oyota has again dethroned General Motors as the world's top-selling automaker.  The Japanese company sold 9.7 million cars and trucks worldwide in 2012, although it's still counting. GM sold 9.29 million.  Both companies saw higher sales, but Toyota's growth was far larger as it rolled out new versions of popular models like the Camry. GM executives promised sales growth this year, especially in the U.S. 

TWO years have passed since an earthquake and tsunami destroyed the huge Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant owned by Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), on the Japanese north-east coast—and precipitated a phased shutdown of the country’s 54 nuclear plants for stress testing, maintenance and further seismic analysis. 

With the last reactor turned off in May 2012, the past summer was when Japan started to live without nuclear power for the first time since 1970. Before the disaster struck, nuclear power accounted for 29% of the country’s electricity supply, with plans for boosting it to 50% by 2030. Such intentions are now out of the question. To compensate for the loss of such a large chunk of electrical capacity, households and businesses across Japan were threatened with black-outs and to make reductions of up to 15% in consumption or face stiff penalties. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, the electricity was switched off in some parts of the country for up to four hours a day.

The number of new condominiums put up for sale in Tokyo and its three neighboring prefectures rose 16.4 percent in June from a year earlier to 4,007 units, a research agency said Wednesday. The average unit price fell 1.1 percent to ¥44.58 million in the greater Tokyo region, the Real Estate Economic Institute said. 

The first decade of this century started with the so-called dot-com bubble. When it burst, central banks moved aggressively to ease monetary policy in order to prevent a prolonged period of Japanese-style slow growth. But the prolonged period of low interest rates that followed the 2001 recession instead contributed to the emergence of another bubble, this time in real estate and credit. 

Despite assumptions that the iPhone would struggle to achieve a foothold in Japan, a country on the cutting edge of mobile technology, the iPhone has taken the land of the rising sun by storm. In 2009 the iPhone accounted for 72.2% of the smartphone market in Japan, and 4.9% of the entire cell phone market in the country.

Japan "is ripe" for more mergers and acquisitions as companies have ample cash and the level of takeover activity is lower than it should be, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Japanese companies should consolidate in industries where there is excessive competition, and be more aggressive in making acquisitions in Asia, where the long-term growth potential is high, Kathy Matsui, chief strategist for Goldman in Japan, said Wednesday.

Japan's industrial production rose a seasonally adjusted 1.3 percent in April from the previous month for the second straight month of growth, partly due to brisk exports of equipment used for flat-panel televisions, the government said Monday.