A Japanese city boasting one of the world's largest hot-spring resorts opened a special amusement park on Saturday with a hot-tub merry-go-round and other rides featuring immersion in its famous thermal water. (Bangkok Post)

Young Japanese women are flocking to pools on summer evenings -- but not so much to swim as to shine on social media. (Kyodo)

On July 27 - unofficially, Watermelon Day - in Japan, many people, including some famous figures, made online posts about the popular summer fruit. (Kyodo)

Democratic Party leader Renho announced Thursday she will step down as the head of the nation’s largest opposition force, saying she didn’t have the leadership ability to maintain party unity in the wake of its crushing defeat in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election earlier this month. (Japan Times)

The new National Stadium being built for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be used exclusively for team ball sports like soccer and rugby after the games, sources told Kyodo News on Tuesday. (Japan Times)

Seven female members of the Miyagi prefectural assembly on Friday asked the governor of the northeastern Japan prefecture to remove a tourism promotion video it is using on the internet, claiming it portrays women as sex objects. (Kyodo)

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant says the metal scaffolding right below the damaged No.3 reactor appears to have gone missing after the 2011 disaster. (NHK)

Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada has denied media reports that she agreed to hide the fact that the records relating to the Ground Self-Defense Force's peacekeeping activities in South Sudan were at the GSDF command. The ministry once said they had been destroyed. (NHK)

Taiwan has decided in principle to lift a ban since 2001 on beef imported from Japan, action taken following the discovery there of cattle with mad cow disease, the Food and Drug Administration said in a statement posted Monday on its website. (Japan Today)

he Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum released online Wednesday digitally processed 16 millimeter film footage showing the central area of Hiroshima about 10 years before its devastation by the U.S. atomic bombing. (the-japan-news.com)

Japan's panda-obsessed public got their latest fix of cute Tuesday as a Tokyo zoo released footage of its 20-day-old helpless cub, who has ballooned in size since its birth last month. (Japan Today)

A type of highly venomous ant has been detected at a container storage area in Nagoya port, central Japan. (NHK)

Japan's Defense Minister Tomomi Inada has apologized for what she called a misleading remark in her speech supporting a candidate in the Tokyo metropolitan assembly election. (NHK)

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, or MHI, will exhibit its jet plane at the International Paris Air Show, one of the world's major aviation events. (NHK)

A zoo in Toyama City, central Japan, has succeeded in hatching eggs of the endangered snow grouse under a government-backed breeding program. (NHK)

Train buffs and railway officials have attended the launch of a luxury sleeper train journey from Osaka Station. (NHK)

Edward Snowden, who exposed the existence of highly invasive U.S. surveillance programs in 2013, warned this week that Japan might be moving closer to achieving sweeping surveillance of ordinary citizens with a bill that gives the police highly invasive surveillance powers in the name of counterterrorism. (Japan Times)