BREAKING: Japan’s Yamagata City government has announced plans to install @Starlink at City Hall and community centres. The aim is to keep emergency alerts and support updates flowing during disasters, helping protect evacuees’ lives when communication matters most.

In the snowy mountains of Yamagata Prefecture, a narrow river runs between rows of three- and four-story wooden inns built a hundred years ago during the Taisho era. This is Ginzan Onsen, once a sixteenth-century silver mining valley and now one of the most breathtaking winter streets on Earth. When twilight falls and heavy snow blankets the red wooden footbridges, there are no cars on the street. There are no plastic convenience store signs. There are no harsh white LED streetlights. Instead, warm golden gas lamps flicker to life along the riverbank, reflecting on the dark steaming water. People look at photos of Ginzan Onsen and assume the town was simply forgotten by time. It wasn't. Keeping a town like this took a fierce decision. During Japan's economic boom in the 1970s and 1980s, developers across the country tore down old wooden inns to build ten-story concrete resort hotels with flashing neon signs. In 1986, the innkeepers of Ginzan Onsen got together and passed their own historic preservation ordinance. They banned cars from the narrow river street, buried utility lines, installed genuine gas streetlamps, and pledged to maintain their multi-story wooden architecture through five-foot winter blizzards. Beauty does not survive by accident. It survives when a town decides what it refuses to sell.

Yamanaka-san @Yamanaka_ARC, Pachi @HYPER_pachi, Congratulations on the launch of MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls! And thank you for sending me a copy of the game. #MARVELTokon#: Fighting Souls as servers go live: Aug. 6 – 8:00 AM PDT Aug. 6 – 11:00 AM EDT Aug. 6 – 4:00 PM BST Aug. 6 – 5:00 PM CEST Aug. 7 – 12:00 AM JST