Taiwan and Japan plan to launch a joint rail tourism campaign next month as part of expanding links between the two countries since a massive earthquake struck Japan in March last year. In the campaign, dubbed “sister trains,” Taiwan’s CK124 steam engine and a similar Japanese train will be used to promote railway travel in both countries.

Shinkai has been awarded best director by the Association of Media in Digital (AMD), yet he remains relatively unknown beyond dedicated anime circles.That began to change this past fall, when he toured the United States and Britain...

As a way to promote travel, Japan will invite influential bloggers and Twitter users from across the globe to visit areas affected by the earthquake, tsunami and ensuing nuclear crisis, which occurred last March.Targeting these areas will aim to restore Japan’s dwindling tourism, which dropped by 50 percent in the first three months following the natural disasters.

What's Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's (METI), then, come up with as a solution? Jumpstarting international interest in its other endeavors, of course — fashion, design, anime. And to put a little umph in its appeal, they named their latest campaign Cool Japan.

The friendship has solidified further after the Great East Japan Earthquake last year, according to Ann Stock, the Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy at the U.S. State Department. After the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami rocked Japan, the U.S. provided weather and nuclear expertise...

The year-long series will conclude in the winter, the ambassador said. "Sports, movies, animation and cartoons, music and youth exchanges are among the priorities campaigned by both sides" to promote public diplomacy, Niwa said.

The event in Tehran will be held during 25-29 January 2012 during which “Gun-en Artists group” shows around 50 pieces of its members' artistic works including paintings, pictures, dolls and textiles. The embassy is also going to hold exhibitions of photographs and children’s paintings of Japan’s disaster-stricken areas of March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Back in October, Japan’s national tourism agency floated a plan that seemed an ideal remedy to boost flagging visitor numbers in the wake of the March 11 disasters. Free flights to Japan in 2012. A full 10,000 of them. However, whatever tourism authorities thought a good idea, Japan simply can’t afford it, the government’s budget planners have concluded.