Michelin inspectors have awarded Hiroshima the city’s first three-star restaurant in the inaugural issue for the region, which now expands the brand’s coverage of Japan’s culinary landscape from three guides to four.

Tokyo’s first amphibious tourist buses were put into service Sunday, carrying 40 passengers through the city’s low eastern side by road before taking to the Naka river during a 100-minute “Tokyo Splash Tour.”

The two buses, dubbed “Sky Ducks”, departed from Tokyo’s new landmark Skytree, the world’s tallest communications tower at 634 metres (2,080 feet).

Tickets are priced at 2,800 yen ($30) apiece for an adult and 1,400 yen for a child under 12. The bus, 12 metres long and 2.5 metres wide, moves up to 100 kilometres per hour on the ground and up to 13 kilometres per hour in the water.

Similar amphibious sightseeing buses have been in service in the western city of Osaka and a few other tourist spots in Japan.

A solid gold replica of footballer Lionel Messi’s left foot, complete with blood vessels and the swirls of skin on the bottom of the toes, is to go on sale in Japan.

Tokyo and Osaka have topped an index of the world’s most expensive cities to live in for 2013, familiar positions for the Japanese megacities which have traditionally dominated the list prepared bi-annually by The Economist.

To celebrate the year of Spain in Japan, and the year of Japan in Spain, Spanish luxury house Loewe will work with Japanese fashion designer Junya Watanabe on new male and female capsule collections.

Karl Lagerfeld  has teamed up with Japanese beauty brand Shu Uemura to to create a new collection of make-up, skincare and accessories.

The Chanel creative director is well accustomed to the brand, having used Shu Uemura cosmetics to hand-color his fashion sketches for over two decades.