JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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Why do Japanese change their attitude when they communicate with foreigners?
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Confrontation
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U.S. Navy investigating how parts fell off aircraft near Atsugi
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4
California court to decide if SeaWorld whales are illegal 'slaves'
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5
Kuroki reported pregnant 2 weeks after denying relationship with Akanishi
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- Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in Kanto region
- RCS (RCSコーポレーション), Kanto
- Salary: ¥180,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month includes performance bonus
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- Assistant Language Teacher - TOKYO - late-March start
- Interac, Tokyo
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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- Assistant Language Teacher - Kanagawa Prefecture - late-March start
- Interac, Kanagawa
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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555Book
aw...lucky fellas.
Article Unavailable
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555Book
No Sarge, I don't live in Japan, 13 million yen can buy you a very nice house in my country, something like 4000 sq ft. of built up area and fully furnished.
Posted in: Softbank's Y13 mil diamond cell phones sell out in three days
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555Book
That is more expensive than my house and car put together.
Posted in: Softbank's Y13 mil diamond cell phones sell out in three days
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555Book
Ah...what can I say, I am a fan of Honda automobiles and I have to say that this car looks rather average, but then again if you have to like something you will have to like both the good and the bad, right?
Posted in: Honda's new Life
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555Book
Sooo...this show is actually sponsored by NHK
Posted in: NHK announces 'support group' for 'Red & White Song Contest'
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555Book
Very nice, looks like the stage of one of those j-pop variety shows.
Posted in: Shinjuku Terrace City Illumination
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555Book
This picture of the day section always bring out the creativity of readers or is there something comical about Hiromi.
Posted in: Jury bra
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555Book
Ha ha...this Hiromi is looking more and more funny, is it a coincidence that the company intended to debut her this way, I mean amid all the injustice being reported these days.
Posted in: Jury bra
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555Book
Athletes, I fully agree with your above opinion. Some times, the problem really isn't so much with the systems, it is the people directing and operating the systems who are creating all these problems.
Posted in: Japan's burgeoning class: Working poor
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555Book
Capitalism is definitely an ironic thing, when China partially embraced capitalism she was able to lift a huge portion of its population from abject poverty in a very short time span. But as evident in many developed countries, when capitalism was left to function fully on its own it will almost always create an increasing divide between the haves and the have not. It is quite obvious that such a widening divide is not sustainable in the longer term.
As mentioned in the article, the root cause of the rising working poor in Japan was the bursting of the economic buble some 20 years ago. In its effort to rescue to floundering economy back then, the government took on massive debt to pump prime the economy. Unfortunately the intented return from this big investment did not materialise. Since the economy did not perform well, the government wasn't able to collect enough tax revenues to pay off its debt, and that is why the tax rate in Japan has to remain high. That of course mean that the general public could not enjoy a higher spending power.
The other reason for the diminishing household income is the low interest paid to savings. The government really couldn't raise interest rates too much because that will cause the value of those government bonds (issued to finance the pump priming) to drop and cause some kind of systemic disaster in the financial market.
Then there are also issues related to the long delays in cleaning up bank balance sheets, overly conservative capital and credit markets, aging population, growing risk avoidance in business and a general pessimism among the people. As I understand, all these in some ways contributed to the growing poverty in Japan.
Posted in: Japan's burgeoning class: Working poor
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555Book
Damn! I should have learned Japanese long time ago.
Article Unavailable
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555Book
I think that the article is suggesting that urban poverty is becoming an alarming trend in Japan. If I can remember what I have read correctly, Japanese government is in a pretty difficult situation to rectify the problems in the country.
Their economic policies are mainly aligned to support the big corporations and multinationals. They have to constantly keep their interest rates low to ensure that these companies have access to cheap credit and at the same time maintaining a weak yen to let these large exporters maintain price competitiveness. This has erroded the living standard of the general public because the low interest rates have reduced the return on household savings while the weak yen have made imported food stuff and energy (fuel) expensive.
There is also this reluctance on the part of the credit and capital market in Japan to promote entrepreneurship and to grow their small and medium size enterprises. As such the level of new investment and job creation is quite stagnant.
I also agree that the growing number of part time jobs will seriously limit the ability of the workforce to acquire useful skills and this may turn out to be a big hidden cost to the economy in the future.
Posted in: Japan's burgeoning class: Working poor
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555Book
Suicide is the worst way to die.
Posted in: Man dies after being hit by express train in Nagasaki Pref
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555Book
Is the crime rate really that high in Japan or is it an example of over spending on public amenities?
Posted in: Vending machine
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555Book
That is why I prefer JT to the NHK site, I love reading the comments.
Posted in: Toray swimsuit girl
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555Book
Is this suppose to allow them ample time to come to term with their death sentence so that they can 'move on' more at ease?
Posted in: 2 inmates hanged; number of executions most per year since 1999
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555Book
Gosh, you sure don't get to read stuff like this at the NHK site.
Posted in: Married man arrested for torching hotel before bogus wedding in Yamanashi
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555Book
I like Miami Vice.
Posted in: Name your five favorite TV show themes.
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555Book
Ha ha...actually I do have my favourite J-Pop artists in their 40's whom I had wanted to mention, but judging from the general responses I think I had rather do them a favour by keeping quiet.
Posted in: Kano Sisters
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555Book
Hiromi must be laughing her head off reading all these comments.
Posted in: Triumph Image Girl 2009