Topics - Monthly News - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
Elementary school kids are talking a lot more about computer games and what they saw on TV than they did 10 years ago. This was one of the findings of a survey conducted in November 1997 by a think tank affiliated with NHK--Japan's public broadcasting network.

Video Games - Hi-tech - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
Nowadays most Japanese families with children own at least one video game console. But it was only about 20 years ago that video games started to become common. In this article, we will explore how computer games were born and popularized.

Small Pet Animals - What's Cool in Japan - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
Recently, more and more people are adopting small animals, which are relatively easy to care for, as pets. Particularly popular with kids are hamsters and ferrets.

Birthday Teddy - What's Cool in Japan - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
Like girls anywhere in the world, Japanese girls love chocolate. If a free prize is attached to the chocolate that captures their hearts, it's only natural that its popularity would go through the roof.

Pinkback Buttons - What's Cool in Japan - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
Recently a lot of kids at school and about town seem to be wearing pinback buttons. Some attach them to their bags or caps, others to their T-shirts, and some even wear them on their jeans. There is an amazing variety of designs, from simple text to manga (Japanese cartoon) characters, abstract pictures, and photos of themselves or their pets. Pins up to about 5 centimeters (2 inches) wide are available, but the most popular size is around 3 centimeters (1.2 inches).

Local Action Heroes - What's Cool in Japan - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
Action heroes that are active in a specific region are popping up across Japan. One example is the Suginami Sentai Irenja (Suginami Task Force Rangers) of Tokyo's Suginami Ward, the members of which are clad in red, blue, yellow, green, and pink suits. The mission of these heroes is to encourage people to conserve resources by using their own shopping bags instead of the plastic bags given out at supermarkets and convenience stores.

Sudoku - What's Cool in Japan - Archives - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan
People in Europe and the United States are going wild over a number puzzle called sudoku, which evolved into its present form in Japan. Sudoku's popularity in Japan was limited to a small group of devotees, but in the autumn of 2004 it suddenly burst onto the scene in puzzle-loving Britain. The sudoku boom has now spread all over the world.

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.

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.

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.