The Mayor of one of Japan’s biggest cities has paid a visit to the San Francisco headquarters of Ripple – further strengthening the ties between Japan and the American crypto firm.

In a Twitter post last week, Emi Yoshikawa, the Ripple Vice President of Strategy and Operations posted a photo of herself with Fukuoka Mayor Soichiro Takashima and a member of the latter’s “team.”

Ripple has been fighting an epic legal battle with the financial regulator in its home country, with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accusing senior Ripple executives of selling XRP tokens as “unregistered securities.”

But the American firm has a number of staunch allies in Japan – including the securities, crypto, and banking giant SBI and its CEO Yoshitaka Kitao. The latter is a Ripple board member, and SBI has previously given out XRP tokens as shareholder bonuses. The Japanese company’s gaming subsidiary even pays its pro gamers in XRP.

Kitao has previously gone to great pains to point out that Japanese regulators have ruled that XRP is not a security. He has also suggested that if Ripple were ever forced to relocate, the American firm could choose to move to Japan.

Takashima, meanwhile, is an outspoken advocate of Web3 – much like the current Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

The Japanese news outlet CoinPost quoted a Ripple spokesperson as stating that, during his visit to the company, Takashima was given an “introduction to Ripple.”

The parties also discussed “Web3-related initiatives in Fukuoka,” as well as “proposed regulatory reforms” and “exchanged Web3-related opinions,” the spokesperson added.

Takashima, who has served as Mayor of Fukuoka since 2010, has launched various digitization efforts in the city. He has also proposed