The Nikkei ran a number of articles expressing fear that the current rout in the Chinese stock market could impact Chinese tourism into Japan.

Welcome to the first issue of Terrie's Take for 2016. Usually our first Take features predictions about general Japanese business and politics. But we thought we'd focus a bit more on our core expertise, which is tourism.

An enthusiastic travel article in the Daily Mail could be turned into a marketing lesson for Japanese tourism authorities, showing clearly the hot buttons an experienced opinion-leader presses to engage his audience.

In this Take, our second-last for the year, we share a collection of observations about how to find distributors for your products even before you commit to setting up a company.

Last month we had more than 6.9m page views from 1.06m unique users. We also had 9,132 contributors producing stories, photos, and videos for us in 11 different languages.

A quick look on Google for the search terms "Japan International Cooperation Agency" (JICA) and "corruption" reveal a broad range of articles from independent journalists around Asia.

Ever since we ran a story in June 2015 about Airbnb possibly becoming legal, we have had a steady stream of people both in Japan and abroad asking us for more information.

How many impressionist works of art are here in Japan? Several of the largest collections are located in and around Tokyo, while there are lots of single paintings spread out all over the country.

Last night, October 31, 2015, was Halloween here in Tokyo. By around 20:00 the streets on the west side of Shibuya were completely jammed with people, and the police had 800 officers in the area for crowd control.

With the basic agreement of the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) now set, the various heads of the governments involved are busy to pass the local legislative changes needed to make the pact happen.