By Elaine Lies

TOKYO (Reuters Life!) – The season for hunting pilot whales in a Japanese town made famous by the controversial Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove” has been extended for a month, partly because of a devastating tsunami that hit Japan in March.

Taiji, on the Pacific coast in southwestern Japan, shot to global infamy after the release of the movie, which featured eco-activists who struggle with police and fishermen to gain access to the town’s secluded cove where the grisly hunt takes place.

By Elaine Lies

TOKYO (Reuters Life!) – The season for hunting pilot whales in a Japanese town made famous by the controversial Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove” has been extended for a month, partly because of a devastating tsunami that hit Japan in March.

Taiji, on the Pacific coast in southwestern Japan, shot to global infamy after the release of the movie, which featured eco-activists who struggle with police and fishermen to gain access to the town’s secluded cove where the grisly hunt takes place.

By Elaine Lies

TOKYO (Reuters Life!) – Poorly employed Asian women pose both old and new challenges to the world’s fastest growing region, with nearly half of them without jobs and struggling with perennial issues of lower wages and fewer chances for education.

But now, their lack of job opportunities is also costing billions of dollars a year in Asia, a report said on Friday.

By Elaine Lies

TOKYO (Reuters Life!) – A Serbian war bride waits for her husband to return from Iraq. A widow tries to find out what happened to her husband in his final hours from the soldier whose life he saved. A wife watches from afar as her husband appears to have an affair.

Siobhan Fallon’s “You Know When the Men are Gone,” a selection of eight linked short stories, portrays a world rarely, if ever, heard from: the home front on a military base, in this case Fort Hood, Texas, when the soldiers are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

TOKYO (Reuters) – The plunge in foreign tourist numbers to Japan following a string of natural calamities and a nuclear crisis has put the key industry in a tough situation, particularly with crucial Asian markets, its tourism agency head said on Wednesday.

The number of foreign visitors fell by half in March compared to a year earlier, with travellers scared off by fears of radiation from a crippled nuclear plant some 240 km (149 miles) north of Tokyo after the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

By Elaine Lies

TOKYO (Reuters Life!) – A young Prince of Wales meets and falls in love with a beautiful, spirited commoner.

But Rebecca Dean’s “The Golden Prince” is set nearly a century ago, so instead of leading to marriage — as with Prince William and Kate Middleton next week — the relationship between Prince Edward, later King Edward VIII, and Lily Houghton was doomed from the start.

By Elaine Lies

TOKYO (Reuters Life!) – The plunge in foreign tourist numbers to Japan following a string of natural calamities and a nuclear crisis has put the key industry in a tough situation, particularly with crucial Asian markets, its tourism agency head said on Wednesday.

The number of foreign visitors fell by half in March compared to a year earlier, with travelers scared off by fears of radiation from a crippled nuclear plant some 240 km (149 miles) north of Tokyo after the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

By Elaine Lies

URAYASU, Japan, April 15 (Reuters Life!) – Snow White and
Donald Duck cavorted before hundreds of fans on Friday as Tokyo
Disneyland reopened after five weeks, marking a tentative step
back towards ordinary life for a Japan still reeling from
natural calamities and a nuclear crisis.

The popular resort shut its doors after the massive March 11
earthquake and tsunami devastated a broad swathe of northeast
Japan and damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant 240 km north of
the capital, hit by rolling power cuts and ground liquefaction
that caused some parking lots to crumble.

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan raised the severity of its nuclear disaster to the highest level on Tuesday, putting it on a par with the world’s worst disaster nuclear accident at Chernobyl after another major aftershock rattled the quake-ravaged east.

Engineers were no closer to restoring the cooling systems at the plant’s reactors, critical to bringing down the temperature of overheated nuclear fuel rods, showing that the battle to contain the damage was far from over, although a fire at the plant appeared to have been extinguished.

TOKYO, April 12 (Reuters) – Japan raised the severity of its
nuclear disaster to the highest level on Tuesday, putting it on
a par with the world’s worst disaster nuclear accident at
Chernobyl after another major aftershock rattled the
quake-ravaged east.

Engineers were no closer to restoring the cooling systems at
the plant’s reactors, critical to bringing down the temperature
of overheated nuclear fuel rods, showing that the battle to
contain the damage was far from over, although a fire at the
plant appeared to have been extinguished.