Startups

Japanese trading house Marubeni will test out automated vehicles at airports serving the Tokyo and Nagoya areas next month, teaming with Tokyo-based autonomous driving startup ZMP.

Hong Kong-based travel booking site Klook plans to enter the Japanese market in the first half of 2019, looking to cash in on Japan's popularity as a tourist destination and to serve the needs of Japanese travelers.

Japanese biotech startup Spiber has raised 5 billion yen ($44.1 million) to build a facility in Thailand for mass-producing synthetic spider silk protein.

Mitsunobu Okada openly admits that Astroscale, the Singapore-based space debris removal company he founded in 2013, was born out of a mid-life crisis."I was 39 years-old, I was wondering, what's life going to be when I'm 40?" the Japanese entrepreneur says.

As anyone who has lived abroad can attest, adjusting to life in a new country can be a challenge, from finding a place to live to visiting the doctor.In Japan, new services are emerging to make life easier for foreign residents. As the government moves to accept more foreign workers, their numbers are likely to rise, creating opportunities for startups.

Household chores are something that people often don’t enjoy doing. But a robot may soon liberate you from tidying up your messy home.Preferred Networks, Inc., a Tokyo-based start-up, has developed a new system that enables a robot to collect things and put them in the right place, meaning you could have a pair of socks picked up and dropped into the laundry basket.

Houseflies, the Soviet space program and manned missions to Mars — these aren’t plot devices for a Cold War space thriller, but key terms to understand the history behind Fukuoka-based startup Musca Inc.’s project to provide a solution to some of the world’s most pressing agricultural problems: food and animal waste and dwindling supplies of livestock feed.

While career success has taken him from elementary school teaching to the head of Tess Co., Kenji Suzuki’s life has not always been easy or straightforward.During his tenure as a teacher, one of Suzuki’s students suffered from a health condition that left them unable to walk. Although the child was keen to participate in all school activities, their traditional wheelchair often restricted their movement.

In its initial quarter after listing on the Japanese stock market, flea market app Mercari has yet to demonstrate a viable pathway to profitability, a predicament that has wiped 40% off its market value.

Japanese industrial robotics company Fanuc is zeroing in on edge computing, where data is processed as close to the source as possible, Chairman and CEO Yoshiharu Inaba said in Tokyo on Wednesday.