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Japan outlines new strategy to boost economy, aims to create lucrative “unicorn companies”

Welcome to the sequel of Abenomics.

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“HOW much?!” Professor estimates appropriate salary for housewives, housewife actresses gasp

In a special press event, a Tokyo professor puts a price to the blood, sweat, and tears of Japanese wives and mothers.

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Japanese advertising agency breaks tradition by recruiting people who got held back in school

When a company ensures that everyone deserves a second chance, it’s a company worth working for.

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“The one and only way to make people in Japan take more vacation time”

Our veteran salaryman-turned-reporter gives his idea for the one thing that has to change before Japan will stop working itself to death.

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Are anime and idol songs the musical choice of poor people? Income survey has some otaku worried

Anime has plenty of rousing anthems, but some are calling this data downright depressing.

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This is a pretty worrying chart for China’s demographic future

It’s no secret that many countries face looming demographics problems as their populations age.

Much has been written about developed markets like Japan, Germany, and Italy, which have the largest percentages of their populations age 65 and up.

But another country also deserves attention: China.

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Here’s why Japan won’t do anything about the crazy yen surge

The Japanese yen is on fire.

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New anime studio employee gets his first paycheck…and is shocked at how small it is

There’s a reason why the same parents who encourage their kids to become doctors or lawyers don’t try to steer them into becoming anime studio employees.

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China could give 100 million people new identities in a bid to save its economy

Chinese officials are set to discuss ways to stimulate the country’s sputtering housing market during its Central Economic WorkingConference later this month, according to Chinese state media.

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“What would happen if all Japanese people could speak English?” Net users duke it out

Who doesn’t love debating hypothetical scenarios about the future of a country, especially in the anonymity of the internet?

In fact, a recent Japanese Twitter exchange has led to such an economic debate. One Twitter user with a large following sparked the initial discussion by posing the question “What would happen if everyone in Japan learned how to speak English?” That post has now been retweeted thousands of times, with hundreds of people eager to share their own opinions on the topic.

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Want to be an animator in Japan? Brace yourself for long hours, poverty as you start your career

To many anime fans, working in the industry itself seems like a dream job. The chance to spend all day immersed in the medium they love, helping to add to the collective body of work from which they’ve drawn so much enthusiasm and enjoyment obviously holds more appeal than some bland corporate or service sector profession. Being a professional animator also means you get paid for your passion, to the tune of roughly a cool million a year!

Except, that’s yen we’re talking about, which means the average animator’s annual salary is well under US$10,000.

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Six Japanese business terms you already know, even if you didn’t realize it

We’ve talked before about handy Japanese words and phrases we wish we could toss around in English. This kind of linguistic jealousy doesn’t flow in just one direction, though. Japanese businesspeople regularly make use of a number of English phrases, either because they’re more concise, precise, or just sound cooler to their ears than their Japanese counterparts.

Sometimes, though, knowing English isn’t enough to understand these loanwords, since their pronunciations can get pretty garbled in the transition from English to Japanese speakers. Feeling confident in your ability to translate English translated into Japanese back into English? Read on and see how many you can decipher.

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Would you date a girl dressed head to toe in Uniqlo? 76% of men say “of course!”

Uniqlo, the hugely popular Japanese chain store that stocks a variety of simple, practical and affordable clothing, has expanded into a world-wide venture, with stores in Singapore, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, France, Russia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and, well, you get the picture. In the West in particular, Uniqlo has a pretty cool image thanks to its simple, pared-down designs and celebrity approval (for example, Pharrell Williams designed a range for them in April 2014), so it might surprise some of you to hear that there are people in Japan who tend to be a bit snobby about Uniqlo, looking down on its regular clientele for lacking in fashion sense.

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In wake of meat scandal, McDonald’s Japan losing not only customers, but employees, too

It’s been a pretty rough year for McDonald’s in Japan, in the same way that getting hit by a bus on your way to work would make for a rough morning. Following a widely reported scandal in which the chain had been supplied with expired chicken by a meat processing facility in China, McDonald’s has been trying everything it can think of to lure diners back, such as giving away Chicken McNuggets for free, replacing the meat with tofu, and trying to take our mind off the incident entirely by pulling our attention towards pork cutlets instead.

After all, a restaurant chain can’t survive without customers, right? There’s one other thing you need to run a business though: employees, and these days McDonald’s is finding itself losing those, too.

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“Why bother?” Survey says one in three Japanese young adults doesn’t see the point in effort

Spend much time talking to people in Japan, and you’re sure to hear the phrases “gambaru” and “shou ga nai” over and over again. The fact that they both come up so often in conversation is kind of ironic actually, since their meaning are complete opposites.

Gambaru means “I’ll do my best,” and gets used for any topic that requires effort, including school, sports, work, and even finding a boyfriend or girlfriend. Shou ga nai, on the other hand, translates out as “it can’t be helped,” showing that you’ve already given up.

Unfortunately, a recent poll suggests that an increasing number of people in Japan are saying shou ga nai, with roughly a third of young adults saying they feel like their efforts in life won’t be rewarded.

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Investors watching Yo-Kai Watch as hit game/anime series leads stock rally in Japan

As Japan continues its long in-vain search for a way to recapture the glory years of the Bubble Economy of the 1980s, politicians and pundits have proposed a plethora of projects. But amid all the talk of privatizing the postal system, making the expressways free, and devaluing the yen, there’s one outside the box solution no one happened on until now: unleash supernatural entities into the stock market.

Maybe it’s something they should have tried earlier, considering how the supernatural characters of hit multimedia franchise Yo-Kai Watch are leading a mini stock rally all by themselves.

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China ‘fearful’ of becoming world’s number one economy, says academic

China is fearful of becoming the world’s leading economic power and does not want to overtake the US. That’s the argument Kai He, Associate Professor of Political Science at Utah State University, has put forward in an article for the RSIS Commentaries on June 2, in which he suggests three reasons why China “doesn’t want to be number one”.

A major report back in May that suggested that China’s economy will overtake that of the US this year was met with opposition from an unlikely source: Beijing itself. A message published by China’s state media questioned the accuracy of the report, which was based on World Bank figures, and discouraged people from “reading too much into it”.

But why would Beijing refute the suggestion that it will be the world’s leading economic power before the year is out?

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Tokyo Skytree’s disappointing attendance: 6.19 million visitors

Tokyo’s two most compelling yet conflicting traits, the energy from its sheer number of residents and the solitude of its back alleys, are both best appreciated from ground level. The metropolis’ scale can only truly be appreciated from high above, though, which is why Tokyo has no fewer than five major observation decks within the city limits.

As the newest and tallest of the group, the Tokyo Skytree, which opened in the spring of 2012, is by far the most prestigious of the group, and it has quickly become a more vibrant symbol of Japan’s capital than Tokyo Tower itself. But even with the millions of visitors the Skytree saw last year, the attendance was still below what was expected.

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How much would the world miss Japan if it suddenly disappeared?

When you live in a country for long enough, it’s easy to forget the things that set it apart and really make it special. In largely homogenous societies, like that of Japan, it’s easy to take daily amenities for granted without ever stopping to consider that commonplace objects are unique to the culture and perhaps novel to people of other nations.

A recent book released by Earth Star Entertainment aims to give the people of Japan a fresh perspective on their island nation, as well as celebrate the many things that it has to offer to the world. The book’s title translates to What if Japan Disappeared: Japan’s Ability to Support the World, and from the few short excerpts we’ve seen, it’s obvious that Japan thinks quite highly of its contributions to the world’s economy, entertainment, and food options.

But in the grand scheme of things, how much would the country really be missed if it suddenly disappeared from this world?

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8 reasons why Japanese workers are so slow at making decisions

For foreign companies, one of the more frustrating aspects of doing business in Japan is the painfully slow process by decisions are made. Thanks to a complicated bureaucracy, a heavily ingrained hierarchical society and an overall tendency to avoid risk at all costs, sometimes it seems like Japanese workers are the most inefficient decision-makers in the world. But what is behind this habit of everyone taking their sweet time to make up their minds? We have compiled a list of eight reasons behind this seemingly common Japanese practice of being incredibly indecisive.

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