Category: Society

Life is full of contradictions, some Japanese shops also are.

I’ve seen this kind of mixture many times in shops around Harajuku & Shimokitazawa in Tokyo and around America Mura in Osaka.

Fortune Global 500 is a ranking with the top 500 worldwide corporations based on their revenue. Here there is the ranking, but what I find more interesting is the breakdown by city.

Position- City – Country – Number of companies listed on Fortune 500

1 .- Tokyo – Japan – (50)
2 .- Paris – France – (26)
3 .- New York – United States – (22)
3 .- London – United Kingdom – (22)
4 .- Beijing – China – (18)
5 .- Seoul – South Korea – (10)
6 .- Toronto – Canada – (9)
7 .- Madrid – Spain – (8)
8 .- Zürich – Switzerland – (7)
8 .- Houston – United States – (7)
9 .- Munich – Germany – (6)
9 .- Osaka – Japan – (6)
10 .- Rome – Italy – (5)

Tokyo has almost double Fortune 500 companies than Paris! Furthermore, the United States and Japan are the only two countries with more than one city in the top 10. But if we look at the ranking by countries instead of cities, the United States has more than double than Japan. It seems here in Japan big companies are pretty centralized in Tokyo.

1 United States (162)
2 Japan (67)
3 France (38)
4 Germany (37)
5 United Kingdom (34)
6 China (24)
7 Canada (16)
7 The Netherlands (16)
9 South Korea (14)
10 Switzerland (13)
11 Italy (10)
12 Spain (9)

Data from wikipedia

Related articles:

• Tokyo compared with Barcelona and Madrid
• Silicon Tokyo

Japan is possibly one of the safest developed countries in the world, criminality is very low (even though we have the Yakuza). In this post I show some pictures of “expensive” bikes without any padlock or security system; these bicycles could be stolen so easily! And I say “expensive” bicycles, because “normal” bicycles without protection can be seen everyday here in Japan.