The CEO of Toyota, Akio Toyoda, will testify before Congress today as part of a probe into his company's massive car recall. Toyoda's prepared remarks have already been released and the embattled CEO is expected to apologize to customers and to lawmakers ahead of his testimony.

During his current trip to Asia, President Obama will meet with a variety of leaders and diplomats. He will also meet  two members of Japan's royal family: Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko. The fiercely private royal family has long been surrounded by secrecy and rumors. We talk to John Burnham Schwartz, best-selling novelist and screenwriter. He is author of "The Commoner," which is a novel loosely based on the lives of some members of the Japanese royal family.

President Obama takes off for an eight-day trip to Asia tonight. He’ll visit Seoul, Singapore and spend three days in China, where the agenda will include some of the biggest global challenges of the day: global warming, the economy and nuclear proliferation. But his first destination is Tokyo, where he’ll meet with new Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who has recently called for a more “equal” relationship with the United States. We speak to Kenneth Lieberthal, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution; along with Martin Fackler, Tokyo bureau chief for our partner, The New York Times.

A half century of single-party leadership came to an end in Japan over the weekend. The opposition Democratic Party won a resounding victory over the more conservative (and counterintuitively-named) Liberal Democratic Party. The LDP has dominated the Japanese parliament for nearly 54 years.

For more context, we're here with Bill Emmott. He's the former editor of the Economist and author of "Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan will shape our next decade."

For this week's agenda segment, we look ahead to President Obama returning to Washington and the developing plans for heath care reform, current economic numbers, and the elections in Japan. Joining us are Marcus Mabry, international business editor for our partner The New York Times, and Rob Watson, defense correspondent for our partner the BBC.

North Korea continues to raise the stakes in its game of nuclear poker, conducting a second nuclear test in as many days on Tuesday. Meanwhile, a South Korean newspaper has reported that U.S. spy satellites have detected signs that North Korea has started up its nuclear plant again. The international community has condemned Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions. But the only country with real clout over North Korea is China: the nation is North Korea’s neighbor and main trading partner. To find out China's take on the North Korea situation, The Takeaway talks to John Pomfret, author of Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China. He writes the blog Pomfret’s China on the Newsweek/Washington Post website.

A baseball tournament with so few games is vulnerable to upsets that leave behind the best teams, but not in this World Baseball Classic: Korea and Japan will play tonight for the championship after clearly establishing themselves as the best teams in the tournament.

Korea’s got it all: pitching, defense, speed and power, and they’re playing at the top of their game. They whacked a stacked Venezuelan team 10-2 on Saturday to get to the final. It’s inconceivable to me that some sad-sack organization like the Pirates or the Royals doesn’t turn over $50 million to the Korean Baseball Organization and buy themselves an all-Korean, instant contender.

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America is hurting. We hear about it and report on it every day. But so is the world’s second largest economy, Japan. Matt Frei became the BBC’s Asia correspondent just as Japan's economy sank in the 1990s and found himself covering economic collapse across the region. He now hosts BBC World News America and is re-visiting Japan and its economy. He joins The Takeaway this morning from Tokyo.

For a look at an internet cafe that several unemployed Japanese people call home, watch the video below.

Yesterday, President Obama welcomed Japanese prime minister Taro Aso to the White House. This meeting came hot on the heels of Secretary of State Clinton making Japan the first stop on her first official trip overseas. While Japan has been a close ally of the United States for decades, why is the Obama administration stressing the relationship now? Bill Emmott, former editor of The Economist and chronicler of post-war Japan, joins us to help answer that question.

On Tuesday morning the Japanese stock market completed its investment year with a final session that ended 1.3% higher. This is a small high note in what was a dismal year for the Nikkei. The market tallied losses of over 42%, the worst annual performance ever. Andrew Walker, the BBC Business and Economics Correspondent, joins The Takeaway to explain what this means for Japan and the global economy.