According to The Australian Financial Review,  Amazon's assault on the $100 billion food and grocery market could reignite the battle between multinational food and grocery suppliers and Woolworths, which believes brand owners may be favouring the e-commerce giant with cheaper prices on brands such as Colgate, Huggies, Omo and Finish.
After stepping up pressure on Woolworths and Coles by adding food and beverages to its non-food pantry range last month, Amazon Australia is now undercutting the dominant supermarket chains by as much as 50 per cent on household staples and quickly capturing a foothold in the market.
Woolworths sources said Amazon.com.au was selling food and groceries at lower prices than Australia's largest supermarket chain on a number of products and in some cases at prices below Woolworths' purchase price.

https://www.afr.com/business/retail/amazon-undercuts-woolworths-and-coles-on-food-and-grocery-prices-20181126-h18ckr

If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
​https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/6374749
​

According to The Australian Financial Review, residential developer Crown Group has partnered with one of Japan's largest real estate developers, Mitsubishi Estate Group, to develop its newest apartment project, the $500 million Mastery in Sydney.
Crown will collaborate with Mitsubishi Estate Group through its residential arm, Mitsubishi Jisho Residence, to deliver the entire five-building and staged project at 48 O'Dea Avenue, Waterloo by 2021.
The development is also designed by another well-known Japanese architect, Kengo Kuma, who will work alongside Japanese-born Sydney-based architect Koichi Takada and Sydney's Silvester Fuller.

https://www.afr.com/real-estate/sydneys-crown-group-partners-with-japanese-developer-mitsubishi-estate-group-20181128-h18hdk

If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
​https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/6714524 

According to The Nikkei Asian Review, Seven-Eleven Japan is teaming with NEC to open a cashierless convenience store that uses facial recognition to authenticate shoppers and check them out.
Japan's retail sector as a whole faces an urgent need to improve its achingly low productivity. The growing difficulty of hiring staff amid a deepening labor shortage, combined with rising costs for part-time workers, is forcing convenience stores in particular to find other ways to improve efficiency and remain competitive.
Against this backdrop, this move by the Seven & i Holdings unit to test a minimally staffed convenience store could be a first step toward the eventual debut of unmanned stores in Japan.
Seven-Eleven's pilot store will open in December inside a building in Tokyo where an NEC group company has offices. It is a small store with just over 10% of the floor space of a typical Seven-Eleven location, and is meant for NEC group employees who have preregistered to shop there.
To enter, shoppers must either wave their employee identification cards in front of a reader or be authenticated by facial recognition. To check out, they scan the bar codes for items they want to buy and identify themselves via either facial authentication or with their employee ID at a special terminal. Actual payment involves deductions from their salary, eliminating the time spent paying with cash, credit card or e-money.
This pilot store is not an unmanned shop because staff is still needed to place orders and stock shelves. But by eliminating cashiers, a store that might otherwise need a staff of two or three can do with only one.
The design makes shopping faster with less wait time. Seven-Eleven will consider introducing the approach at stores that are limited to shoppers from offices and factories.
In the U.S., Amazon is spearheading the introduction of cashierless stores with Amazon Go, where cameras and sensors track who is buying what and the money is debited when shoppers leave through special gates. The first store opened last January and the company is believed to have an eye on expanding to as many as 3,000 locations by 2021.
In China, about 70 companies, including operators of online shopping sites, are running 1,000 unstaffed stores already, and more companies are stepping over business-segment and business-category barriers to join the fray.
In general, cashierless stores use some means of authenticating shoppers when they enter to prevent shoplifting, requiring that people preregister to shop in such stores.
It has been hard for Japan's leading convenience store operators to expand in this way because their customer base includes everybody from children to senior citizens.
But now that it is growing ever harder to secure clerks, and now that more and more people are using smartphone apps to pay for things, Japan's retailers are exploring minimally staffed and staffless stores.


https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-Trends/Seven-Eleven-taps-facial-recognition-for-future-unstaffed-stores
 
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https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/-nec
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According to The Asahi Shimbun, duty-free shopping is about to get sweeter for travelers flying overseas out of Kansai International Airport.
Starting Dec. 3, passengers on international flights will be able to purchase Japanese pears and "mikan," among other agricultural products, before boarding.
Leading travel agency JTB Corp. will start selling 10 Japanese agricultural products at the J's Agri shop in the duty-free section for travelers who have gone through the immigration gate.
The pears are produced in Kyoto Prefecture and the mikan, a citrus fruit similar to a tangerine, in Wakayama Prefecture.
The company will also provide a quarantine inspection service for customers heading to countries where such handling is required for importing agricultural products, including Thailand and European Union member nations, for 3,000 yen ($26.50) per purchase.
By promoting interest in Japanese agricultural products, the business aims at encouraging foreign visitors to register as members of the J's Agri website and participate in experience tours such as strawberry picking.
There are currently about 3,500 registered members of the website, which was launched in September 2017.
JTB hopes to increase the number to 5,000 by the end of this fiscal year through the introduction of the website at the new shop.
Customers can also make reservations for such products via the website.

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201811260034.html

If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
​https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/4145821
​

According to The Asahi Shimbun, ever innovative, Tokyo's restaurant scene is targeting solo customers for lunchtime dishes normally beyond the realm of the average salaried worker, figuring lower prices will translate into a decent profitable turnover.
For example, outlets that specialize in steak, Korean-style "yakiniku” grilled meat and French cuisine are offering deals that are hard to ignore for a typical working person on a daily budget of around 1,000 yen ($US 9) for food.
One restaurant chain that made its reputation for good grub at reasonable prices as long as customers didn't mind standing up while eating now provides chairs and tables.
In Shinbashi, a commercial area close to Ginza that is popular with white-collar and other workers, a restaurant called “Yakiniku Like” that opened in August recently had long lines outside even before it opened for lunchtime trade.
The silence that permeated the restaurant as office workers and other solo diners grilled slices of meat eloquently reflected the happiness that customers were experiencing.
Partitions are also set up to provide a measure of privacy.
Dishes are served within three minutes of being ordered. Customers stay for only 25 minutes or so on average.
“I cannot afford to go to expensive yakiniku restaurants very often, but the prices here are affordable,” said a 47-year-old customer, who works part-time. “The meat here is not sinewy, and is of good quality.”
Yakiniku Like was set up by Dining Innovation Ltd., a Tokyo-based company operated by the founder of Gyu-Kaku, a major yakiniku restaurant chain.
Providing a “yakiniku answer to fast food” is the guiding concept of the restaurant. Its menu contains features few snacks to go with alcoholic beverages. Its sales are booming on the back of high customer turnover.
Typically, the cost rate, or the ratio of food material costs to the total sales, at a restaurant is about 30 percent.
At Yakiniku Like, the figure is about 45 percent for U.S.-produced beef and more than 50 percent for cuts from Japan, officials said.
The restaurant's proud boast is the “cost-effectiveness” of the meat it serves. Its “rib & skirt set,” priced at 1,210 yen, excluding tax, is a big favorite.
“Ordinary restaurants wouldn’t be able to serve dishes at prices like ours,” said one official. “We are trying to meet demand for more casual yakiniku experiences.”
The restaurant operator plans to move quickly to open more outlets, many of them in busy commercial districts of Tokyo.
The business model that allows higher-end food to be served at reasonable prices because of higher customer turnover drew attention when restaurant chains operated by Tokyo-based Oreno Corp., which serves French, Italian and other upmarket dishes, gained popularity in Tokyo’s posh Ginza district and other shopping and entertainment areas.
Oreno’s outlets in a combined bakery-and-cafe style, which serve high-quality loaves of bread, are also faring well. Officials are weighing whether to set up similar outlets in provincial cities.
“Ikinari Steak,” a chain of steakhouses, is also expanding its network.
The chain of 340 or so outlets, the first of which opened only five years or so ago, will have a presence in all 47 prefectures on Nov. 30 when the company opens a steakhouse in northern Akita Prefecture.
Unlike typical steakhouses, few appetizers and side dishes are available at Ikinari Steak’s outlets, where steaks are served “ikinari” (Japanese for “outright”), and so the customers don’t stay for a long time.
With a cost ratio exceeding 50 percent, the chain has earned a reputation for serving good quality steaks at a reasonable price.
However, Ikinari Steak is under pressure to modify its shop management style.
When the chain started out, stand-up eating was the norm, but the bulk of space of restaurants in the chain now provides chairs.
Customer numbers at Ikinari Steak’s outlets are either falling or remain largely unchanged year on year, so the chain is hoping to attract more elderly diners, as well as families with children.
​
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201811290001.html
 
If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/1931510 
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According to The Asahi Shimbun, treatment using stem cell regenerative medicine to restore damaged nerve connections in patients with spinal cord injuries, whose only course of treatment is rehabilitation, may be available by year-end.
The medicine will be the first tissue-engineered medical product created from stem cells.
An expert panel at the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare approved the proposed therapy on Nov. 21.
The health minister is expected to officially approve the treatment by the end of next month. Treatment for patients will likely be covered by the national health insurance program.
The ministry assessed the new therapy under the system that prioritizes new drugs with a potential to have a dramatic effect for speedy approval.
The medical product, called Stemirac, was jointly developed by Osamu Honmo, professor of cerebral nerve at Sapporo Medical University, and Nipro Corp., a leading medical equipment maker based in Osaka.
Under the therapy, researchers extract mesenchymal stem cells that have the ability to transform into bone or blood vessels from bone marrow fluids of patients whose spinal cord has been damaged.
After they cultivate 50 million to 200 million mesenchymal stem cells to create Stemirac, they inject it into patients intravenously within a couple of months after their injury.
Researchers say mesenchymal stem cells will concentrate in damaged parts of bone marrow on their own, reduce inflammation, work to promote regeneration of nerves or turn into nerve cells.
Honmo and his colleagues have conducted a clinical trial led by doctors to verify the safety and effectiveness of the proposed treatment since 2013.
Of 13 patients who received the injection between three weeks and eight weeks after injury and underwent rehabilitation, 12 showed improvement at least by one rank defined by the American Spinal Injury Association Impairment Scale, which describes the extent of the spinal cord injury.
One of the patients showed dramatic improvement by regaining the ability to move the feet after originally falling into the category where patients had no motor or sensory functions, according to the researchers.
Exactly how mesenchymal stem cells work remains a mystery. The expert panel’s approval is conditional.
All patients using cell and tissue drugs derived from mesenchymal stem cells will be monitored for about seven years for safety and efficacy.
Akifumi Matsuyama, professor of regenerative medicine at Fujita Health University, urged caution in assessing the results of the clinical trial.
“The nervous system may have recovered somewhat because the injection of the drug was made not long after the patients were injured,” he said.
An estimated 5,000 people suffer spinal cord injuries annually in Japan, totaling more than 100,000 patients in total.
A research team at Keio University plans to conduct a clinical trial with the use of human iPS cell-derived neural cells to treat spinal cord injuries.
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http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201811220032.html

If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/7093044 

According to The Asahi Shimbun, at the parking lot of the Decks Tokyo Beach commercial complex in Tokyo's Odaiba district, a shopper stops a vehicle near the entrance.
With the push of a "park" button on the app screen of a smartphone, the car begins moving.
Although an official of the Japan Automobile Research Institute (JARI) is at the wheel to ensure safety in the event of an emergency, the car drives along slowly on its own. It backs into a vacant space in the parking area with the driver never manipulating the wheel.
Assuming a scenario where the shopper finishes shopping, the vehicle then automatically returns to the entrance at the push of the “pick-up” button on the app.
The automated valet parking system technology is expected to eliminate the difficulties in finding empty spaces in large parking lots of shopping malls and elsewhere. It would allow motorists to enjoy shopping more conveniently and efficiently.
It would also remove the annoyance of having entrances and exits from commercial and other facilities that are typically far from their parking spaces.
However, the new technology requires three elements: self-driving cars; parking lots with cameras, sensors and other devices; and control centers to gather data on vehicles and parking areas to efficiently guide vehicles.
Because drivers are prohibited from entering parking lots under the system, spaces to open doors do not need to be secured, reducing the area necessary to park a car. That means 20 percent more cars can be parked, according to JARI officials.
The government is providing support for the project for the system to be put to practical use in the early 2020s.
As the self-operating technology covers only parking spaces, the automated valet parking system is anticipated to spread earlier than the introduction of fully automated vehicles on public roads.
Under the plan, the system will be adopted first at tourist facilities for rental cars and not for personal vehicles.
While the development of the technology is also being conducted overseas, Tokyo is looking to develop international standards for the system on its own.
Although the technology will also be adaptable to apartments, medical centers, hotels and elsewhere, challenges are whether the use of self-driving vehicles will spread and how dedicated parking areas can be introduced at those facilities.
Parking lot operators need to bear part of costs to introduce the system, so the benefits they can receive is key to popularizing the technology.
“We hope companies will realize the convenience of the system through our experiment and actively join the program,” said Hiroshi Tanigawa, head of the JARI’s ITS research division.

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201811250008.html
​If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/3629742 

According to The Australian Financial Review, Ikea Australia will open the first of about eight pop-up stores in the next few months as the Scandinavian furniture and homewares company shifts its strategy  from big "blue boxes" to smaller format stores and e-commerce in response to changing shopping habits.
Ikea announced on Wednesday it would cut 7500 jobs worldwide – mainly in corporate and back-office roles – and create thousands of new roles by opening 30 new smaller stores in urban centres and expanding its fledgling online retailing operations.
The shake-up at the Swedish company shows that even Ikea – known for its massive destination stores and affordable flat-pack furniture – is not immune to the online competition that has decimated other brick-and-mortar retailers.

https://www.afr.com/business/retail/ikea-australia-to-open-popups-smaller-stores-as-online-sales-exceed-10pc-20181122-h188au

If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
​https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/ikea 
​

According to The Australian Financial Review, housing prices could fall as much as 20 per cent across Sydney and Melbourne before the downturn is over, according to a revised forecast from ANZ.
ANZ's economists are the latest to downgrade their predictions amid worsening signals from the housing market and the chilling effect of credit tightening.
As recently as September, ANZ was tipping a a 10 per cent fall peak to trough in Sydney and Melbourne, while warning the current weakness in house prices would extend into 2020.
In research published on Thursday, bank economists Daniel Gradwell and Jo Masters, revised their peak to trough forecasts for Sydney and Melbourne to falls of between 15 per cent to 20 per cent.

https://www.afr.com/real-estate/anz-doubles-down-on-housing-downturn-prices-to-fall-20pc-20181122-h1875g

If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
​https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/anz20 
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According to The Australian Financial Review, iron ore magnate Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest's Fortescue Metals Group and CSIRO have joined forced to deliver a $20 million deal to develop and commercialise new hydrogen technologies to support the creation of a new hydrogen industry in Australia.
The deal, announced in Brisbane recently, include a commercialisation agreement of CSIRO's metal membrane - a technology that allows the extraction of pure hydrogen from ammonia.
Mr Forrest said Fortescue was keen to get involved to unlock the potential of hydrogen which could be the low-emission fuel of the future, with a $19.1 million contribution over the next five years.

https://www.afr.com/news/politics/andrew-forrest-gives-20m-to-help-kickstart-a-hydrogen-industry-in-australia-20181121-h1871p
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If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
​https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/1868733