“Pop culture is big business in Japan, with domestic ‘J-Pop’ alone racking up sales of nearly ¥40 billion ($373 million) a year. The most popular artists achieve sales of nearly 10 million copies per album. Volumes of manga (comics) as thick as telephone directories are read by children and balding salarymen alike. The best loved, ‘Shuppan Shonen Magajin’, sells 4 million copies a week.” Now the rest of Asia is catching the Japan-pop bug. – The Economist