TRAVEL

A black-rind watermelon grown in Hokkaido drew a ¥300,000 bid Monday in the year's first watermelon auction. (Japan Times)

Japan and Russia have recently "agreed", in a joint statement, that it is "abnormal" that they have not concluded a "peace treaty 67 years after the end of World War II." (idsa.in)

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner returned to Japanese skies Sunday for the first time since battery troubles grounded the aircraft globally in January. (Jiji Press)

Plankton and seawater sampled at 10 points less than a year after the Fukushima meltdowns found concentrations of radioactive cesium were highest at different locations in the Pacific, puzzling scientists. (Japan Times)

Six sailors were found dead after a fire on a foreign freighter docked at a port in Hokkaido, northern Japan. The sailors are presumed to be Russians. (NHK)

Snow has settled in the city of Obihiro in Japan's northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido for the first time in May in eight years. (NHK)

Japan tried to buy the four disputed islands off Hokkaido from the former Soviet Union as proposed by an aide to then-President Mikhail Gorbachev, opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa said Saturday. (Japan Times)

Unseasonable low temperatures have been keeping Japan's spring cool, resulting in snowfall in the country's northeast this week. (Japan Today)

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks Monday in Moscow on reviving long-stalled negotiations on a territorial dispute that has prevented the countries from concluding a postwar peace treaty. (Japan Times)

One out of about 2,800 people in Sapporo is suffering from gender identity disorder, according to a survey compiled recently by a medical group in Hokkaido. (Japan Times)

Japan has been shaken anew by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake, located in Kuril Islands off the country's northern part. (ibtimes.com)

The Bank of Japan simultaneously upgraded its assessments Monday for all of the country's nine regional economies for the first time since July 2012, with growing hopes of economic recovery yielding an increase in household and corporate spending, boosting domestic demand. (Kyodo)

A typhoon-like storm wreaked havoc in wide areas of Japan on the weekend, leaving three people dead and disrupting air and railway traffic. (Jiji Press)

Japanese engineers hurriedly redesigned the rock-collector and science payloads on the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft set to launch on an asteroid-sampling mission in late 2014, hoping to trump a problem which limited the load of asteroid rock fragments brought home by a preceding mission. (astronomynow.com)

Applications unique to Japan are blossoming here thanks to Apple's (AAPL) iPad. In the absence of a popular home-grown alternative, domestic app makers have come up with some unusual -- sometimes inspiring -- approaches. (Fortune)

A total of 10 regional electronic fare cards operated by Japan's eleven major transport authorities on Saturday became mutually usable in all their operating areas in Japan, enabling holders to travel through Japan's key cities across the country with one card. (Kyodo)

The unauthorized wanderings of a passenger at Hokkaido's New Chitose Airport on Tuesday forced about 1,250 passengers to undergo a second security inspection, according to airport authorities. (Yomiuri)

Niseko has experienced unprecedented amounts of snow this season with over 15 metres of accumulative snowfall at the base of the resort and a current snowpack of over 5 metres at the peak of Mt Annupuri. (NPC)

Japanese telecommunications company Softbank is continuing its investment in the solar industry and will develop an 111MW PV facility in Tomakomai, Hokkaido prefecture, Japan. (pv-tech.org)

Japanese agricultural and fisheries groups on Friday severely criticized Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's decision to have the country join Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade negotiations. (Jiji Press)

Japanese fighter jets have scrambled to track 2 Russian bombers that flew around the archipelago. (NHK)

A father froze to death while sheltering his nine-year-old daughter from severe weekend blizzards that swept northern Japan, two years after her mother died, reports said on Monday. (NDTV)

A high concentration of radioactive cesium has been found in a range of land animals and insects in areas around the site of the Fukushima nuclear plant accident, providing a clue to a mechanism of radioactivity accumulation in the food chain, a study showed Saturday. (Kyodo)

A heavy blizzard that began in eastern Hokkaido on Saturday has killed 8 people. In Nakashibetsu Town, a woman and her 3 children were found dead in a car that got buried in snow. (NHK)

Communities in Hokkaido and five prefectures of the Tohoku region had record levels of accumulated snow as of Feb. 25, although precipitation levels are about the same as an average year. (Asahi)