japanese

163,000 fans of anime and Japanese culture expected to attend four-day event

Employees burn caskets of Japanese carmaker and manufacturers' association officials

President Torra says he and Spanish president are committed to addressing situation together

Barcelona's ring road blocked by employees and burning tires surrounding the plant as Japanese carmaker confirms it intends to move out

Over 3,000 people work at the Japanese carmaker's factories, which will be leaving after 40 years of activity

Over 3,000 people work in the factories of Japanese carmaker, which moves out after 40 years of activity

Film festivals, theatre festivals, and the biggest football game in the world - October is packed with things to do in Catalonia

Naohito Watanabe calls for political and economic stability

Catalan capital played host to the sixth edition of the Matsuri festival, a popular celebration in Japan

Lasting five days and with more floor space than ever, this was the event’s most ambitious edition

Mind the Byte, a Catalan company dedicated to computational drug design, will enter the bioinformatics market in Japan, thanks to a distribution agreement with the Japanese company Filgen. This agreement came after several meetings between the companies during a mission of the public business competitiveness and internationalisation agency ACCIÓ in Japan last year. The founder and CEO of Mind the Byte, Alfons Nonell-Canals, stated that this step is important as the overall bioinformatics market in Japan “is expected to grow 21% by 2020”. The company estimates that it will have an annual turnover of €1.2 million in Japan by 2020, “a very large and mature market in the field of biotechnology”. "We are small and we are in a phase of development but Japan is a key country", said Nonell-Canals.

The Manga Fair opened its doors this Thursday in Barcelona and will be the meeting point for comic and Japanese culture lovers until Sunday. This year the event has increased both the number of visitors and that of the companies and professionals taking part, and consequently the fair’s exhibition space in Montjuic’s Fira de Barcelona has been extended to 60,000 m². The fair commemorates this year the 30^th anniversary of one of the most iconic characters of Japanese culture and the international video games industry: Super Mario Bros. Another outstanding exhibition at this 21^st edition shows the influence of Gaudí’s architecture within Japanese culture and the work of Japanese architects in Barcelona. The 70^th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings is also a topic which is taken into account at the fair and around which some exhibitions are centred. The organisers of the fair expect to welcome more than 130,000 visitors. A good sign of this high participation is the tickets for the weekend, which have already sold out.