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  • Humanoid robots to become baggage handlers in Japan airport experiment

    Japan Airlines will introduce the robots for trial run at a Tokyo airport amid country’s surge in inbound tourism and worsening labour shortages Japan’s famously conscientious but overburdened baggage handlers will soon be joined by extra staff at Tokyo’s Haneda airport – although their new colleagues will need to take regular recharging breaks. Japan Airlines…

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  • Sony collars Snoopy in £340m deal to take control of Peanuts franchise

    Japanese conglomerate raises its stake in the firm that owns the intellectual property Charles Schulz created to 80% Business live – latest updates Sony has taken control of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts franchise including Snoopy and Charlie Brown in a deal worth C$630m (£340m). The Japanese conglomerate has bought 41% of Peanuts Holdings, which owns the…

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  • ‘It made my day more meaningful’: the Japanese gen Zers attempting a two-hour limit on smartphone use

    Authorities in Japan are taking action against excessive phone time – but what is it like to restrict scrolling to 120 minutes a day? Despite working full-time for a company in Tokyo, Shoki Moriyama manages to eke out eight hours a day to devote to his smartphone. “I need my phone to navigate my way…

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  • Author Rie Qudan: Why I used ChatGPT to write my prize-winning novel

    Sympathy Tower Tokyo attracted controversy for being partly written using AI. Does its author think the technology could write a better novel than a human? “I don’t feel particularly unhappy about my work being used to train AI,” says Japanese novelist Rie Qudan. “Even if it is copied, I feel confident there’s a part of…

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