From Japan’s top broadcasters, this list covers all you need for the most reputable and up to date news about Japan. Most of these sites are the English translations of the most established Japanese newspapers such as The Asahi Shimbun, The Daily Yomiuri, NHK World and loads more.

 

Top 10 Sites For News About Japan

The Asahi Shimbun is a great place for news – one of my favourite places for daily updates – the recently redesigned site has multiple daily updates across a range of news topics. I like to follow the “Cool Japan” section.

http://ajw.asahi.com/

 

The Daily Yomiuri, although a tired looking site, is the English version of Yomiuri Online which has some of the most breaking and?in-depth news about Japan.

http://the-japan-news.com/

 

The Japan Times Online is amongst the best. It’s an all-round news site with a treasure of articles about entertainment, sports, business and national news. For someone living in Japan, it also has a really handy “life in Japan” section.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/

 

The Mainichi is good for bite-size news, as the updates are but snippets of the more detailed Japanese articles.

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/

 

The national weather authority of the Japanese government, the Japan Meteorological Agency is the only place you need for reliable weather, climate and earthquake information. I recommend it to anyone when we talk news and weather info.

http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/indexe.html

 

Japan Today is another top notch site for news about Japan. The “tech” and “crime” sections are always a good read.

http://www.japantoday.com/

 

Kyodo News, being the leading news agency in Japan, is probably the most comprehensive source of news about Japan in this list.

http://english.kyodonews.jp/

 

Japan Real Time from The Wall Street Journal is a blog style news site, with lots of good posts. They also publish a lot of Kyodo News articles – some, but not all.

http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/

 

News On Japan writes a few of their own articles, but mostly publishes syndicated news content. The thing is, they collect news about Japan from a wide range of sources, so this site can make for a bit of different reading.

http://newsonjapan.com/

 

NHK World was born as NHK radio, which started in 1935 with English and Japanese broadcasts. It’s now includes:

• NHK World TV, an English-language TV station available in over 130 countries. It shows news about Japan and other specialty programming about Japan.
• NHK World Premium is a Japanese-language TV service available in some countries.
• NHK World Radio Japan now broadcasts in 18 languages and is heard all around the world.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/index.html – Grab the news podcast or listen online.

Watch an online stream of NHK World at jibtv.com – http://www.jibtv.com/onair/oa_about.html?n=0. Check the schedule for NHK Newsline.