Japan will head one second into the future on January 1, 2006 when it adjusts the high-precision atomic clock, which keeps Japan Standard Time using advanced physics. The "leap-second" is being added onto the clock in line with a global effort to make official time in synch with the Earth's orbit, the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology said Thursday.


The institute said that standard time should not be 0.9 of a second faster or slower than the actual astronomic time. The last time the atomic clock had a second added on was seven years ago.

Japan is not used to adjusting clocks, being the only major industrialized nation that does not practice daylight savings.