be able to travel from King's Cross to Beijing in just two days on a journey that would be almost as fast as by airplane under ambitious new plans from the Chinese.

They were dressed in street clothes and I realized that in three years I'd never seen them dressed so. Yuki looked the way I imagine Hello Kitty would look if she had a blue fairy like Pinocchio who turned her into a little girl. And, Midori had future Hostess written all over her outfit.

On Monday, Japanese auto giants and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) joined forces to set up a common system to recharge electric cars, with the hopes to create a global standard.

"Former internal affairs minister Kunio Hatoyama, the younger brother of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, submitted a letter to the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party on Monday announcing that he is quitting the party, LDP officials said."

South Korean boy band Shinee performed a concert at Olympic Stadium in Phnom Penh on Tuesday, wrapping up a six-day visit that included a donation of US$10,000 to the Cambodia Children’s Fund..

Learn about the advantages and conveniences of opening a post office savings account in Japan, and start saving!

A Mainichi editorial gives a Japanese perspective of the current pressure on Japan to sign up to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

Hate anime with the fire of 10,000 burning suns? Well so do we, yet we still managed to find a few that were good. Give it a second chance by checking out a few of these recommendations. With YouTube clips!

"Two Ibaraki Prefecture train lines will offer a special service next weekend that is rarely seen on rails: maids."