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80 percent of universities in Japan plan to hold both in-person and online lessons

Sep 16, 2020 (Japan Times) - About 80 percent of universities and junior colleges plan to conduct both in-person and online lessons in the second semester of fiscal 2020 beginning this autumn, an education ministry survey showed Tuesday.

In light of coronavirus infection risks, only around 20 percent of surveyed schools said that all lessons will be done face-to-face.

Of the surveyed 1,003 public and private universities and junior colleges, 824 said that they will offer lessons both in-person and online, while 173 said they will conduct all lessons face-to-face as usual. A public institution said that it will have all of its courses online.

Schools planning to implement both types of lessons were asked about the proportion of in-person lessons, and the most common answers were 30 percent and 50 percent, cited by 207 schools each, followed by 80 percent or more, 20 percent or less and 70 percent.

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Hiroko Saito was 19 years old when she left Japan for North Korea in June 1961 with her Korean husband and their one-year-old daughter, persuaded by assurances that they were heading to a "paradise on earth" and that she could return to Japan after three years. Instead, she would spend four decades in North Korea, enduring chronic hunger, the deaths of her husband and children and a desperate struggle to survive before finally escaping and returning home in 2001.

Transport disruption caused by Typhoon No. 15 was easing across eastern Japan on the morning of August 12, with most major railway and airline services returning to normal after dozens of flight cancellations and widespread rail disruption during the storm's landfall in Ibaraki Prefecture the previous evening.

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The Tokaido Shinkansen operated its first overnight service ahead of the Obon holiday period, offering travelers a 15,000 yen trip from the Tokyo area to Kyoto and Shin-Osaka while allowing them to save on hotel costs and arrive earlier than the first regular morning trains.

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