Students’ extracurricular sports activities sometimes require large amounts of time and energy from parents and guardians, too. Duties include communicating with other adults via social media, distributing beverages, and taking photographs. Some sports teams unconnected with schools are targeting the exhausted-parent market by doing these tasks for a fee.

The coronavirus pandemic has worsened already high rates of loneliness in Japan, especially among those in their 20s and 30s. Previously, people were already becoming increasingly isolated, with more living alone and fewer interactions outside the home, and since COVID struck, social occasions like parties and travel have declined.

After almost 150 years, the age when Japanese citizens are deemed adults will drop from 20 to 18, as it is in most developed nations. Young people will have more rights as well as responsibilities, but will still have to wait until they turn 20 to drink, smoke, and gamble.

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Fatal accidents caused by drivers aged 75 or over, of which there were hundreds in 2020, are in the spotlight. Many are surrendering their drivers’ licenses, testing will become stricter, and new cars are required to have automatic braking. However, a major challenge is that rural areas lack other transportation options.

The pandemic has caused many, especially young people and women, to consider escaping cramped, overpriced, and overworked lifestyles in greater Tokyo and moving to rural areas. The government supports this trend, which it hopes will help close Japan’s urban-rural population and income divide.

Two death row inmates are suing the Japanese government over same-day notifications of executions. Retaining capital punishment makes Japan, like the US, an outlier among developed nations, and the practice of not informing prisoners until the day of their hanging has been a particular target of criticism.

More schools in Japan are letting female students choose either uniforms with a skirt or with pants, while proposals for unisex uniforms are also being considered. Increased options are seen as having practical benefits, as well as accommodating non-gender-conforming students or those with body image issues.

In two cases, in 2017 and 2019, an engineer and a salesperson at top automaker Toyota took their own lives due to on-the-job pressure including so-called “power harassment” by superiors. The company’s failure to rein in abusive bosses points to wider issues with Japan’s workplace culture.

A government source said on Wednesday that Princess Mako and her boyfriend Kei Komuro plan to have a low-key wedding by the end of the year. She will likely decline a lump-sum payment that is usually given to royal women upon their departure from the household.

Japan’s Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that laws requiring married couples to have the same family name does not violate the Constitution, dismissing a challenge by three couples who wanted to keep their original names.

A driver of a bullet train temporarily left the cockpit to use the bathroom on Sunday while the train was running with about 160 passengers on board. He asked a conductor, who didn’t have a driver’s license, to man the train in his absence.