Two of the most persistent and damaging myths about Japan are that it is hard to start a company here and that it is hard to do business as a foreigner.  Well, those are not complete myths. Both of those things are indeed difficult,

Japan has a long history of small shopping streets and tiny markets. In fact, despite the population density, American-style mall culture never took off here. The back streets of even the most crowded downtown office districts are filled with little sp...

Platform as a Service (PaaS) has been a difficult startup business model in the US, but Wayland Zheng, founder and CEO of Mobingi, has found a way to make it work in Japan. His approach involves a combination of leveraging both a unique feature set and...

It’s rare for a Japanese startup to challenge NTT and come out ahead. But that’s exactly what Takehiro Ogita and his team at TownWiFi have accomplished. - TownWiFi is a mobile app that automatically detects and logins into available WiFi hotspots.

This is a rather personal episode. We have no guests this time. - It’s just you and me. - We talk a lot about Japanese startups on this show and the role they will play in shaping Japan's economic future. - Well,

Most great startup ideas don’t grab your attention right away. It takes a while before the founder’s vision becomes obvious to the rest of us. On the other hand, the startups that immediately grab all the press attention often go out of business shortl...

After the March 2011 earthquake and the explosions at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, TEPCO and the Japanese government tried to assure us that everything was just fine. The repeatedly insisted that there was no serious danger posed by the radiation...

Selling innovative software to conservative Japanese businesses is never easy, but it’s particularly challenging in the cutthroat and low-margin restaurant industry. - Today, we sit down with Masao “TJ” Tejima and talk about how he brought OpenTable i...

Education is one of the hardest sectors to disrupt -- or even improve upon -- and most EdTech startups struggle. - Today we sit down with Go Arai and we talk about how his company, Arcterus, is taking a bottom-up approach to improving education.

The translation and localization industry has seen some impressive innovations over the past decade, but in many ways, it has remained stubbornly resistant to change. - Today we sit down and talk with Jeff Sandford co-founder of Wovn.io.