Toyota announced that one of its subsidiaries had set itself the goal of developing a "supercomputer-on-wheels" self-driving vehicle ready to demonstrate at the Tokyo Olympics one year from now.

The numbers come from a recent education ministry survey, and show that 20.4% of the kids dropping out, an increase of about a quarter over the last 7 years, are doing so because of financial reasons.

The Finance Ministry came out with some negative data this week, showing that the nation's exports fell 2% in June, and that the trade balance was in deficit, again, to the tune of -JPY822.2trn.

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.

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.

One of the nice things with hydrogen is that it needs massive investment and infrastructure to make it successful, just like the oil economy, so it's better suited to the revenue hopes of Japan's major players.

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.

Under the influence of PM Shinzo Abe, the Bank of Japan declared its new strategy for fighting deflation. The bank said it would embark on its own version of America's Quantitative Easing (QE) program.