US, Japan endorse Okinawa base plan
US and Japanese defence chiefs on Friday renewed their support for a controversial plan to relocate an American base on Japan's Okinawa island, saying it was the most viable way forward. After holding talks at an Asia security summit in Singapore, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Japan's Defence Minister Toshimi Kitazawa issued a joint statement saying "the current relocation plan is the most operationally viable and politically sustainable way forward". Under the plan, agreed in 2006 after years of negotiations, the United States would move the flashpoint Futenma base out of a crowded urban area to an isolated stretch of coast elsewhere on Okinawa. (AFP)Visitors' footsteps mute famous 'singing' floor
A unique corridor of Yogenin, the Buddhist temple in Kyoto known for its links to Go, the eponymous heroine of an NHK period drama, is now on the verge of losing its well-known feature, chirping sounds similar to those of a small bird that are produced as a visitor moves through the corridor. The wood-floored corridor in the main hall of the temple in Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto, is called the "uguisu-bari no roka" (nightingale corridor). Since January, when the period drama depicting the vicissitudes of the life of Go (1573-1626), a niece of warlord Oda Nobunaga and wife of shogun Tokugawa Hidetada, started, the temple has been overrun with throngs of sightseers. (Yomiuri)
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