Category — Investment

In baseball-crazy Japan, one of the game’s most interesting legends, known amongst fans as ‘the curse of the Colonel’, has presented a once-in-a-lifetime marketing opportunity for Kentucky Fried Chicken.

This legend stretches back to a famous night in Osaka in 1985, when local baseball team and perennial underdogs the Hanshin Tigers won the Japan Series Pennant – their first and only victory in the series to this day. As one of Japan’s most popular but least successful teams, delirious fans celebrated by having lookalikes of the team’s players jump into the Dotonbori River, which runs through the heart of Osaka city. [Read more →]

From Nowhere to No Vacancy

Once a rural locality in the throes of serious social and economic decline, today the Japanese ski town of Niseko, situated in northern Hokkaido, is regarded as a world-class skiing destination. Niseko has enjoyed a tenfold increase in the number of foreign skiers over the past five years, and now the area is also home to some of the fastest rising land prices in the land of the rising sun. [Read more →]