The government announced that it was going to help stimulate the medical sector by creating new guidelines to encourage Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) to invest in hospitals.

Over the last 3 months, the trend of fewer bankruptcies is gathering momentum and under normal circumstances one might might be forgiven for thinking that the economy is recovering.

We were surprised and happy to come across a Stanford University paper, which offers some fascinating facts and figures about the make up of the Japanese entrepreneurial community.

Tokyo could start limiting the number of vehicles transiting the city -- think of Singapore and its various toll charging and vehicle registration systems, which have kept annual vehicle growth down to just 1.5% a year.

Did anybody else notice that just as Sony did their JPY50bn buy-in to Olympus, they quietly sold off their chemicals business to the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ) at the same time?

Changes in this sector shouldn't be surprising: the high yen, the government's pressure on employers to choose between full-time workers or nothing, and the increase of employee social welfare compulsory contributions.

With one of our sister companies in the market entry business, we have noticed in the last 3 months a gradual increase in the number of foreign firms investigating setting up an operation in Japan.

The Swiss have a very similar number of inbound tourists each year and much like Japan, the sources of Switzerland's tourists are nearby countries.

The company owes about JPY2.5trn (US$31bn) to the banks and other bond holders, a crushing debt burden, with shares slipping from around JPY800 this time last year to just JPY198 on Friday.

Most recent was the Hoei Eruption of 1707, when when Fuji was active for several weeks, spewing out an estimated 800 million cubic meters of ash.