Nobuo Okuno, 82, has been selling traditional "karuta" playing cards at a store that has been operating in Tokyo's Kanda-Jimbocho district for more than 90 years. "Playing karuta, you have to use your eyes, ears and brain, so you can enhance concentration," Okuno said. "It ...
The "soroban," Japan's traditional abacus, is drawing renewed interest as a tool to promote the development of children's mental capacities and to help fight dementia in the elderly. At a soroban class in Tokyo's Nerima Ward, early elementary school children practice a mental calculation technique ...
Aya Ohzeki was still just a 17-year-old high school student when she founded her necktie company. "A company will go down if it fails to earn money, so it's important to try to keep creating something special and unique that no one else can copy," ...
More and more parents are interested in having their children start studying English even before they turn 1, with an eye on giving them an advantage in their future careers. At S&S International School, an English school for infants in Yokohama, 2-year-olds were fluently pronouncing ...
A Tokyo-based nonprofit organization is promoting a program to help grandfathers learn the basics of nurturing babies. The NPO, called Egalite Otemae, began the program in 2010 to address the growing need for grandparents to get involved in child-rearing as the number of working couples ...
Early this year, a woman had her rabbit treated for a stomach ailment in a pet hospital for a week, costing her around ¥80,000. But the financial hit didn't pose a problem for the Osaka store clerk because she had pet insurance. "I was shaken ...
Yoshihide Ito sometimes makes ¥40,000 a day selling organic vegetables from the tailgate of his vehicle in a space he rents in front of a beauty parlor when it isn't open for business. "Won't you have some rare organic vegetables?" he calls out from the ...
Fitness gyms offering a variety of physical exercise programs for children are doing well despite declining adult membership in the midst of the economic slowdown that has hit the country over the past few years. One 35-year-old housewife sends her second-grader daughter and 5-year-old son ...
Companies catering to people suffering from sleeplessness are now in vogue as Japan goes through "the era of insomnia." Panasonic Electric Works Co. is offering the Restino, a device that automatically controls light and sound factors to determine whether a person can be healed and ...
Consumers are turning to innovative food storage containers to help stretch their food budgets amid the economic slowdown. Companies are keeping up with demand by giving plastic freezer bags, soy sauce dispensers and instant coffee refill cartridges a technological edge. "Vegetables really last long," said a ...
