A 24-year-old entrepreneur is drawing attention with a new business model that relies on goats to provide weed control, a service that could also help sustain life in depopulated communities.
Japan's National Tax Agency announced on Friday that the average annual salary for private-sector employees in 2023 rose to 4.78 million yen, the highest level since the survey began, marking the fourth consecutive year of increases.
While corporate profits continue to reach record highs, employee wages remain stagnant, leaving a growing segment of Japan’s workforce struggling. Since the collapse of the bubble economy, non-regular employment has steadily increased, creating a widening gap between regular and non-regular workers. Today, 15.4% of the population earns less than half the median standard of living, the second-highest proportion among the G7 countries after the United States.
Tokyo consumer prices rose 2.5% in September compared with a year earlier, with the index excluding fresh food—often subject to sharp fluctuations—reaching 110.0 across the capital’s wards, while the pace of growth remained unchanged from the previous month.
Panasonic Holdings will begin soliciting early retirement applications next month at one of its core operating companies as part of broader restructuring efforts.
Seven Bank has announced plans to replace all 16,000 ATMs currently installed in FamilyMart stores nationwide through agreements with E-Net and Japan Post Bank with its own machines.
Japan counts only eight unicorns -- unlisted startups valued at over 150 billion yen -- compared with 690 in the United States, and has yet to produce a single 'hectocorn,' the term for companies worth more than 100 billion dollars such as ByteDance’s TikTok, OpenAI, or SpaceX.
Japan and Saudi Arabia announced a new memorandum of understanding for economic cooperation on September 24th at the Osaka-Kansai Expo, with a strong emphasis on expanding entertainment and content industries.