TOKYO, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Japanese government bonds edged down on Friday with the yield curve slightly steepening as JGBs took cues from overseas markets.
Strong third quarter U.K. growth data on Thursday dented expectations for monetary easing by the Bank of England and triggered a sell-off in Gilts. The German 10-year bund yield soared to its highest since late May.
This helped send the benchmark U.S. 10-year yield to five-month highs well above 1.8 percent.
The benchmark 10-year JGB yield added 1 basis point (bp) to minus 0.050 percent, while December 10-year futures ended down 0.16 point at 151.64.
In the superlong zone, both the 20-year JGB yield and the 30-year yield added 1.5 bps to 0.390 percent and 0.510 percent, respectively.
The Bank of Japan refrained from buying any 1 to 5-year JGBs as part of its asset purchase operations, offering to buy 410 billion yen ($3.89 billion) of 5- to 10-year JGBs.
The BOJ will meet next week, and is expected to maintain its minus 0.1 percent short-term interest rate target at its two-day meeting ending on Tuesday.
BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda told parliament last week that he saw no need to ease at the bank's next meeting, suggesting there will be no further monetary stimulus except in response to a big external shock.
Data released earlier on Friday showed Japan's core consumer prices fell 0.5 percent in September from a year earlier to mark the seventh straight month of declines, adding to a recent run of gloomy indicators.
($1 = 105.3200 yen) (Reporting by Tokyo markets team)