Underwater drones are being developed by the Japanese government to patrol the waters around the Senkaku Islands off the shores of Kyushu while film director Kazuki Omori passed away. Known for writing and directing Godzilla vs. Biollante, 1989, and Godzilla vs. King Ghidrah, 1991, he began by adapting books by Haruki Murakami as well as writing his first film reflecting on his experiences studying at medical school.

The former village Kanbara in Gunma prefecture, originally buried by the volcanic eruption of Mount Asama in 1783, was shown to the public over the weekend. The Tenmei eruption not only devastated the village but also remodeling the local landscape which has come to be known as the Pompeii of Japan. Meanwhile the Japanese Emperor and Empress on tour in Hyogo prefecture visited one of the world's fastest supercomputers, Fugaku, currently being used to study AI in the field of life science, predict weather patterns and embrace quantum computing.

Monday’s note reported on two pythons on the loose in Tochigi and “Documentary Dream Show” being screened at K’s Cinema in Shinjuku, while Wednesday’s note pictured inbound tourism, a lunar eclipse, and the first catch of winter snow crab this year. Today, however, looks at Sakumaseika, the 114 year-old confectioner known for its sweets in the Studio Ghibli film Grave of the Fireflies, which closes its doors next January. And two exhibitions — “Voix” by Gozo Yoshimasu at Take Ninagawa and “Copper Age 1978-2022” by Shinro Ohtake at Ginza Atrium, GinzaSIX — both exploring drawing as wild and untamed in their own unique way.

Japan aims to have inbound tourism recover to pre-pandemic levels by 2025, bolstered by upcoming events such as the Expo 2025 in Osaka and the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo that same year. The weak yen is also helping the economy, while the US midterm elections will point at how Japan's currency will fare over the next few months as investors buying the dollar are now frantically buying back the yen. And with yesterday's rare lunar eclipse, the winter dish of crab is back on the menu. Fishing bans have been lifted in the waters surrounding Ishikawa and Fukui prefectures and the Snow Crab is now returning to tables across the country as winter draws in.

Two pet African ball pythons are currently on the loose after being abandoned by their owner and released into fields in Tochigi prefecture, north of Tokyo. In Tokyo, “Documentary Dream Show” (Yamagata in Tokyo 2022) at K’s Cinema in Shinjuku features 45 films from the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival held last year online. Yamagata is further north of Tochigi and home to Asia’s first international documentary film festival, the first of which celebrated the 100th anniversary of Yamagata city in 1989. Since then, the festival has been held biannually during the month of October.

Seen next to Monday’s note on the 178 people all named Hirokazu Tanaka and Wednesday’s note on N.E.U.U., a new games centre in the shadow of Shinjuku's old Odakyu Department store, as well as the screening of Tsai Ming-liang’s 2003 film Goodbye Dragon Inn in 4K, today's news of yet more rockets fired from North Korea are a world away as Tokyo seeks to make itself a unique cultural center that stands apart from other global centers. Art Week Tokyo involves 51 galleries, museums, and experimental art spaces opening their doors to visitors over 4 days. One such venue is MOMAT, the National Museum of Modern Art in Takeshiba, now in its 50th year, hosting the retrospective of Japanese artist Shinro Ohtake.

XR, or Cross Reality, a new digital tool combining elements of virtual reality and actual reality, has been unveiled by the Odakyu Corporation in Shinjuku to showcase its redevelopment of the area and the old Odakyu department store on the west side of Shinjuku Station. Elsewhere, the 35th Tokyo International Film Festival draws to a close. Tsai Ming-liang’s 2003 film Goodbye Dragon Inn showing as part of the World Focus section, reflects the state of contemporary cinema as well as the present day, while other films such as World War III (2020) by the Iranian director Houman Seyedi and Eli, Eli, Lema Sabachthani? (2006) directed by Shinji Aoyama hold a strange mirror to the world.

On the eve of Hallowe'en, a world record breaking attempt took place last weekend to gather the most number of people with the same name. All named 'Hirokazu Tanaka' the group even boasts former pro baseball player ... Hirokazu Tanaka ... amongst its ranks. On the other side of the city, national museums line Ueno Park, the first public park in Japan. One of these is the National Museum of Western Art, designed by French architect Le Corbusier. It recently reopened after several years of renovations restoring the museum to its former glory. Ueno Park is also dominated by the arrival of two new panda to Ueno Zoo, while celebrating 50 years since the first Chinese panda came to Japan.

Seen in the context of recent events — from Monday’s note on the 35th Tokyo International Film Festival and an upcoming new animated shorts festival at Shibuya’s Eurospace, to Wednesday’s note on a 400 year-old chisel recovered from within part of Daitoku-ji Temple, Kyoto — the purchase of five wooden "Brillo's Box" sculptures by Andy Warhol by Tottori prefecture for almost ¥300 million, bought in preparation for the new Tottori Prefecture Museum of Art opening next year, is causing something of a stir. Meanwhile, Damian Loeb "Still" at Taka Ishii Gallery and tomorrow's screening of "Event for Modified Man" (1976) by Australian artist Stelarc at the Keio University Art Center's Mita Campus in Tokyo both probe and amplify the best of what the city has to offer post-lockdown.

250 officials from more than 142 countries and regions, as well as eight international organizations, are gathering this week to announce their participation in the upcoming 2025 Osaka-Kansai Expo. And as Autumnal weather creeps in, fish from Yamato Raku in Shinjuku makes the experience of food like kaki (oyster) katsuo tataki (slices of raw seared bonito) age-ginnan (pan-fried ginnan seeds that grow from the ginkyo tree) and sanma-no-kama-meshi (a hot pot of rice and whole mackerel) all the more memorable.

A 400 year-old chisel has been found hidden within the Hoji building currently being renovated at Daitokuji Temple in Kyoto. This week also marks the start of the 35th Tokyo International Film Festival sharing its programme shared with “Kazuhiko Hasegawa and Director’s Company” and the 90th Anniversary of Toho Studios, both taking place at the National Film Archive of Japan, a festival of New Animated Short films from Japan around the world will be taking place at Shibuya’s Eurospace cinema from December 10th.

Seen in the context of recent events — from Monday’s note on growing financial hardship to Wednesday’s notes on the preservationist who plowed through a 600 year-old Japanese toilet with a 22 year-old car; the 100 Chinese Dragon gang members fighting in a French restaurant on the 58th floor; and the female boxer in film “Small, Slow But Steady” reflecting her faltered surroundings by shooting in 16mm film — Kyoto Experiment, Alternative Kyoto, and Art Collaboration Kyoto this October and November all combine local culture with technology and ask the difficult question; what can art contribute during periods of austerity?

A car driven by someone from the Kyoto Association for the Preservation of Ancient Cultures reversed into Japan’s oldest public bathroom or tosu, an important cultural property part of the Tofukuji Temple in Kyoto. And the day before, members of the Chinese Dragon gang were involved in a scuffle at a French restaurant on the 58th floor of a building in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro. The gang has ties to Japanese who remained in China following the end of World War II. Now the Chinese Dragon and its members continue living in limbo; gang-like but not gang-like enough, falling outside of Japan's anti-organized crime laws and considered a nuisance more than a criminal element. Directed by Sho Miyake and previewed in Berlin earlier this year, “Small, Slow But Steady” (or Keiko, me o su-masete), from 2022, loosely adapts the novel Makenaide (Don’t Give Up) by Keiko Ogasawara, the first hearing-impaired professional female boxer in Japan. A tale of resilience and self-sufficiency the film has also been shot on 16mm film breathing life into this character study that is also an intimate study of an independent boxing community, experiencing the pressures of corporate competition and the coronavirus pandemic.

With the number of corporate bankruptcies in Japan up by almost 7% from the previous year to just over 3,000 cases, the first increase in three years, the Toranomon-Azabudai Project in Tokyo reshapes the physical centre of corporate Japan to introduce green space, residential and shopping to the heart of the city. But how will it do all of this in a meaningful way? Time will tell, as the project is due to open next spring in March 2023.

Human remains have been discovered in hedgerow beside Osaka's popular amusement park Universal Studios Japan, while Thailand's AirAsia has carried out its first flight connecting Bangkok with Fukuoka as borders are relaxed and tourists welcomed into Kyushu, now a new major hub for tourists from South East Asia. Meanwhile, a new exhibition of little seen work by Dutch artist Daan van Golden (1936–2017) takes place in Tokyo. “Art is the opposite of Nature” at Misako & Rosen gallery presents the painting and photographs of "art finding" by van Golden, examples of his radical practice.

Military led authorities n Myanmar have sentenced the documentary film director Toru Kubota to 3 years for violating "communication laws", on top of a 10-year sentence he received the week before. In Japan, with the week yen and relaxed borders, explosive tourism is set to make its way into the country, while noppe stew makes use of left-over ingredients and vegetables, especially taro root, providing a hearty, economic alternative best eaten during the autumnal winter months.

Japan finally removed both its cap on daily arrivals and its ban on individual tourism yesterday, seeking to revive the country’s ailing tourist economy. Meanwhile, Tokyo’s newly restored Rikkyo Gakuin Exhibition Hall is open to the general public along other buildings on the Rikkyo University campus, such as the residence belonging to mystery novelist Edogawa Rampo and his storehouse of books next door which was transferred to the University in 2002 and designated a cultural asset of Tokyo's Toshima city in 2003.

Japan's Megumi Horikawa won the women's 63-kilogram division at the Judo World Championships in Uzbekistan on Sunday for her first world title, as Taylor Fritz held firm in a pair of tie-breaks Sunday to outlast tour rival and longtime friend Frances Tiafoe in a gripping all-American final at the Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships. And following the news that composer Toshi Ichiyanagi passed away last week, we look at several of the twelve films he soundtracked, from The World of Pulses Electronics and Living Organism (1962) to Farewell to the Summer Light (1968), Atman (1975) The Story of Big 1: Sadaharu Oh (1977) and the final film he was involved with Hokai-bito: Ina no Seigetsu (2011)

An anchor belonging to a Mongolian ship, part of a fleet attempting to invade Japan in 1281, was recovered from the sea floor off the coast of Nagasaki last week. Meanwhile the composer and pianist Toshi Ichiyanagi passed away aged 89. He was crucial part of the postwar Japanese avant-garde and worked in theatre and film with the likes of painter Jasper Johns, choreographer Merce Cunningham, Toshio Matsumoto and Yoko Ono to name but a few.

Yayoi Kusama's 'Pumpkin' from 1994 had been on a pier on the island of Naoshima jutting out to sea yet was washed away during a typhoon last summer. After being rescued by locals and repaired, the sculpture has now been unveiled and is back to its former glory. Nearby, the Okayama Arts Summit 2022: Do we dream under the same sky, curated by Rirkrit Tiravanija, also considers community and participation as the triennale returns after its last edition in 2019 chose technology and fiction as major themes. There has been nothing imaginary about the past 3 years and this edition of the Art Summit aims to slow things down, and does so until November 27th.

The Crown Prince Akishino attended the 31st Blue Planet Prize award ceremony in Tokyo awarded this year to the the Fourth King of Bhutan for his promotion of culture and collective happiness along with Professor Stephen Carpenter from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States for his 40-year study of lake ecosystems. In Ehime on Shikoku, the warm waters of the Uwakai Sea, part of Japan's Inland Sea, provide an amply supply of fresh fish. While Ehime's west-facing coastline also provides the right setting for Shikoku’s famed dish of udon. Regular crops of chestnuts and barley are raw ingredients used in making raw yomogi udon, mixing local yomogi (mugwort) grown in the Hijikawa river of Ozu city with udon noodles; tarai udon and ankake-yomogi udon; two Chinese inspired dishes topped with fresh seasonal vegetables.

North Korean fired a ballistic missile for the first time in 5 years, traveling over Aomori to the north of Japan and then landing in the Pacific, 4,500km away. Meanwhile, Japan's oldest hot spring Dogo Onsen Honkan in Matsuyama City, Ehime, is currently being renovated but is open for business. It has served as inspiration and a setting for the writer Natsume Soseki and a festival celebrating Matsuyama hot spring culture, DOGO ONSENART 2022 features the 'honkan' (or main building) as its centre piece, wrapped with an enlarged collage of the local landscape, local culture and local history by the local artist Shinro Ohtake.

Swedish researcher Svante Pääbo, based at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan since 2020, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for trying to extract DNA from 40,000-year-old bones, and unveiling the Neanderthal genome. Meanwhile, the National Film Archive of Japan in Tokyo will showcase films made by Kazuhiko Hasegawa and Directors Company, a little known of film production office that ran from 1982 to 1992 and produced Hasegawa's social satire The Man Who Stole the Sun (Taiyō o Nusunda Otoko) from 1979, starring the notorious Bunta Sagiwara as a police officer tracking down a terrorist and High School teacher — played by musician Kenji Sawada — building an atomic bomb to demand the Rolling Stones play Japan.

Kanji "Antonio" Inoki passed away last Saturday after being diagnosed with a heart decease several year ago. He came to be known for the unusual mixed martial arts contest with Muhammed Ali at the Nippon Budokan Hall in 1978, and later turned to politics, leveraging his influence in places such as Iraq and North Korea to negotiate the release of Japanese hostages and abductees. Yu Miri's own story is as a Zainichi writer of Korean and Japanese descent. Her latest book Tokyo Ueno Station won the fifth Berkeley Japan Prize last week at an award ceremony in California, and it tells the story of a worker from Fukushima looking for work in the run up to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and their later life as the 2020 Olympics Games are announced. Miri's champions the forgotten and disregarded in society, a tale that now resonates around the world.

China and Japan celebrated 50 years of diplomatic ties despite the recent strain over the Senkaku islands in the South China Sea and the issue of Taiwan. Meanwhile, Art Week Tokyo returns for its first full iteration following its soft launch last summer. The string of 50 of Tokyo's museums, galleries and art spaces are linked across 6 different routes throughout the city and the art week hopes to generate interest by introducing local artists to a more global audience and nurture the local scene by encouraging the conversation of art’s worth beyond its monetary value.