Surely few employees would jump out of bed every morning, itching to start work at the "Department for Driving Them Out"? But what is an oidashi-beya? And what scary entities are to be driven out?

A year ago we looked at a 20-year-old apartment after it had just gone on sale in the city where we live, which is about an hour from Tokyo. It was large and sunny, but the walls needed to be re-papered and the floors ...

A new specter hangs over Japan: the specter of insecure employment. The source of this insecurity is the August 2012 reform of the Labor Contract Act related to fixed-term employment.

According to most business media, now is the time to act if you are thinking about buying a home. Though the Liberal Democratic Party has yet to confirm that it will go ahead with the consumption tax increases the Democratic Party of Japan passed ...

'Teachers quitting before graduation?!' the headlines screamed as we headed into the new year.

One of the most common issues that comes up in sessions with patients at our clinic in Tokyo is depression, and one of the most frequently asked questions is “How can psychotherapy help people with depression?” This is a complex question that depends on ...

People in the market for new single-family houses usually don’t worry as much about the land those houses occupy because they tend to work with developers, who purchase huge tracts and then subdivide them. The customer buys the land and the house as a ...

They started performing on stages in Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district, and today their ubiquity is unrivaled. The current flavors of the month pepper the TV schedules and covers of weekly magazines all year round. In Tokyo, you can’t swing a carrot without hitting a ...