JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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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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Ah_so
The Uniqlo sizes in the UK are all one down from Japan - a Japan L will be a Uniqlo UK M. This accounts for the larger size of Europeans than Japanese.
In other stores, I have seen shirts marked as L for the UK and mainland Europe also have "US M" stamped next to them, to account for the larger size of Americans compared to Europeans.
This means that a Uniqlo L in Japan would logically equate to a USA S.
I fit into Uniqlo just right, in Britain or Japan. My 183cm slender physique is just right.
Posted in: Orlando Bloom to appear in new Uniqlo ads
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Ah_so
iam sandwich: You sound rather troubled, I'm afraid. Burning your Japanese stuff at protest about a book is quite odd. Dogs and Demons may make you pity the Japanese, but it is concerned with the Japanese and THEIR country.
You are then confused as to what "Nihonjinron" is and whether or not it is a book, but feel sure that if it is a book, you will want to punch the next Japanese you see if you happen to read it. As far as I know, it is not a book, but I suspect that you would love to read it.
Just go home and forget about Japan.
Posted in: What books or movies would you recommend to anyone wanting to gain an understanding of Japanese people's way of thinking and culture?
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Ah_so
Definitely the, "Enigma of Japanese Power". Slightly heavy going and now 20 years old, but gets right to the heart of the often corrupt heart of Japanese politics and power and how its passive population responds.
Posted in: What books or movies would you recommend to anyone wanting to gain an understanding of Japanese people's way of thinking and culture?
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Ah_so
As an ex-ALT, I was always alarmed at how THIN the English text-book was - about 100 pages, often filled with large pictures and large spaces, with limited examples or exploration of new grammar points.
On the topic of maths, a topic that Japan loves to do well in, wrote learning of tables and processes helps kids answer mathematical questions well, but never helps them to understand the relationship between the numbers.
By coincidence I had this discussion with my wife yesterday. She can follow all the steps to multiply out brackets and get the right answer, but she does not understand the fundamental relationship between the starting algebra and the answer. She does not think it matters because the answer is right.
She only knows it is right because her teachers told her that is the way to do it. If her teacher had told her that (x^2+3x+2y^2)^2 multiplied out was a banana, she would have believed it quite happily. This is what we need to move away from, not return to.
Posted in: Japan fattens textbooks to reverse sliding rank
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Ah_so
This is the effect that banning smoking universally will have. Fine in fashionable areas, but it will destroy the izakayas in inaka.
Posted in: Kanagawa's new anti-smoking ordinance a bane on businesses
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Ah_so
Yes, it is actually logical. The smoker no longer wants to go there, so will not go with whoever he or she had wanted to go with - smoker and non-smoker will both go somewhere else.
Posted in: Kanagawa's new anti-smoking ordinance a bane on businesses
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Ah_so
Bad question.
All science is theory. No scientist, in any situation where there is more than one variable, can call something a "proven fact", just highly probable based on the data available.
Posted in: Do you consider global warming just a theory or a proven set of facts?
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Ah_so
I am glad the placebo worked for you.
Posted in: What do you think of alternative health care methods such as homeopathy, indigenous medicine, acupuncture, mind-body medicine and so on?
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Ah_so
Maria - from your post I suspect you are mixing up homeopathic medicine with alternative supplements generally.
Homeopathy is mumbo-jumbo, based around a quack theory that a diluted solution of something gets you better. These are often so diluted that there are more molecules of the substance naturally ocurring in the water than are left from the original fluid. Proof of homeopathy would not just turn medicine on its head, but the laws of physics.
Your general supplements (ginko, St. John Wort, echinacea etc) may well do some good, but do not confuse with the mountebanks who peddle homeopathy.
Posted in: What do you think of alternative health care methods such as homeopathy, indigenous medicine, acupuncture, mind-body medicine and so on?
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Ah_so
It depends what you mean by "alternate". For me, if something passes a controlled double-blind test then it is no longer "alternate", it is medicine. This would probably apply to a lot of indigenous medicine.
knews - claptrap like homeopathy will never be anything more than a placebo. However, it it works for you, go for it - the placebo effect may be more powerful than a real drug. The placebo effect is even effective on 5-year-old children.
Posted in: What do you think of alternative health care methods such as homeopathy, indigenous medicine, acupuncture, mind-body medicine and so on?
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Ah_so
Are you actually being serious? You are getting angry because a song title is used as the name of the book? What an odd comment, I can only hope you are joking.
Of course the title to a Japanese audience has no meaning outside of the Beatles' song, so it is not plagiarizing, but quoting the name. The book is set in the late 60s and the song Norwegian Wood makes a number of appearances. At one time it was played about 40 times in succession, so you could argue that it is quite an appropriate title for the book.
But as you would never read the book, you will never know, will you?
Posted in: 'Norwegian Wood' debuts at Venice Film Festival
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Ah_so
Trying to crash a small Japanese plane onto the flight deck of an aircraft carrier in a hail of bullets is probably rather different to trying to hit a massive modern plane into some of the world's biggest buildings when nobody expects it. The 20% comparison is meaningless and pointless.
Posted in: Do you believe that Al-Qaida was responsible for the events of 9/11
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Ah_so
Not bad for an old girl. Shows how silly it was for her to retire in 1996.
Now that Date is back on the scene, perhaps we will see her more often in pic of the day, perhaps promoting a new soft drink.
Posted in: Point of no return
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Ah_so
No, punishment is punishment i.e. retribution. All criminal sentences carry an elembent of retribution. Rehabilitation is a by-product, but not in cases of the death penalty.
Posted in: Execution chamber at Tokyo Detention House opened to media
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Ah_so
What is the point of this article? Firstly, it has nothing to do with Japan, and secondly it is an alarmingly slanted opinion piece. Opinion on JT is left to the posters, not shoved in our face like some conservative shock-jock.
This article is written by someone so intellectually insecure that he has to put M.Ed after his name, a qualification about as relevant to American voting behaviour as a boy scout's knot tying badge.
Posted in: Fixing American 'dumbocracy'
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Ah_so
I have viewed the clip. He obviously intended to say Christian. I presume that Islam had been discussed at some point immediately prior to this.
Anyway, even as a Christian, is not worrying that the world's most powerful man actively believes in a fairy tale?
Posted in: Growing number of Americans incorrectly call Obama Muslim
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Ah_so
Another way of putting it would be: "Obama when to school in Indonesia while living there as a kid: True of False"
The information and the questions you posed simply suggests you are regurgitating someone else's anti-Obama propaganda.
For what it's worth, I also think the call to prayer is beautiful. I spent about a month in Turkey and really grew to love it. I can assure I am not a muslim.
Posted in: Growing number of Americans incorrectly call Obama Muslim
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Ah_so
This is a perfect microcosm of Japan and could come straight from the pages of Alex Kerr's Dogs and Demons.
The schools will be built, as nothing can stand in the way of the bureacrats' decision to destroy one of the few remaining parts of pre-war Tokyo.
One of the ironies of the allies' decision not to destroy the great city of Kyoto is that the Japanese did it themselves.
Posted in: Local residents fight to save historic school buildings in Tokyo's Chuo Ward
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Ah_so
I have no issue with calling my daughter "hafu" in the context of Japan, just as I would not object to calling her "half-Japanese" while in the UK if anyone asks (it being pretty obvious that the other half is British). The Japanese term simply comes from the English and is not pejorative. Americans do something not disimilar: "Hi, I'm Chuck and I'm German-American" etc, effectively emphasising, with pride, their distinctiveness from mainstream "American".
My daughter is obviously not the same as other Japanese, in terms of appearance or life/cultural experience. It would be surprising if a fairly homogenous culture/race did not create a term for it. We are hardly talking about some multi-cultural melting pot, even in Tokyo.
Yep, my girl is half English and half Japanese and that makes a whole in my book. It does not make her "double" anything, so please stop using the term - it makes me cringe with embarrassment.
Posted in: The Hafu Project: Exploring the question of what it means to be Japanese
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Ah_so
Have to disagree with you here. The Crown Prosecution Service's guidelines state that murder with a sexual/sadistic element, as this one certainly did have, would mean a minimum sentence of 30 years before parole made be considered.
Posted in: Lindsay Hawker's accused killer appears determined to fight murder charge