What's in this episode:

• Unusual Business Idea: A Tokyo café where customers pay to dress as maids and serve the staff.
• Top Bit: The Takaichi-Trump Summit: Japan pledges to raise its defense budget to 2% of GDP and offers $550 billion in U.S. investments in exchange for tariff reductions. The summit highlights Japan’s difficult economic and security balancing act with China.
• Asian Markets Rally: The Nikkei 225 cracks 50,000 for the first time; the KOSPI surges past 4,000. Key stocks like SoftBank, Advantest, and Samsung Electronics lead the surge.
• Japan-China Economics: Trade continues, but Japan's direct investment in China has hit a decade-low, with companies diversifying to partners like Vietnam and Malaysia.
• Number of the Day: 90 million—The total number of battery swaps completed by Chinese EV maker Nio, which now performs over 100,000 swaps daily.
• Market Bit: Seres IPO: Huawei’s EV partner targets a $1.7 billion Hong Kong IPO after a massive turnaround in profitability, embodying the "technology first, cars second" ethos of China's auto sector.
• Head of the Day: Hu Weiwei, The Mobike Maker: The story of the founder of Mobike, who sold the bike-sharing platform to Meituan for a reported $2.7 billion USD in a perfectly timed exit.
• Short News of the Day: South Korean chaebol meeting with Nvidia CEO on AI chips, easing tensions after Germany's Foreign Minister postponed a China trip, and a major fusion energy breakthrough by Japan’s Helical Fusion.

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