Japan
Chip markets swing, the yen wobbles, a shrinking workforce reshapes manufacturing from underneath — an economy that keeps rewriting itself while still setting the regional pace.
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Aug- 2026 -6 AugustCompass
Japan’s stronger yen won’t fill hotels until next year’s bookings open
The yen has rallied from 164 to 155–157 against the dollar, but most 2026 travel packages are already sold. The real surge in Japanese tourists to Thailand begins when operators…
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5 AugustTech & AI
Four Asian economies are quietly dividing up the AI supply chain
Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam are each securing a critical chokepoint—from advanced chips to rare earths—making themselves indispensable to the global AI stack rather than competing for dominance.
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Jul- 2026 -29 JulyEarth
Japan’s rebuilt mall collapses weeks after ‘fresh start’ reopening
Aeon Mall Kumamoto, reinforced after the 2016 earthquakes and reopened June 13, was leveled by a magnitude 7.1 quake and explosion on July 28, trapping up to 30 employees as…
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28 JulyTech & AI
Asia’s chip rout masks a geopolitical repricing nobody saw coming
South Korea's KOSPI plunged 8.59% on July 28 as China disclosed domestic lithography production, signalling the tooling gap that protected Korean and Japanese memory makers is narrowing faster than supply…
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25 JulyTech & AI
East Asia is training Southeast Asia’s engineers for Silicon Valley
Japan's new internship programme and South Korea's expanded visas aim to anchor 100,000 tech workers by 2030, but migration research suggests many treat the region as a springboard to Western…
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25 JulyLife & Health
South Korea is betting it can cool housing without Japan’s crash
President Lee's plan to triple property taxes by 2027 aims to shift 75.8% of household wealth out of real estate, but economists say the immediate crash risk remains low.
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21 JulyCapital
Chip stocks crater as oil and rates collide before earnings
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 20% from June peaks as Brent crude jumped to $90.40 on Iran strikes and Treasury yields pushed above 5%, forcing Alphabet, Tesla, and Intel to…
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21 JulyCapital
Japan’s stablecoin just beat America’s to the payroll
AZ-COM Maruwa will pay 2,300 truck drivers in JPYC, a regulated yen token, replacing 30-day bank transfers with same-evening settlement—a corporate deployment impossible under current U.S. rules.
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20 JulyCapital
Seoul’s chip stocks now dictate global AI portfolio moves daily
A $1 trillion selloff in Korean memory chips pushed the Kospi-Nasdaq correlation to 0.46, nearly triple the five-year average, forcing Western fund managers to monitor Seoul's opening bell before trading…
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19 JulySociety
Japan’s fraud losses hit record as scam compounds keep reloading
A raid in Surabaya freed two Japanese women held for three days, but Amnesty International found none of 73 trafficking survivors from Cambodian compounds had been formally recognized, exposing a…
