Like other East Asian countries, Japan is a heavy user of seals (hanko) as a means of authenticating documents. So is it better to use a seal or a signature? Japanese civil procedure doesn’t particularly care. If you ever end up in a Japanese courtroom, a signature is just as admissible as a s...

If you spend enough time in Japan with consumption habits like mine, you will eventually discover that All Nippon Airways and Shinsei Bank have very similar corporate theme songs. This is because both songs were composed and performed by Taro Hakase, a Japanese violinist who sports a generous afro, ...

Per a Kyodo wire report in Japanese, the new “zairyu card” proposal (detailed here and here) coincides with an MLIT proposal for an updated resident registration (juminhyo) system, which will include foreigners for the first time. This is perhaps the best part of the entire change. For y...

Debito has gotten hold of the actual proposal to overhaul Japan’s alien registration system (as blogged in this space last week). If you read Japanese, go straight to his post and read the primary sources. Some of the details which are now clear: Initial registration will still be done at city...

For a while I was taking comfort in the notion that if I ever lost my job, I could naturalize and become a local politician like Anthony Bianchi or Jon Heese. At least it would be a more interesting experience than the salaryman grind, right? Well, watching this clip of city council petitioners in S...

The new Forbes list is out and this is apparently the 2009 lineup of Japanese plutocrats: 1. Tadashi Yanai (Uniqlo), $6.1 billion 2. Kunio Busujima (Sankyo), $5.2 billion 3. Hiroshi Yamauchi (Nintendo), $4.5 billion 4. Akira Mori (Mori Trust), $4.2 billion 5. Masayoshi Son (Softbank), $3.9 billion 6...

Or else you might become the Finance Minister of Japan: The full story is here. He says it’s the latter, but we all know better. UPDATE: News services are now reporting that Nakagawa is going to resign, citing this incident as the cause. Apparently they finally got over their implicit agreemen...

I recently came back from my first trip to Taiwan, and while there are a lot of profound things which I will someday have to say about the country, the first thing I want to share with MFT is an image of a bakery which can’t decide whether it’s German or French. The German French bakery ...

It looks like the legal framework is now in place for flights between Tokyo’s Haneda Airport and the Netherlands. As mentioned in this space last year, the Japanese government has been pushing the notion that Haneda can replace Narita during late night and early morning hours as the capital...

For those of you who missed it: Kim Jong Il Announces Plan To Bring Moon To North Korea...