In 2008, the manner posters of Tokyo Metro used the phrase pattern “Do it at ___.” The poster for April read Ie de yarō, “Do it at home.” Its subject was how passengers sit on the seats of a train.
In 2010, Tokyo Metro announced the next posters under the title “From ‘Do it at home’ to ‘Do it again.'”
The Japanese state designates important intangible cultural properties and certifies the individuals who hold them. These holders are commonly called ningen kokuhō, Living National Treasures. The state pays each of them a special grant of two million yen a year.
Suzuki Ichirō has declined the People’s Honor Award three times, in 2001, in 2004 and in 2019. In 2001, he said he hoped to receive it once his baseball career was over.
In 2019, after he retired, the government offered it again. He replied: Jinsei no maku o oroshita toki ni itadakeru yō hagemimasu. “I will work hard so that I may receive it when the curtain falls on my life.”
On October 8, 2012, Yamanaka Shin’ya of Kyoto University was named for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He said: Masa ni Nihon to iu kuni ga jushō shita shō da to kanjite imasu. “I feel that this is truly a prize that the country of Japan has won.”
From 2000 to 2005, NHK broadcast the documentary series Purojekuto X: Chōsenshatachi (Project X: The Challengers). Its main characters were unknown Japanese people. It told the hidden stories behind new products, social incidents and giant projects, as “a story of organizations and groups.”
In April 2024, NHK began a new series, Shin Purojekuto X.
Nō aru taka wa tsume o kakusu (能ある鷹は爪を隠す): the able hawk hides its claws. A truly capable person does not needlessly show off that ability.
Minoru hodo kōbe o tareru inaho kana (実るほど頭を垂れる稲穂かな): the more the rice ripens, the lower the ear bows its head. The deeper a person’s learning and virtue, the more modest that person should be.
Tsumaranai mono desu ga (つまらないものですが): it is a trifling thing, but. Said when giving a gift. A dictionary editor notes that tsumaranai here means “nothing special” and expresses humility, so the phrase is not rude.
The researcher Nakamura Shūji sued Nichia Corporation, the company where he had worked, for a fair reward for his invention of the blue light-emitting diode. On January 30, 2004, the Tokyo District Court valued the invention at 60.43 billion yen and ordered Nichia to pay 20 billion yen, the amount he had claimed for the time being.
In January 2005, the two sides settled. Nichia agreed to pay about 843.9 million yen.
The film Shin Gojira (Shin Godzilla) opened in Japan on July 29, 2016, and earned 8.25 billion yen. It won seven Japan Academy Film Prizes, more than any other film that year.
As the monster comes ashore, the government meets to decide how to respond. The debate over whether the Self-Defense Forces may be sent out, and whether doing so would violate the constitution, goes on and on.
In Japanese kitchens and workshops, newcomers are told waza o nusume, steal the skill. The expert does not walk the newcomer through the know-how step by step. He keeps working where the newcomer can watch, and expects the newcomer to master the skill over a long time. Cooks, craftsmen and technicians are among the trades that train this way. Sushi chefs say meshitaki sannen, nigiri hachinen: three years cooking rice, eight years shaping sushi.
In 2023, a debate on social media asked whether the method is outdated. A worker in the shipping industry wrote that those who say it do not teach because they have no theory of teaching.
Every year, Keidanren, the Japan Business Federation, asks its member companies what they value most when they hire new graduates. In the survey published in December 2017, komyunikēshon nōryoku, communication skill, came first. Keidanren called it the fifteenth year in a row, although its report a year earlier had counted thirteen years.