Piping hot

The new Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, has just appointed Taro Aso as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and already the newly appointed head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has released a sensation: Japan, they say, is ready to compromise with Russia - we will once again discuss the problem of the Kuril Islands, come to an agreement and look for a common mutually acceptable solution . They say he didn’t say it rashly - it seems like a thoughtful response to Putin’s statement on September 9 that the problem does not need to be “mothballed.”