Japan inn operator admits telling staff not to change hot-spring bathwater

Two men died on July 11 in separate water accidents in Aichi and Gifu prefectures, including an Indonesian man who apparently drowned after jumping into a waterfall basin and a fisherman swept away while trying to recover his fishing gear.

An unauthorized Islamic prayer hall has been built on land in Kawagoe, Saitama Prefecture, where new construction is generally prohibited, prompting the city to order the landowner to remove the structure.

Three men have been arrested on suspicion of preparing to rob a home in Saitama City after police found new face masks and crowbars hidden in shrubbery at a coin-operated parking lot.

Empress Masako harvested wild silk cocoons at the Imperial Palace on July 9, continuing the long-standing sericulture tradition passed down through generations of empresses since the Meiji era.

A firefighter with the Toyonaka City Fire Department has been arrested on suspicion of confining his live-in partner's 6-year-old daughter at their home and causing her injury.

A 30-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after allegedly stabbing his father, a temple priest in his 70s, to death at their home in Nanao, Ishikawa Prefecture, on July 8, before going to a convenience store and telling a clerk, "I stabbed my father."

A 49-year-old woman in Koga, Ibaraki Prefecture, has been arrested on suspicion of injuring a 42-year-old woman she lived with by sewing her upper and lower lips together multiple times with a threaded needle, police said.

A landslide that occurred directly in front of homes in Koka, Shiga Prefecture, on July 7 caused part of a garden to collapse and cut off a road, bringing down an area about 25 meters wide and 80 meters long, including residential property.