Gundam Base Minneapolis grand opening has been derailed by “unforeseen circumstances.”
September 30 was supposed to be a day of joy, excitement, and plastic for fans of venerable anime mecha franchise Gundam. That’s because it was the date on which the grand opening of Gundam Base Minneapolis, a brand-new Gundam superstore, was scheduled to take place inside the Mall of America in the northern U.S.
Unfortunately, the day turned out to be one of, if not necessarily sadness or full-on disappointment, a decided lack of new Gunpla models to put together, because not only did Gundam Base Minneapolis end up not opening on September 30, as of right now no one knows when the store will be open.
▼ Artist’s preview rendering of Gundam Base Minneapolis
As announced through Bandai Namco’s American website and official Twitter account, the store’s grand opening had to be delayed “due to unforeseen circumstances.” Not only that, it’s been delayed indefinitely, with no word as of this writing as to when it will be ready for shoppers and event guests.
Bandai Namco was able to give fans a heads up four days before the scheduled opening, so that no one had to waste a trip to the location just to find its doors closed. Also effected is the Bandai Namco Cross Store, an anime and character merchandise specialty shop, which will be located adjacent to Gundam Base Minneapolis. The Cross Store was also supposed to open on September 30, an event which has similarly been postponed indefinitely.
To its credit, Bandai Namco has been rather courteous in handling the matter, saying in its announcement:
We deeply apologize for any inconvenience this change may cause.
We know many of you have been looking forward to exploring these new destinations, and we’re just as excited to welcome you through our doors. We’ll share the new opening date as soon as it is confirmed, along with more details about what you can expect when we open.
We sincerely apologize again and thank you for your patience, understanding, and continued support.
Unfortunately, with no more specific details about the cause of the delay than “unforeseen circumstances,” it’s impossible to even speculate how long the delay may be, though it’s hard to escape the feeling that Char is somehow involved.
Yep, that’s actually a change for McDonald’s Japan.
On October 1, McDonald’s Japan shocked fans with a surprise announcement that they’re changing the name of the chain’s mascot. Some might say it’s crazy to throw away decades of name recognition for such a widely recognized spokescharacter, but McDonald’s Japan feels like the time is right, and posted on its official Twitter account that that the famous clown decked out in the company’s red and yellow colors will, from now on, be known as Ronald McDonald.
To many of our readers, this might seem like old news. Like, 63-year-old news, since 1963 was the year when McDonald’s friendly clown character made his debut in U.S. TV commercials for the fast food chain, and in which people clearly said his name was Ronald McDonald.
However, ever since Japan’s first McDonald’s opened in 1971, he’s been known here as “Donald McDonald.”
It’s not exactly clear why Ronald got a new leading consonant for his name while crossing the Pacific. One theory is that Den Fujita, the Japanese businessman who established McDonald’s Japan, thought that “Ronald” would be difficult for Japanese people to pronounce. However, the Japanese language has both “ro” and “do” sounds, and “ro” isn’t at all a rare sound within Japanese names or vocabulary, so it’s not a particularly difficult sound for native Japanese speakers to make. Another possible explanation that’s been posited online is that the change to Donald was made to avoid confusion with Ranald MacDonald, who in 1848 became the first native English speaker to teach the language in Japan. Despite the important role he played in the country’s history, though, Ranald MacDonald is far from a household name in Japan, and as much as modern-day McDonald’s Japan likes wordplay, it seems doubtful that they’d feel compelled to rename their mascot to cater the sensibilities of linguistics enthusiasts.
▼ An anime-style Donald McDonald, showing off his “Donald magic” powers. Sadly, the animation doesn’t seem to have been produced by Studio Pierrot (yes, I do cater to the sensibilities of linguistics enthusiasts).
But whatever the reason, back in 1971 McDonald’s Japan said hey, we like this clown character you’ve created, but we’re gonna rename him Donald, OK? And perhaps because no one knew the character was going to stick around this long, or because the fast food industry was still young enough that chains weren’t thinking about global branding synergy, Ronald became Donald in Japan, until McDonald’s Japan’s announcement that he’s now Ronald.
The character’s “From today, I’m Ronald” tweet has drawn comments such as:
“Biggest shock of the year.” “Naw, dude you’ve been Ronald since a long time ago.” “They’re not renaming him Ronald McRonald, are they?” “Now people are gonna be able to tell how old you are if you say ‘You know, he used to be called ‘Donald.’” “It’s going to take me some time to get used to this.” “I mean, we’re all going to keep on calling him ‘Donald,’ right?” “I think he didn’t want to have the same first name as Trump.” “People in Japan know him as Donald, so they should have kept it like it was. There’s no need to go out of the way and match his name in other countries.”
Regarding the last two comments, though McDonald’s Japan did, a very long time ago, print “Donald Trump” cards (“trump” being what Western-style playing cards are called in Japan) featuring their mascot character, when the current U.S. president comes up in conversation in Japan, his first name is rarely used, so it’s unlikely that Donald McDonald’s name was changed to avoid association with Donald Trump.
On the other hand, McDonald’s Japan apparently does think there’s a good reason for matching the name used for the character in other countries, and it’s not necessarily to sell more burgers. On the same day that McDonald’s Japan announced that their mascot’s name is now Ronald, the Donald McDonald House Japan charity organization said that it is renaming itself to Rondald McDonald House Japan, in order to more clearly convey its alignment with the goal of helping children battling illnesses or other medical conditions shared by the many Rondald McDonald House divisions in other countries.
▼ Rondald McDonald House Japan announcing its new name
As for McDonald’s Japan’s customers needing some time to get used to Ronald’s new name, we can relate, but we think they’ll come around eventually, especially as long as the chain doesn’t tinker too much with its tsukimi burger recipe.
Seasonal exclusive graces the menu for a limited time, proving pumpkin spice isn’t dead in Japan.
For Starbucks customers in the U.S., the Pumpkin Spice Latte has been going strong as an autumn special for 23 years, but here in Japan, it’s still a baby, having only become a regular seasonal addition since 2021.
So although customers overseas may be tiring of the flavour, with some claiming pumpkin spice is dead as people turn to other trending drinks like matcha, here in Japan customers still have a strong thirst for it. In fact, it remains so popular that the beverage is making its return for another season, in hot and iced versions, with members of the Starbucks Rewards program getting an early taste of it on 29 September, a day ahead of its official release.
▼ The Pumpkin Spice Latte is available in Short through to Venti sizes, priced from 550-680 yen (US$3.50-4.33).
As always, the drink is inspired by the flavors of pumpkin pie, combining the gentle sweetness of the autumnal vegetable with warming spices, and a dash of nutmeg as a flourishing finish. A good serving of milk adds a smooth richness to the mix, creating a mellow flavour that’s ideal for colder nights and shorter days.
It’s nice to see the Pumpkin Spice Latte returning to the menu, because although matcha is popular here, pumpkin spice has an overseas quality that makes it a unique novelty for Japanese customers. It’ll be particularly special to get a taste of it while kicking back in one of the country’s newest and most interesting stores, but as always, it’ll only be on the menu for a limited time through autumn.
Source, images: Press release ● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
Swapping out scissors and ribbons for sand and farm tools.
Japanese property developer Mitsui Fudosan recently held a groundbreaking ceremony for its historic £1.1 billion (approximately 230 billion yen [US$1.46 billion]) expansion of the British Library in London, and in doing so also brought a long-standing Japanese tradition to the other side of the world. As an institution boasting one of the largest book collections on earth, the British Library is expanding its footprint near its main building across the street from London’s St. Pancras International Station. As part of Japan’s largest scale real estate development to date in the UK, Mitsui Fudosan and the British Library are looking to construct a multi-story complex housing commercial offices, rental laboratories, and expanded library facilities.
To mark the start of work, UK government officials, library leadership, and Mitsui Fudosan executives gathered for a chakko-shiki (“groundbreaking ceremony”), more formally known as a kiko-shiki. Major property developments in Western countries often center around a simple ribbon-cutting, but construction in Japan traditionally has an entire sequence of ceremonies designed to ensure safety, prosperity, and community goodwill.
These Japanese construction customs traditionally start with a jichinsai, a sacred Shinto purifying ritual led by a Shinto priest. This religious ceremony uses offerings of rice wine, salt, and rice to pacify the local tochi-no-kami (earth deities), asking permission to alter the land and praying for protection against construction accidents or natural disasters, as well as for the prosperity of those who will use the land. In modern times, not all chakko-shiki begin with a jichinsai, with some people favoring to simply recognize the secular business side of the ceremonies, but the British Library event included this splash of tradition, featuring a non-Japanese Shinto priest who participated in the ceremony.
There are of course talks by the key people involved in the construction project, but the highlight and prime photo opportunity of the event is the ugachi-zome (literally “first pierce”), the symbolic first dig, where these important people grab a hoe or shovel and stab them into a small mound of sand.
Historically, preparing for building a house in Japan was a three-step process: clear the area of weeds, dig up the soil, and level the ground, and it is said that a house cannot be built without this process. Therefore, the full Shinto groundbreaking ceremony has evolved into three parts, starting with kari-some (“the first cut”), where the designer cuts grass with a sickle.
▼ The “ey, ey, ey” is very much an intergral part of all three parts.
This is followed by the kuwaire-no-gi (“hoe entry ceremony”), where the client lightly chips out a section of sand from the mound with a hoe.
Then comes the sukiire-no-gi (“shovel entry ceremony”), where person in charge of construction flattens the mound with a shovel (suki, 鋤), or at least makes more of a dent than with the hoe.
The other aspects of the jichinsai are also embedded with history and religious meaning and culminate in the naorai, the closing feast in which participants share the sake and food that were offered to the deities in order to receive their blessings, before then returning to daily life (naoru means “to return”).
Other ceremonial rituals continue through the stages of a building’s construction lifecycle, such as the joto-shiki, or raising-the-ridgepole ceremony, when the main structure is complete. Historically, carpenters placed symbolic items on the highest beam meant to ward off disaster and pray for good fortune, but nowadays it has been streamlined to just a sacred wooden wand or wooden plaque containing the names of the master carpenter, the homeowner, and the deities invoked in protecting the house, which is permanently sealed away within the roof cavity.
The four corners of the building site are splashed with ceremonial sake and salt to purify the land, and ensure the safety of both the workers and future residents.
In some instances of residential development, the whole neighborhood gets together for a mochi-throwing event, sometimes substituted with coins or sweets, in a bid to foster goodwill with the neighbors who will live alongside the development.
At the end of larger-scale construction projects, when the entire building is finished, stakeholders assemble for a shunko-shiki (construction completion ceremony), which announces the completion to the public, conveys gratitude to those physically and financially involved in the construction, and prays for safety and prosperity.
With the jichinsai and chakko-shiki being performed at such a large-scale overseas investment project, we’ll have to wait and see if they complete the entire trio of construction ceremonies at the British Library’s expansion, and find out whether or not they’ll climb to the top floor and start lobbing down tea bags in place of mochi, in an attempt to build goodwill with the locals.
First-of-its-kind system for Kyoto would raise maintenance funding and fight overtourism, proponents say, but will it really reduce crowd sizes?
Many of Japan’s castles were built by a local samurai lord, but Kyoto’s Nijo Castle is an exception in that it was built specifically for use by out-of-towners. Constructed in 1624, Nijo Castle, and the attached Ninomaru Palace, were the Kyoto residence of Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of the Tokugawa shogunate, and his heirs, a place for them to stay when they rolled into Kyoto on official business from Edo (as Tokyo was called in those days).
However, starting next year out-of-towners are probably going to be paying twice as much to get into the castle, as Kyoto’s mayor Koji Matsui has announced plans for a two-tiered admission system.
Currently, the combined ticket for Nijo Castle and Ninomaru Palace is priced at 1,300 yen (US$8.15). Under the new system, the admission price for residents of Kyoto City would be reduced, down to just 1,000 yen, while non-residents of the city would pay double, 2,000 yen. “By raising the admission price [for non-residents], additional funds can be applied to maintenance,” said Matsui, “and hopefully our city’s residents can more easily come visit the castle.” The new pricing structure would make Nijo Castle the first tourism facility in the city with a two-tier admission system.
It’s no secret that even among Japan’s major tourism attractions, no other city in the country is feeling quite as overtouristed as Kyoto is these days, with a growing sense that the city’s atmosphere and the lifestyles of local residents are being disrupted. To illustrate the amount of visitors Kyoto has been receiving, in 2025 2.07 million people visited Nijo Castle, but only about 2 percent of them were Kyoto City residents.
However, while Kyoto is filled with more international visitors than ever before, Nijo Castle’s two-tier pricing system wouldn’t charge the higher price exclusively to foreign tourists. Domestic Japanese travelers who don’t live in the city would also pay 2,000 yen for admission, even those coming from other cities within Kyoto Prefecture.
All else equal, the reduced ticket price for residents will make it easier, financially speaking, for Kyotoites to visit Nijo Castle. It’s unlikely, though, that charging out-of-towners more is going to significantly improve overcrowding. Again, there are two groups of people who would be paying the 2,000-yen admission, Japanese residents of cities other than Kyoto, and foreign tourists. For foreign tourists, many of whom have been drawn to Japan at least in part by the weak yen, having to pay an extra 700 yen, equivalent to less than US$4.50, probably isn’t going to make anyone cross Nijo Castle off their itinerary. That price increase is going to feel like more of a demotivating factor to Japanese domestic travelers, but for many of them Kyoto has already lost a lot of its allure as a sightseeing destination, what with the prevailing image of Kyoto these days being that it’s packed with foreign tourists and prices for hotels have skyrocketed, so at most it’d be a situation of a dip in numbers from an already deflated demographic.
Matsui says the draft ordinance for Niko Castle’s two-tier ticket system will be formally introduced at a city council meeting next month, and would go into effect in the spring of next year.
Japanese government suddenly raises income bar for foreigners seeking permanent residency, will apply new rules even to applications filed six months ago.
On Thursday, the Japanese government announced new guidelines for foreigners seeking permanent residence in Japan.
Under Japan’s Immigration Control Act, foreign nationals seeking to become permanent residents of Japan must satisfy three conditions. They must demonstrate good conduct (i.e. not break any laws) and have financial assets/job skills that will prevent them from becoming a burden on social welfare programs. Finally, the applicant’s permanent residency status must be determined to serve Japan’s national interests.
Those are all broadly defined conditons, and the Japanese government’s new interpretation of them is going to significantly raise the bar for displaying financial security. Until now, an annual income of roughly 3 million yen (US$19,000) was considered to be a baseline, but generally acceptable, amount for a permanent residency applicant. 3 million yen isn’t a lot; it’s more or less a typical salary for a low-level office job in Japan. Still, with proper budgeting and a frugal lifestyle, it’s enough to make ends meet.
Under the new guidelines, however, foreigners will have to show that they earn an annual income above the national average for Japanese citizens. It’s unclear whether this is referring to the applicant’s individual income or that of their household as a whole, but according to government statistics the average unmarked adult income in Japan is approximately 4.5 million yen, bringing minimum required income up by 50 percent. The increase is even larger if evaluators are going to be using the average household income for Japanese citizens, which is 5.8 million yen.
But hey, if those foreigners who want to obtain permanent residency status can’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps and double their income, they can just file their applications before the new guidelines go into effect, right? Nope. The government announced the new guidelines on October 1, and said that the higher-than-average-Japanese-citizen income requirement will be applied to permanent residence applications filed as of April, but that’s not April of next year. No, the new income guideline is being retroactively applied to applications that were submitted as much as six months ago.
▼ It seems unreasonable to make the only alternative to the retroactive increase be to travel back in time and file your application on an earlier date, seeing as how even the wealthy struggle to find usable time machines.
Two other criteria are set to change from this coming April, one of which involves the amount of time a foreigner who’s married to a Japanese citizen has to live in Japan before they can obtain permanent residency. Currently, the couple must have been married for at least three years, and the foreign spouse must have lived in Japan for at least one year in order to be eligible. From April, those requirements are going to be lengthened to the couple having been married for five years, and the foreign spouse having lived in Japan for at least three. Note that these requirements are in addition to the above income requirement, not a substitute for it.
Foreign residents who are not married to a Japanese citizen will need to have lived in Japan for 10 years in order to be eligible for permanent residency, an amount of time which is unchanged from the current system. The 10-year residency requirement is going to be a moot point for many younger applicants, though, because from April evaluators will also be looking at permanent residency applicants’ projected pension benefits, with the new guidelines saying applicants should have benefits equivalent to those of someone who has been paying into Japan’s national pension system for 30 years.
All of this is taking place against a backdrop of Japanese residents dealing with the most severe price inflation in generations for basic goods and services, while also seeing more and more foreign tourists spending carefreely while on vacation in Japan. At the same time, Japan’s foreign resident population has increased, but as the majority of them are working for Japanese employers and getting paid in yen, they’re not reaping the benefits of the weak yen that foreign tourists are. Foreign residents can still make easy scapegoats for frustrated Japanese nationals who feel like their standard of living is eroding, though, and with foreign residents of Japan not being able to vote, it’s not surprising that politicians going to bat for them on this matter are in short supply.
Aside from playing to the preferences of a certain segment of the voter base, it’s hard to see how the new guidelines will actually benefit Japan. The required 30 years of pension benefits is likely to have a negative affect on younger foreigner’ interest in relocating to Japan, since it would involve taking on the risk of potentially spending their prime working years in Japan without knowing whether they’ll be able to settle in the country permanently until they hit their 50s. That, in turn, lessens the potential for immigration to help counteract the negative effects of Japan’s falling birthrate and shrinking total population. Raising permanent residency requirements isn’t going to do anything to help Japan attract the world’s best and brightest expats, either. The stricter guidelines don’t do anything to benefit them, and between Japan’s lower salaries for executive positions compared to overseas companies, plus the weak yen, high-flying professionals can earn significantly more working elsewhere, then enjoy the best of what Japan has to offer to wealthy leisure tourists without really needing to reside in the country.
Pair of thieves broke into house in Tokyo one day after arriving in Japan.
On August 21, 24-year-old Chilean national Pinya Guzman and his 33-year-old countryman Mansano Quesad arrived at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on a flight from Australia. The pair were quite busy for the next few days, pulling a smash-and-grab robbery in a luxury watch shop in Tokyo’s Nakano neighborhood on August 25, fleeing halfway across the country to Osaka, and then getting arrested in a vacation rental property on August 27.
It turns out, though, the pair started breaking the law even earlier than initially thought. During the investigation into their activities after arriving in Japan, the police were able to determine that on August 22, the very next day after they landed, the two men also broke into a house in Tokyo’s Ota Ward, where they stole three more luxury watches and seven other valuable items with a total value of approximately 7.9 million yen (US$50,000).
The men, who have admitted to the August 22 break-in, say that they had not chosen their burglary target prior to arriving in Japan. Instead, they saw they went to a wealthy part of Ota Ward and simply walked around until they saw someone getting in their car and driving away from a house. After they spotted someone doing that at around 11:35 in the morning, they waited for the car to drive out of sight, then rang the house’s doorbell. When no one answered, they broke one of the house’s windows and Guzman acted as a lookout while Quesad entered the home and stole the watches, other items, and around 200 Euros in cash that he came across.
In explaining the motivation for such an unplanned, breezy burglary, Quesad told the police:
“We’d heard back in Chile that sentences are light in Japan, so we went looking for a house to rob in a rich neighborhood.”
The thieves say that they planned to sell some of their stolen goods to a fence in Italy who they know from previous thefts they committed in Europe. Investigators were also able to determine that airline ticket data had been sent to the pair’s smartphones for a departure from Osaka’s International Airport on the day they were arrested, with their scheduled route taking them through Italy on their way back to Chile.
As for whether or not Japan is soft on crime, theft alone can carry a sentence of up to 10 years imprisonment, so it’s not like prosecutors are limited to doling out feckless slaps on the wrist. And in a broader sense of societal attitudes about criminal justice, while it’s not something that would be applied to property theft, the death penalty does exist in Japan, and unlike in Chile, it’s not reserved for extraordinary circumstances like treason or war crimes.
In addition, under Japan’s rearrest system, the Chilean pair, who were already in jail in Osaka, have now been rearrested for the home break-in, thus resetting the 23 days they can remain locked up before they even have to be formally arraigned. And since the burglary contains multiple potential charges (theft, property damage, and trespassing, to name just three), the time limit for their pre-arraignment incarceration could be reset a few more times too.
The two men (or whoever they got their info from) may have had the idea that the Japanese legal system is lenient on crimes committed by foreigners, which was, in a sense, true for many years. For quite some time, when foreigners in Japan got in trouble with the law, a speedy deportation was often the end result. However, this pattern existed in a time when foreigner-committed crimes in Japan tended to be predominantly things like a drunken bar scuffle, minor vandalism, or petty shoplifting, situations where things could be smoothed over by paying for repairs and an assurance that the perpetrator wouldn’t come back again. A multimillion-yen robbery, though, is something on a much higher level of heinousness, and a home break-in introduces the possibility of physical danger to anyone who might have been in the house or returned to it while the burglary was going on. Those aren’t the sort of things Japan is willing to just shrug its shoulders and say “Can’t be helped” over, especially with foreigner-committed crimes growing more frequent and larger in scale, causing many to worry that local laws and social norms aren’t being respected by visitors from overseas.
