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Democratic Party of Japan heavyweight Ichiro Ozawa said Wednesday that a new plan is required to address the issue of relocating a U.S. military base within Okinawa Prefecture. Ozawa told reporters it is impossible for Japan and the United States to go ahead with their current plan, agreed on in May, given strong opposition from people in Okinawa, who are calling for the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station to be moved outside the southwestern Japanese prefecture. (AP)

The government on Tuesday released the report of a Japan-U.S. expert panel on a planned alternative facility for the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station in Okinawa Prefecture. The report features two conflicting plans for runway layouts. One layout option is a plan agreed upon between Japan and the United States in 2006 to build two runways in a V-shaped formation, a plan that Washington still favors. The other option is a plan more recently advanced by Japan to build a single I-shaped runway. (Yomiuri)

A typhoon hit the northern part of the Okinawa Prefecture's main island around 5 p.m. on Tuesday and is moving northwest in the East China Sea, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. Typhoon Kompasu brought strong winds of up to 203 kilometers per hour in Izena village in the prefecture and has caused the cancellation of more than 190 flights to and from Okinawa and its vicinity, affecting about 25,000 people. The typhoon left four people injured in Okinawa and power blackouts have occurred at around 32,000 households in 15 municipalities in the northern part of the island. (AP)

A Georgia man convicted of raping a girl over a four-year period in Japan faces a sentence of up to life in federal prison, court records show. Dwain D. Williams, 36, of Pelham was found guilty Thursday by a federal jury in Valdosta of aggravated sexual abuse, abusive sexual contact with a child, engaging in illicit sexual conduct while traveling in a foreign country, and committing a criminal offense while accompanying a member of the armed forces outside of the United States, the Jacksonville, Fla. Times-Union reported. The girl, now 15, said Williams began raping her in July 2004, when she was 9, and continued until she was 13, while she lived in Okinawa. (UPI)

Konan of Okinawa Prefecture roughed up highly touted right-hander Shinta Hifumi and trounced Kanagawa's Tokaidai Sagami 13-1 in the final of the National High School Baseball Championship on Saturday. Konan became only the sixth school in the long history of Japanese high school baseball to win both the spring and summer national tournaments and first since Daisuke Matsuzaka, now with the Boston Red Sox, helped Yokohama do so in 1998. (Japan Times)

Tattoos have long been relegated to the shadows of society. People often connect them to the yakuza and there is an automatic fear against people sporting body art. Tattoos have a long history in Japan, believed to date back to the Jomon Period (10,000 to around 300 B.C.). They became widely popular in the Edo Period (1603-1867), particularly among firefighters and builders. Tattoos were also a part of the culture of the ethnic Ainu and Okinawan women, who had them on their faces or hands as a sign of adulthood. And at the same time, tattoos were part of punishment. Criminals' arms and foreheads were marked. The Meiji government banned tattoos, denouncing them as barbarous and unsuitable for the "civilization and enlightenment" movement. Even though the ban was lifted in 1948 under the Allied Occupation, tattoos to this day still have negative connotations. (Japan Times)

The Self-Defense Forces will conduct exercises simulating the recapture of an isolated island from enemy forces in December, Defense Ministry sources said, the first such drills by the SDF and seen as a response to China's recent naval expansion. The exercises will be based on the newly compiled defense program for the Nansei Islands, which includes the Okinawa Islands. The primary location will be the Ground Self-Defense Force's 4,900-hectare Hijudai maneuver site in Oita Prefecture, according to the sources. (Japan Times)

A 19-year-old U.S. Marine has been arrested on suspicion of stealing and a 33-year-old U.S. airman for an alleged traffic violation in separate cases in Okinawa Prefecture, the police said Sunday. The Okinawa Prefectural Police arrested the lance corporal from the U.S. Marines' Makiminato Service Area in the city of Urasoe for allegedly stealing about ¥3,000 from a taxi in Ginowan at around 10:30 p.m. Saturday. (Japan Times)

Released in 2000 with much fanfare, the 2,000-yen ($23) bank note was quickly shunned by most people after its novelty value wore off. But not in Okinawa Prefecture. There, the people have been staging a campaign to save the beleaguered bill. Introduced to commemorate the 2000 Group of Eight summit, which was hosted in Kyushu and Okinawa, the bill has had a hard time establishing itself in the wallets of Japanese consumers. It currently accounts for only 1 percent of all the bank notes in circulation, apparently due to its reputation as being less useful than other bills. Some vending machines still do not accept 2,000-yen notes. In Okinawa Prefecture, however, it is regarded as a symbol of local pride, and its popularity is stronger than ever. An image of Shureimon, the main gate of Shuri Castle in Naha is printed on the bill. (Asahi)

Japanese police arrested a U.S. Marine for the alleged sexual assault of a woman on the island of Okinawa, where similar incidents in the past have led to protests against the American military presence. Marine Sergeant Phillip Edward Sawyerr, 28, was taken into custody in the capital of Naha early this morning on suspicion of breaking into the house of a woman in her 20s and sexually assaulting her, police spokesman Motoki Haneji said by phone. The U.S. serviceman has denied the charges, Haneji said. (Bloomberg)

Ensuring steady progress in the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station will be essential to minimizing any delay in the planned transfer of marines from Okinawa Prefecture to Guam. The U.S. Defense Department recently revealed that the transfer of about 8,000 marines to Guam originally scheduled to be completed in 2014 likely will be delayed by up to six years. (Yomiuri)

Prime Minister Naoto Kan, faced with strong opposition in Okinawa, hinted Monday it will be months before he finalizes a plan for relocating the Futenma air base. During his first full Diet debate since taking office in June, Kan said relocating the U.S. base is one of the major issues facing his Cabinet. But he also said, "Including securing understanding from Okinawa, I recognize that several more processes will be needed," suggesting that a comprehensive plan for the relocation won't be worked out before the Okinawa gubernatorial election Nov. 28. (Japan Times)

Crown Prince Naruhito offered flowers Tuesday at the national cemetery for people who died in the Battle of Okinawa in the city of Itoman. On the first day of a three-day visit to Okinawa, the Crown Prince also visited the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum, where he viewed an exhibition on the war and the prefecture's reversion campaign afterward. (Japan Times)

Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Tuesday met with key ministers on the issue of relocating a U.S. military base within Okinawa Prefecture, the first such meeting since he took office in June. The discussion with ministers including Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada and Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa comes as sources say the government will delay finalizing details of the relocation plan in consideration of strong protests in Okinawa against keeping the base. (AP)

Washington has given up on moving 8,000 U.S. Marines to the U.S. territory of Guam from Japan by 2014, media said on Friday, a potential blow to Prime Minister Naoto Kan who is already struggling over a U.S. base dispute. The planned transfer of Marines from the southern island of Okinawa is a part of a larger agreement between Washington and Tokyo that includes relocating functions of the U.S. Futenma airbase in Okinawa to a less crowded area on the island. (Reuters)

Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said Friday that he and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton State Hillary Clinton agreed in their meeting that it is important to gain the support of the people of Okinawa for the relocation of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma within the prefecture. Okada added that he and Clinton also agreed that an expert study on details of the plan to relocate the base will be held as scheduled by late August. (Japan Times)

The Defense Ministry is considering dispatching the Ground Self-Defense Force's border security and coastal monitoring units to some islands in southwestern Okinawa Prefecture in about five to eight years in response to factors such as activities in the area by Chinese naval vessels, senior ministry officials said Monday. The ministry is eyeing reinforcing surveillance around Japan's western border as the Self-Defense Forces is only sparsely dispatched in areas to the west of Okinawa's main island, but the move is likely to draw protests from China and Taiwan as the units would be placed close to islands disputed by the three sides. (AP)

For a brief moment, Naoto Kan looked like the anchor who could end Japan's drift. Where his predecessor, Yukio Hatoyama, was a patrician dogged by corruption scandals and perceived as incapable of leading his own government, Kan came into the premiership stressing his own middle-class background. He pledged to recommit the governing Democratic Party of Japan to its ambitious agenda: reversing the country's long decline by reforming its bureaucracy and social safety net while jump-starting the economy. Moreover, his commitment to replace an aging U.S. air base on Okinawa signaled a possible end to a dispute that had soured relations with Washington and led to Hatoyama's resignation. (NewsWeek)

Japan's All Nippon Airways announced it Friday it will become the first airline in the world to offer draft beer in-flight beginning Tuesday. The airline said the draft beer will cost about $11.30 per glass and 20 cups will be available on each domestic flight, except Tokyo to Okinawa flights, which will have 40 glasses, the Japan Probe reported Friday. Officials said the beer will be served using keg technology designed to compensate for air pressure problems that previously made draft beer problematic on flights. (UPI)

More than 900 unexploded munitions from World War II have been found beneath a restaurant in Okinawa, police said Thursday. Construction workers on a road expansion project detected the explosives with a metal detector and notified police Wednesday morning, Kiyotaka Maedomari, a senior police official in Itoman city, told AFP. An army bomb disposal squad discovered the total of 902 unexploded munitions -- including rocket bombs, grenades and motor projectiles -- believed to have been made in the United States, he said. (AFP)

Okinawa voters returned the prefecture's only Liberal Democratic Party Diet member, Aiko Shimajiri, to the Upper House in a contest closely watched by Tokyo and Washington for its connection with U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma. Campaigning under the slogan "Changing politics from the kitchen," the 45-year-old Shimajiri won Sunday with 258,946 votes, while her main challenger, Hiroji Yamashiro, 57, an independent supported by the Social Democratic Party, ended up with 215,690 votes. (Japan Times)

The star of the documentary "The Cove" about the annual dolphin hunt in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, says video footage showing a dolphin jumping out of an aquarium tank underlines the cruelty of captivity and that all of the creatures should be set free. The startling footage of the dolphin, a species known as the false killer whale, shows the animal suddenly leaping out of a tank during a July 4 marine show at Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in the northern part of the island. The footage was shot by an American tourist, who sent it to Ric O'Barry. (Japan Times)

The government is considering proposing that a single offshore runway be built at the proposed relocation site for a U.S. base in Okinawa Prefecture, as an alternative to the V-shaped pair of runways on reclaimed land Tokyo and Washington agreed to construct in a 2006 deal, according to sources. Some government officials believe, however, it will be difficult to win the United States' consent for the alternative plan by the end of August, the deadline set under a Japan-U.S. joint statement in May for completion of a study on the location of the runway and the construction method. (Yomiuri)

A change in leadership in Japan passes almost un-noticed these days, but the ascension of Naoto Kan to the role of prime minister could have a long-lasting impact on the strategic landscape. Kan is the fifth Japanese prime minister in four years. He takes over from Yukio Hatoyama, who resigned after botching the sensitive issue of the relocation of the U.S. military base in Okinawa. Kan, a much wilier politician, will not revisit that particular tar baby of an issue. His pragmatism has already boosted support for the Democratic Party of Japan, which had plummeted thanks to Hatoyama's Hamlet-like indecision. (NewsWeek)

About 57 percent of homeless people expressed a desire to vote in an election, according to results of a survey conducted by supporters released Wednesday. A group promoting exchanges among supporters of the homeless in Kagoshima Prefecture took the initiative in conducting the survey at parks, Internet cafes and other places in Tokyo and Kanagawa, Kyoto, Fukuoka, Kagoshima and Okinawa prefectures between late June and earlier this month, ahead of Sunday's House of Councilors poll. (Japan Times)