JAPAN: Travel Warning & more – 19th June 2025

Konnichiwa from BA! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 19th of June twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

On Friday the 13th, the Foreign Ministry raised its travel warning to level three, which urges Japanese citizens to avoid all travel to most areas in Iran and Israel, like Tehran, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem, because the conflict is getting worse following Israeli attacks on Iran. About 380 Japanese nationals are registered as residents in Iran and around 1,000 in Israel, excluding short-term visitors. The ministry warned that the situation could worsen and said those abroad should try to stay safe and keep an eye on the news for any changes.

Then, a few days later on Tuesday the 17th, the ministry announced that it was thinking of evacuating Japanese nationals from Iran to Japan, though it hasn’t made any final decisions on that.

On the domestic front, a recent government survey found that over fifty percent of female local assembly members in Japan have experienced harassment, over twice the rate of male members. Harassment included sexist remarks, physical contact, and a generally demeaning attitude toward female politicians based on the belief that women should be homemakers — all usually coming from fellow politicians or voters. The survey gathered responses from over 5,000 local assembly members nationwide.

Women make up a small minority in local assemblies, with over twenty percent of town and village councils having no women.

Much of the online commentary has been on how this shows that Japan is still very much an old boys’ club, filled with men in their forties and fifties who may have a bias against women.

In an update to a story from previous shows, Nippon Steel officials said Donald Trump, the US President, approved their planned buyout of US Steel. The companies signed a National Security Agreement with the US government, committing to eleven billion dollars in US investments by twenty twenty-eight. The agreement includes a promise that they’ll give the US veto power over key decisions.

In another Trump-related update, the US president met with Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Monday the 11th before the G7 summit officially began on Tuesday the 12th. They discussed tariffs and the military conflict between Israel and Iran, but the meeting only lasted thirty minutes and they didn’t reach any deal on tariffs or agreements on what actions to take after Israel attacked Iran.

In imperial news, a Twitter user posted a video on Thursday the 12th of Princess Kako sleeping during a flight in Brazil, and Japan’s Imperial Household Agency is not happy about it. Recall that on last week’s show, we mentioned that Princess Kako was visiting Brazil for the 130th anniversary of Japan–Brazil relations. The agency called it an invasion of privacy, and asked Twitter to investigate whether this violated the website’s content guidelines.

Funnily enough, most Japanese people on Twitter didn’t care about the video of her sleeping. Instead they talked about a video that caught her taking a seat in economy class on a flight in Brazil asking why their princess wasn’t put in first class. Quite a few seemed to think that Kako flying coach was only fair in light of the many recent incidents with politicians trying to sneak ways to get tax-free money.

In other news, an off-service bullet train stopped in Tochigi Prefecture, north of Tokyo, while running without passengers on Tuesday the 17th. JR East, the railway operator, had to pause train service for hours in that area to carry out inspections, which disrupted travel for thousands of people.

The next day, on Wednesday the 18th, JR East said that the train had stopped because of a suspected power supply malfunction. It’s not the first time something like this has happened; several trains from the E8 series, a new model that was first introduced last year, have also had power unit failures.

For now, JR East has suspended the independent operation of the E8 series, which mainly runs between Fukushima and Yamagata Prefecture in northeastern Japan, until they can confirm it’s safe.

Speaking of transportation, the government has decided to impose fines for minor bicycle traffic violations called blue tickets, which will go into effect on the 1st of April twenty twenty-six. The fines will range from 3,000 to 12,000 yen, which is twenty to eighty-two dollars, for riders aged sixteen and up. The highest fee will be for smartphone use while riding.

One of the blue ticket fines includes riding on the sidewalk, but many members of the public were against having this as a violation since in some places, riding on the road is too dangerous. However, the police said that only dangerous sidewalk cycling would be fined.

Serious violations, called red tickets, which include things like drunk cycling, will still result in criminal penalties.

In unrelated news, Kobayashi Seisakusho, a factory in Kyoto Prefecture, western Japan, is working to combat foreign worker accidents caused by language barriers—a topic we have covered in previous shows—by using an automatic chat translation system. Developed by Kaminashi Inc., the system comes as both an app and computer software. Over half of the factory’s 110 employees are Vietnamese or Thai, and the system makes it possible for them to translate conversations in real-time

Before, misunderstandings caused by language barriers resulted in delays and errors. Now, the new system has reduced the number of mistakes and made it easier for workers to ask questions and give feedback.

Meanwhile, officials in Yamanashi Prefecture, in eastern Japan, have installed a steel gate at the fifth station of the Yoshida trail on Mount Fuji to prevent overcrowding and stop risky nighttime climbing that can result in deaths due to cold temperatures and harsh conditions.

Starting the 1st of July, climbers must pass through the gate, which will be closed from two p.m. to three a.m. Officials discourage unprepared climbers. The entry fee is now 4,000 yen, which is twenty-eight dollars, and the daily cap remains 4,000 people, but reservations aren't required..

From cold to hot, fourteen cities across Japan had record high temperatures for June on Wednesday the 18th, with many regions issuing heatstroke alerts. At least three people died from heat-related causes, and many in Tokyo went to the hospital for heatstroke and heat exhaustion.

The weather was much milder last month, during which Japan also had a record number of nearly four million foreign travelers. It was a twenty-one percent increase compared to May of the previous year, with many travelers coming from China and the US.

However, recall from a previous show that a YouTube rumor about an upcoming natural disaster in Japan was going around. This rumor went especially viral in Hong Kong, and as a result, Hong Kong visitors dropped eleven percent due to canceled flights.

In entertainment, James Miki, a scriptwriter who worked on many popular TV shows, died at the age of ninety-one of pneumonia on Saturday the 14th. He was best known for his work on a wildly popular nineteen eighty-five drama series called Mio Tsukushi, and also a historical series showing the life of Masamune Date, a feudal warlord from 500 years ago.

Closing this edition on some more positive entertainment news, ChaO, a Japanese animated film, won second place at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France on Saturday the 14th.

The movie takes place in a future where mermaids and humans live alongside one another, and features a comedic love story between a regular human and a mermaid princess who starts off the story as a giant orange fish.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

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