Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk has warned that Japan will perish if it does not reverse its declining birthrate, responding to a tweet of a Kyodo News article that said the country's population saw its largest drop on record in 2021. "At the risk of stating the obvious, unless something changes to cause the birth rate to exceed the death rate, Japan will eventually cease to exist.

The Tokaido Shinkansen, which connects Tokyo and Shin-Osaka, has discontinued its onboard food cart service due to a shortage of workers and declining sales. The service had been a feature of the line since its inception in 1964. Despite popular offerings like Shinkansen-exclusive ice cream, sales couldn't compete with convenience stores and station shops. Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai) intends to explore alternative service models and innovations to address this issue.

While Japanese tenants, from a landlord perspective, are normally extremely docile and headache free, and while tenancies are generally long and stable as a rule - there is one issue that, while not unique only to Japan, is more common here due to the country's status as the world's fastest ageing society - as landlords in Japan, our tenants are often elderly - which means that the likelihood of them becoming severely ill or passing away during their tenancy is higher than in most other countries.

Robust demand for lodging by visitors and rising prices create an ideal scenario for investment. In fact, foreign investors have spent US$2 billion on hotel deals in Japan so far in 2023, the most compared with any other sector in Asian commercial property, according to MSCI Real Assets.