Japan's games industry, built on arcades that happily gobbled up 100 yen coins, is perhaps better placed than anywhere else to carve a future from micro-transactions.

Why does Japan have the most advanced vending machine culture in the world and we don’t? The big surge in them started with the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, when millions of people needed to be served food ...

Postcards of Japan were often of the ports, palaces, teahouses, geishas and temples. Many of these images were taken by early Western residents and great care was taken to colorize them.

Of course, nobody in modern-day Japan believes that speaking the words “radiation” or “meltdown” will call forth fire and brimstone like an incantation out of a Harry Potter movie.