Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda won a richly deserved Palme d’Or for his moving drama about a makeshift household of petty thieves, while Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman” took the silver-medal “Grand Prix” and…

posted by  banzaitokyo | 7 years, 2 months ago | 0 comments

From 1995 to 2012, the annual number of tourists going to Japan increased from 3.3 million to 8.4 million, a growth rate of about 6% each year.

And then, the deluge.

In its most recent report, the Un…

posted by  banzaitokyo | 7 years, 2 months ago | 0 comments

Looking for a new hobby? Maybe it’s time to try coding.

That’s what 82-year-old Masako Wakamiya of Japan decided to do this past year. Since learning to write code in early 2017, the retired bank cle…

posted by  banzaitokyo | 7 years, 2 months ago | 0 comments

Japanese authorities are planning to intensify a crackdown on illegal private-lodging businesses.

The move comes at a time when a new law will be put into force that will allow anyone in principle to…

posted by  Yubi | 7 years, 2 months ago | 0 comments

By now, geeks around the globe are cognizant of Akihabara.

Once Tokyo’s post-war electronics haven, the neighborhood has grown into a modern mecca for anime fans. As its popularity has swelled, so ha…

posted by  banzaitokyo | 7 years, 2 months ago | 0 comments

A monk working at the World Heritage site of Mount Koya in Wakayama Prefecture has filed a lawsuit against the organization that operates the temple for damages and unpaid wages, claiming he develope…

posted by  Yubi | 7 years, 2 months ago | 0 comments

Japan’s Preferred Networks Inc. has only one publicly available product, a whimsical application that uses artificial intelligence to automate the coloring of manga cartoons.

Yet the four-year-old fi…

posted by  banzaitokyo | 7 years, 2 months ago | 0 comments

Today, Suntory announced officially that sales of the Hakushu 12-year-old single malt and the Hibiki 17-year-old blend would stop for the time being. The reason? Some of Japan’s most beloved whisky r…

posted by  banzaitokyo | 7 years, 2 months ago | 0 comments

Mercari, the eBay-like service that is Japanese first tech startup unicorn, has filed to go public in an IPO that could raise as much as $1.1 billion.

The company is scheduled to list on the Toyko St…

posted by  banzaitokyo | 7 years, 2 months ago | 0 comments

If you’ve ever wandered around Tokyo on foot you’ll know that it can sometimes be like a spider web of side streets and back alleys. It’s one of the things that makes Tokyo so unique and therein lies…

posted by  banzaitokyo | 7 years, 2 months ago | 0 comments