Nipponica

Japan's restaurant industry is deploying a two-tiered pricing system in tourist spots as eateries look to cash in on an influx of foreign visitors without alienating local customers.

Compared with the castle pricing for tourists below, I do have a problem with this if it starts to become common outside of tourist areas. For foreign residents wanting to have a meal, an identity check should not be part of the ordering process.

"We would like to charge around $30 for foreigners and around $5 for residents," Kiyomoto said at the symposium on cultural heritage and natural disasters.

When asked about his reason for the $5 fee, Kiyomoto told reporters Monday that he wants "to avoid raising the admission fee for local residents."

For cultural sites like castles, I think a higher admission fee could be appropriate for certain tourists from higher wealth countries. But grouping all tourists in a single high-cost bucket is unfair for people from less developed nations. But the challenge is obvious in devising a pricing strategy like this. You can't expect a passport check at a ticket window.

A once-bustling shopping district in the city of Gifu which boasts a 135-year history and inspired a hit song that defined its heyday will see the withdrawal of department store mega-chain Takashimaya Co. at the end of July.

Takashimaya's departure from the Yanagase shopping arcade in the central Japan city is a portent of a more worrying trend sweeping the country, as commercial districts that have coexisted with major department stores lose customers amid Japan's declining birthrate and aging population.

I have seen multiple shopping arcades fall into disrepair around Japan in recent years and it really is a sad loss. There are still many that are vibrant, but the rural areas are hit the hardest.

Japan's parliament on Friday enacted revised laws to replace the controversial foreign trainee program, which has been criticized as a cover for importing cheap labor. Japan seeks to ensure foreign workers will stay on longer in a bid to address an acute labor shortage in a rapidly greying society.

Under the new system, workers will be able to move after working in a job for one year provided their Japanese language and professional skills meet certain requirements.

Businesses in Japan that employ immigrant labor are getting a wake up call and hopefully exploitative practices start to die out. Props to the national government for passing immigration reform for this classification of visa but there is still work to do to raise all workers up to a better overall standard wage to catch up to the rest of the world.

The owner of a ramen restaurant in the city of Nara appeared frustrated as they described their search for a new hire. In January, they registered their business on a major job search site to hire a part-timer, but received few inquiries. Finally, in March, they got a nibble, but still couldn't fill the position. "Three people were supposed to come in for interviews, but they all pulled out. And only one of them notified me. Young people's thinking is off the rails," they said.

Interesting article about a phenomenon happening elsewhere around the world that is surely linked to a wide dissatisfaction with wages and the expectations of the worker/company relationship. The article also posits that inefficiencies in the application process turn away qualified applicants which also rings true. But they place part of the blame of workers submitting multiple simultaneous job applications as a problem when, in reality, it is a necessary part of job hunting.