All public phones*1 in Toei Subway stations will be taken away by November 2028. The Toei Subway is a group of underground train lines in Tokyo, the capital of Japan. The Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation, the city office that runs these trains, announced the plan on September 29, 2026.
公衆電話
The phones belong to NTT East, a large Japanese phone company. NTT East asked the bureau to take them away.
People will be told before each phone is taken away. A notice*2 will be put on the phone at least two weeks before that day.
People who still need a public phone can look for one near them on the NTT East website. People with questions can call the NTT East public phone team at 0120-394047. The team answers calls on weekdays*3 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
*1 public phones: phones in places like stations and streets that anyone can pay to use
*2 notice: a paper with information that is put up for people to read
Okazaki, a city in Aichi Prefecture*1 in central Japan, is asking people not to touch mushrooms in its parks. The city's park office updated this warning on September 25, 2026.
Poisonous*2 mushrooms sometimes grow in the parks. Some of them look like mushrooms that people can eat. Others can make your skin red and sore if you only touch them.
The park office says people should not touch or eat any mushroom that they do not know. Parents should watch their children all the time and keep them away from mushrooms.
Anyone who feels sick after eating or touching a mushroom should see a doctor right away.
The city also asks people to call the park office at 0564-23-6093 when they find mushrooms in a park.
*1 Prefecture: One of the 47 large areas that Japan is divided into
*2 Poisonous: Able to make you very sick if you eat or touch it
The news comes from the Japan Meteorological Agency, the government office that watches the weather in Japan. The agency reports the first snow on 44 mountains across the country. On October 3, its list showed Asahidake as a mountain that had its first snow in the last four days.
The agency has also changed the way it checks for snow. Until the 2026 cold season*1, workers looked at the mountains with their own eyes. From the 2027 cold season, the agency uses calculated snow depth*2 to show how much snow is on each mountaintop.
Because the two ways are different, the agency says the new dates cannot simply be compared with the dates from earlier years.
*1 cold season: the part of the year when the weather is cold and snow falls
*2 calculated snow depth: how deep the snow is, worked out by a computer from weather information
Trains are not running on one part of the Uchibo Line, a train line in Japan. The trains stopped because of Typhoon*1 No. 25. The part with no trains is between Anegasaki Station and Kisarazu Station.
JR East, a big train company in Japan, gave this news on September 28, 2026. It came from the company's office for the Chiba area. The company said it will take at least about three months before trains can run there again.
Nagaura Station is between the two stations. JR East is thinking about running trains on the shorter part between Nagaura Station and Kisarazu Station. These trains would go back and forth between the two stations.
There is one problem. Trains cannot turn back at Nagaura Station now. So the company is thinking about putting temporary*2switches*3 on the tracks there. It has not decided when these trains will start. It will tell people when the date is decided.
The company also wants to carry people by bus between Anegasaki Station and Kisarazu Station. It is still working to get enough replacement buses*4.
*1 Typhoon: a very strong storm with heavy rain and wind
*2 temporary: used only for a short time, not forever
*3 switches: parts of a train track that let a train move from one track to another
*4 replacement buses: buses that carry people when the trains cannot run
Japanese can be written in two ways. The words can go from left to right, like English, or they can go from top to bottom of the page. A new survey*1 asked people in Japan how often they read or write from top to bottom. It also asked how often they write by hand.
The survey was done for the Agency for Cultural Affairs, a part of Japan's government that looks after culture and language. It ran from January 13 to March 3, 2026. Questions were sent by mail to 6,000 Japanese people aged 16 or older all over the country. Answers came back from 3,777 of them, or 63.0 percent*2.
In total, 67.3 percent said they read or write from top to bottom in their daily lives. Of all the people who answered, 28.5 percent said they do it often, and 38.9 percent said they do it sometimes. Another 27.0 percent said they do not do it much, and 4.7 percent said they never do it. Together, that is 31.7 percent.
The number was higher for the youngest and the oldest people. Almost 80 percent of people aged 16 to 19 said they read or write from top to bottom. About 75 percent of people aged 70 or older said the same.
People were also asked where they read or write this way. The top answer was paper books and dictionaries, at 69.6 percent. Paper newspapers came next at 58.7 percent, and paper magazines were at 45.4 percent. Letters and postcards were at 38.6 percent.
On writing by hand, 69.6 percent said they do it in their daily lives, and 29.4 percent said they do not. The two things were connected. Among people who write by hand, 76.0 percent also read or write from top to bottom. Among people who do not write by hand, only 46.8 percent do.
Finally, 80.4 percent of people said that the habit*3 of writing by hand should be kept as something important.
*1 survey: a set of questions that many people are asked, to find out what they do or think
