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BUSINESS
Nov 22, 2005

Biometric systems popular with condo buyers

With crime rising, an increasing number of condominiums are being equipped with biometric security systems able to identify people by scanning their faces, fingerprints or other physical characteristics.
JAPAN
Nov 13, 2005

Seibu Railway provided 400 million yen to ultranationalist through land deals

Seibu Railway Co. provided 400 million yen to a former high-ranking member of an ultranationalist group in the six years to 2003 via a string of transactions involving land in Kanagawa Prefecture, sources said Saturday.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 3, 2005

Writers ask: Are you being served?

SAYING YES TO JAPAN: How Outsiders are Reviving a Trillion Dollar Services Market, by Tim Clark and Carl Kay. New York: Vertical, 2005. 175 pp., $14.95 (paper). Readers familiar with Japan are in danger of whiplash when reading this entertaining and informative book about Japan's services sector. Some...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Apr 5, 2005

Burned out, wills and tax advice

Fire! Last week our house had a fire We had just moved into a rental house and paid all the key money, real estate fees etc. and nine days later our neighbor's house had a major fire, which spread to ours. The neighbor's house is completely burned, and one person died. My family all escaped unhurt,...
JAPAN
Oct 28, 2004

Judge reverses Kunitachi ruling

The Tokyo High Court reversed a lower court ruling Wednesday and withdrew an order for a real estate developer to remove the top seven floors of an apartment building in Kunitachi, western Tokyo.
EDITORIALS
May 28, 2004

Banks and their 'debt of gratitude'

It appears that most of Japan's top banks are making good progress toward cleaning up their nonperforming loans. They may not be out of the woods yet, but their latest financial reports indicate that they are on track to meeting a government target for bad-debt reduction in fiscal 2004, which ends March...
JAPAN
Apr 8, 2004

Land ministry to prod realtors on renting to foreigners

The land ministry will compile guidelines for real estate agents on procedures for leasing property to foreign renters to make it easier for them to obtain housing, ministry officials said Wednesday.
JAPAN
Mar 7, 2004

Two more arrested over Seibu Railway payoff scandal

Two more men have been arrested in connection with suspected payoffs by Seibu Railway Co. to a corporate racketeer, bringing the number of arrests in the case to 11, Tokyo police said.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Mar 2, 2004

Home Sweet Uchi

Dec 31, 2002, a total of 1,851,758 foreigners were registered with immigration authorities in Japan. That's about 1.5 percent of this country's population. But it's an exceptionally diverse group and comprehensive information on their housing conditions is difficult, if not impossible, to come by.
JAPAN
Jan 23, 2004

Group urges landlords to accept foreign tenants

Finding a place to live is one of the biggest difficulties foreign residents of Japan face, and one of the main reasons is that landlords are reluctant to accept them as tenants.
BUSINESS
Dec 5, 2003

Capital spending rising at slower pace

Capital spending in the July-September period rose on a year-on-year basis for the second quarter in a row, although the pace of expansion slowed to 0.4 percent, according to a Finance Ministry survey released Thursday.
CULTURE / Books / THE BOOK REPORT
Dec 4, 2003

Living on 3 million yen a year

Is there a conspiracy among Japanese politicians, economic experts and elite bureaucrats to destroy Japan's egalitarian postwar social and economic systems and replace them with an American-style, dog-eat-dog type of capitalism typified by a society of haves and have-nots? In his best-selling "Nenshu...
BUSINESS
May 23, 2003

White paper asks for transparency in land prices

The land ministry compiled a draft white paper on land for fiscal 2002, urging that real estate trading prices be made public, and presented it Thursday to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, ministry officials said.
BUSINESS
Apr 5, 2003

Kumagai Gumi seeks 300 billion yen bailout, merger

Ailing construction firm Kumagai Gumi Co. announced Friday it will ask its main creditor banks for a bailout of 300 billion yen under a new three-year restructuring plan while seeking a merger with Tobishima Corp.
BUSINESS
Apr 4, 2003

Kumagai to integrate with Tobishima

Ailing construction firm Kumagai Gumi Co. is planning to integrate operations with Tobishima Corp. next April under a revamped restructuring program in which it will spin off its loss-making real estate business into a new company, sources said Thursday.
BUSINESS
Mar 11, 2003

Ando to inject Hazama with 1 billion yen

Midsize general contractor Ando Corp. said Monday it has agreed to forge a capital tieup with Hazama Corp., seeking to inject the troubled builder with 1 billion yen through the purchase of preferred shares.
BUSINESS
Nov 8, 2002

Towa requests second bailout from banks of 230 billion yen

Towa Real Estate Development Co. said Thursday it is seeking a 230 billion yen bailout package from UFJ and other creditor banks under a new five-year restructuring program.
JAPAN
Aug 7, 2002

Suzuki bribe info faxed to property firm

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office mistakenly faxed a witness account about indicted lawmaker Muneo Suzuki's bribery case to a Tokyo real estate firm in June, a top official of the office said Tuesday.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 6, 2002

Looking at the bright side of Japan's cash woes

One of the most soul-destroying experiences of my life in Japan occurred back in 1986.
BUSINESS
May 29, 2002

Condo firm Haseko crumbles into the red

Condominium builder Haseko Corp. said Tuesday its group net balance sank into the red in the 2001 business year, due chiefly to latent losses on its real-estate holdings for sale and on other fixed assets.
BUSINESS
Mar 30, 2002

Matsushita kin to help debt-ridden developer

OSAKA -- The family of the late Konosuke Matsushita, founder of the Matsushita group, has decided to extend financial help to Matsushita Investment & Development Inc., a debt-ridden real-estate developer, industry sources said Friday.
BUSINESS
Feb 28, 2002

Matsushita plans to sell Osaka towers

OSAKA -- Matsushita Investment & Development Inc., a real estate developer in the Matsushita group, plans to securitize its twin towers in Osaka and other properties and sell them to investors for some 60 billion yen, company sources said.
BUSINESS
Feb 24, 2002

Banks offer 500 billion yen to aid Daikyo

UFJ Bank, Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank and Asahi Bank have entered informal talks with Daikyo Inc. on the provision of up to 500 billion yen in financial assistance to Japan's largest condominium builder, industry sources said Saturday.
BUSINESS
Jan 10, 2002

Residential land prices decline again

The nation's land prices in eight major residential areas declined in 2001, a private-sector survey showed Wednesday.
BUSINESS
Oct 27, 2001

Market slump damages Daiwa's interim earnings

Daiwa Securities Group Inc. said Friday its group pretax profit for the first half of fiscal 2001 plunged 98.9 percent from a year earlier to 1.18 billion yen.
JAPAN
Sep 19, 2001

Slayer of elderly land holder gets 15-year term

OSAKA -- An executive of a real estate firm was sentenced to 15 years in prison for murdering an 81-year-old woman who refused to vacate her house, which stood in the middle of a condominium construction site.
BUSINESS
Jun 1, 2001

Keidanren, bankers to work on debt relief

The Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren) and the Japanese Bankers Association have agreed to begin working on guidelines for banks to forgive loans to troubled corporate borrowers, Financial Services Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa said Thursday.

Longform

The byzantine process for converting a foreign driver’s license into a Japanese one entails mountains of paperwork and significant stamina — unless you're a lucky license holder from a country or region where these requirements are waived.
Driving in Japan isn’t hard. Getting the license is.