“Kashiwanoha Smart City” in Kashiwa City, Chiba Prefecture, is about to become a place for demonstration experiments utilizing the entire city. Promoted by Mitsui Fudosan, Kashiwanoha Urban Design Center and Kashiwa City. The University of Tokyo (University of Tokyo), Chiba University, and others also joined and started as a demonstration platform called “Innovation Field Kashiwanoha” in collaboration with civil society.
Kashiwa-no-ha Smart City was launched with the opening of the Tsukuba Express in 2005 as a flagship project for the smart city strategy. It features a compact cityscape with houses, commercial facilities, offices, hotels, hospitals, universities, parks, etc., within a radius of about 3 km.
Unified platform will share information among agencies to ease the burden
The Japanese government aims to slash the hours that companies spend on tax and other filings by more than a fifth through consolidating various government e-filing platforms.
Testing to begin this fiscal year with tender applications
Japan wants to use the data storage technology behind bitcoin and similar virtual currencies to update how individuals and companies interact electronically with government, aiming to bolster information security while cutting administrative costs.
Read more: Japan looks to blockchains for more secure e-government systems
Cryptocurrency enthusiasts will agree that Bitcoin has always been big in Japan. After all, the country was last year named as one of A to Z Forex’s top 3 most Bitcoin-friendly countries in the world. Roger Ver, the so-called “Bitcoin Jesus,” has called Tokyo “the world’s most Bitcoin-friendly city” – a tag that many of the city’s tech officials have been only happy to cultivate.
But as China has recently raced ahead in the East Asian bitcoin stakes, some Japanese tech gurus are instead pinning their hopes on finding innovative uses for blockchain technology.
Read more: Major domestic conglomerates match Japan’s blockchain drive
Japan’s national digital identity has only reached a third of its residents, a year after launch.
Out of 30 million cards, only 9.83 million have been distributed, according to Japan Times. One of the reasons for the delay was due to a series of computer glitches at the Japan Agency for Local Authority Information Systems, tasked with the production of the cards.