Back in 2019, it had been announced that the iconic Harajuku Station would be demolished after the 2020 Olympics. Though with the postponment due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the dismantling of the station continued as planned, and now the original façade is not there anymore. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sugaya…

Numbers don’t lie: there is a trend going on in Japan that is seeing the number of elderly people committing petty crimes go up. Among these crimes, the top one is shoplifting. Upon seeing these numbers, researchers and demographers became puzzled as they tried to come up with a good hypothesis that could explain the…

According to the Ministry of Defense, Filipinos are the 4th largest foreign population living in Japan, being recently surpassed by Vietnamese residents, and they have had a long and strong presence in the country. The number of Filipinos living in Japan had increased in the late 90s to the numbers seeing today. However, many of…

A young man looks at his mother. The frail, old woman can no longer walk long distances and usually spends her days inside the house with the family. Her hair has turned white, and the foggy mist in her eyes indicates that she is losing her vision. Her son really loves her, but does not…

Special Benefit for JPY 100,000 again? For those who live in Japan, you might remember that the Japanese government distributed 100,000 yen to each individualhalf a year ago to compensate for the monetary losses caused by COVID-19, and that we showed you how to apply for it. In response to the second state of emergency,…

With the increasing number of COVID-19 patients in Japan and the coronavirus mutations found overseas, the government decided to shut down the country’s doors again and prohibit entry to foreigners from all countries until the end of the second emergency. Since November 1st 2020, the government has allowed business entry from these 11 countries and…

During most of 2020, Japan was able to avoid the worst outcomes from the COVID-19 pandemic despite not enforcing a lockdown and very strong measures. One of the reasons Japan did not impose the type of strict rules and measures that saw places like Taiwan and Vietnam keep the virus under control is that the…

Have you checked them yet? Because of a shortage of workers due to its population decline, Japan has been accepting foreign workers from all over the world. Under the COVID-19 circumstances, however, both Japanese and foreign workers have been suffering from low income or unemployment. To help them during these financial difficulties, the government has…

When it comes to human trafficking, one might usually think of impoverished countries where laws are not enforced and politics are full of corruption. However, many first world countries are in fact important source transportations and destinations when it comes to human trafficking. This can be something that many citizens tends to overlook as they…

Microaggressions, that word alone can stir a mixture of emotions that can widely differ depending on the individual. Its polarizing nature is deeply linked with the perceptions people have on microaggressions: some believe they are very damaging, while others do not think they are acts of aggression at all and gag when hearing the term.…