In this month's issue, Petra Trudell interviews a very interesting entrepreneur, Mr. Nicolas Soergel, who runs a legacy Umeboshi (plum) business in Odawara, Japan, and Lee Reeve writes about growing tourism in Japan and how that is affecting construction activities. Jarman also posts a few consulting project listings for non-Japanese who live in Japan.

DeepJapan (http://www.deepJapan.org) shares the top 20 key words in 2013 on its "how to" Japanese travel site for international visitors, and reviews some of the most popular and helpful articles from last year.