Tag - property

 
 

PROPERTY

COMMENTARY / World
Oct 10, 2014
Asia's innovation challenge
The West should pay attention to Asia's experiments with creative ways to finance innovation, such as China's intellectual property exchanges and Malaysia's intellectual-property loan programs.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Oct 3, 2014
Inheritance tax in Japan may not be the burden you imagined
With the government cutting corporate tax, it needs even more revenue to make up for its already alarming fiscal shortfall. So far the media has fixated on consumption tax, which tends to be more punishingly felt by the average person than any other sort of tax.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 16, 2014
Osaka kills reform-driven apartment-for-hotel plan for foreigners
The Osaka Municipal Assembly had voted down a plan to allow property owners to open up vacant condominiums and apartments to lodge visitors — an idea based on a central government deregulation drive and aimed at meeting the growing number of foreign visitors to the city.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Sep 5, 2014
Can Japan level its problem with vacant buildings?
On July 29, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications released the results of its latest survey on Japanese housing, which it completed last fall and conducts every five years. The statistic that caught the media's attention was the one for akiya, or vacant homes. As of the end of October 2013, 13.5 percent of all housing units in Japan were empty, which is 0.4 percentage points higher than the portion in 2008, the last time the survey was carried out.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Aug 24, 2014
New buildings can take the sunshine out of life
As residents of Japan, most of us probably expect that our right to sunlight is protected by law. However, as reader Y found, that isn't really the case.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 14, 2014
Chinese authorities fine Fuji-Q copyright violator
A local Chinese authority in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, has punished the operator of a spooky house for copyright violations involving Japanese amusement park Fuji-Q Highland in Yamanashi Prefecture, NHK reported Thursday.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Aug 1, 2014
Ticking the right tax boxes
In most places in the world, property taxes, which are levied on buildings and land, are administered and collected by local governments for the benefit of local governments. This is also true in Japan, but it's useful to keep in mind that property tax rules and regulations are determined by the central government.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 27, 2014
The pathetic state of infrastructure in America
The deliberate starving of public funding for America's roads, bridges, parks, schools, public hospitals, even hospitals charged with caring for U.S. veterans, reflects the economic and political system's ass-backward priorities.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Jul 4, 2014
When should we make noise about loud neighbors?
In August 1974, a 46-year-old man living on the fourth floor of a public apartment building in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, forced his way into the unit below him and killed two little girls and their mother. After attempting suicide he was arrested, and he told police he had been driven to murder by his neighbors' piano playing. Despite his earlier complaints to his neighbors, they continued to use the instrument. On a door in the family's apartment, he scrawled, "There was no apology."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Jun 2, 2014
Generation gaps filled by brick and mortar
Though their numbers have dwindled in the developed world over the past century, multi-generation households are still common, and in fact may become even more common in countries where income gaps are increasing. In Japan, multi-generation households have social relevance owing to cultural norms, the Justice Ministry's Civil Code and relative high cost of land, but there are fewer than there used to be.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
May 28, 2014
Mitsui Fudosan plans big share issue on Olympics
Mitsui Fudosan Co. plans to raise as much as ¥324.6 billion in the biggest share sale by a property company in Japan in at least four decades.
EDITORIALS
May 18, 2014
Protecting the water cycle
The Diet has enacted a basic law on the water cycle, but the law falls short of meeting local governments' demand to legally define underground water as common public property.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
May 13, 2014
Nations narrowing gaps on TPP: Amari
The 12 countries involved in the haggling over a Pacific free trade agreement are narrowing their differences on intellectual property rights, one of the issues blocking the conclusion of the pact, Akira Amari, minister in charge of the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, said Tuesday.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
May 5, 2014
Money that must go down the pan
In almost all of Japan's major cities, close to 100 percent of the population are connected to public sewerage systems, but the farther away from cities you get the more the number drops. Tokushima Prefecture is the lowest, at 16.3 percent.
BUSINESS / Economy
Apr 24, 2014
Apple loses iPod patent battle in high court
The Intellectual Property High Court on Thursday ordered Apple Inc. of the United States to pay some ¥330 million in damages to a Japanese inventor for infringing on a patent involving its iPod music player.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Apr 12, 2014
Tokyo underground: taking property development to new depths
With demand for commercial and residential space increasing on the surface of Tokyo, developers are exploring new ways to utilize space underground.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Mar 31, 2014
Japan's 30-year building shelf-life is not quite true
In the past decade or so, certain claims about Japan's housing market have come to be accepted as facts. One is that Japanese houses are only meant to last 30 years.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Mar 3, 2014
In Japan, you can leave it all up to the moving company
It's often described as one of the most stressful events of human life — but in Japan moving house is virtually a breeze.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Feb 3, 2014
The housing conundrum: To own or not to own
The population is not increasing and there's a shrinking pool of potential buyers for the home you bought 20 years ago, or 10 years ago, or even yesterday.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Dec 2, 2013
Water, water, it's not everywhere
There are aspects of everyday life that renters take for granted, such as access to utilities. Of course, renters pay for their own electricity and gas, and, depending on where they live, they may be billed for water and sewerage. Homeowners pay for these services, too, but there are extra financial burdens involved that people who have yet to buy a house or condominium may not know about. More significantly, some of these services are not available everywhere in Japan.

Longform

When trying to trace your lineage in Japan, the "koseki" is the most important form of document you'll encounter.
Climbing the branches of a Japanese family tree