Kuchikomi
New Yokohama ordinance to ban smoking in public parks from April
Japan's second largest city, Yokohama, has enjoyed the status of a tourist attraction since the country's emergence from national seclusion in the mid-19th century. Its many attractions include the Motomachi shopping street, Japan's largest Chinatown, Yamashita Park, museums and many historic buildings along its waterfront area. The city also boasts… Read
One magazine's sunny view for Japan in 2025, with a few dark clouds
What’s ahead? Many of us (most?) have yet to catch up with what’s behind. But a new year dawning says, “Look ahead!” – and so we do, so Josei Seven (Jan 2-9) does, gloomily or cheerfully as our natures incline us, for though the clouds are thick and thickening, patches… Read
Sometimes risky turnovers by 'ten-baiyaa' proving profitable
To buy an object with the intention of reselling it -- ticket scalping being one example -- the Japanese word that applies is tenbai suru. For people engaged in this as a profession, a new word, tenbaiyaa has been coined. When the suffix ya is tacked on to a word,… Read
2025 marks 100 years since Showa: Japan then, Japan now
Next year, Reiwa 7 by the Japanese calendar, marks a prologue to a new century, the second since the dawn of the Showa era (1926-89). Showa’s curtain rose on a nation still reeling from natural disaster: the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, whose firestorms, destruction, massive death toll (140,000) and panicked… Read
Finding happiness by cutting all family ties: Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't
Family. What a tangle of emotion that familiar little word conjures up. Nothing you can say about it that isn’t as false as it is true, as true as it is false. What is family? Joy and sorrow, light and darkness, pain and relief from pain, a necessity and a… Read
What do nondrinkers really feel about year-end parties?
On December 7, just in time for the year-end party season, the Asahi Shimbun's weekly "be between" column ran the results of an online survey on drinking alcoholic beverages. In response to the question, "Do you partake of alcoholic beverages?" 70% of the 2,584 respondents gave positive replies. Despite non-drinkers… Read
Japan's elderly the target of all kinds of scams
The recent spree of yamibaito (dark part-time jobs) -- robberies contracted via SNSs that target vulnerable seniors with home invasions -- have shocked the nation. But Spa (Dec 3-10) notes that these are just the tip of a massive iceberg, as it can identify all kinds of other scams that… Read
High inbound tourism levels forcing tourists to sleep rough, in airports, or in 'ghost love hotels'
Where to sleep? “The Haneda Airport departure terminal’s good,” a 45-year-old Osaka executive tells Spa (Dec 3-10). For sleep? Why not? “Our company’s top accommodation allowance for business travel is 18,000 yen a night” – not bad compared to the maximum 10,900 yen a night a mid-level government employee is… Read
Disaster contingency plans lagging to assist Tokyo's foreign visitors
With the waning of the COVID-19 pandemic, foreign tourists have been converging on Japan with a vengeance. Since visits to Japan have been made even more affordable thanks to the lowered value of the Japanese yen, from around last summer the neologism "enbound" (or yenbound) -- substituting the "in" in "inbound" with "en," which is… Read
The highs and lows of living in a tower mansion
Prisons, or palaces? If prisons, golden cages indeed. If palaces… castles in the air, maybe. Ancient Japan built itself close to the ground. Other cultures reared high towers – to overawe enemies, to worship gods or, as in the Biblical Tower of Babel story, to defy God. Japan’s architectural modesty… Read
