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Japan Today
14-06-2025
- Japan Today
JR's new overnight sleeper train will connect Tokyo and northern Japan; will be private cabin-only
By Casey Baseel, SoraNews24 For many years, the shinkansen has been time-conscious travelers' go-to method for going from one region of Japan to the other. That doesn't always mean that the shinkansen is the option that maximizes your sightseeing time, though, since while it's often the fastest point-to-point way to get around, you're still going to be spending a period of time sitting on a train instead of seeing the sights, and if your bullet train pulls into your next destination town late at night, you're not really going to be doing anything after you drag yourself out of bed the next morning. So it's good to know that East Japan Railway Company, aka JR East, is going to be offering a new way to travel between Tokyo and Japan's northeastern Tohoku region while you're asleep, announcing that it's going to be introducing a new overnight sleeper train. Though not shinkansen-class in terms of speed, the special express train will still travel much more quickly than conventional commuter carriages, and also make fewer stops on their journey from Tokyo to Tohoku. All passengers will have private cabins, with configurations for solo travelers and parties of up to four people. Rather than separate chairs and mattresses, the cabin interior preview images show sofa-style seats that can be reconfigured into full-flat sleeping spaces. ▼ A solo-traveler cabin configured with a seat and table ▼ The same cabin, reconfigured for when the traveler wants to sleep The 10-car train will have a total capacity of 120 passengers, with one car serving as a common-space lounge. The train's exact route and timetable, as well as its official name, are yet to be announced, but JR East gives an example itinerary of leaving Tokyo at 9 p.m. and arriving at Aomori Station the next morning at 9 a.m., in time to grab/catch some scallops for breakfast. The new sleeper train will serve as a replacement of sorts for the outgoing Cassiopeia sleeper train, which used to link Tokyo and northern Japan, but which has been out of regular service since 2016 and now is only used for special-event short-term tours. The Cassiopeia is being completely retired this summer, and the new sleeper train is slated to go into service in the spring of 2027. Source: JR Eas via NHK News Web Images: JR East Read more stories from SoraNews24. -- JR East announces awesomely cheap one-day all-you can ride pass, Shinkansen included -- Hot coffee finally returns to Tohoku, Hokuriku Shinkansen bullet trains -- Tokyo airport's new train line to make getting into, out of the city easier for JR pass holders External Link © SoraNews24
Japan Today
14-06-2025
- Business
- Japan Today
Foreign tourists outnumber Japanese ones at Kyoto hotels for first time ever
By Casey Baseel, SoraNews24 Recently, with Japan experiencing a surge in inbound international travelers, it's not unusual to hear locals remark 'These days, it feels like there are more foreign tourists in [sightseeing place] than Japanese people!' Oftentimes this is an exaggeration, but in the case of hotels in Kyoto, it's the statistical truth. The Kyoto municipal government recently released its tourism-related numbers for 2024, reporting that during the year 8.21 million foreign travelers stayed in hotels within Kyoto City. That's the largest number ever, and a 53.2 percent increase from the previous year. It's also the first time in history for more foreign travelers than Japanese ones to stay in Kyoto hotels, which received 8.09 million Japanese guests in 2024. That figure of 8.09 million Japanese guests is down 13.8 percent from the year before, illustrating that as Kyoto becomes an increasingly popular destination for visitors from outside Japan, a growing proportion of Japanese travelers are choosing to stay elsewhere. Along with large crowds at sightseeing attractions and congestion on public transportation, Kyoto's rising hotel prices are making it a less attractive place for Japanese travelers to stay. At the end of May, the Kyoto City Tourism Association announced the results of an April 2025 survey of room rates at 106 hotels within the city, finding an average per-night room price of 30,640 yen, the highest amount since the organization began tracking the average price in 2014 and also the first time for it to go past 30,000 yen. With a favorable exchange rate to take advantage the higher hotel rates may not be much of a deterrent to foreign tourists, but for the local Japanese population already struggling with increasing consumer prices, hotel rate hikes in Kyoto aren't nearly so easy to brush off. Surprisingly, even as Kyoto's hotels welcomed fewer Japanese travelers in 2024, the city itself still had an increase in Japanese sightseers, with an estimated total of 45.18 million Japanese people spending some amount of travel time within the city. That number is up 4.6 percent from 2023, and coupled with the drop of Japanese Kyoto hotel guests for the same period indicates that many Japanese visitors were either from-home day trippers or stayed in hotels outside of Kyoto City. On the other hand, the 10.88 million foreign tourists who visited Kyoto in 2024 were a 53.3-percent increase over the previous year, almost exactly the same increase as that for foreign Kyoto hotel guests. The situation hasn't been at all bad for Kyoto's bottom line. Tourism-related spending in the city was up significantly in 2024, with visitors spending an estimated 1.9075 trillion yen, another record-breaking figure and a 24.1-percent increase from the year before. As such, the city is unlikely to enact any drastic policies to pump the brakes on inbound international tourism, but as the city gets more crowded and more expensive, it also gets closer to a tipping point where Japanese travelers might think it's no longer worth visiting. Source: City of Kyoto, Kyoto City Tourism Association via Nihon Keizai Shimbun Read more stories from SoraNews24. -- As more foreign visitors visit Kyoto's top sights, Japanese travelers increasingly staying away -- Foreign travelers' lukewarm reactions to traditional Japanese inn food causing changes in Kyoto -- Japanese government wants to build luxury resorts in all national parks for foreign tourists External Link © SoraNews24
Japan Today
13-06-2025
- Business
- Japan Today
Bento shop bankruptcies increase as Japan's boxed lunch stores struggle in new dining landscape
By Casey Baseel, SoraNews24 Bento, boxed lunches, are practically a symbol of Japanese cuisine itself. A self-contained meal of rice and a number of meat, fish, or vegetable side dishes, they're a quick and convenient way to get a balanced meal, easily portable back to your office or home, and their packaging means you can even set the box down on your lap and eat it on a park bench if you don't have access to a table or desk when you're hungry. However, these are tough times for bento shops. According to business research organization Teikoku Databank, 22 bento shops filed for bankruptcy between January and May of this year. Not only is that more than the same period for 2024, if this pace keeps up for the rest of the year it'll be the highest annual number of bento shop bankruptcies Teikoku Databank, whose figures go back to 2010, has ever observed. So what's causing this? The researchers offer a few different explanations. Large orders of premium-priced bento for events such as business meetings, weddings, and funerals are down, but that's really more of a gradual societal trend away from serving fancy bento at such gatherings. People working from home also means less demand from office workers buying bento as an alternative to waiting for a seat at crowded business district restaurants during the lunch rush, but that wouldn't explain why we're seeing more bento shop bankruptcies in 2025 than we did during the pandemic, when even more people were teleworking. So really, it would seem that the biggest factor that Teikoku Databank mentions is rising costs for ingredients, especially rice. While bento can have all sorts of different side dishes, rice is the one common element they all have. If you've got no rice, you've got no bento, and with Japan currently grappling with the most sudden rice price increases in a generation, it's having a major effect on bento bottom lines. What makes the situation especially difficult is that even though bento are widely liked in Japan, most of them aren't necessarily loved. While special regional bento, sometimes with higher price tags, are popular with travelers as a novelty or special-occasion meal, when it comes to ordinary, everyday bento, you won't find nearly as many passionate fans as you will for things like ramen or beef bowls. Convenience and affordability are often the bigger parts of bento's appeal for would-be regular customers, so passing on increased ingredient costs as higher bento prices can erode demand, since there might not be such strong loyalty to how the food tastes, even if it does taste pretty good. That's putting bento shops in a situation similar to the one being faced by Japan's biggest curry rice restaurant chain. Their food hasn't traditionally been seen as a premium product, so if they raise their prices very much a significant number of customers are likely to say 'Eh, in that case I'll pass,' but keeping their prices low is making it difficult for many bento shops to make a profit. That doesn't mean it's bad news all around for bento shops, however. According to Teikoku Databank's researchers, 45 percent of bento shops had an increase to their profits in 2024. However, 30.2 percent saw their profits shrink, and 21.7 percent were operating in the red. Contributing to this feast-or-famine status is that larger bento shop chains are in a better position to manage their inventories to reduce losses from unsold bento or diversify their sales networks to tap into more pools of demand. Those are more difficult for smaller local bento shops to do, though, and so they're the ones who're facing the most danger in Japan's new dining landscape. Source: Teikoku Databank via Yahoo! Japan News via Hachima Kiko Read more stories from SoraNews24. -- Japanese people demand that Gackt taste the government's old old old rice -- Musical ekiben adds a tune to your train station bento meal -- Tough times for Japanese pubs as izakaya bankruptcies come at highest rate in more than a decade External Link © SoraNews24
Japan Today
12-06-2025
- Business
- Japan Today
Bento shop bankruptcies increasing as Japan's boxed lunch shops struggle in new dining landscape
By Casey Baseel, SoraNews24 Bento, boxed lunches, are practically a symbol of Japanese cuisine itself. A self-contained meal of rice and a number of meat, fish, or vegetable side dishes, they're a quick and convenient way to get a balanced meal, easily portable back to your office or home, and their packaging means you can even set the box down on your lap and eat it on a park bench if you don't have access to a table or desk when you're hungry. However, these are tough times for bento shops. According to business research organization Teikoku Databank, 22 bento shops filed for bankruptcy between January and May of this year. Not only is that more than the same period for 2024, if this pace keeps up for the rest of the year it'll be the highest annual number of bento shop bankruptcies Teikoku Databank, whose figures go back to 2010, has ever observed. So what's causing this? The researchers offer a few different explanations. Large orders of premium-priced bento for events such as business meetings, weddings, and funerals are down, but that's really more of a gradual societal trend away from serving fancy bento at such gatherings. People working from home also means less demand from office workers buying bento as an alternative to waiting for a seat at crowded business district restaurants during the lunch rush, but that wouldn't explain why we're seeing more bento shop bankruptcies in 2025 than we did during the pandemic, when even more people were teleworking. So really, it would seem that the biggest factor that Teikoku Databank mentions is rising costs for ingredients, especially rice. While bento can have all sorts of different side dishes, rice is the one common element they all have. If you've got no rice, you've got no bento, and with Japan currently grappling with the most sudden rice price increases in a generation, it's having a major effect on bento bottom lines. What makes the situation especially difficult is that even though bento are widely liked in Japan, most of them aren't necessarily loved. While special regional bento, sometimes with higher price tags, are popular with travelers as a novelty or special-occasion meal, when it comes to ordinary, everyday bento, you won't find nearly as many passionate fans as you will for things like ramen or beef bowls. Convenience and affordability are often the bigger parts of bento's appeal for would-be regular customers, so passing on increased ingredient costs as higher bento prices can erode demand, since there might not be such strong loyalty to how the food tastes, even if it does taste pretty good. That's putting bento shops in a situation similar to the one being faced by Japan's biggest curry rice restaurant chain. Their food hasn't traditionally been seen as a premium product, so if they raise their prices very much a significant number of customers are likely to say 'Eh, in that case I'll pass,' but keeping their prices low is making it difficult for many bento shops to make a profit. That doesn't mean it's bad news all around for bento shops, however. According to Teikoku Databank's researchers, 45 percent of bento shops had an increase to their profits in 2024. However, 30.2 percent saw their profits shrink, and 21.7 percent were operating in the red. Contributing to this feast-or-famine status is that larger bento shop chains are in a better position to manage their inventories to reduce losses from unsold bento or diversify their sales networks to tap into more pools of demand. Those are more difficult for smaller local bento shops to do, though, and so they're the ones who're facing the most danger in Japan's new dining landscape. Source: Teikoku Databank via Yahoo! Japan News via Hachima Kiko Read more stories from SoraNews24. -- Japanese people demand that Gackt taste the government's old old old rice -- Musical ekiben adds a tune to your train station bento meal -- Tough times for Japanese pubs as izakaya bankruptcies come at highest rate in more than a decade External Link © SoraNews24
Japan Today
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Today
KFC Japan cooking up new yuzu Japanese citrus katsu sandwiches for summer
By Casey Baseel, SoraNews24 Kentucky Fried Chicken Japan isn't shy about leaning just as heavily into the second geographic part of its name as it does the first. So while sure, they're happy to hook you up with a bucket of the Colonel's original-recipe fried chicken, they also regularly offer items that feature Japanese culinary creativity, and that's what's on the way with a new sandwich that's joining the KFC Japan menu: the Yuzu Shichimi Wafu Chicken Katsu Burger. We've got a lot to chew on linguistically there, so let's start at the beginning. Yuzu (pictured above) is a kind of Japanese citrus fruit that's somewhere between a lemon and a lime, but with a sharper finish to its flavor profile that better balances its sweet and tart notes. Shichimi (seen below) is a mixed chili pepper seasoning which often contains powdered orange peel, giving it a flavorful spiciness with a faintly citrusy impression. Meanwhile, wafu is a classical way of saying 'Japanese-style,' alluding to the teriyaki sauce that spread all across the chicken cutlet (katsu). That cutlet gets placed between whole-wheat buns, topped with shredded cabbage (the customary accompaniment for cutlets in Japan), and finished with a generous dollop of yuzu-juice and shichimi-infused mayonnaise sauce. The Yuzu Shichimi Wafu Chicken Katsu Burger can be had by itself for 490 yen, as part of a set with a medium drink and small order of fries for 900 yen, or, if you can't imagine going into KFC and not getting some straight-up fried chicken, as a combo with the drink, fries, and a piece of Original Recipe for 1,200 yen (both of the combos can be had for 160 yen less as lunch sets, offered between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.). Appearing alongside the Yuzu Shichimi Wafu Chicken Katsu Burger on the menu is a regular Wafu Chicken Katsu Burger with conventional mayonnaise, for which a la carte and combo prices are all 50 yen less. Both sandwiches are on sale for a limited time. Source: KFC Japan via Entabe Insert images: Wikipedia/Dallae, Wikipedia/E136, KFC Japan Read more stories from SoraNews24. -- KFC adds a Katsu and Fillet Burger to its menu in Japan for a limited time -- KFC puts its own spin on Japanese flavours with the new Katsu and Fillet Burger -- KFC adds hash brown burgers to its menu in Japan External Link © SoraNews24
