Business and Economy
December 13, 2024
Should tourists be hit with fines for taking reserved seats that aren’t theirs on a Shinkansen train in Japan? That’s what some are arguing as travelers struggle to understand (or ignore) basic bullet train seating rules.
Planning to ride an e-scooter around a Japanese city? Be careful if you take the devices on the sidewalk. One Japanese user found this out the hard way after police slapped him with a 6000 yen fine.
It’s a common trope that “Japan is living in the future.” But did you know the country still has some train stations where you need a physical ticket? Next year, JR West will (finally) install IC card gates at Tottori Station, the last station it runs that still collects paper passes.
Will you never have to swipe your Suica card again? JR East says it plans to roll out a version of the iconic card in 2028 that uses GPS, enabling tap-free travel.
A city in Gifu Prefecture wants to give middle schoolers free lunches. However, it’s sparked a debate by saying it’ll fund the project by ending a 100K yen prize it gives to people who manage to live to age 100.
Street prostitution is on the rise in most major cities in Japan. Police and city leaders in Osaka had a unique idea for deterring the practice in the Umeda hotel district: paint the road a gaudy yellow. At least for now, they say, that plan seems to be working.
An Itoku supermarket in Akita City finally re-opened after a bear invaded and occupied it for over two days. While residents are happy to have their store back, others have expressed anger at authorities for killing the noble creature.
The student-led paper for Tokyo University says a graduate program used an HTML trick to prevent mainland Chinese students from applying.
A second hamburg steak joint this year in Japan is going viral after netizens accuse it of undercooking its food. Social media users laid into Kichijoji Burg after a TikTok food influencer’s video showed its food was essentially raw on the inside.
Gryllus CEO Watanabe Takahito had a mission: to promote cricket protein as a healthy, environmentally friendly alternative to meat. This week, the company filed for bankruptcy after right-wing conspiracies drove it out of business.
The Subway brand in Japan is dying. Over half of the store’s chains have closed in the past 10 years. Japan’s Watami, however, thinks it can turn the struggling franchise around. Why has Subway failed to catch on here? And can Watami succeed in making it “more Japanese”?
You may love mayonnaise. But would you DRINK mayonnaise? The verdict is in as Japanese users have been trying Lawson’s new “drinkable mayo” – learn what they think in our latest.
Good news! There are more female company presidents in Japan than ever before. The bad news? That number is still pathetically low – a mere 8.4%, according to a new report.
Female job-seekers in Japan are facing a new avenue of sexual harassment, Japanese media reports. Some male employees are using apps meant for candidates seeking job search advice as a way to extort sex from women.
Nonconsensual photography is a rising problem in Japan. Authorities say they’re also seeing a spike at schools – including more cases of kids committing the crime against their peers.
Who was Japan’s first female doctor of Western medicine? Both Ogino Ginko – Japan’s first licensed female doctor – and Kusumoto Ine – its first practicing female doctor – can validly lay claim to that title.
The people have spoken: The Kanji of the Year for 2024 is, once again, 金 (kin, kane), meaning money or gold – a character reflecting a range of topics from the Olympics to the LDP’s embarrassing political slush fund scandal.
Is a word of the year the Word of the Year if most of the people who hear it don’t know what it means? That’s the debate happening in Japan as the annual U-CAN award goes to a term that doesn’t seem to ring many bells.
Trying to keep up with your Japanese slang? Then you’d better learn “kaiwai” – one of the year’s most-trending terms.
Some argue that beginners to the Japanese language can skip the writing system and just use romaji. Here’s why that’s never a good idea.
Kuromi appears to have moved on from her beef with My Melody and now has a new enemy: Russia! Here’s why (we think) the mischievous little devil from Sanrio has made an appearance on a wall of badges belonging to various Ukrainian military detachments.
You can make a profit selling anything on the Internet, it seems. In the latest trend, some resellers on Japanese sites like Mercari are making beer money selling old pamphlets meant for new Nintendo employees – some dating back over a decade.
Sanrio fans rejoice! The company has announced it’s opening a new and “unique” museum in 2025 in Kai, Yamanashi Prefecture for Hello Kitty, My Melody and gang. The new facility is partially an homage to Sanrio founder Tsuji Shintaro, a Yamanashi native.
Actress and singer Nakayama Miho, 54, was found dead in her bath last week. The shocking death has Japanese media warning against “heat shock,” a major contributor to the over 20,000 bath-related deaths in Japan every year.
They’re one of the world’s most important Japanese diaspora groups. Meet the Japanese-Peruvians, and learn their dramatic history.
Spurred by colonialist propaganda that called his people “a dying race,” Iboshi Hokuto spent his short life in service to his belief that “only the Ainu could save the Ainu.”
Want a rare peak into Japan’s pre-history? An expanded exhibit at Tokyo National Museum is celebrating Haniwa, funerary statues from the country’s Kofun Era, bringing some rare pieces together under the same roof for the first time.
In 1990, journalist Akiyama Toyohiro became the first Japanese astronaut in space. Too bad he had such a rough time of it.
A Kyoto resident is asking a court to allow them to update their family registry to reflect their nonbinary gender identity. The petition asks to change the listing on their registry from “eldest daughter” to the gender-neutral “first child.”
Japanese lingerie company Wacoal is experiencing significant backlash after unveiling a new transgender-friendly changing room policy. As a result, the company appears to be waffling on its support.
A majority in Japan support marriage equality for same-sex couples. But will new PM Ishiba Shigeru do anything about it? Here’s what we know about his current stances on marriage and other issues such as separate spousal surnames.
A Florida school district has banned a Japanese boy’s love manga despite the series having no explicit scenes. You won’t believe what they recommend replacing it with…
Sudo Saki stood accused of murdering her husband – a notorious playboy who went by the flamboyant nickname “the Don Juan of Kishu.” This week, Sudo became one of the 0.1% of criminal defendants in Japan who win their cases. Here’s how the prosecution’s flimsy case fell flat.
New information is coming out about Luigi Mangione’s time in Japan: after being tipped off by followers, Japanese poker player Obara Jun acknowledged his chance meeting with the alleged shooter at a Tokyo restaurant.
Tokyo police arrested four men at a painting company – including the CEO – for ordering a colleague to walk onto a train track and forbidding him from leaving, a murder that the four set up to look like a suicide.
Neglectful and law-breaking bicyclists have terrorized Japan’s streets for years. A new law taking effect in November aims to crack down on some of the most dangerous behavior.
The price of everything in Japan is going up lately. Christmas cakes, a holiday staple since Japan’s Taisho era, are no exception. Profit margins are so tight this year some bakers say they might stop making them altogether.
Deck the school halls with Famichiki? FamilyMart is making headlines today with its announcement of a very Japanese Christmas-themed giveaway, as it says it’ll distribute over 10,000 of its boneless fried chicken fillets as free school lunches in the city of Sayama.
Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare says Japanese people need to eat more vegetables. The exhortation has led to an online backlash, with people responding that they’d love to – if they could afford them.
The Subway brand in Japan is dying. Over half of the store’s chains have closed in the past 10 years. Japan’s Watami, however, thinks it can turn the struggling franchise around. Why has Subway failed to catch on here? And can Watami succeed in making it “more Japanese”?
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