Tokyo - Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will try to resolve a key territorial dispute, the top government spokesman said Thursday.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said he hoped the next week's meeting would serve as "an important catalyst" to resolving the longstanding dispute over four islands.

Although the Russian president recognizes the difficulty over resolving the dispute, Japan welcomes his intention to resolve the issue over the Kuril Islands, Machimura said.

"We hope to advance mutual efforts to find some common ground by using our wisdom while President Medvedev is in office, and the Fukuda Cabinet will also do its best to work on it," he said at a press conference.

Washington - A pair of climbers from Lafayette, California, in the United States and Hidaka in Japan have climbed the 3,000-foot vertical face of El Capitan peak in record time, beating a record s

Tokyo - Another smokers' paradise in Asia is disappearing as Japanese smokers face ever more restrictions in the nation's effort to join the global anti-smoking campaign. 

Tokyo - Tokyo stock

Singapore- Champion eaters from the United States and Japan will take on a Singaporean gobbler during a food festival, organizers said Wednesday.
Joey Chestnut, the 24-year-old top-rated Major League Eating competitor, is the ranking champion. He beat rival Takeru Kobayashi, 30, at an annual hotdog-consuming competition in the US, ending Kobayashi's six-year reign.
Eating competitions are rare in the city-state, where a 20-year-old man died in 1989 after choking while participating in a moon cake eating contest.
Major League Eating is a US sports franchise that oversees professional competitive eating events.

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Bank of Japan (BOJ) has signed a bilateral swap arrangement (BSA) on Monday. The BSA was signed by BOJ governor Masaaki Shirakawa and RBI governor Yaga Venugopal Reddy in Basel, Switzerland. It will pave a way for swapping local currencies against the US dollar for up to $3 billion. The agreement will also sort out problem of short-term liquidity and strengthen existing international financial arrangements

The agreement was come into effect on Sunday (June 29). Both Japan and India can now swap Yen and rupee against the US dollar up to $3 billion. They will hold biannual consultations on economic and financial conditions of each country with the BSA in effect.