Category: Japan, Inc.

Inheritance taxation planning—speaking with the oracle of Otemachi John Dodd When the founder of McDonald’s Japan, 78-year-old Den Fujita, passed away on April 21, 2004, he bequeathed a rags-to-riches story worthy of dramatization. Born in Osaka, he was brought up bilingually and worked as a translator to earn pocket money during high school. After World […]

Home is where the car ads are: a New Zealander watches her scenic countryside turn into a TV commercial for the newest Japanese cars – Upfront Debbi Gardiner THE OAK-LINED ROAD TO Fairlie once meant only one thing to me: the best way to get to Lake Tekapo so that my granddad Dudley and I […]

There’s profit in junk: welcome to Eigo Nosaki’s Treasure Factory – Sponsored Section John Dodd AS I WALK INTO the “recycle” shop, essentially a themed junk store, I am hit by the sensation of having walked into a messy version of Crate & Barrel. Lighting is good, the merchandise is laid out in categories and […]

Does paradise need a parking lot? It takes 26 hours to get to Tokyo’s farthest-flung suburbs, but if the travel and construction industries get their way, that could all change – Ogasawaras Islands, Japan Michael E. Stanley IT GETS TIRESOME HEARING how “unique” Japan is; how the tea ceremony or the practice of Zen, for […]

Booming IP telephony challenges NTT’s telecom empire – Nippon Telegraph and Telephone’s competition Sumie Kawakami Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT Group has held a de facto monopoly in the fixed phone business for the past 100 years. Despite the keitai boom, as well as the coming of the broadband age, the Japanese still need NTT’s […]

Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen 40GB – CNJBZ40F – Portable audio player – Brief Article Creative, one of the foremost producers of portable audio players, has released two new models of its “Nomad Jukebox Zen” player. The 40GB version, the CNJBZ40F, has both USB and Firewire sockets and, thanks to that huge capacity, can store and […]

Banking on a tourist boom Japan’s burgeoning hotels are big, brash—and mostly from abroad: if Prime Minister Koizumi’s [yen] 20 billion initiative works, his targeted 10 million tourists are going to need a place to stay. Luxury hotels are descending fast Matt Wilce TOKYO CURRENTLY HAS AROUND 35,000 hotel rooms, ranging from budget bunks to […]

Whaling and Japan: Japan persists in its quest for whalers’ rights, despite fierce opposition and even demonization by foreign media. Is Japan being treated fairly? This summer’s International Whaling Commission meeting in Berlin promises to heat up the great whaling debate Debbi Gardiner IN MID-MARCH, ON the Polynesian island Kingdom of Tonga in the South […]

Suntory’s world-class malts: Kansai’s very own whisky rebellion Dominic Al-Badri THE salaryman enjoying a glass of whisky after work has long been a staple image in postwar Japan. Cigarette in one hand, a tumbler of scotch in the other, Japanese men played out this role in the 1,500 Torys bars Suntory established in the 50s […]

Japan’s fruit filchers – The Pulse 1 ACROSS THE COUNTRY, JAPAN’S farmers are suddenly suffering a spate of nocturnal fruit thefts prompted by astronomical market prices. A recently released National Police Agency report reveals that thefts of farm produce and marine products across Japan skyrocketed 48.1 percent over the previous year. Damage totals have reached […]