Understanding Japan's system for classifying typhoons can be a challenge. For one, it differs from that used for hurricanes, and there are also differences in how the storms are discussed in English versus Japanese. As Typhoon Shanshan -- which as of Friday became Tropical Storm Shanshan -- moves toward Shikoku, it marks a good time to brush up on the terminology. When checking the news about typhoons in Japan, you may see comparisons to hurricane categories. Essentially, a hurricane and typhoon are the same weather phenomenon -- a tropical cyclone.

LLMs (large language models) such as ChatGPT have shown remarkable language understanding and generation capabilities. Although reference-free evaluators based on LLMs show better human alignment than traditional reference-based evaluators, there are many challenges in using reference-free evaluators based on LLMs. Reference-free evaluators are more suitable for open-ended examples with different semantics responses. But not all examples are open-ended. For closed-ended examples with unique correct semantic response, reference-free evaluators will still consider it high quality when giving a response that is inconsistent with the facts and the semantic of reference. In order to comprehensively evaluate the reliability of evaluators based on LLMs, we construct two adversarial meta-evaluation dialogue generation datasets KdConv-ADV and DSTC7-ADV based on KdConv and DSTC7-AVSD, respectively. Compared to previous meta-evaluation benchmarks, KdConv-ADV and DSTC7-ADV are much more challenging since they requires evaluators to be able to reasonably evaluate closed-ended examples with the help of external knowledge or even its own knowledge. Empirical results show that the ability of LLMs to identify unreasonable responses is insufficient. There are risks in using eference-free evaluators based on LLMs to evaluate the quality of dialogue responses.

Shinobu Yamanaka apologized the moment this reporter arrived for an interview at a day care facility in the city of Konan, Kochi Prefecture, one muggy morning in July. "Sorry, I had completely forgotten about it," she said with a smile at Day Service Happy, a traditional Japanese-style house converted into a day care center for people with dementia and other health conditions in need of nursing care. "I must leave for another appointment at a local elementary school soon." Yamanaka, a vivacious 46-year-old woman who has her short hair dyed ash blonde, has early-onset Alzheimer's. She often has memory lapses like the one that morning, she later confided.

In the mid-nineteen-nineties, Koushun Takami was dozing on his futon on the island of Shikoku, Japan, when he was visited by an apparition: a maniacal schoolteacher addressing a group of students. "All right, class, listen up," Takami heard the teacher say. "Today, I'm going to have you all kill each other." Takami was in his twenties, and he had recently quit his job as a reporter for a local newspaper to become a novelist. As a literature student at Osaka University, he had started and abandoned several horror-infused detective stories.

Takamatsu – The Takamatsu District Court upheld Tuesday the constitutionality of a local ordinance placing limits on video game playing to combat gaming addiction, rejecting a lawsuit by a man and his mother who sought damages for alleged violations to their right to self-determination. Implemented in Kagawa Prefecture in April 2020, the ordinance set guidelines on when and for how long children would be allowed to play games. It was the first ordinance of its kind to be implemented in Japan. This could be due to a conflict with your ad-blocking or security software. Please add japantimes.co.jp and piano.io to your list of allowed sites. If this does not resolve the issue or you are unable to add the domains to your allowlist, please see this support page.

A strategic office that Japan's Consumer Affairs Agency set up in Tokushima Prefecture is expected to receive ¥470 million in budget allocation for fiscal 2021, which starts next April, according to sources. The Strategic Headquarters for Frontiers of Consumer Policy was set up in July as part of government efforts to transfer the functions of state agencies to rural areas. The Tokushima office is in charge of planning consumer administration. It will take over functions from the Tokyo office when a large-scale disaster occurs. The agency's entire budget is expected to fall 1.0% from the previous year to ¥11.8 billion.

A teenager standing up for his right to play hours of video games has launched a crowdfunding campaign for a lawsuit to challenge guidelines in Shikoku that limit children's gaming time. The 17-year-old, who asked to be identified only by his first name Wataru, has enlisted the support of his mother and a lawyer for the first-of-its-kind ordinance, which was issued by Kagawa Prefecture. The ordinance calls for children to be limited to an hour a day of gaming during the week, and 90 minutes during school holidays. It also suggests that children 12 to 15 not be allowed to use smartphones later than 9 p.m., with the deadline pushed back to 10 p.m. for those between 15 and 18. But while the rules are just guidelines with no enforcement mechanism, Wataru said he was inspired to challenge them on principle.

Some 60 people from the police and Japan Coast Guard participated in the exercise at the Ikata nuclear power plant, which simulated a drone launched from a boat planting a makeshift explosive device on the premises of reactor 3. Officials of Shikoku Electric Power Co., which runs the plant, and members of the bomb disposal unit in the Ehime Prefectural Police also took part. "We took into account the serious situation regarding terrorism in conducting this drill, and I think it is important to prepare for the unpredictable," said Hideto Murase, the local security chief of the Ehime Prefectural Police. Reactor 3 was restarted last August after clearing safety requirements introduced after the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis. The reactor runs on plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel, or MOX, which contains plutonium extracted by reprocessing spent fuel. Shikoku Electric plans to finish building by March 2020 a facility that is capable of withstanding major terror attacks, such as those involving intentional aircraft crashes, and preventing the release of radioactive materials.

An award-winning brewpub built with recycled materials as part of a "zero waste" mission. There is new life in the mountains of Tokushima Prefecture, in the neighboring towns of Kamiyama and Kamikatsu, even as depopulation afflicts most rural areas with rot. In Kamiyama, young people work remotely for tech companies or as artists in cooperative spaces. In Kamikatsu, the elderly test drones as part of their work harvesting leaves and flowers for use as garnishes in restaurants as far away as Europe. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has stressed the need to revitalize rural areas as the country struggles with demographic decline.

TOKUSHIMA – In another downside to rapidly graying Japan, the nation's active hunters -- in decline and aging -- are having a hard time keeping up with their hunting dogs that dash after their prey. That's a big headache for prefectural governments nationwide that need hunters to go after deer, boars and other animals that cause extensive crop damage. The small mountain town of Naka, Tokushima Prefecture, is hoping to solve the problem by using drones and tracking devices on dogs to help increasingly frail hunters bag their targets. In December, the town conducted an experiment using a drone to locate a hunting dog in the mountains. In the experiment, a portable tracking device showed the location of the dog more than 900 meters away on the side of a mountain.