by admin | Jan 30, 2019
A minibus decorated with All Nippon Airways Co.’s signature blue and white logo motors across the tarmac at Tokyo’s Haneda airport. From the outside, it looks like an ordinary bus, with a person sitting in the driver’s seat — except no one is really operating the vehicle.
Reporters got a glimpse Tuesday of an autonomous airport bus experiment in progress. It is part of Japan’s first series of experiments on automatic vehicle-control systems designed to carry passengers within an airport’s restricted zone.
The project at Haneda is being developed by six companies, including ANA, NEC Corp. and Aichi Steel Corp.
The move to go autonomous comes at a time when Japan is grappling with a shrinking labor force amid rising tourist numbers from abroad.
As more flights are expected to arrive at and depart from Haneda in the coming years, the goal is to effectively and efficiently carry out operations for the ground crew, said Tadakatsu Yamaguchi, an ANA official.
Those tasks include moving passengers between aircraft and terminals as well as unloading and loading their luggage.
Read More…
by admin | Jan 30, 2019
A railway operator in northern Japan has launched an annual steam locomotive service in the eastern part of Hokkaido Prefecture.
Hokkaido Railway Company operates the steam locomotive, commonly referred to as the Winter Wetlands line, that makes one roundtrip journey every day between Kushiro and Shibecha Stations.
A departure ceremony was held at Kushiro Station on the season’s opening day on Saturday.
With the sound of a whistle, the 5-car locomotive, carrying 280 passengers, chugged away from Kushiro Station.
Travelers ate dried squid and fish snacks prepared on coal stoves in the train carriages.
After the train entered the marshlands, passengers got to view the snowy landscape, and took photographs of a pair of red-crowned cranes.
Read More…
by admin | Jan 30, 2019
Central Japan Railway Co. has said that its N700S bullet train model will go into service on the Tokaido Shinkansen in early July 2020, just before the start of the Tokyo Summer Olympics and Paralympics.
The railway operator plans to introduce a total of 40 N700S trains over three years to fiscal 2022, which ends in March 2023, with total investment estimated at ¥240 billion, according to the firm’s announcement on Friday. Each train will have 16 cars.
The new model, which is now undergoing test runs, is equipped with a lithium-ion battery system enabling it to travel a certain distance in case of power outages, the first such feature for a shinkansen. Power outlets for passengers will be available at every seat, and the model has more security cameras than the trains now in service
Read More…
by admin | Dec 11, 2018
The city of Sapporo observed its first snowfall of the season early Tuesday, on a date that matches the latest ever recorded, the Sapporo District Meteorological Observatory said.
The year 1890 was the last time Nov. 20 marked the season’s first snow in Sapporo, the largest city in Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido, the observatory said.This date is 23 days later than the first snowfall in an average year, and 28 days later than last year. The snow started to fall at around 12:50 a.m. Tuesday in Sapporo as cold air was above the city, it said.
Read More…
by admin | Dec 11, 2018
The Japanese city of Osaka will host the 2025 World Expo. The city won a 3-way race over 2 rounds of voting at the Bureau International des Expositions in Paris on Friday.
Delegates from 156 member nations cast ballots. Baku in Azerbaijan was eliminated in the 1st round. Osaka won the largest number of votes but fell short of the required two-thirds majority to win outright.In the runoff vote, Osaka won 92 against 61 for Russia’s Ekaterinburg.
The 2025 event will be the 2nd World Expo to be staged in Osaka. The previous one was in 1970.
Read More…
Foreign Embassies in Japan