Japan

It’s the New York Stock Exchange with gills. In the early morning twilight, thousands of people converge in an area smaller than a football field to bid on tuna, mackerel, yellowtail and salmon.

Within sight of Green Bay at Yokosuka Naval Base sits a Japanese maritime warfare legend.The battleship Mikasa, which played a pivotal role in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, is preserved at Mikasa Park, a five-minute walk from the base.

Despite the recent problems with a few sailors on leave, the Navy plans to keep using the 7th Fleet’s Exceptional Sailor Program, a three-year-old policy that affords lower-ranking sailors more liberty options in return for good behavior.

Sailors from the USS John S. McCain paid a visit last week to Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, where they played a game of hoops with high school students and helped dig out a school for the mentally challenged from more than 6 feet of snow.

Using a whiskey bottle, a business card and some rudimentary carpentry, Lt. Col. Eugene J. McNamara found a way to be remembered.

The fate of Sgt. Charles Robert Jenkins — a U.S. soldier believed to have defected by walking across the border into North Korea during a 1965 Demilitarized Zone patrol — could go one of several routes, said lawyers and others observing the case.