Japan is undergoing a massive labor sea-change, and is creating two classes of workers -- the privileged and the rest of irregular workers.

In 2012 the mayor of Osaka, Toru Hashimoto, came out "full blast" with a policy that outlawed tattoos -- in the Osaka government at least. Specifically, he ordered a stop to city employees getting inked.

Economists and businesspeople will be speculating about what will happen to the Japanese economy after the consumption tax increases from 5% to 8%, and therefore what will happen to Abenomics.

The first edition of Terrie's Take for 2014. We take a peek into the future and ask ourselves what trends or macro developments might happen and what impact they will have on doing business in Japan.

This year's summary of key events revolves in around the role of government intervention and the trends that such politically-driven activity will have on our businesses in 2014.

Instead changing the Constitution and the U.N. Security Council an interim solution could be to employ private military companies, working on the behalf of the Japanese government to get "sticky" stuff done.

Rakuten CEO Mikitani is voicing what many other Japanese businesspeople think, that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Abenomics could be doomed by his government's inability to deal with vested interest groups.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) announced that their officials will be visiting companies and asking them (read, arm-twisting) to increase wages, a part of PM Shinzo Abe's stimulus package.

Economists reckon that 10% of employees (about 4.5m people) in Japanese companies are redundant, and if they could, companies would let that many go in order to increase productivity.

There are a number of lobby groups in Japan that have been trying to hold back TPP, among them the medical, education, insurance, and legal sectors, but the one group with the greatest sway over TPP is the farming lobby.