The crab stick in your salad or sushi roll traces back to a small town on Japan's Noto Peninsula, where it was invented as one of the country's great postwar food breakthroughs. The global surimi market is worth several billion dollars, roughly half of it crab sticks. Riding a wave of fish-eating and high-protein diets, kanikama is spreading fast, so why is Japan's surimi know-how so hard to imitate, and how is it sold abroad?
Seven & i, the owner of 7-Eleven, entered talks over a multi-billion-dollar stake in Żabka, Poland's largest convenience chain, then walked away on July 25. A look at why Europe is the gap in 7-Eleven's map, how the Polish upstart's autonomous stores and fintech already outpace many Japanese konbini, and how the deal contrasts with Seven & i's fuel-heavy US business.
Kyushu Electric has grown and cured Japan-made vanilla beans in a Fukuoka greenhouse, branding them Carol Vanilla. With a pollination gun and an automated curing machine, the utility is taking on the world's second most expensive spice, and Japan's 90%-plus import dependence.
On July 15, 2026, Nvidia's Jensen Huang stood in a Tokyo arcade and thanked Sega for the $5 million that saved his company in the 1990s. The story ran everywhere. What almost nobody mentioned: the executive being thanked had helped pick the technology that failed.
Nissin launched the first-ever cold-water-only Cup Noodle on July 20. Its patented Cold Rehydrate technology turns fridge-chilled water into chewy noodles in 5 minutes. Here's how Japan, birthplace of instant ramen, keeps reinventing it.
Japan's Rangle Pro hovers hands-free in pipes and sewers where GPS dies. A racing team turned its autonomous-control tech into an inspection drone taking on DJI.
A century-old Japanese packaging company will launch a flexible CIGS solar cell in early 2027, betting that proven, long-life thin-film tech can beat still-maturing perovskite to Japan's weak roofs and walls. The contrarian logic, and the catches.
Bridgestone's airless AirFree tire is now in permanent service on an autonomous shuttle in Higashiomi, Shiga, a national first. How its puncture-proof resin-spoke design works, why driverless and MaaS fleets need it, how it contrasts with Michelin's Uptis strategy, and whether it's really Moon-bound.
Japan's AutoReserve sends an AI to phone restaurants on your behalf, including ones that never opted in and keep asking it to stop. It echoes Google's 2018 Duplex furor and points at an unsolved question for every AI agent, from Operator to computer use: who on the receiving end ever consented?
NEC and New York University estimate that flood defenses on the Rockaway Peninsula could avoid up to $800 million in losses, pricing everything from transit disruption to residents' mental health in a bid to pull private money into climate adaptation.
Takeuchi invented the mini excavator, earns 99% of sales abroad, and ranks 2nd in Europe and 5th in North America. The story of a Nagano firm that built a market from nothing, and the US-dependence risk it now carries.
