Tourists visiting Japan tend to flock to the same spots, these being popular destinations that appear in every guidebook and website that recommends places to the millions of visitors that come to Japan each year. One of these places is Asakusa, where people stroll past multiple traditional restaurants and souvenir shops until they reach Senso-ji,…

The Tokyo Metropolis is a bustling place that over 13 million call home (38 million if you count the Grater Tokyo Area). Of course, the city’s population tends to increase during daylight, when commuters from other places in the Kanto region travel to Tokyo’s many business districts to work until night. With so many people…

According to the Ministry of Defense, Filipinos are the 3rd or 4th largest foreign population living in Japan (depending on the year, it continues to be a toss-up with Vietnamese residents). photo-ac.com/ The population is also expected to grow thanks to Japan’s new visa policies that will make it easier for people from certain countries…

As summer nears, Japan’s most dangerous animal will start appearing in many places. We are not talking about bears, who roam Hokkaido and the northern part of Honshu. We are also not talking about the dangerous box jellyfish that shows up around Okinawa when waters start to warm. Oh, no. The beast we are talking…

A silent killer has been spreading all over the world over the past decade. The killer is known as Candida auris, and in recent days many news outlets reported on its risks and what was happening. After reading the news articles, many might have spotted that the bacteria was first identified in Japan, making some…

Your love life is nonexistent. After moving to Tokyo to focus on your career, your office has become your home and your social interactions have plummeted to levels you had never imagined. After devoting most of your day to all the tasks your boss gives you, you get home so late you don’t have time…

Picture this. It’s 8 AM and you are taking the Tozai Line to work. The train is packed. Absolutely packed. People are so close to each other they could morph and become a new creature. For some, having someone glued to their bodies like that represents a level of intimacy that is often reserved to…

The nightmares are over! Long gone are the days when people visiting Japan had to enter a Starbucks and order some coffee just to be able to use the Wi-Fi. If you’ve already visited Japan, you’ll be wondering what exactly we are talking about since finding public Wi-Fi did force you to enter a coffee…

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…

It’s that time of year again! Predictions for the first and full bloom of the beautiful cherry blossoms, more affectionately known as “sakura” in Japan, have been floating around for a while since the beginning of the year. Given that it has been a comparatively warm year, the blossoms are expected to emerge earlier than in…