Since the 1990s, many Japanese women have emigrated from Japan for work. Usually, they obtain jobs in Japanese subsidiaries, and their status is similar to that of a local staff member and not that of a representative of the Japanese parent company. Singapore has a large population of Japanese women who have moved there of their own will. In this paper, we investigate the structure of the labor market for locally hired Japanese women in Singapore in the mid 2000s. In the analysis, we focus on the supply side (the Japanese female workers), the demand side (the Japanese subsidiaries), and the intermediary organizations (recruitment agencies in Singapore). Japanese women normally decide to emigrate in their late 20s. This decision is closely linked with the desire to live overseas and communicate in English. Half-outdated sociocultural norms, including gender discrimination, often serve as factors that trigger their decision to leave Japan. Singapore is a popular destination for these women because the country boasts a high standard of living and a low crime rate, and is relatively generous when issuing employment visas to Japanese women. Japanese companies promote both the globalization of their business and the localization of human resources, thereby limiting the number of representatives they send from Japan; the cost of relocating employees is very high. However, Japanese companies have to retain some of the Japanese staff because their typical clients are other Japanese companies or, in the case of personal service businesses, Japanese people. Even if the locals can communicate with customers in Japanese, they cannot fully understand the tacit premises and connotations of Japanese communication. Since hiring Japanese emigres costs companies much less than dispatching representatives, the demand for them is increasing. Recruitment agencies play an important role in bridging the supply-demand gap of Japanese labor at the international level. The rise of the Internet has made it easier for both job-seekers to seek employment overseas and recruitment agencies to build online databases of those seeking employment. Because of the drop in the number of representatives sent from Japan, Japanese companies in Singapore the incentive to outsource their employment and screening process of locally hired Japanese staffs, which increases the business of the recruitment agencies. Outsourcing the screening process works to the advantage of Japanese companies since recruitment agencies have the technical knowhow when it comes to matching the appropriate candidate to the job profile, which eventually lowers the probability of employee turnover.

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This study aims to clarify the political utilization of festivals with a case study of Seouls''Hi! Seoul Festival (HSF)'. HSF is a famous festival in Seoul and it was established in 2003. The trigger for its development was the FIFA World Cup 2002. The entire city is used as a festival stage and the places where events are hold change every year. If we examine the places where events are hold, we can find a close relation with the policies of the mayor of Seoul. Also, as a result of the political meaning assigned to it by the mayor, HSF became established as a famous festival in Seoul City only eight years after it was created. HSF has been utilized as a means to emphasize successful urban politics, as the main event always changed to locations where the past mayor in Seoul realized campaign promises. Also, the political intention to change the event location of HSF was clarified as part of Seoul City's strategy to attract tourists. Specifically, from 2003 through 2006 the main event venue was the "plaza in the center of a city". However, between 2007 and 2010, the location changed to the "Han River" and "Five Palaces". In addition, not only was the main event venue changed, but also many event programs were concentrated along the "Han River" because the new Seoul mayor aimed to realize his campaign promises. As a result, visitor numbers were highest around the "Han River". However, our survey showed that visitors came to the HSF with a single purpose, such as recreation. Also, people who visited the "plaza in the center of a city" gave higher evaluation of HSF than those who visited the "Han River", so there is clearly a perception gap between the administration and tourists. In other words, our research clarified that people who visited HSF in 2010 didn't realize the administration's political intentions.

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The purpose of this research is to clarify the locational characteristics and locational patterns of convenience stores (CVS) in Kyoto City in the 2000s (2001-2010). The findings are as follows. 1) CVS became more concentrated in the central business district in the urban core during the second half of the 1990s in Kyoto City. This tendency is also seen in the 2000s. 2) Since 2000, the proportion of CVS located on shopping streets has been decreasing. In comparison, the proportion of CVS located near railway stations has been increasing. 3) The tendency to spread into various areas progressed further. It was seen that there are diverse types of CVS in Kyoto City. Since the late 1990s and through the 2000s, the population growth of Kyoto City has occurred in the urban core along with the development of condominiums. The locations of CVS are keeping pace with the increase in population in the urban core. The locational patterns of CVS in the cities of Kyoto, Okayama, and Takamatsu were in accordance with the suburbanization of the population till the first half of the 1990s. Since the second half of the 1990s, the locational patterns of CVS in these cities were in accordance with population movement back to the city. This tendency in Kyoto City for CVS location was also seen in the cities of Okayama and Takamatsu. After 2000, when the growth in the number of CVS slowed down, the tendency between these three cities for CVS location became different.

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