PRESIDENT Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida recently vowed to continue bolstering Japan and the Philippines’ cooperation to address security and economic challenges.

The reaffirmation of Marcos and Kishida’s commitment was made during their bilateral meeting held on the sidelines of the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.

The two world leaders renewed their resolve to strengthen ties amid challenges in regional security and economic landscape.

During their meeting, the two leaders reaffirmed their commitment to reinforce ties and strengthen cooperation in response to the challenges and opportunities in the regional security and economic landscape.

This is the first time Marcos and Kishida met in person to discuss the developments in Philippine-Japan bilateral relations.

The two nations’ closer cooperation has helped address security and defense priorities, particularly in maritime security, maritime domain awareness, maritime law enforcement capacities, and peace in Mindanao.

During his meeting with Kishida, Marcos acknowledged that the Philippines and Japan have fostered one of the closest partnerships in the region for 66 years since the normalization of their bilateral ties.

The two leaders expressed confidence that bilateral cooperation in the next years will lead to the further realization of the two countries’ common aspiration for regional peace and stability and a better life for their peoples.

The two executives exchanged views on bilateral, regional, and international concerns.

Marcos also presented to Kishida his administration’s priorities aimed at developing the agriculture, energy, infrastructure, and cybersecurity sectors.

He shared his administration’s priorities, particularly in the field of agriculture and food security, energy security, infrastructure development, and cybersecurity.

Kishida reassured Marcos of his continued support for the Philippines’ economic development to help his administration attain its goal of transforming the Philippines into an “upper-middle-income country.”

Marcos, during the 77th UNGA session, ensured that the Philippines remains “on track” to reach upper-middle-income status by 2023.

Marcos also expressed confidence that the Philippines would become a “moderately prosperous” nation by 2040.

On May 20, Kishida called Marcos to congratulate him on his presidential win in the May 9, 2022 elections and agreed to beef up ties to maintain regional peace and security.

Celebrating this development are of course the business communities of the two countries.

With improved business climate seen in the Philippines, Japanese investors are likely to make the country the destination of their business ventures.

Talking about Japanese investments, Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) has a big stake in the Philippines where it’s represented by Toyota Motor Philippines (TMP). TMP is currently a market leader.

However, it should inspect its dealers especially their service centers to find out if they are worthy to carry the Japanese brand.

I say this because a service center of Toyota in Caloocan appears to be giving the multinational corporation a bad name.

Try taking your car to Toyota Balintawak for a simple problem such as a defective speaker and chances are they will ask you to wait for more than four hours.

After the waiting, they will confirm that your speaker is indeed defective and a new one is required.

According to them, the new speaker has to be imported from Japan, the process of which will take two long months.

When the new speaker arrives from Japan (I’m not even sure if they really imported the item), they will ask you to bring the car to the service center.

As usual, they will tell you to wait for more than four hours this time for the installation.

And guess what — when the installation is finally done, the speaker remains defective.

I wonder what TMP has to say about this especially when the car involved is a new top of the line version of Raize still under warranty.

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