What Japan is telling
the market now

Night view of a narrow, neon-lit indoor alley lined with small izakaya-style bars, glowing paper lanterns, and steam rising from a food stall, styled to evoke Tokyo's postwar yokocho districts.

Jul 30, 2026

Developers Are Building Brand-New “Old Tokyo” Alleyways From Scratch — and Some Locals Think It’s Gone Too Far

Shibuya Yokocho, a 100-meter indoor alley of 19 bars and restaurants built inside a modern retail complex, opened in August 2020 —…

Read briefing ->

An elderly Japanese person's hands holding and tapping a smartphone with a simplified, large-icon interface at a sunlit kitchen table.

Jul 29, 2026

Japan’s Senior Citizens Quietly Quadrupled Their Smartphone Adoption — and Most Product Teams Still Haven’t Noticed

In the world’s most aged society, smartphone ownership among people in their 60s has climbed to roughly 88.6% as of 2025, up…

Read briefing ->

A young traveler, seen from behind, holds up a smartphone to photograph a quiet small-town Japanese train station platform bathed in golden-hour light, with mountains in the distance.

Jul 28, 2026

A Small Japanese Town Got a $180 Million Tourism Boost From an Anime — Without Spending a Dollar on Marketing

Gifu Prefecture, the real-world setting behind scenes in several hit anime films including “Your Name,” has drawn an estimated 1.03 million pilgrimage…

Read briefing ->

Overhead flat-lay of several open Japanese bento boxes arranged in a grid, each showing neatly divided compartments of rice, fish, vegetables, and pickles on a wooden surface.

Jul 27, 2026

A Department Store Sells $4 Million of Train Station Boxed Lunches in Two Weeks — Once a Year, on Purpose

Every January, Tokyo’s Keio Department Store in Shinjuku holds an event most Western retailers would never think to run: a two-and-a-half-week fair…

Read briefing ->

Exterior of a modern Japanese roadside rest station (michi-no-eki) with wooden post-and-beam architecture, crates of fresh local vegetables displayed on outdoor tables, and mountains in the background.

Jul 26, 2026

Japan Turned Highway Rest Stops Into a $1.7 Billion Retail Network — and Almost a Third of Them Still Lose Money

Japan has 1,230 government-certified roadside stations — michi-no-eki — generating an estimated ¥250 billion (roughly $1.7 billion) in combined annual sales as…

Read briefing ->

Magazine-style cover image of a long, orderly Japanese used-bookstore aisle with color-coded book spines, overlaid with Japan Market Pulse Issue 064 headline text about BOOKOFF's global expansion and store-count statistics.

Jul 25, 2026

A Japanese Used-Book Chain Is Expanding Into America — the Exact Market That “Killed” Used Bookstores

BOOKOFF, Japan’s dominant secondhand retail chain, now operates 727 stores domestically and has crossed 50 locations overseas, with a stated target of…

Read briefing ->