Pouring sake from a wine bottle and drinking it in a wine glass. Enjoying sake with anime characters. These are some of the unconventional drinking styles being suggested by sake breweries and retailers to attract overseas customers and young people. Now that washoku traditional Japanese cuisine has been registered as a UNESCO intangible cultural property, there is an opportunity for sake to heighten its profile overseas.

Flipping through any travel guide about Japan you will learn that Japan is a country where tipping is non-existent. Leaving your change on the table at a restaurant may result in the waiter chasing you down to give it back. But in Japan there actually is a system of tipping that exists but is tangled in a mysterious system of formality that no one really seems sure of.  In an interview with Yahoo! Japan, Nobuko Akashi of the Japan Manners & Protocol Association attempts to unravel this system so we can all know when and where it’s appropriate to tip in Japan.

Japanese women are in demand as never before. "Women have the greatest potential," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe recently told media, "and allowing them to demonstrate their full abilities is the core of our growth strategy." He must be pleased by the recent news flow. Even Japan's conservative financial companies are taking women executives more seriously. 

Starbucks Coffee Japan plans to open new outlets at an accelerated pace while shifting its focus from urban centers to suburban areas. Over the next three years, the company will spend roughly 15 billion yen ($146 million) to open 260 new coffee shops, which is 60% more than were opened during the last three years. Starbucks now operates some 1,000 stores in Japan, of which around 10% are located in suburban areas along main streets. 

Japan can increase its female workforce by about one million if it takes steps to improve the working environment for women raising children, the government said in its annual economic and fiscal white paper on Friday.  The white paper, submitted to the day's cabinet meeting by Economic and Fiscal Policy Minister Akira Amari, stressed the importance of encouraging women and elderly people to work in order to tackle the problem of a shrinking labor force, which has been constraining Japan's economic growth.

Japanese education minister Hakubun Shimomura said Tuesday that the government plans to introduce an income limit for free preschool education for five-year-old children. Families with an annual income of less than 3.6 million yen are expected to be eligible for the free schooling from fiscal 2015, Shimomura said at a press conference.

The five biggest convenience store operators in Japan claimed more than 90% of the market by sales for the first time in fiscal 2013. Sales for all Japanese convenience store locations totaled 9.81 trillion yen ($95.7 billion) for fiscal 2013, according to a Nikkei survey. 

Many Japanese purchasers of e-books are facing a situation inconceivable to owners of conventional texts: They are no longer able to read the books they purchased. With an increasing number of e-book distributors withdrawing from the market, some people are calling for a new system to protect e-book consumers.  On May 29, Yamada Denki Co. notified users of its Yamada E-book service that it would discontinue its e-book distribution service. 

Two years after celebrating the manga’s 20th anniversary, fans finally get their present In 1992, a 14-year-old Japanese girl set out to save our universe from total anhiliation. She became a hero for young women around the world, saving them from evil and from the macho male heroes that permeated the media at the time. Her name was Usagi Tsukino, but you may know her better as the one named Sailor Moon. 

Japan has a Kawaii Ambassadur - a cute ambassador. Yep, that is a thing. At least in Jaoan. Kawaii ambassador and model Misako Aoki travels such countries as France, Italy, South Korea, Spain, Russia and Brazil under the auspices of the Foreign Ministry. Lolita fashions served as one of the program's major highlights. During the time of the Kawaii Ambassadors program, the Japanese media used to ask her all the time: "Why Lolita fashion?"