Aero R/C Cars - What's Cool - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
Remote-controlled model cars are usually expensive toys that most kids can't afford to buy with just their pocket money. But a new remote-control car that is much cheaper than previous models is now on the market, and thanks to its affordable price tag it has become a big hit with car-loving kids and adults alike.

Baggy Socks - What's Cool in Japan - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
For three or four years now, baggy white knee socks pushed down to the ankles have been all the rage among Japanese junior- and senior-high-school girls. In Japan, where most junior- and senior-high-school students wear school uniforms, there isn't much leeway for fashion at school. One of the few ways a schoolgirl can add a touch of style to her uniform is by wearing baggy white knee socks instead of ordinary white socks.

Animal-print Fashion - What's Cool in Japan - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
The hot fashion these days is not clothes made of actual animal skin or fur, but skirts, sweaters, and scarves made of animal-print fabric. In Japan, animal prints were initially worn only by a few women who preferred head-turning, colorful designs. But over the past few years, as animal-print fashions have made their way into the Paris and Milan collections, a wider segment of Japanese women have come to view them as a winter clothing option.

Beetles - What's Cool in Japan - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
Japan's warm, humid summer nurtures a diverse cast of insects, including cicadas, dragonflies, butterflies, ladybugs, long-horned beetles, and the Japanese gold beetle. And many elementary and middle school students--mostly boys--devote a good part of their summer vacation to collecting these creatures. The bugs are popular subjects for summer homework and individual research projects. The two biggest favorites are the Japanese rhinoceros beetle and the stag beetle.

The Girl Who Trains Falcons - Kids in Action - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
This article introduces a Japanese girl with two unusual pets: a Harris' hawk ad a peregrine falcon. Misato thinks of the two birds as members of the family and spends a lot of her free time training them to scare away crows.

Bureau - Monthly News - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
Four members of Children's Express, an international children's wire service based in the United States, came to Japan in early December to invite Japanese children to join their reporting activities.

Survey - Monthly News - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
If you were a Japanese kid, what would you have done last weekend? Well, you probably would have spent some time playing games on your Sony PlayStation or Nintendo Game Boy. Maybe you would have watched some television, too. You might also have called your friends on your cell phone to get together and have some fun.

News - Monthly News - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
The first bureau in Asia of a worldwide, nonprofit media organization whose reporters and editors are school-age children opened in late January in Tokyo. The 34 correspondents at the Tokyo Bureau of Children's Express will report on important social issues, especially those affecting children and young adults.

Jobs - Monthly News - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
When Japanese kids from kindergarten to sixth-grade were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, baseball player came out as the boys' top choice, while cook or restaurant owner was ranked top among girls for the fourth straight year, according to a nationwide survey by Dai-ichi Mutual Life Insurance Co. Soccer player was the boys' second choice.

Volunteer - Monthly News - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
Recently, while the number of children in Japan has been steadily going down, the number of elderly people has been going up. Nowhere is this more keenly felt than in Shinagawa City, which lies on the east side of Tokyo. It has one of the fastest growing elderly populations in the world, and the city is having difficulty finding places for these seniors to live.

Fathers - Monthly News - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
What would you say if someone asked you to describe your father in one word? Would you answer with a word like "angry," "stubborn," or "strict"? These words might be the traditional image of a Japanese father, but according to a recent survey by Sumitomo Life Insurance Co., that image is changing.

DJs - Monthly News - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
Kids are running a popular new radio station in the Suginami Ward of Tokyo that started in April of this year. At 88.0 Megahertz on the FM dial, it is affectionately called Radio Pachi-Pachi (pachi means eight, and pachi-pachi is also the sound of clapping hands). If you're anywhere near the Zenpukuji-Kita Children's Center, you can hear its regular two-hour broadcast from 10 a.m. to noon on the second Saturday of every month.

Aiko - Monthly News - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
On December 1, 2001, Crown Princess Masako gave birth to a baby girl. The baby weighed 3,102 grams and was 49.6 centimeters long at birth. At the traditional naming ceremony on the seventh day of her life, the girl was given the name Aiko and the personal title Toshi no Miya, Princess Aiko. "Ai" means love, "ko" means child and is often used as the last character in girl's names, and "toshi" means respect. She is the Crown Prince and Princess's long-awaited first child, born eight years after they got married in 1993, and is Emperor Akihito's third grandchild.

Barrier Free - Monthly News - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
In May, the month before the World Cup, kids from Kobe City's Nagata Junior High School went and used the bathrooms in train stations in and around Kobe - taking along wheelchairs and notebooks. That's because they were on a mission to find out how "barrier-free" the stations are.

Beads - Monthly News - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
Being stuck inside when you're sick can be pretty boring, so many of us turn on computer games and TV to pass the time. Not eight-year-old Shintaro, though. When he was sick at home one day last year, he found some beads to play with. This sparked his interest, so Shintaro borrowed some books about beadwork (jewelry and artwork using beads) from the library to learn more. Soon he was using his free-time making works of art with the beads, something that his mom wasn't too happy about at first.

Seal - Monthly News - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
In August 2002 an unusual visitor swam up the Tama River that flows between Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefectures: a seal. The seal was seen swimming in the river and sunbathing on the concrete banks. Named after the river, "Tama-chan" became a national celebrity, attracting large crowds to the river. Experts said Tama-chan probably got lost, since he is of a type that usually lives in the Arctic Ocean.

Pants - Monthly News - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
Girls play with dolls and boys play with cars. Girls wear red and boys wear blue. Girls wear skirts and boys wear pants. In the past, when women and men stuck to clearly separate roles in society, these patterns were considered normal. But as more and more women work outside the home, stereotypes like these have begun to fade.

Firefighters - Monthly News - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
Fire! You call 119 (the emergency number in Japan), and firefighters from your local fire station rush to the spot within minutes. This is what usually happens. But what if you live in a town with no fire stations of its own? In small towns like Minami-Izu, which is 150 kilometers southwest of Tokyo on the southern tip of the Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka Prefecture, community fire brigades made up of male citizens come to the rescue.

Words - Monthly News - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
The Shingo Ryukogo Taisho (New and Fashionable Phrases Awards) were announced in December 2003, and the top ten words and phrases representing the trends of the year 2003 were named. Furthermore, every year a number of words and phrases that enjoyed particularly widespread currency are selected from among the top ten as winners of the annual grand prize. There were three winners this year: "nande daro," "doku manju," and "manifesto."

Braille - Monthly News - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
Terumi, an illustrated magazine that can be enjoyed by touching the raised shapes, recently celebrated its twenty-first anniversary. Published every two months by the Foundation for the Advancement of Juvenile Education in Japan, it has been cherished by generations of visually impaired children as a rare source of knowledge about the shapes of things. The pictures and Braille writing are raised from the surface of the paper by printing them with a special kind of ink that puffs up when heated.