English news for Tuesday, October 13, 2026

The University of Tokyo, a big university in Tokyo, the capital of Japan, has a famous old gate. It is called the Red Gate. The gate is an important cultural property^*1 of Japan. On September 5 and 6, 2026, the university opened the work site and showed visitors how workers are making the gate strong against earthquakes^*2.

The Red Gate has been closed since February 2021. A high fence stands around it now. On the morning of September 5, about 20 reporters^*3 went inside the fence. In the afternoon and on the next day, 117 more people visited. Some of them finished university after the gate closed, so they had never seen it open.

Workers are changing many things. The roof will become lighter. Before, the roof tiles sat on a layer of mud. Now they will be fixed with nails. Under the ground on the campus^*4 side, workers will bury heavy blocks of concrete^*5. Steel rods^*6 will tie the bottom of the pillars^*7 to these blocks and pull them down. This will stop the gate from falling over in a strong earthquake.

Some pillars were repaired a long time ago. Workers cut off the old, bad part at the bottom and joined on a new piece of wood. These joined parts will now be made stronger with carbon fiber^*8. The small guard houses^*9 next to the gate had mud walls. These walls will be replaced with strong wooden boards.

The gate will look almost the same as before. Workers will put new lacquer^*10 on only a few parts. The work is planned to finish in the fall of 2027. The university wrote about the visits in its newsletter on September 24, 2026.

1. *1 cultural property: an old building or thing that the government protects because it is important to the country's history
2. *2 earthquakes: times when the ground shakes hard
3. *3 reporters: people who write news for newspapers, TV, or websites
4. *4 campus: the land and buildings of a university
5. *5 concrete: a very hard building material made from cement, sand, and water
6. *6 steel rods: long thin bars of strong metal
7. *7 pillars: tall strong posts that hold up a roof
8. *8 carbon fiber: a very light and very strong material made of thin threads of carbon
9. *9 guard houses: small buildings by a gate where guards once sat and watched
10. *10 lacquer: a shiny paint that protects wood

More and more children in Japan are taking an English test called Eiken. The Eiken Foundation^*1 of Japan, the group that runs the test, reported this on August 15, 2025. The news was part of a column^*2 in the group's yearly report, the Integrated Report 2025.

In the 2024 school year, 375,991 elementary school^*3 students took the test. That is about 1.5 times the number from ten years before, in 2014.

The Eiken test has many levels. The growth is mostly at Grade 4 and the levels above it. The number of children taking Grade 4 is about 1.6 times the number in 2014. For Grade 3, it is about 1.9 times, and for Grade Pre-2, it is about 2 times.

The children are also getting better at English. More of them have reached the A1 level (Grade 3) and the A2 level (Grade Pre-2) of the CEFR, a European scale^*4 for language ability. Their reading, listening, writing, and speaking are all going up.

Why is this happening? The foundation thinks one reason is a change in schools. English is now a regular subject in Japanese elementary schools. Because of this, schools have clearer goals for what children should learn in English.

1. *1 foundation: a group that uses its money to do work for the public, not to make money
2. *2 column: a short piece of writing on one topic in a report or newspaper
3. *3 elementary school: a school for young children, from about 6 to 12 years old
4. *4 scale: a set of steps or levels used to measure something

Cyclamen^*1 is a flower. Many people grow it in pots at home. On October 13, 2026, a group of scientists in Japan said they have read the whole genome^*2 of the wild^*3 cyclamen. They are the first team in the world to do this with very few mistakes.

The study was led by the Kazusa DNA Research Institute, a research center in Japan. Scientists from Saitama Institute of Technology, Kyushu University and Kagawa University, three universities in Japan, also worked on it.

The wild cyclamen has the scientific name Cyclamen persicum. It is the parent of the cyclamen plants that people buy in shops. Its genome has about 1.48 billion base pairs^*4. The team read 98.1 percent of it. They found 40,223 genes^*5. Some of these genes are found only in cyclamen. Other genes are shared with the other plants in the primrose family^*6.

The scientists hope this work will help in several ways. It can show which genes control the shape, color and smell of the flowers. It can also show which genes make the tuber^*7 grow. In the future, growers may use this information to make new kinds of cyclamen faster and more easily.

The study was published in the journal^*8 DNA Research. The authors are Kenta Shirasawa, Yusuke Akita, Yuki Mizunoe and Takejiro Takamura.

1. *1 cyclamen: a small plant with pink, red or white flowers, often grown in pots
2. *2 genome: the full set of genes of a living thing
3. *3 wild: living in nature, not made or grown by people
4. *4 base pairs: the tiny building blocks that genes are made of
5. *5 genes: tiny parts inside a living thing that decide how it grows and looks
6. *6 primrose family: a group of plants that are close relatives of each other
7. *7 tuber: the thick, round part of a plant that grows under the ground
8. *8 journal: a magazine where scientists write about their work

Seven train companies in Japan will start selling a new kind of train ticket in the spring of 2027. The new ticket has a QR code^*1 on it. The companies announced the plan on October 13, 2026.

The seven companies are JR East, Keisei Electric Railway, Keikyu, Tobu Railway, Tokyo Monorail, Hokuso Railway, and Sendai Airport Transit. They run trains in the east of Japan, in places like Tokyo, the capital, and the city of Sendai.

Today, people use a magnetic ticket^*2. It is a small paper ticket, 30 by 57.5 millimeters^*3. Most of the new QR tickets from ticket machines^*4 will be bigger, 57.5 by 85 millimeters.

The new ticket is easy to use. At the station, you hold the ticket over the ticket gate^*5, and the gate reads the QR code. At the end of your trip, you put the ticket into a box on the gate. Some stations do not have the new gates. At those stations, you show your ticket to a station worker at the window.

People will be able to use the new tickets on all lines and at all stations of the seven companies. But the way to use the ticket may be a little different at each station, because the stations have different machines.

Other train companies may start later, in 2027 or after that. Each company will tell people when it is ready. Some trains also run from one company's line onto another company's line. The seven companies are talking with those other companies too.

In May 2024, eight companies first announced the plan to change the tickets.

1. *1 QR code: a small square picture made of black and white dots. A machine or a phone can read it.
2. *2 magnetic ticket: a paper ticket with a thin dark strip on the back. A machine reads the strip.
3. *3 millimeters: a very small measure of length. There are 10 millimeters in one centimeter.
4. *4 ticket machines: machines at a station where you pay and get a ticket
5. *5 ticket gate: a small gate at a station. It reads your ticket and opens to let you in or out.

Japan's Ministry^*1 of Education wants school textbooks to be shorter. On October 13, the ministry held a meeting with a group of experts^*2 who check school textbooks. The ministry asked the experts to think about a new idea. For each kind of textbook, there could be a limit on the number of pages.

For many years, textbooks in Japan have been getting longer. The books have also been getting bigger in size. The ministry says that shorter books will give teachers and children more free time.

There is another reason. Japan is making a new curriculum^*3. Under a new system, schools will be able to plan up to about 15 percent fewer class hours than the standard number. Textbooks must fit into these shorter hours. The ministry says the size of textbooks, the use of digital materials^*4, and the guides for teachers must all match the new hours.

The ministry also asked the experts to think about two other things. One is choosing more carefully what goes into textbooks. The other is changing the rules for checking textbooks.

The ministry has not said how many pages the limit will be. It expects to announce the new curriculum for elementary schools^*5 and junior high schools^*6 by the end of March 2027. The new curriculum for high schools will come in the school year that starts in April 2027.

1. *1 Ministry: a part of the national government. The Ministry of Education is in charge of schools.
2. *2 experts: people who know a lot about one subject
3. *3 curriculum: the national plan that says what schools must teach
4. *4 digital materials: learning materials that children use on a computer or tablet, not on paper
5. *5 elementary schools: schools for younger children, from about age 6 to 12
6. *6 junior high schools: schools for children from about age 12 to 15

On October 1, 2026, the pest^*1 control office of Shizuoka, an area of Japan, gave a warning to fruit farmers. Very large numbers of stink bugs^*2 are coming to the fruit trees. The warning is about three kinds of bugs: the brown-winged green stink bug^*3, the glossy green stink bug^*4, and the brown marmorated stink bug^*5. These bugs hurt citrus fruits^*6 and other fruits like persimmons^*7 and kiwis. The office says the bugs will be in every part of Shizuoka in October, and there will be a lot of them.

The office already gave a smaller advisory^*8 on August 26. But after the middle of September, the number of bugs went up very fast. The office has four light traps^*9 in Shizuoka. From September 1 to September 20, each trap caught 19,512 bugs on average^*10. In a normal year, a trap catches about 960 bugs in that time. This year's number is about 20 times higher. It is even higher than in 2024, a year with an unusually large number of bugs.

The office also counted the bugs on cypress trees^*11. Stink bugs eat the cones^*12 of these trees. Workers found 37.5 bugs on every 10 branches with cones. In a normal year, they find about 6.1 bugs. This is the highest number for September since 1996. The workers also counted the marks the bugs leave when they eat. In early and middle September, the average number of marks was 21.1. The normal number is 16.2. At 60 percent of the 20 places, the number was over 20. This means the bugs are probably starting to leave the cypress trees. Large numbers of bugs have already been seen flying into orchards^*13 in the west and center of Shizuoka.

The weather office in Nagoya, a city in Japan, gave a one-month forecast^*14 on September 24. It says the temperature will be higher than normal. The pest control office says warm weather helps the bugs, so there may be even more of them.

1. *1 pest: a small animal or insect that hurts plants, fruit, or crops
2. *2 stink bugs: insects with a flat body that give off a bad smell and eat fruit and plants
3. *3 brown-winged green stink bug: a kind of green stink bug with brown wings that lives in Japan
4. *4 glossy green stink bug: a kind of shiny green stink bug that lives in Japan
5. *5 brown marmorated stink bug: a kind of brown stink bug with light and dark marks
6. *6 citrus fruits: fruits like oranges and lemons
7. *7 persimmons: a sweet orange fruit that grows on trees in Japan
8. *8 advisory: an official message that tells people to be careful; smaller than a warning
9. *9 light traps: boxes with a light inside that pull insects in and catch them
10. *10 on average: the usual or middle number when you add things up and divide
11. *11 cypress trees: tall trees with small green leaves that stay green all year
12. *12 cones: the hard, round seed cases that grow on some trees
13. *13 orchards: fields where fruit trees grow
14. *14 forecast: a report that says what the weather will probably be like