A driver of a bullet train temporarily left the cockpit to use the bathroom on Sunday while the train was running with about 160 passengers on board. He asked a conductor, who didn’t have a driver’s license, to man the train in his absence.

Tennis star Naomi Osaka expressed her rage over the recent racial attacks against Asian-Americans in the United States. They have become the targets of hate crimes since the start of the pandemic last year.

The Economist’s latest “glass-ceiling” index shows that Japan ranks second from the bottom among the world’s industrialized countries. As usual, Nordic countries including Sweden and Iceland take the top four spots.

Nearly half of all high schools in Tokyo ask students with hair that is wavy or not black to submit a document confirming that their hair is natural, according to the information the Japanese Communist Party obtained from the metropolitan board of education.