One-star Ginza Kitafuku in Tokyo serves the world’s most expensive Michelin tasting menu at $2,130. While the visitors are served the best-tasting snow crab at the establishment, they must take off their shoes and sit on the floor. Diners must pay $2,130 per person for the restaurant’s most expensive dish, made entirely of a snow crab so beloved by the Japanese royal family that it has its museum, reported the New York Post.

Visitors may watch the chef at Ginza Kitafuku cook a live crab in front of them before it is served. If this sight makes you uncomfortable, you might consider reserving on the sixth floor in a separate room. For $258, the restaurant serves a red king crab feast for customers on a tighter budget. According to a list compiled by food publication Chef’s Pencil, Ginza Kitafuku is the most expensive Michelin-starred restaurant in the world in 2024.

The second most expensive restaurant on the list is Shanghai’s three-star Ultraviolet by Paul Pairet. A meal at the establishment costs an astounding $1,230. The restaurant offers a “theatrical, multi-sensory dining experience featuring meticulously crafted dishes that blend French techniques with global influences,” according to the outlet, which described it as “a captivating fusion of gastronomy and cutting-edge visual technology.”

Third place goes to New York, where Caviar Russe on Madison Avenue has the priciest Michelin-starred tasting meal in the country. Here, the guests can taste an 11-course meal focused on caviar for $950.

Azabu Kadowaki in Tokyo and Masa in New York are two other eateries on the list. With a dinner that cost more than $950, Masa was the first restaurant in the USA to receive a Michelin star.

Other notable locations are Guy Savoy in Paris, Quince in San Francisco, and Alchemist in Copenhagen.

Tokyo:

Japan braced Wednesday for its strongest typhoon of the year, with authorities advising tens of thousands of people to evacuate and issuing the highest warning level for wind and storm surges on the main southern island of Kyushu.

“Typhoon Shanshan is expected to approach southern Kyushu with extremely strong force through Thursday and it may make landfall,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters.

“It is expected that violent winds, high waves, and storm surge at levels that many people have never experienced before may occur,” said Hayashi, the top government spokesman.

The approach of the storm, packing gusts of up to 252 kilometres (157 miles) per hour and already bringing widespread heavy rain, prompted auto giant Toyota to suspend production at all 14 of its factories.

Two people remained unaccounted for on Wednesday after a landslide buried a house with five family members inside in Gamagori, a city in central Aichi prefecture.

Rescuers worked around the clock and on Wednesday afternoon they pulled out a woman in her 70s.

“She wasn’t breathing and was unconscious,” a Gamagori official told AFP. They were still searching for a man in his 70s and another in his 30s.

For southern Kyushu, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) predicted 1,100 millimetres (43 inches) of precipitation in the 48 hours to Friday morning, around half the annual average for the area comprising Kagoshima and Miyazaki regions.

The JMA also issued its highest “special warning” for violent storms, waves and high tides in parts of the Kagoshima region of Kyushu, with authorities there advising 56,000 people to evacuate.

Video on public broadcaster NHK TV showed roof tiles being blown off houses, broken windows and felled trees.

“Our carport roof was blown away in its entirety. I wasn’t at home when it happened, but my kids say they felt the shaking so strong they thought an earthquake happened,” a local resident in Miyazaki told NHK.

“I was surprised. It was completely beyond our imagination,” she said.

The warnings indicate the “possibility that a major disaster prompted by (the typhoon) is extremely high,” Satoshi Sugimoto, chief forecaster of JMA, told a news conference.

Japan Airlines cancelled 172 domestic flights and six international flights scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, while ANA nixed 219 domestic flights and four international ones on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

The cancellations affected around 25,000 people.

Kyushu Railway said it would suspend some Shinkansen bullet train services between Kumamoto and Kagoshima Chuo from Wednesday night and warned of further possible disruption.

Trains between Tokyo and Fukuoka, the most populous city in Kyushu, may also be cancelled depending on weather conditions this week, other operators said.

Shanshan comes in the wake of Typhoon Ampil, which disrupted hundreds of flights and trains this month.

Despite dumping heavy rain, it caused only minor injuries and damage.

Ampil came days after Tropical Storm Maria brought record rains to northern areas.

Typhoons in the region have been forming closer to coastlines, intensifying more rapidly and lasting longer over land due to climate change, according to a study released last month.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A Tokyo-based television news anchor was fired from her job and faced online backlash after a controversial post on social media in which she criticised men’s hygiene habits. According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), Yuri Kawaguchi, 29, is a freelance announcer known for her feminist views. She also works as a lecturer on harassment prevention. She faced severe backlash online after she claimed that men’s body odour was hard to endure and suggested they shower more often.

In a now-deleted post on X (formerly Twitter), Ms Kawaguchi voiced her frustration about men’s hygiene during the sweltering summer months, per the outlet. “I’m really sorry if there’s a personal situation, but the smell of men in the summer or the body odour of unsanitary people is so uncomfortable,” she wrote, advising men to shower more frequently and use deodorant. 

“I want to be clean, so I take several showers a day, use freshening wipes, and apply sweat inhibitors year-round. I think more men should do this,” the 29-year-old added. 

Ms Kawaguchi’s post, perceived as discriminatory against men, offended many online. “Only blaming men is infuriating and undoubtedly discrimination. Women, especially older women, can have body odour too. I’m really uncomfortable with this,” one social media user wrote. 

Her post also prompted scrutiny of her private life, including her divorce. She was labelled as a “materialistic woman out of touch with the struggles of ordinary people”. 

As the controversy escalated, Ms Kawaguchi issued a public apology and removed the post.  “This time, because of my careless remarks, many people were upset and hurt. I will deeply reflect on this. In the future, I will work hard not to hurt anyone with my remarks. I am really sorry,” she said.

However, the apology did little to quell the uproar. VOICE, the agency that managed Ms Kawaguchi, announced that it was terminating her contract, citing “defamation of the honour of the opposite sex” as the reason. In a statement, the agency said it had received numerous complaints and emails, and stressed that it was against their principles for a professional to use language that harms others and causes discomfort. 

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Another firm which hired the anchor as a lecturer for harassment prevention education also terminated her contract. But the decision of these two companies was criticised by Japanese netizens as “too extreme”. While some said that the 29-year-old’s dismissal shows a mirror to the challenges faced by women in a male-dominated society in Japan, most were not kind. 

“A woman asks men to be tidy and maintain decorum, yet it triggers outrage. It just shows that Japan has been a male-dominated society for too long. No matter how dirty men are, as soon as a woman complains, they punish her,” one person wrote.

“Why are Japanese men so sensitive? They cannot handle a bit of criticism. Women are expected to maintain beauty, cleanliness, and fitness without complaint, yet men face no such expectations. If that isn’t gender bias, then what is?” said another. 

Tokyo, Japan:

Tourists and residents packed Tokyo’s top cherry blossom spots on Thursday to enjoy the full bloom that has arrived in the Japanese capital later than usual this year because of cold weather.

The elegant dark branches bursting with pink and white flowers — known as sakura in Japanese — spilled over the moat of the Imperial Palace, where people gathered to snap photos or simply take in the view.

“Cherry blossoms are so symbolic and make everything around you feel joyful and beautiful,” Michitaka Saito, 68, told AFP.

“It makes me feel that I’ve made a good start on the year ahead,” said Saito, who makes an annual visit to Chidorigafuchi Park beside the moat in central Tokyo.

Sakura season traditionally accompanies the beginning of the new fiscal year in Japan, representing fresh starts but also the fleeting impermanence of life.

Eiko Hirose, 76, said that enjoying the cherry blossoms with her husband Sadao “means I’m healthy, and he’s good, and we all have a good time”.

“We take it for granted that we can see it next year again, but who knows? Something may happen,” she said.

The Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) declared on Thursday that the country’s most common and popular “somei yoshino” variety of cherry tree was in full bloom, four days later than average for the city.

While the agency attributes this year’s tardy blooms to cold weather, it has raised the alarm that climate change is making the delicate petals appear sooner in the long term.

Last year’s sakura began to flower on March 14 — the joint earliest date on record along with 2020 and 2021 — and hit full bloom on March 22.

“Since 1953, the average start date for cherry blossoms to bloom in Japan has been becoming earlier at the rate of approximately 1.2 days per 10 years,” the JMA says.

“The long-term increase in temperature is thought to be a factor” as well as other reasons such as the urban heat island effect, according to the agency.

Tourism to Japan has been booming since pandemic-era border restrictions were lifted, and an international crowd was also out enjoying the scenery on Thursday.

Kamilla Kielbowska, a 35-year-old from New York, planned her third trip to Japan around the blossoms.

“We arrived here on, I believe, March 23. And I was joking… ‘OK, we gotta go to this park straight from the airport, I cannot miss sakura.'”

But “it was super cold, and no trees were blossoming. And I was a little bit sad, but hoping that I’ll still see them in full blossom before I leave.”

“It definitely lived up to expectations,” she said, calling the sight “marvellous” and “very magical”.

Katsuhiro Miyamoto, professor emeritus at Kansai University, estimates the economic impact of cherry blossom season in Japan, from travel to parties held under the flowers, at 1.1 trillion yen ($7.3 billion) this year, up from 616 billion yen in 2023.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

A theme park based on Japan’s “Dragon Ball” manga franchise will be built in Saudi Arabia’s new high-end tourist attraction of Qiddiya, just outside Riyadh, authorities said Friday.

The announcement comes two weeks after fans of the massively popular and influential series were shocked by news of the death of its creator, Akira Toriyama, aged 68.

The 500,000-square-metre (125-acre) park will allow fans to “live the adventures at the heart of the action, experiencing the journey from the first Dragon Ball series to the latest Dragon Ball Super,” according to a press release by the Qiddiya Investment Company.

First serialised in 1984, “Dragon Ball” is one of the best-selling manga franchises of all time and has spawned countless anime series, films, and video games.

Toriyama’s death this month from a blood clot on the brain sparked an outpouring of grief from around the world, including tributes from French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazilian Vice President Geraldo Alckmin.

In a press release on the official Dragon Ball website, authorities in Qiddiya did not give an opening date for the park and also did not say how much construction would cost.

The statement said the attraction would be split into seven themed zones based on the magical dragon-containing balls that are central to the series.

The park will have at least 30 rides and include a 70-metre (230-foot) dragon at the centre of the site, it said.

The Qiddiya “entertainment city” project, featuring high-end theme parks, motorsport facilities, and a safari area, is under construction near the Saudi capital Riyadh. Shares of Toei Animation, which produced the “Dragon Ball” anime series, surged 6.7 percent on Friday.