How an Iran-Egypt Pride match threw the World Cup into disarray
Fifa looks set to face its first major scandal of the 2026 World Cup – if you don’t count the…
Fifa’s great World Cup rip-off has gone too far
Today’s World Cup draw in Washington, presided over by Fifa president Gianni Infantino with best buddie president Donald Trump at…
‘Monster parents’ are terrorising Japan
If you want to make a Japanese high school teacher break out in a cold sweat and suffer heart palpitations,…
Scotland’s win showed the beauty of international football
Scotland have qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 28 years. I can hardly believe that I…
Is the British Council worth saving?
The British Council, the cultural arm of the UK government, is in deep trouble. The 91-year-old organisation is struggling to…
Is Japan’s new PM the Thatcher to Trump’s Reagan?
‘My wonderful ally and friend’ is how Japan’s brand new, and first female, prime minister Sanae Takaichi described President Trump…
How sumo wrestling bounced back
Sumo is the featured attraction at the Royal Albert Hall this weekend in a rare foray for the ancient sport…
Japan has a bear problem
In a scenario out of a horror film, or Werner Herzog documentary perhaps, Japan is experiencing a spate of bear…
Why Japan doesn’t care about having its first female leader
Japan is to have a female prime minister. Well, probably. Sanae Takaichi, the 64-year-old conservative veteran, has at the third…
Japan’s Asahi cyber attack is a national embarrassment
Could Japan be about to run out of beer? Or at least of one of its favourite brands Asahi, whose…
Who will succeed Shigeru Ishiba?
Here we go again. In what appears now to be an annual event, the Japanese prime minister has resigned. In…
Is the British Council really a ‘nest of espionage’?
I worked for nearly a decade at the British Council in East Asia. Every day, under the guise of teaching…
Man Utd vs Grimsby is what football should be about
Poor old Ruben Amorim. The sight of the hapless Manchester United manager cowering in the Blundell Park dugout seemingly praying…
What J.K. Rowling misses about Sturgeon’s memoir
When someone one day writes a true history of Scotland during the baleful tenure of Nicola Sturgeon and reflects on…
What Marcus Rashford gets right – and wrong – about United
Marcus Rashford, formerly of Manchester United, now of Barcelona, has opened up about his time at Old Trafford in a podcast interview…
Could Britain learn from Japan’s ‘vigilante’ groups?
A uniformed group of volunteers is planning to patrol the mean streets of Bournemouth in response to a recent surge…
Women’s football is better without the politics
England did two remarkable things in Basel last night: winning an international title overseas and doing it by that most…
The US trade deal may come too late for Japan’s prime minister
Relief. That was the overriding emotion in the Japanese financial markets and society at large today when, after months of…
Japan’s prime minister is on borrowed time
‘It is a difficult situation and we have to take it very humbly and seriously’. This was the typically understated…
Could Japan soon be governed by chatbots?
Tokyo Could Japan be the world’s first -algocracy – government by algorithm? The concept has been flirted with elsewhere: in…
Japan is running out of time to save itself from Trump’s tariffs
‘This is a serious situation for Japan’. That was the verdict of the business editor on NHK’s morning news programme…
In defence of Wimbledon’s AI line judge
Does anything work in Broken Britain? You’d be forgiven for wondering when even during our most prestigious sporting tournaments the…
Nissan’s future looks bleak
Nissan has announced that hundreds of jobs will be cut at its Sunderland plant. The Japanese auto-maker said the lay-offs…
Where have all the Japanese tourists gone?
Is the Japanese tourist, for so long in good numbers a welcome and reliable fixture at our most famous tourist…
Why the Japanese don’t believe Fukushima is safe
Soil samples from Fukushima, the prefecture where Japan’s Dai-Ichi Nuclear reactor exploded in 2011 sending plumes of radioactive material into…
