Japan's 'cheapskate' marketing of itself as a tourism destination, and its lack of realism about where its overseas visitors are actually coming from, constitute Terrie's main focus this week. He argues that Japanese tour operators are now "paying the price for this timidity and lack of vision." Read Terrie's Take Now

This week Terrie considers the commercial consequence of Goodwill Group's failure to renew operating licenses for their nursing homes business as well as need-to-know summaries of Japan-related news and commercial information. Read Terrie's Take Now

What lies behind the Japanese government's policy on whaling? Terrie Lloyd examines the social and economic forces behind Japan's ongoing dispute with the international community Read Terrie's Take Now

Just this week, the Government of Singapore Investment Corp. (GIC) and Sumitomo announced that they will invest JPY150bn (US$1.2bn) in retail properties here, effectively joining a slew of other foreign real estate firms such as Australia's James Packer, Rubicon (Aus), NewStar (UK), Macquarie Bank (Aus), Morgan Stanley (US), and many others wanting a piece of the action. To see Terrie's perception of such activity Read Terrie's Take Now

A weekly roundup of news & information from Terrie Lloyd. General Edition Sunday, May 20, 2007 Issue No. 421. This week's newsletter looks at alternative possibilities for fuel cells in the context of global warming in Japan Read Now

Getting on the Yamanote train line the other day, we happened to board a "train-jack" car -- a term referring to a carriage whose entire advertising space has been bought by a single advertiser. In this case, the car's walls,
doors, and ceiling ads all featured the Pink Panther cartoon character and his nemesis the bumbling Inspector Clouseau. Being fans of Peter Sellers, the original Inspector, we naturally wondered what the pink panther was being used to...

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been hitting the news a lot recently, with dire predictions for Africa, Australia/New Zealand, and South and South East Asia, as well as more extreme weather for
the rest of us. Although the current summaries from the report don't yet enlarge on the threat, Japan was identified as one of the 8 most affected...

In a move reminiscent of Livedoor's Horiemon, at 04:00 am on March 1st this year, mobile content company For-side.com announced that it would downgrade its earnings for FY2006 (ending Dec. 31, 2006) to a massive JPY60.6bn (US$51.4m) loss. The company blamed the result mostly on an extraordinary JPY71.3bn (US$60.4m) loss on its sale of UK subsidiary iTouch. For-side's stock price as of last Friday (April 20th) was just JPY3,780, about 85% lower than a year ago, and less than 2% of the company's peak back in October 2002. So what went wrong with this once high-flying firm? Most analysts agree that...

Ten days ago, the foreign Vice President of Dior Japan and his wife were charged with possession of drugs here in Tokyo. Apparently he tried mailing cocaine from a Paris address to his home in Tokyo and Customs tipped off the
Police. The Police raided his home and arrested his wife after...

This last week a small but high-profile English school called Lado International College of Japan declared bankruptcy in the Tokyo District Court and has subsequently shut down. Surprisingly, there has been very little coverage by the foreign press, possibly because of the sketchy details. The Asahi newspaper quoted Teikoku Databank as saying that Lado has left debts of...