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Japan Today
an hour ago
- General
- Japan Today
Does U.S. President Donald Trump deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?
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Japan Today
2 hours ago
- Business
- Japan Today
New Zealand aims to double foreign international education market by 2034
By Lucy Craymer New Zealand's government on Monday released a plan aimed at doubling its international education market to NZ$7.2 billion ($4.32 billion) by 2034, which includes relaxing rules around international students working part-time while studying. Education Minister Erica Stanford said in a statement that with international student enrollments steadily increasing since 2023, the government wants to 'supercharge that growth track.' 'In the short term, Education New Zealand will focus its promotional efforts on markets with the highest potential for growth,' she added. New Zealand's international education market is currently worth NZ$3.6 billion to the economy and the government would like to double that over the next decade and wants to see international student enrollments grow from 83,700 in 2024 to 105,000 in 2027 and 119,000 by 2034. This comes as countries including Australia look to reduce foreign students due to the impact on house prices and the impact on the university experience for domestic students. New Zealand said, to encourage more foreign students to come to New Zealand, it plans to increase the number of hours that eligible international students can work to 25 hours from 20 hours and extend which foreign students are allowed to work in New Zealand while studying in the country. © Thomson Reuters 2025.
Japan Today
2 hours ago
- Business
- Japan Today
King Charles to host Trump in September for state visit to Britain, palace says
FILE PHOTO: Britain's King Charles speaks with guests during a reception at St James's Palace to celebrate 25 years of the Royal Drawing School, in London, Britain, June 24, 2025. James Manning/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo By Andy Bruce Britain's King Charles will host U.S. President Donald Trump in September for his unprecedented second state visit to Britain, Buckingham Palace said on Monday. The visit will take place from September 17 to 19. "His Majesty the King will host the President and Mrs Trump at Windsor Castle," the palace said in a statement, adding that further details would be announced in due course. Trump said last month he had agreed to meet Charles after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer handed him a handwritten letter from the monarch in the Oval Office. The U.S. president will be the first elected political leader in modern times to be hosted for two state visits by a British monarch. The late Queen Elizabeth welcomed Trump to Buckingham Palace for a three-day state visit in June 2019 during his first term in office, during which he had a private lunch with the sovereign and had tea with Charles, who was then heir. Starmer and Trump are also due to meet in Scotland later this month, a source told Reuters last week, with details including the specific date yet to be finalised. The two leaders have developed a warm relationship in recent months, and last month signed a framework trade deal on the sidelines of a G7 meeting that formally lowered some U.S. tariffs on imports from Britain. In May, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney criticized Britain's invitation to Trump for a state visit, saying it undermined his government's effort to project a united front against the U.S. president's talk of annexing Canada. Trump's past visits to Britain have attracted large protests, with his 2018 trip costing police more than 14 million pounds ($18.88 million) as 10,000 officers were deployed from all over Britain. Most Britons have an unfavorable view of the president, according to opinion polls. State visits are usually pomp-laden affairs featuring an open-top carriage trip through central London and a banquet at Buckingham Palace. © Thomson Reuters 2025.
Japan Today
4 hours ago
- Business
- Japan Today
Restaurant payment app starts its second attempt to make tipping a thing in Japan
By Casey Baseel, SoraNews24 Many would say that along with delicious food and great service, no tipping is right up there among the best parts about restaurant dining in Japan. However, one cashless payment provider wants to play a role in changing that last part, and now includes a prompt encouraging customers to leave a tip. Tokyo-based Dinii actually has two different tipping systems, with the second being added this past May. It introduced its first take on tipping, called 'Oshi Support,' in 2020, but that works a little differently than the sort of tipping conventionally seen in American restaurants. Taking a cue from Japanese idol culture in which ardent fans support their favorite performer (oshi) through extra spending, Dinii's Oshi Support allows customers to look at a list of profiles for the restaurant's waitstaff and use it to select an extra payment to be given to the server of their choice. Dinii's new system, simply called 'tipping,' instead prompts users to select a percentage-based addition to their bill, which goes to the restaurant. ▼ Dinii's tip selection screen, with options ranging up to 25 percent Image: PR Times Dinii is usable at about 3,000 restaurants in Japan, and the company says that around 13 percent of those make use of the service's new tip payment option. Though tipping is largely recognized in Japan as originating in foreign dining cultures, Dinii says that its data shows a fairly even split between Japanese and non-Japanese users of its new tip function, based on user language settings, with an overall 56 percent Japanese/43 percent foreigner breakdown (though 61 percent of tippers in the Kansai area, around Osaka and Kyoto, are non-Japanese). That doesn't mean, though, that Japanese customers are as eager to start tipping as their overseas counterparts. Dinii's statistics about the tipper nationalities don't mean very much without comparing them to the nationalities of the service's total users. As a Japan-based service without much recognition internationally, it's likely a safe bet that the majority of Dinii's users are Japanese, and so roughly half of tippers being foreigners likely means that far less than 50 percent of the total number of Japanese users are leaving tips. As for the Oshi Support system, through which one waitress says she was given 70,000 yen in a single month, by co-opting fan jargon and working through perusable profiles, one could make the argument that it's actually closer to the parasocial transactions of host/hostess bars or online influencer donations, where the extra payment has less to do with skillful service and more a desire to support a presumed personal connection. There are a few other factors to also take into consideration regarding the decision to tip or not in Japan. First, many restaurants in Japan already include a tip substitute in the form of something called otoshi, a small appetizer that is served to customers without them ordering it and must be paid for. Otoshi portions are small and their ingredients usually inexpensive, and they're priced to boost the restaurant's profit margin a little extra beyond the food and drinks that customers actually order. It's also not unusual for bars and fancy restaurants in Japan to have a seating/table charge built into the bill. Finally, with tipping not being a common practice at restaurants in Japan, concepts such as the waitstaff pooling and splitting their tips, or a portion of the tips also going to the kitchen staff, may or may not be in place, depending on the establishment. It's also worth pointing out that part of the way Dinii presents its tip option runs counter to a belief in Japanese society. The text above the tip percentage options reads 'Let's show appreciation with a tip. A special thank you for special service.' To diners in Japan, though, good service isn't supposed to be 'special,' it's the norm, and something the restaurant should provide as a matter of course, so hopefully attempts to wedge tipping into dining out in Japan won't erode that part of its culture. Source: PR Times, Mainichi Shimbun via Yahoo! Japan News via Jin Read more stories from SoraNews24. -- All you need to know about Japan's unasked-for restaurant appetizers that you have to pay for -- Japanese restaurant chain installs tip boxes in response to foreign tourists leaving tips, sparks debate -- Tipping in Japan: Yes, It Exists and It's Confusing External Link © SoraNews24
Japan Today
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Japan Today
Irvine Welsh takes aim at 'brain atrophying' tech ahead of new 'Trainspotting' sequel
By Helen ROWE Scottish author Irvine Welsh on Friday described the new sequel to his cult novel "Trainspotting" as an antidote to a world full of "hate and poison", as he took aim at social media, the internet and AI. "Men in Love", the latest in a series of sequels, follows the same characters -- Renton, Spud, Sick Boy and Begbie -- as they experience the heyday of rave culture in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Welsh's novel was turned into the wildly successful 1996 hit film of the same name directed by Danny Boyle and starring Ewan McGregor. The black comedy drama featured a group of heroin addicts living in an economically-depressed part of Edinburgh. "We're living in a world that seems to be so full of hate and poison. Now it's time I kind of focus more on love as a kind of antidote to all that," Welsh said. Although his novel was published over 30 years ago, there were many parallels with the world today, he added. The 1980s demise of much heavy industry such as shipbuilding in the Leith area of Edinburgh heralded a new world for some "without paid work". "Now we're all in that position. We don't know how long we'll have paid work, if we do have it, because our economy, our society, is in just a long form revolutionary transformation," he told BBC radio. "It's a big, contentious, messy revolution. There's lots to play for, but there's some very dystopian tendencies within it," he added. Despite the problems faced by earlier generations, Welsh said he detected less optimism now. "I think we're just a bit more scared... I think we've got this existential threat on the horizon, basically, of species extinction... through kind of wars and diseases and famines and climate change and no economic means for younger people to make their way in the world as we had," he said. Welsh also took aim at artificial intelligence (AI), an internet appropriated by big corporations and a social media culture marred by "vitriolic pile-ons". He said the internet had stopped people from thinking and had created a "controlling environment" in which "we just take instruction". "We've got artificial intelligence on one side, and we've got a kind of natural stupidity on another side. We just become these dumbed down machines that are taking instruction. And when you get machines thinking for you, your brain just atrophies." He said he hoped that people's current addiction to mobile phones would be a phase that runs its course. "You look down the street and you see people with a phone stuck to their face. Hopefully, if we survive the next 50 years, that's going to look as strange on film as... people chain smoking cigarettes did back in the 80s," he added. "Men in Love" is due to be published by Penguin on July 24. © 2025 AFP
