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.

Given that 16% of all Japanese children (about 2.6m kids) were apparently living in poverty in 2012, we are probably looking at almost a million households of 2-4 people who have to live on JPY2,680,000 a year.

So why is Recruit going public? The Nikkei reckons that there are rumors that Recruit wants to do some major M&As. We think we can safely rule out much of that happening in Japan.

One way to alleviate travel language fears and to give tourists some real depth and perspective to this amazing country would be to open up the tour guiding sector so that more youthful bilinguals could get involved.

There can be few more satisfying meals in Japan than a steaming (or chilled) bowl of ramen (Japanese noodle soup dish.) Pork, miso, soy, salt, curry, or vinegar flavored. Thick or thin, al dente or soft.

The recent success of the sake industry has given farmers and their minders in government hope for food exports, and for that matter agritourism -- because food brings tourists.

The idea of the program is to get more Tokyo-centric news, events, and lifestyle reportage into the international news system, and thus start increasing international awareness as the city runs up to the 2020 Olympics.

Last week, foreigner-related message boards lit up in outrage over the finding of the Japanese Supreme Court, that foreigners are not entitled to receive welfare support if they get into personal financial trouble.

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.

It's companies which understand innovation and the international markets -- although it's somewhat ironic that the world leader for patent applications was turn-around challenged Panasonic corporation.