The Japan Meteorological Agency announced that tropical storm Aere made landfall in Nagasaki Prefecture in western Japan just before 6:00 a.m. on Tuesday.

Weather officials say Tropical Storm Aere is likely to hit the western region of Kyushu, while heavy rain is expected across wide areas of Japan.

The Metrological Agency says that as of 3 p.m. on Monday, the tropical storm was moving north-northeast over the East China Sea at about 20 kilometers per hour.

Major Japanese mobile carrier KDDI says it has mostly restored services following a nationwide network disruption over the weekend. The company says services won't be fully restored until Tuesday evening at the earliest.

KDDI Senior Managing Executive Officer Yoshimura Kazuyuki said the company sincerely apologizes to its customers for the trouble.

Japanese retailers are introducing specialty rice products to lure customers as prices for the staple have steadily declined.

The Lawson convenience store chain will start using high quality rice for "onigiri" products.

Major Japanese mobile communications provider KDDI said on Monday afternoon that most of its services, including voice calls, were operating smoothly after more than two days of serious disruption.

The company earlier said data communications had mostly been restored as of 7 a.m. on Monday. But voice calls were patchy until the firm announced that they were back in working order as of 4 p.m.

Click to watch an NHK World meteorologist provide the latest details on tropical storm Aere.

Japan's Defense Ministry says a Chinese and a Russian naval vessel were spotted just outside Japan's territorial waters off the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea on Monday.

The ministry says that at around 7:44 a.m., a Chinese frigate entered Japan's contiguous zone southwest of Uotsuri Island. It left the zone about 6 minutes later.

Japan's most influential business lobby and its South Korean counterpart met for the first time in three years.

The groups said the private sector needs to play an active role to improve bilateral ties.

Japan is expected to post record tax revenue for the second year in a row. Corporate tax payments surged in fiscal 2021 as businesses recovered from the coronavirus pandemic.

Sources say the Finance Ministry will soon report that tax revenue hit about 67 trillion yen, or almost 500 billion dollars in the year that ended in March. The figure is 44 billion dollars more than last year's record high.

People in southwestern Japan's Kumamoto Prefecture are offering prayers for dozens of people who died two years ago when torrential rains turned neighborhoods into disaster areas.

Record rainfalls hit the prefecture in July 2020. Including those who died in the aftermath, 67 people were killed. Two more remain missing.

Japanese weather officials are warning of possible torrential rain in western Japan, as tropical storm Aere is approaching.

The meteorological agency said the storm was on the move north-northeast in the East China Sea at about 15 kilometers per hour on Monday morning.

Communications networks run by major Japanese mobile carrier KDDI remain disrupted at least partially more than two days after the problem unfolded. The firm says it is trying to fully restore services as soon as possible.

KDDI says the glitches began early on Saturday morning, disrupting voice-call and data services offered under the au, UQ mobile, and povo brands.

The operator of a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Aomori Prefecture, northern Japan, says a cooling system for highly radioactive waste liquid stopped functioning for about eight hours on Saturday.

Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited reported the problem at a plant compound in Rokkasho Village on Sunday. It says the glitch poses no threat to the environment.

Japanese mobile carrier KDDI says a glitch during maintenance disrupted service starting Saturday.

The company says engineers replacing network equipment in the early hours of Saturday encountered a problem that caused voice calling to be unavailable for 15 minutes.