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

Tink Labs, had just raised US$125m to implement an ambitious plan to put a free smart phone into every room of every participating hotel chain in all major tourist destinations in Europe, North America, and Asia.

When a tenant causes a minpaku house to burn down and it takes 2 other dwellings nearby with it, where does the responsibility lie? And what of the 3rd party houses?

APIs are indeed hard work to implement. The supplier offering an API needs to think deeply about their business and at which points in their existing systems they are willing to inject outside requests for action.

One of Japan's big 3 parcel delivery companies, Yamato, dropped a bombshell when a "inside source" revealed that they would gradually end their same-day deliveries for Amazon Prime customers.

In risk averse Japan, the thrill scale is a bit more docile than some other locations, but the most iconic and visually spectacular events are superb. The olden-day Japanese were particularly good at vivid colors, lighting, and shapes.

Police cars on traffic duty generally don't bother stopping speeding cars unless they're doing more than 20km per hour above the limit, or are doing something dangerous.

In what will probably become dubbed the "Airbnb Law", the cabinet office has said that they will allow private citizens to rent out their spare rooms and properties for up to 180 days a year.

For the first time, the National Tax Agency (NTA) will have unfettered access to the overseas financial records of both its citizens and its tax residents.

In the Inbound Travel sector, one of Japan's three distinct travel domains, the trends are being set by foreign companies trying to bring global best practices to Japan.

It was with some interest that we saw a press announcement put out by the government's Statistics Bureau several weeks ago that stated a whopping 3.06m Japanese switched their jobs in 2016.

Inbound visitors have transitioned from high-spending luxury travelers, and "once-in-a-lifetime" tourists, to a larger group of lower-value repeat visitors with naturally less money to spend on each trip.

It is a huge and very welcome surprise that the government may ban public smoking in enclosed spaces such as bars and restaurants, as early as next month (March, 2017).

Japan Travel KK signed a contract with Japan's largest bicycle rental company, DoCoMo Bike Share, for Japan Travel to become DBS' main (but not sole) marketing and sales partner for foreign inbound tourists.

With the global media so focused on the Trump administration, we thought it would be interesting to try to predict what effect the new administration's tactics of bullying will have on Japan.

Some countries have already been down this road - that of balancing thrills with spills. New Zealand pioneered jet boat rides at top speed through narrow and potentially dangerous river gulleys.

Japan changes slowly unless forced by circumstances to do so. It's a risk-averse and conservative society where generally the only domestic sources of change are scandals and deaths.