Nipponica

Dozens of shops, restaurants and bars lining the streets of Tateishi Nakamise, a covered shopping arcade – or shotengai – in the capital’s eastern suburbs will make way for a new development. It will transform the skyline, but also change beyond recognition an entire community whose roots lie in the destruction caused by the second world war.

Across Tokyo and other Japanese cities, shotengai that sprung up during the Showa era [1926-1989] are in a losing battle against property developers, depopulation and a consumer culture that demands convenience.

On one side of the local railway station, a tall screen partially hides cranes preparing the ground for apartment blocks, shops and a multi-storey local government office. On the other, families that have run shops, bars and restaurants for two or three generations are bracing for the inevitable arrival of the wrecking balls.

This one hits close to home as I live on a famous shotengai that luckily is still bustling. When supported and funded properly by cities, these areas are communities unto themselves and should be protected. So much connection is lost when these unique alleys are replaced by cookie cutter developments.

A send-off event was held at the Japanese Embassy in New Delhi on Friday for 11 assistant language teachers and three international exchange coordinators who will be dispatched from India to Japan.

This marks the first regular dispatch of assistant language teachers from India under the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program, a government initiative to promote international exchanges at the regional level. Only a few such personnel from India have participated in the program until now.

This is fantastic news and will diversify the JET program beyond English speakers from the Anglo world. I still have reservations of JET as a language education program as English levels of Japanese youth fail to rise. But as a cultural exchange program, it is world class.

The South Korean Air Force said Friday that a transport aircraft bound for Guam urgently landed at the U.S. Air Force's Kadena base in Okinawa Prefecture on July 13 as it ran out of fuel.

The South Korean military transport aircraft is believed to have entered Japan's air defense identification zone (ADIZ) without prior notice, causing the Air Self-Defense Force aircraft to scramble.

I'm far from an expert on fuel consumption but this must have been quite the diversion to force a landing at Kadena. Someone fucked up in a big way here.

The rapid ascent of the right-wing Sanseito party in Japan has shone a spotlight on public attitudes to immigration, unnerving some non-Japanese residents.

Sanseito, founded in 2020, won 14 seats in Sunday's upper house election on its "Japanese First" platform advocating stricter rules on immigration and foreign capital, along with proposing tax cuts and welfare spending. The party had held only one seat in the 248-member chamber of parliament prior to the vote.

In a stump speech during the election campaign, party leader Sohei Kamiya called for limits on the number of unskilled foreign workers entering Japan to make up for the nation's labor shortage, which he described as a "national doping scheme."

Nikkei Asia asked a number of foreign residents in Japan to describe their reactions to Sanseito's election performance.

A good roundup of foreign resident's thoughts on this new party.

"The most attractive part is the kindness of Japanese people," Galata said, adding he has been particularly impressed by the well-maintained roads, packaging for onigiri rice balls sold at convenience stores, and how he was served at restaurants.

These kinds of puff pieces are typical, but I am fascinated that onigiri packaging is in the top three for this guy's Japan loves. Too much tuna mayo can rot the brain.

Japanese ocean shipping group Mitsui O.S.K. Lines is exploring options for sending employees to English-speaking countries other than the U.S., citing the possibility of longer-term impacts.

The company has eight participants in its program, with four each at New York University and University of California, Irvine. They have student visas to take part in three-month programs to study English and business.

"The Trump administration's xenophobic policies will in the long term hurt the free-spirited charm has attracted exceptional young talent from all over the world and has been a U.S. strength," Mitsui O.S.K. Lines chief executive Takeshi Hashimoto said.

The internal affairs ministry plans to survey municipalities about uncollected resident tax from foreigners who leave Japan without paying, in order to consider countermeasures, a government source said Friday.

Workers living in Japan as of Jan. 1 are subject to resident tax for that year. However, it is typically paid in monthly installments from June of the following year and the time lag contributes to the problem, as some foreign workers leave Japan before their payments begin.

The core of the problem here is that municipalities are taxing people on a year delay, not people not paying. It is the first thing in the populist playbook to claim the immigrants aren't paying their fair share, but the answer to this problem is not to punish people when the system itself should be the object of reform. Adopting an immediate resident tax would simplify everything.