While my fellow Japanese passengers knew to be patient and endure, the foreign tourists could only wait about 30 minutes before they started fidgeting and needing more information.
After some embarrassing exposes in the press, the government has cracked down on some of the worst offending employers - the ones withholding passports and salaries, seeking sexual favors and unpaid overtime, etc.
Unfortunately for Kochi, although they got the boats and the visitors, in reality it hasn't resulted in the economic boom that they expected. The tourists are visiting the shops. But once in those shops, they are looking but not buying.
Well, after nearly 40 years after her creation, the cat who is really a be-whiskered pre-teen British girl named Kitty White (yes, really, according to Sanrio), has been responsible for most of Sanrio's JPY60bn in sales last year.
The japantravel.com website and Japan Travel KK company were both started in December, 2013, but the idea and test version of the site came in mid-2011, shortly after the devastating 3/11 Tohoku earthquake.
The Hiroshima Prefectural Board of Education announced that it would open an International Baccalaureate school on Osakikamijima, serving local middle and high schoolers, not just expat kids.
For the Japanese, the Trump-Kim summit is a bit of a slap on the face as they are being bypassed by Trump in his eagerness for a North Korea deal. Essentially the White House is relegating Japan's interests to being of minor concern.
An Airbnb competitor told me that they think Airbnb will lose up to 90% of its listings in Tokyo, and that in a perverse sort of way, it levels the playing field for the other industry players.
Few farming-marine sectors in Japan have seen such extreme boom and bust conditions as the pearl industry. A recent report in the Nikkei says that Japanese pearls are now experiencing a mini-boom.
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