Yonaguni is a tourist hotspot – but its location just 100km from Taiwan means residents must wrestle with the creeping militarisation of their home

In the minds of many Japanese people, Yonaguni is a sleepy paradise of crystal-clear sea and pristine beaches, where miniature horses graze on clifftops and empty roads dissect fields of sugar cane; where tourists dive with hammerhead sharks and marvel at the Ayamihabiru – the world’s largest Atlas moth.

But this tiny island, located far closer to Taipei than Tokyo, now finds itself at the centre of regional tensions triggered by a new round of Chinese aggression towards Taiwan.

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© Photograph: KYODO/Reuters

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© Photograph: KYODO/Reuters

Pastel cities trapped in a timeless future-past. Empty apartments drenched in nostalgia. Classic convertibles speeding into a low-res sunset. Femme fatales and mutated monsters doing battle. Deep, dark dungeons and glittering star ships floating in space. All captured in a eerie palette of 4096 colours and somehow, you're sure, from some alternate 1980s world you can't quite remember... Drawn painstakingly one pixel at a time, with a palette of 4096 possible colours, pushing the limits of these 80's era machines memory, these early graphic artists and hackers alike have left an indelible mark on the world of digital art and internet culture, only to be forgotten in the passing of time. But what made this boring business computer from Japan so special?

The strange world of Japan's PC-98 computer [contains some NSFW pixel art] / More striking imagery: Incredible pictures from an era of games we never got to experience [CW: flashing lights] - Tumblr: High quality [SFW] pixel art from PC-98 games - Pixelation.org: The Art of PC98 - Amino: The world of PC-98 Pixel Art - Galleries from @noirlac, @item, and @densetsu.ch

A downloadable pack of over 7,000 PC-98 images and GIFs [check the current page for v4, coming soon-ish] Video: PC-98: Japan's Own Era of Early PC Gaming [CW: flashing lights] Video: Over 50 NEC PC-98 Games In Under 30 Minutes TVTropes has an extensive primer on the platform followed by a long list of game articles Music: A selection of unique PC-98 tracks by composer Takeaki Watanabe Hardware: Restoring & Learning All About The NEC PC-9821 [transcript included!] DIY: PC-98 Emulation For Beginners A collection of PC-98 image files for use with an emulator

An anonymous reader shares a report: Japan's Ministry of Finance spent nearly $50 billion on April 29 and May 1 trying to prop up the value of the currency by selling US dollars and buying yen. Who was on the other side of this trade? Data from Deutsche Bank's foreign exchange trading platform suggests: literally everyone. "Nearly all client categories saw record USD/JPY buying during the assumed intervention days," writes George Saravelos, global head of FX research at the German bank, in a note to clients on Thursday. "That absorption of USD/JPY selling from the Japanese Ministry of Finance was so broad-based continues to point to the lack of effectiveness of this policy." The Japanese yen is the weakest G10 currency in trading on Thursday, deepening its decline relative to the US dollar to nearly 10% so far this year. Very low rates in Japan increase the appeal of holding other currencies where investors can earn more interest. Strategists have warned that action from the Bank of Japan may be needed to reinforce the Ministry of Finance's attempts to guard against further yen weakness.

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Osaka trains derailed by giant cats

Diorama Restaurant (sometimes Diorama Shokudo or Daiorama Restaurant) was a model railroad cafe. During Covid they started to take care of stray cats and now they're a model railroad cafe and an official cat shelter. Their YouTube page has thousands of videos (although some predate the arrival of the cats.) There's also a Patron's eye view of the restaurant. If you're in the area, look them up and maybe adopt a kaiju.

The Japanese automaker, which has been slow to sell electric vehicles, said it would invest $11 billion to make batteries and cars in Ontario.

© Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

To lure visitors, residents of Yoshida, famed for its high-quality steel, are inviting tourists to help produce it.