Starbucks may well have coffee shops in around sixty countries and regions worldwide but other than North America, Japan is the first to reach 1,000 branches. Despite being seen initially as a more ...

Weddings and konkatsu (or spouse-hunting) are big money in Japan. June Bride is a term that originated in the west but later became a commercialized concept in Japan too. However, June in Japan, as ...

Last weekend I jumped on the Fukutoshin Line and headed down to Shibuya to check out Keitai Mizu ("mobile water"). From what I had read, the event at Jingu-dori Park was set to be a mobile ...

Japan's largest retailer Aeon is offering yukata (cotton summer kimono) this year with peach and soap fragrances. Part of its new "adult kawaii" range of hundreds of summer items, the yukata ...

There is no doubt that Japanese anime's stories vary greatly from cute, funny, educational, heroic, romantic, horror, erotic to grotesque. Makoto Shinkai's latest animation film "The Garden of Words" ...

We blogged last autumn about the opening of the Art Aquarium in Tokyo in 2012. After the exhibition pulled in a whopping 200,000 visitors, it's not surprisingly coming back to the Nihonbashi ...

After the Tohoku disaster, we have all become a bit more conscious of the "gear" needed in an emergency. Bottled water. Warm clothes. Geiger counter. Hardhat. In Japan, schools and companies ...

You can argue with me on this, but in Japan, there are two days a year when the idea of being alone might affect you emotionally -- these are Valentine's Day and Christmas (or Christmas Eve, to be ...

If you ever wish to find out who's hot in the Japanese show biz today, simply pay close attention to TV commercials. SoftBank, for example, is famous for featuring the latest trends in its ...

GU (pronounced "gee-you" -- a play on jiyu, meaning "free") is the off-shoot of UNIQLO that is even cheaper and even more casual. GU branches have been popping up around major city centers ...

Cyber Agent, the people of Ameba, are part of a three-company consortium behind the new Shibuya Clickable Project, a system for Online to Offline (O2O) services using IC tags and NFC-enabled ...

Following the Tohoku disaster in March 2011, we've all thought much more about the kind of tools and clothes that we need when society as we know it breaks down. From flashlights to emergency ...

Japanese beer makers are in trouble. Retail sales for regular beer have been declining for years now as salarymen who like a can of fizzy lager in the evening opt for cheaper variations. Even ...

If there’s one thing you’ll notice walking around Tokyo, it’s that people are always on the move. At any given moment of the day, no matter where you are in the city, the sidewalks are jammed ...

Foot-in-mouth disease strikes Toru Hashimoto again. On Monday the brash right-wing politician shocked reporters in Osaka when he said that the so-called "comfort women" (local women forced into ...