Terrie's Take -- A weekly roundup of news & information from Terrie Lloyd.

As has been well publicized, there are over 8.49MM akiya in Japan, so with the rate of renovations made so far, amounting to just over 1% of the vacant housing stock, this could be a HUGE opportunity.

... to add some miles to the week of riding, we'd take a left turn at Miyoshi and go down into a valley called Iya, in Tokushima. As it turns out, this was an amazing ride to an amazing part of the country.

Fundamentally JMEC teaches volunteer participants how to take the first step in creating new businesses or fixing old ones - by doing deep-dive research and thereafter building credible business plans.

The media is thick with reports on problems caused by too many tourists in destinations like Tokyo, Kyoto, and also increasingly by the swarming of regional festivals.

Although the government has a Minister in Charge of Support for Women's Empowerment and Child-Rearing, the reality is that having a baby is just as difficult now as it always was for aspiring career-minded mothers.

It was rather shocking to read in the news last week that the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) has raided the offices of Booking.com, Expedia, and Rakuten.

As technology automates and sweeps over our lives, one sector in particular that has been hard hit and many have predicted will disappear all together is the printing industry - a sector worth about JPY1.36trn in Japan.

It's kind of hard to believe that with the flood of foreigners coming into Japan that there is any part of the country which is untouched by their presence - but yes, there are still some who haven't figured out how to attract outsiders.

Japan took a step closer to allowing genetically edited plants and animals into our food chain. An advisory panel to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, decided that gene-edited foods are safe for the public to eat.

Why people travel to Japan's most iconic destinations: They want to get "Disneyland-eseque" experiences. They are drawn by natural beauty and preserved locations. They are drawn by consumerism, mostly in the form of food and shopping.

The Japan Center for Economic Research, a Tokyo-based think tank related to the Nikkei newspaper, released an update report stating the cost of cleaning up the Fukushima Daiichi power plant has now risen to around JPY81trn.

Last week the Nikkei ran an article declaring that Airbnb has clawed "its way back in Japan following the 2018 listings collapse". I took a look at their most recent listings and counted them.

In Japan where fundings and M&A valuations are usually kept secret, and where smaller companies take longer to gain traction because of cautious partners and suppliers, knowing what you are worth can be tough to discover.

What does Full Stack" mean? Well it refers to a new generation of software developers who not only handle databases and servers, but also systems engineering and client-facing interfaces (UX).

Toyota announced that one of its subsidiaries had set itself the goal of developing a "supercomputer-on-wheels" self-driving vehicle ready to demonstrate at the Tokyo Olympics one year from now.

Japan introduced its first new tax in 28 years, which is a traveler departure tax of JPY1,000 per passenger aged two or older and who is not in the armed forces, government, or other exempt category.