Over a dozen orcas were spotted struggling for air after getting trapped in ice sheets off northern Japan

Tech Insider
An orca calf swimming off the Laguna Beach coast.
A local wildlife organization said it saw about 13 orcas (not pictured) struggling for air off the coast of Hokkaido, Japan.

Mark Rightmire/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images

I moved to Japan having never visited. Here are the 7 things I found surprising after living there for 17 years.

Tech Insider
A busy street at dusk in Kyoto, Japan.
Kyoto, Japan.

ARUTTHAPHON POOLSAWASD/Getty Images

A junior-high principal was fired after he was caught pouring more coffee than he paid for

Tech Insider
An iced coffee at a self-service machine
An iced coffee at a self-service machine.

bee32/Getty Images

The US economy is crushing it compared to other rich countries

Tech Insider : Economy, Economy
G7 leaders Hiroshima 2023
The US economy has been outpacing the growth of its G7 peers.

Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

Japan's moon probe landed upside-down but somehow it still works

Tech Insider
moon surface grey rocky slope with yellow space probe balanced on its nose
Imagery from one of its rovers shows the SLIM probe landed at a peculiar angle.

JAXA/TAKARA TOMY/Sony Group/Doshisha University/Reuters

Elon Musk wants to sell more Teslas in Japan. Here's why that could be tricky.

Tech Insider
This photo taken on January 27, 2023 shows Atsushi Ikeda, the founder and vice president of a Japanese club for Tesla owners, checking his phone as he charges his Tesla Model S at a charging station in Tokyo.

A new space photo of Japan's first spacecraft to land on the moon shows why it's not generating any power

Tech Insider
image taken by a Lunar Excursion Vehicle 2 (LEV-2) of a robotic moon rover called Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, on the moon.
Image taken by a Lunar Excursion Vehicle 2 (LEV-2) of Japan's SLIM lander upside down on the moon.

JAXA/Takara Tomy/Sony Group Corporation/Doshisha University

Why Japan has more than 8 million cheap abandoned houses that people are renovating into dream homes

Tech Insider
A street in Okawachiyama, Saga Prefecture, Japan.
An akiya is in the rural village of Okawachiyama, in Saga Prefecture, Japan.

Makoto Watanabe

Less than 1% of Japanese sake is made this traditional way

Tech Insider

The Gozenshu Brewery is one of the few in Japan using bodaimoto, a 600-year-old fermentation method, to make sake. They use it to make junmai, or pure rice sake that has no added alcohol or sugar. But mass-produced sake made with cheap additives is threatening the business.

Japan has landed a spacecraft on the moon for the first time, but the mission didn't go exactly according to plan

Tech Insider
a gold rover rests on the moon surface
An illustration of JAXA's SLIM spacecraft on the moon.

JAXA

Subscribe to Japan