Articles

In 2004, an anonymous poster boarded her usual train and stepped off at a station that does not appear on any map. Starting from Japan's most famous internet ghost story, this piece weaves together late-night Yamanote platforms and Aoyama Cemetery taxi rumors, revealing the other Tokyo that surfaces only after the last train has gone.

~4 min · 983 chars

Japan's AI scene, long dismissed as a laggard, is shifting in 2026. Sakana AI—founded by ex-Google researchers including Transformer co-author Llion Jones—closed a Series B totaling roughly 32 billion yen at a $2.65–2.7B valuation, plus a strategic Google partnership in January 2026. Preferred Networks is betting on its in-house MN-Core L1000 chip with 3D-stacked memory and a new AI cloud joint venture with Mitsubishi Corp and IIJ, directly challenging Nvidia dependency. Backed by a planned ¥1 trillion, five-year government program and players like ELYZA, rinna and Stockmark, Japan is carving a distinct path: efficiency, hardware integration, and Japanese-language depth—rather than head-on competition on frontier model scale.

~5 min · 1370 chars

In summer 2024, rice vanished from Japanese supermarket shelves, marking the start of what became known as the "Reiwa Rice Turmoil." By January 2025, the price of a 5kg bag had soared to 4,051 yen — up 77% year-on-year and the highest since 2000. Causes were tangled: a heat-damaged 2023 harvest, surging inbound tourism and dining-out demand, panic buying triggered by a Nankai Trough earthquake advisory, and the legacy of decades of acreage-reduction (gentan) policy that had quietly eroded supply resilience. MAFF initially denied any shortage, only revising stockpile release rules in January 2025. Agriculture Minister Taku Eto resigned in May after admitting he had "never bought rice," and his successor Shinjiro Koizumi pushed reserves directly to retailers via discretionary contracts. As of April 2026, average prices have eased to 3,933 yen per 5kg, but government stockpiles have collapsed from 910,000 tonnes to just 100,000 — and the deeper policy reckoning is only beginning.

~5 min · 1382 chars

Edo Kiriko cut glass, founded in 1834 by Kagaya Kyubei in Edo, has been carving light for nearly 190 years. Artisans grind patterns like kiku-tsunagi, asanoha and yarai onto coloured overlay glass using emery wheels. Designated a Tokyo traditional craft in 1985 and a national traditional craft in 2002, the trade now counts fewer than a hundred mostly aging artisans, with surviving workshops down from over forty to roughly ten, squeezed by cheap machine-cut imports. Yet ateliers like Horiguchi Kiriko and Hanashyo are drawing young apprentices through overseas exhibitions and luxury collaborations, keeping this craft of light alive.

~5 min · 1322 chars

Launched globally on June 5, 2025, the Switch 2 sold 17.4M units in its first nine months, outpacing the original. Nintendo's dual-pricing model — a ¥49,980 Japan-locked SKU versus a ¥69,980 international one — absorbs yen weakness and tariff risk at the BOM level, while a lottery system and bans on Mercari and Yahoo Auctions listings mount the industry's toughest anti-scalping defense. Hardware runs on NVIDIA's custom Tegra T239, but real margin comes from a Mario Kart World bundle with a 96% attach rate.

~5 min · 1222 chars

After missing the last train, a quiet bowl of niboshi ramen under the Shimbashi overpass, shared in silence with two strangers. Not loneliness — just the right distance.

~4 min · 949 chars

From paying taxes to picking up Amazon parcels, printing documents, and recycling batteries, Japanese konbini have quietly become civic infrastructure. Through a foreign friend's eyes, we revisit the strangeness Japanese people take for granted, and the labor shortage and unmanned-store experiments propping it all up.

~4 min · 999 chars

A composite portrait of an 82-year-old Edomae sushi master, framed as a single day from 4 a.m. at Toyosu Market to past 10 p.m. at his eight-seat counter in a downtown alley. Through fish selection, the silent rituals of shari and nikiri shoyu, and a near-wordless apprenticeship, the piece honors the weight of a craftsman's philosophy: doing the same thing, the same way, every single day.

~4 min · 1123 chars