Worst-case scenario: You have been legally working in Japan and paying into a private insurance program. The coverage is minimal but you like the low premiums. April 2010 arrives and it is time to renew your working visa. A new immigration guideline now stipulates that you must show proof of being enrolled in one of…

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has been quite vocal about his party’s pledge to cut carbon emissions in Japan by 25 percent over the next ten years. Offering tax breaks for eco-friendly companies, households and cars are amongst his policies to achieve this. However, it would appear the PM has neglected one sure-fire way to achieve…

Japanese society is in a constant state of flux, riding the peaks and troughs of the economic wave, and taking cues from the west that suit Japanese sensibilities and rejecting those that don’t. As society evolves, so does its vocabulary. New words and expressions keep popping up on TV variety shows, in songs, bars and…

Jasmine sat on her living room floor covered in fake gorilla fur. She sneezed — twice. What she really wanted to do, though, was cry as she held a crumpled sheet of music in her right hand, and a very incomplete costume in the other. In less than a week, she had to play a…

For centuries, the Japanese – like many in Europe and elsewhere with a similar length of recorded history – never ventured far from their birthplace. Subsistence farming was for so long the norm in both regions and for much of the rest of the planet, leading to local area specialties forming regional staples and a…

Japan’s affluence grew in the late seventies and throughout the eighties. Hordes of people moved out of their cramped apartments and into more palatial dwellings. With the dream houses and condominiums came the pets – a surefire way of announcing to your friends and neighbors that you were in the money. And so started Japan’s…

Rebecca Rayborn was born on March 6, 1984. Her father is British. In 2008, she replaced Ueto Aya as Japan’s ‘CM Queen,’ an accolade which is awarded to the star who appears in the most TV commercials in a year – in other words, Japan’s most marketable face. Never heard of her? Don’t worry, under…

With the world’s lowest infant mortality rate, Japan appears to be an ideal place to give birth. But having baby is more than a medical procedure, and personal beliefs play a huge role. If you can accept Japan’s cultural idea about childbirth, then you can take advantage of the impressive post-partum care at many hospitals…

Eco is the catchphrase that serenades this era’s consciousness, and given the urban density of Japan – and the alarming rate of climate change – it is one that cannot be stressed enough. In response to this impending crisis, Prime Minister Hatoyama made climate change one of his foremost topics, and at the UN summit…

Population swings have long been the subject of debate, study, analysis, predictions of doom and gloom, and general chitchat for the uninformed. In reality, there is no such thing as an “ideal” population. There are, however, many takes on required numbers to maintain, improve upon, and even decrease, living standards at any given point in…