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The Japan Times reported that most world leaders chose to fly to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, but Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg made headlines for deciding to sail instead.

This has prompted a gathering of tourism executives to ponder how to address the fact that flying adds to the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming. According to data cited by the Air Transport Action Group, in 2019, commercial flying accounted for about 2 percent of global carbon emissions and about 12 percent of transport emissions. By 2020, emissions from global international aviation are projected to be about 70 percent higher than in 2005 due to rising travel demand.

The 2019 Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded to three scientists who played a large role in developing lithium-ion batteries: Stanley Whittingham of the U.K., American John Goodenough (at 97, the oldest Nobel laureate ever), and Japan’s Akira Yoshino. Whittingham created the first functional lithium-ion battery in the 1970s, then Goodenough increased its capacity two-fold over the next 10 years. Finally, Yoshino removed the pure lithium, making it much safer to use.

Lithium-ion batteries are indispensable in today’s world, used in everything from cellphones to cordless power tools to electric cars. Rechargeable and able to store large amounts of energy, they have revolutionized electronics. As the Nobel Committee put it, "...this year’s chemistry laureates have laid the foundation of a wireless, fossil fuel-free society."

Car rental companies in Japan have figured out why some customers are returning their vehicles with barely a mile on the clock. Rather than travel from point A to B, as many as one in eight “drivers” are using their rental cars to take a nap, catch up on work or even brush up their language skills, according to industry surveys.

The unusual habits came to light after Orix Auto found a number of its 230,000 registered users were not driving their rented vehicles. Other rental firms noticed similar anomalies in their customers’ mileage records and approached them hoping to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Today, more than a quarter of Japan's population is aged over 65. This is set to increase to 40% by 2055. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has warned that Japan will need to add one million nurses and care workers by 2025 to cope with this demographic change.

Encouraging immigration may seem like a simple solution—but it's not a popular one. Japan is still one of the most ethnically homogeneous countries in the world, with foreigners making up less than 2% of the population. Opening up Japan to large-scale immigration is a very sensitive subject.

Human-built machines immortalize human problems, as we are discovering more and more. Voice recognition software isn’t good at identifying higher-pitched (i.e., predominantly women’s) voices. Facial recognition software is far superior at identifying white men’s faces than literally anyone else’s. Motion sensors often seem to be unable to detect dark skin, a problem that seems to also infect some wearable health monitors.

Perhaps the most famous example of this is when Amazon wrote AI software to sort through resumes to identify top applicants. Because of how Amazon had recruited and hired over the previous ten years—the base dataset that the AI used to train itself—the software penalized any mention of “women’s” and disregarded candidates from women’s colleges. It was basing its definition of an optimal candidate on human hiring decisions, and since tech is so dominated by men, that definition assumed the optimal candidate would be as well.

The 11th-century Japanese writer Sei Shōnagon’s Pillow Book was written using kana, a Japanese script mainly used by women for nearly a millennium to write literature, arrange secret assignations and express themselves freely within the confines of court life. Women in medieval Japan were discouraged from studying kanji, so they began using kana instead, which transcribe words phonetically. 

A standardisation programme at the beginning of the 20th century saw 90% of the 550 characters used in kana die out. But these forgotten characters are now being kept alive by the artist and master of Japanese calligraphy Kaoru Akagawa, who became fascinated with them after deciphering letters from her grandmother.

Japan is internationalising—and this process is rapidly accelerating. The driving force is demographic change. Japan’s population is ageing rapidly and shrinking. Add in other factors, including never-before-seen levels of foreign tourism, plus massive preparations for the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, and the result is a nation that desperately needs more workers to fill jobs. 

Japan has been aware of this approaching demographic crisis for decades, but because successive governments have been reluctant to take major steps, the problem has become more urgent. 

The California-based architects Virginia San Fratello and Ronald Rael have transformed a stretch of the border fence between Mexico and the U.S. into an international playground. The pair installed three hot pink seesaws between the slats of the fence where Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, abuts Sunland Park, New Mexico, allowing people on both sides of the increasingly militarized border to play together.

In an Instagram post, Rael said, “The wall became a literal fulcrum for U.S.-Mexico relations, and children and adults were connected in meaningful ways on both sides with the recognition that the actions that take place on one side have a direct consequence on the other side.” He added, “The joy that was shared this day on both sides is something that will stay with me forever.”

[See Ronald Rael's Instagram post here.] 

A social media campaign against dress codes and expectations that women wear high heels at work has gone viral in Japan, with thousands joining the #KuToo movement—a pun based on the Japanese words for shoe (kutsu) and pain (kutsuu). Nearly 20,000 women have signed the movement's online petition so far, demanding the government ban companies from requiring female employees to wear high heels on the job.

Yumi Ishikawa, a 32-year-old actress and freelance writer, launched the campaign after tweeting about being forced to wear high heels for a part-time job. “After work, everyone changes into sneakers or flats,” she wrote in the petition, adding that high heels can cause bunions, blisters and strain the lower back. “It’s hard to move, you can’t run and your feet hurt. All because of manners.”