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

... 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.