Earlier this week I traveled to Kochi city to participate in a seminar designed to help Kochi Prefectural tourism-related officials understand what might bring more foreign travelers there.

Earlier this week, the trade ministers from 12 pacific rim countries wrapped up their Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations. Between them they account for about 40% of the world's total GDP.

In this age of the Internet, there is still nothing more powerful in our grab bag of popular culture and entertainment media than movies with inspired plots that can actually move the hearts of audiences.

The ministry is going to pressure the Big 3 (NTT DoCoMo, KDDI/AU, and Softbank) to reduce costs and innovate to bring mobile services back in line with consumer incomes.

Having been there, I can safely say that as of September 2015, there is NO access allowed by the Great Firewall to Google services like search, Gmail, maps, etc.

Looking at the Laox stock price over the last 6 weeks, you will see that their shares have moved almost 40% from the top to bottom, then recovered by 20% in just the last 3 trading days.

Towns and cities all over Japan, funded either directly by the Japanese government or indirectly through private investment programs are now wondering how to attract their share of visitors.

It looks like special foreign nanny visas are about to become law, for many thousands of nannies who can be hired by regular Japanese working women.

Why doesn't the Tokyo Olympics committee follow the same good sense of its predecessors and hold the Olympics in, say, September-October? No one is saying, not in public anyway.

Given that most nuclear power plants do not need plutonium as a fuel (although those using a mix called MOX do), the only conclusion we could come to was that Japan is on the threshold of having nuclear weapons.