JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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- English Instructor (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe)
- Berlitz Japan, Inc. (ベルリッツ・ジャパン株式会社), Kansai
- Salary: ¥125,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month
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- FT English Teachers for Kids - Osaka
- Kohgakusha Co., Ltd. （株式会社興学社）, Osaka
- Salary: ¥255,000 ~ ¥275,000 / Month Travel Expenses, Encouragement of Japanese learning*
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- Translator
- ZAIHON, Inc. (日本財務翻訳株式会社), Tokyo
- Salary: ¥6.0M / Year Negotiable
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5SpeedRacer5
"And dude, just because Christians don't have a name for it does not mean they don't have fatwas."
I think they have a name for it, fatwa in American Christendom is "murder the abortion clinic doctors" and they are issued by Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.
"They do it to everybody else in the world and nobody seems to have a problem with it."
No. Not everybody. Matt and Trey have let plenty of people off pretty lightly. When someone complains though, they get a second dose.
Mormons in particular got a huge pass, IMHO. They were portrayed as misguided and gullible, but really good folks.
Christians and Christmas are roundly mocked in every way possible, and the sheer number of possibilities is awesome. Easter, Christmas Carols, Santa, the Mel Gibson movie, virgin birth, etc. Jesus actually lives in South Park. He is a peaceful hippy type. Satan is more powerful in every way, it seems, and he is gay!
Spiritualism, Hinduism, UFO cults, "magic", etc. Judaism and American Jewish culture too. They have all been mocked and derided.
Scientology has been smacked several times because Chef's voice, Isaac Hayes, quit the show in protest. Matt and Trey believe he was forced by Scientology to quit. People who have seen the show where that character dies know that Matt and Trey burned their bridges with him even though his was one of the original characters.
That about covers it. They have depicted Siddhartha and Krishna as characters too.
The single most caustic, nasty smack at religions is a Christmas song, "Merry F...... Christmas" which is a terribly prejudiced rant with a catchy tune. It is sung by a deplorable character: a schizophrenic, transsexual, bigoted schoolteacher who is/was gay AND lesbian.
I am pretty sure they have not attacked Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Christian Scientists. They have not attacked Zoroastrianism.
Oddly enough, they have not really said anything bad about Muslims aside from attacking some muslims' lack of tolerance and mocking people who give in to threats.
It is also important to say that THEY signifies "characters in their show". The nasty petty characters in the show are well known to be nasty and petty. Do they say true things? Only if you are inclined to believe the most evil people you can imagine. But they are clever, like Dante's Satan, and they do get sympathy at odd times. The "good" characters are generally skeptical of the bad ones.
Posted in: Muslim group warns 'South Park' creators of death
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5SpeedRacer5
“The military is facing a lot of pressure by our government to make nice of the Japanese,” he told The Associated Press by telephone from Boulder, Colorado. “We are going to win this battle, with or without the U.S. military.”
This guy is such an astute observer of the Japanese political scene. But of course the Japanese government and the US military have such a close friendship that the US kowtows to Japan's every whim. I say it is time for the US to be more assertive and stop being Mr. Nice Guy. Stand up to those Japanese bullies!
Posted in: 'Cove' director defiant on Yokota base ban, harassment
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5SpeedRacer5
"where are the "reasonable" Muslims at this point"
They are going about their lives as though it never happened. No reasonable muslim is going to defend or condemn South Park. Why would they? Christians don't do it either. Did anyone bat an eye when Jesus made dooty on the American flag? No. People just rolled their eyes and shook their heads and cursed the first amendment. The parody and satire give everyone exactly what they want and point out the absurdity that we all deal with.
They are not ridiculing Muhammad. They are ridiculing the people who feel ridiculed by that. Mission accomplished.
Give credit where it is due, all you muslim haters. With all the believers in Islam throughout the world, Matt and Trey only get one death threat for all their trouble? Maybe that IS a religion of peace after all. I guess they need to stick it to Scientology again to get some excitement.
Posted in: Muslim group warns 'South Park' creators of death
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5SpeedRacer5
The show's creators flatly tell people at the beginning of every episode NOT to watch the show. What stronger disclaimer is there? Respecting the sensitivities of others is most certainly NOT what art is for. And yes. South Park is art.
Matt and Trey are geniuses. They love their work and it shows. They also give their show away, as Timorborder has noted, so they are not all about the money. One other thing, Matt and Trey have gone on record as saying that Comedy Central were a "bunch of p*****s" for not showing the episode they made depicting Muhammad several years ago. Even in the show (TV Wars?), they rank on TV execs for being wimps.
I am pretty sure I have seen every episode ever made, and I appreciate each for what it is. Their characters are revealing. Jesus is cool. Mickey Mouse is a fascist. Satan is powerful but very confused. They have shown the pantheon of Jesus, Moses, Buddha and others as SuperFriends. The most powerful being in the universe is a little boy named Butters. I am guessing that the Muhammad character is pretty benignly portrayed. I think that the satire and parody jibe with Dante, Pope, Swift, and all the greats of their time.
Too bad somebody got offended, but it seems as though Matt and Trey should be at the back of the line for retribution for doing what they do, what with Rushdie still running around alive and kicking after all these years. Still, Google Alan Berg and see what extremists can do with machine guns in Colorado.
By the way, Trey is married to a Japanese woman. Maybe everyone knew that.
Posted in: Muslim group warns 'South Park' creators of death
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5SpeedRacer5
"people wonder why so many of us question the science and computer models"
I never wondered why. I always wondered how.
Are you trying to say that Lufthansa and others blindly ignored science in their search for the truth? On the contrary, I would say that they embraced science to find the truth.
Posted in: Recriminations erupt in ash-fueled aviation crisis
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5SpeedRacer5
“It looks to be a train wreck,” Rothman said.
Looks like NorthAm needs Magnus, Robot Fighter.
Posted in: McAfee antivirus program goes berserk, freezing PCs
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5SpeedRacer5
Someone should have shaken the fist at the chopper and screamed MAAAAVELICK!!
You know. China has a wide open western frontier and all kinds of nastiness pointed at it from the south, with huge potential for unrest domestically. Maybe it should just chill and pay attention to meeting the needs of its billion people.
It has grown enough that nobody needs to invade it to make a point these days. They are becoming so dependent on other people's resources that choking off a waterway here and there will throw it into chaos.
Posted in: Chinese navy chopper approaches Japanese destroyer near Okinawa
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5SpeedRacer5
Look at everyone struggle to adopt the same prejudices as a typical kyoiku mama. We all know it depends on the person. There is no rule whatsoever. Arnold Schwarzenegger is not a native speaker. Michael Tyson is. Yogi Berra was. Einstein wasn't.
A teacher is someone who must apply a wide range of skills and experience to elicit some kind of development in a learner. If they have the skills and experience, they can probably do a good job.
I know of a school that hired some PhD candidates from non-native countries. They were smart, energetic, interesting, and physically attractive people who had a lot of experience as English learners. They were definitely worth what they were paid, and it was a lot less than a Japanese native English major would have earned. They did not have perfect English, but I have watched native speaking Heads of English Departments misspell words and make up English usage rules in front of university classrooms.
I can think of many situations in which I would prefer a non-native speaker over a native speaker as an English instructor. Your mileage may vary.
Posted in: Do English teachers at schools have to be native speakers? Can non-native English speakers do just as well or better?
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5SpeedRacer5
"Paying this fine is akin to a guilty plea- "
All evidence and statements to the contrary, one poster jumps in there with an unsupported statement. Thanks so much for sharing. Let's just ignore the fact that there is no due process here or litigation involved at all. Toyota could have even decided not to pay the fine, but they did.
"see the legal eagles biting at the bit- they're ready for some serious litigation- and the pot is a cool $25 billion dollars !"
There is another gem. As far as I know, there are about 41 civil suits against Toyota for damages attributable to acceleration, for which no engineer anywhere has been able to even show a mechanism. So this poster is on record as saying that these suits would have Toyota paying out about 800 million dollars to each plaintiff for a problem that nobody can even prove exists.
OK. I think if I were to speculate, I would say that it is people like this and statements like this that clarify to me whether Toyota is getting a fair shake. The news that they are paying the fine does not surprise me a bit, and their motives for doing so are much clearer to me when I see what passes for wisdom in the US these days.
Posted in: Toyota recalls SUVS, agrees to $16.4 mil fine, but denies coverup
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5SpeedRacer5
What a great idea! We can all enjoy more eye candy and pretend that bandwidth is limitless! With cloud computing, we can put all of our most important data on the internet, and simultaneously, we will give people 3D TV so that housewives can jam the pipes with soap operas in 3D, and TIVO so that they can download all channels at once. What could possibly go wrong?
Posted in: 3-D without glasses
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5SpeedRacer5
As long as the climate change deniers are out in force, we all ought to be forewarned that their rants are going to get worse. The volcano in Iceland is adding a lot of ash to the atmosphere. We will wind up with cold cold cold and then blistering hot. Up to now, forest fires the world over have been pumping up the particulate levels, and now this volcano.
I am wondering what the climate is going to be like when things do clear up eventually. The clock is ticking, but this Iceland volcano is a pretty big snooze button.
Posted in: Tokyo experiences coldest mid-April day in nearly 50 years
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5SpeedRacer5
"this admits that the whole depression is artificially created with clear intention of enriching chosen few by defrauding whoever buys the scheme."
Karl Mark identified the scheme in about 1848. But did anybody listen? Nope. Everyone was too busy hunting socialists. Recent history has shown that capitalists in the US increasingly destroy the middle class and boost their ownership of the means of production. TARP money given to capitalists? That is simply the profit of extortion. Grab capital and force the working class to the wall.
Oh. Don't get me wrong, Marx would have called Mao and Stalin closet capitalists too.
Nobody even studies Marx anymore, but he is the only one who saw this coming 160 years ago. And anyone who wants to talk about the efficiency of capitalism should write this on their bedroom wall: The US destroyed more wealth in this recession than the PRC and the USSR did in their entire histories, COMBINED. Goldman Sachs puts the Politburo to shame in the arena of wealth destruction.
Posted in: SEC accuses Goldman Sachs of civil fraud
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5SpeedRacer5
""When Tambora blew up the NE USA had what is still remembered as "the year without a summer." "
Yes. Most definitely. Read the Wikipedia article on this, people. This is likely to have a discernible effect on weather, global warming policy, etc. I am very concerned about global food supplies being affected by the ash. Most of the recent volcanoes have not been too bad, but I recall that Pinatubo had some measurable effect. This is likely to be much worse, first for Europe, then for the rest of the northern hemisphere.
Posted in: Iceland volcanic ash sparks more flight disruptions
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5SpeedRacer5
JAL service was great. Sloppy scheduling, uncertainty, missed connections, lost baggage. Those are all costs passed on to the customer. JAL valued my time and allowed me to relax when travelling. I hope they can keep it up.
US airlines. I can't think of a good thing to say about them. Every last one of them has jerked me one way or another.
Posted in: JAL named most punctual major global airline in 2009
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5SpeedRacer5
Read the article. Look for the quotes. I think that this represents the way Huckabee sees the world very well. The headline is pretty harsh. He does not actually equate them or compare them. He tries to cast gay marriage in those terms, and pretty well fails.
The interesting thing is that INCEST and POLYGAMY are charged terms because we all might agree that they are morally outrageous. Huckabee DOES see gay marriage similarly. He also raises a fair point. If society is willing to let people marry and adopt based on a sexual relationship, irrespective of that partner's most basic physical characteristics, then why not allow incest, polygamy, etc.? If I love my dog or my car, could I marry them too? Why not my grandmother? What if I wanted to extend my health insurance to her? Could I just marry her to expedite that? Would I have to have sex with her first? Why or why not?
It is said that Mormons had to give up polygamy for Utah to gain its statehood. So now Utah is a state, and we come to find that anything goes in California and Massachusetts. If I were a Mormon, I would want some answers.
Gay marriage presents a confusing can of worms to people, like Mike Huckabee, who thought they understood what marriage is.
Posted in: Huckabee likens gay marriage to incest, polygamy
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5SpeedRacer5
What a tired account this book must be.
If marrying a foreigner is worth writing a book about these days, then people must be desperate for excitement. Chicken soup for the soul-less.
Posted in: My Darling Is a Foreigner
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5SpeedRacer5
"I recently discovered that apples are a cheap supply of fruit @ ¥398 / 5 (of OK quality). But I had to overcome a childhood indoctrination of wasting as little as possible when peeling before I could enjoy them on a regular basis."
Peeling technology has improved greatly in the last decade or so. I have a peeler and corer... Little cheap hand tools that let me peel an apple or kiwi or mango or whatever in about 5 seconds. Another 2 seconds with the corer and it is done. I justify the little bit that is wasted against my saved labor time, which is worth so much more than a little bit of apple or potato or whatever.
Fujis are great. When you slice a lot of Japanese apples, you can see a star of sugars inside. Amazing. Most J stuff is quite good. The more rural your provider, the better the freshness and prices. People in Tokyo pretty well just have to take what they can get. Too bad.
Lazy people are lazy. Clever people find ways to save time... and thereby enjoy fruit that others pass up. I am surprised that so many posters here feel victimized by producer/consumer relationships that they voluntarily enter into. People should spend more time finding appropriate sources for their food.
I grow my own potatoes, so I eat the peels of those. I don't trust peels of J fruit. The better it looks, the more chemicals have been used, IMHO.
Posted in: Anytime is fruit time
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5SpeedRacer5
The Tea Party was an invention of the Republicans to allow the fringe to vent and scare people and let the Republican party itself accept and organize the frightened gullible people who are sucked in by the tea baggers. They are the shock troops and storm troopers. Look at Beck on the cover of his book. All medals and riding crop. Kind of Himmlerian. The appeal is clear. It is an amorphous group of angry people with no clear agenda or stated principles. They are anarchists and agitators.
The GOP can let the Tea Party form groups and ideologies based on hate, racism, ignorance, "taxes", etc. If the rhetoric gets too hot, the GOP can back up and disown that. Otherwise it will just accept Palin's new recruits into the fold. If the GOP embraced David Duke and his organization, the result would be the same, but then the GOP could not disown that formally, and Duke has his own agenda. In contrast, the Tea Party allows the GOP to recruit gullible but energetic people who can be molded and manipulated.
The GOP is recruiting this week in Mississippi and Virginia. I think what the GOP will find is that the party of Abraham Lincoln will have to contend with a very strong undertone of racism that they are encouraging in their ranks. Michael Steele will be gone soon, and that will symbolize quite a lot.
Posted in: Tea Party crashers plan to exaggerate 'racists' and 'morons'
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5SpeedRacer5
It is a mistake to do this to the teabaggers.
First of all, the movement lunacy does not have to be parodied. They do that with far greater energy and sincerity than anyone else could.
Secondly, giving Republicans an excuse to hold this movement at arm's length for fear that it is infiltrated will keep the teabag crowd from mixing with Republicans, where they would otherwise mix.
Thirdly, Republicans will be able to say all kinds of absurd things and blame in on liberal lunatics rather than looking at their membership.
Nah. The best thing to do is just let the teabaggers do what they do, let Michael Steele do what he does, let Glenn, Sarah, and Rush fleece the flock, and basically let them mutually marginalize themselves. It is sad to watch, but let them do it. They seem to want it so badly.
Posted in: Tea Party crashers plan to exaggerate 'racists' and 'morons'
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5SpeedRacer5
It is a cool article. Informative. I have some comments that might spur some discussion.
"The main problem is that overall fruit consumption in Japan has significantly declined over the last 10 years, especially among the young generation. One reason is that many people find it troublesome to peel or cut fruits."
This shocks me. How lazy does a person have to be not to be able to peel a banana or cut an apple? The golden kiwis can be eaten almost whole, but really... who does not eat kiwi because they are such a hassle? Anybody? Sheesh. People cannot get the ambition to boil an egg nowadays.
Goddog is right that the fruit for sale at stands are top notch, but second tier products should get more attention. Japan produces a lot of good fruit. I really like to buy fruit that is just a tiny bit overripe, and then dry it. Consumption of Japanese fruits should be a lot higher. It could be too.
Finally, what exactly are people eating? They are eating less of vegetables and fruits. Grains? Probably less. Does this mean that Japanese people are filling up on sugar, fat, and meat? That is pretty creepy. They must be eating something, but I am betting that a lot of people stick to maybe two or three food groups, tops.
Posted in: Anytime is fruit time