Category: English speaking lawyer in Japan

We made our new ad design for magazines.

It will be printed on the magazine “Yokohama Seasider”.

If you need legal advice in Tokyo or Kanagawa area (or else), please call us.

(Please note that we do not provide telephone consultation. You can make reservation for a meeting at our office.)

Recently, all attorneys of our office were eating same things at the same restaurant, and unfortunately experienced food-poisoning.

We were eating Kushi-Age at a small restaurant. Two days after, we fell ill one after another, and were absent from work. It was likely to be the infection of Norovirus.

When you come down with food-poisoning when you were eating at a restaurant, the steps you should take are as below.

1) Go to the hospital and tell that it may be a food-poisoning (Shoku-Chudoku).
2) When the virus is found, call the health center (Hokensho) of your area. The hospital may call in behalf of you.

Then the health center will do the inspection at the restaurant, and if the same virus is found, the source of the food-poisoning is identified. Then, the restaurant is likely to refund you the money, and also they may have to pay you some compensation.

Fortunately, our attorneys all regained our health in 1 day.
Food-poisoning can also happen at your home, so we hope you all will keep your hands clean and stay in good health.

If you or your children ride bicycles in Japan, and if you bump into a pedestrian, you may have to pay big amount of compensation.

There was a case which a child hit an old lady with his bicycle, and the lady was injured badly. The child and his parents were sentenced to pay almost a hundred million yen (1 oku yen). Same accident can happen any time.

If you and your family ride bicycles, and if you are not insured yet, we suggest you to buy insurance as soon as you can. Some insurance companies pro
vide English documents.

Our law office will be closed for the New Year holidays, from December28th  to January 5th. We will be open at 9:00 on January 6th.

During the holidays, we cannot answer the phone. If you have inquiries, please send email to us. Please note that we may not be able to respond until 6th January.

Hope you all have happy holidays.

It is little known that Japanese “Road Traffic Act” has changed on 1st December 2013.

There are some topics, such as penalties for driving cars without license are strengthened.

Maybe the most important change for good citizens like you and your family is the new rule for riding bicycles.

From now on, you should note that when you ride your bicycle, you have to be on the LEFT side of the road. If you ride the bicycle on the RIGHT side of the road, you may be stopped by the police officer, and you may be penalized.

The penalty for riding the bicycle on the wrong side of the road is,

“Imprisonment up to 3 months”
or
“Criminal Fine up to 50,000yen”

As you see, the penalties are not very light.

Many people riding bicycles think that they are very free and there are no enforceable rules for bicycles, but don’t forget that the Road Traffic Act is also applicable to bicycles.

Also, when you get involved in an accident while riding bicycle on the RIGHT (wrong) side of the road, your fault percentage may be evaluated higher. So it is also important to follow the rule from the perspective of civil law problems.