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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Azrael
Of course it should be abolished; why should serious crimes have an expiration date? As new technologies become available, even cold cases can be solved and the perpetrator can be caught. Once the statute of limitations for murder and serious crimes is abolished, criminals will not have impunity no matter how much time passes since they committed a crime.
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Azrael
Kyolicious's interpretation seems sound. Just to comment perhaps the sign means, don't exchange more than one presentation card with a new acquaintance. Maybe it's a graphic sign equivalent to those in shops saying, we don't exchange money. Honestly I don't know; the guy in the sign looks like a pimp though. Don't seize passports for imaginary debts? o.O;
Posted in: Sign of the times
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Azrael
Don't you realize those 8 countries ARE working on national problems by asking Japan to give back -their- citizens? It's called abduction after all.
Posted in: 8 ambassadors urge Japan to solve global child custody disputes
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Azrael
I think it's very kewl and useful. I checked it out on Amazon, it has quite a lot of recipes. To this date I know very little Japanese cooking and this seems a fun and relaxed way to learn more things.
Posted in: The Manga Cookbook
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Azrael
... I have to admit that is one excellent posterior.
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Azrael
Blacklabel at 08:10 AM JST - 16th October: Azrael: So, all these women working in sex joints, hostess bars, as strippers, making adult movies, etc didnt make a CHOICE to do that as a better way to make money compared to working a real job?
Blacklabel: I am glad you understood right away. Perhaps you are acquainted with the term Glass Ceiling. As Kokorocloud explained, the whole system starts with the sexualization of women, which to an extent is inevitable considering mankind must reproduce in order to survive. In this context, Japan has created a social hierarchy in which women are subservient to men and they are effectively denied progress and security in work careers. Sexual harassment is seen as -playful- attitudes at work, women are not considered capable of being full-fledged professionals and are quickly removed from the workforce when they marry. Sex workers have, as you yourself stated, basically few options. So according to you, all Japanese women in low-brow works should be working at MacDonald's but how many MacDonald's may Japan have? Regardless of the name of fast food joints and others (underpaid, part-time, no-progress workplaces) you may check out the statistics for female employment in Japan and reconsider how much choice is available.
There is the cultural factor, too. Children in Japan are heavily sexualized to the point that women must remain childish to be sexually attractive to Japanese men. Women on TV and magazines always have a simpering, clueless expression (read kawaii). Both men and women patronize this, by socially ostracizing Japanese women with intelligence and opinions foundered on reason and assertiveness is considered an awful trait in a Japanese woman. So what must a Japanese woman do to survive in this society? Check out the statistics of what highschool girls choose as future careers when polled at school. Technical careers are barely there because intelligence in a female is bad (in Japan). Then there are men of your same opinion (a vast majority of Japanese men, it seems) that consider women are meant to be sexual workers by nature and at the same time scorn them and gloat. The saddest part is, this Japanese chauvinistic attitudes by both male and female Japanese is projected out of Japan. Then foreign men look at Japanese women the -same way Japanese males do-, not the way they would picture a female compatriot.
When I read discussions like this, a profound sense of pity arises in me. I wish things were different in Japan. I wish human rights had a deeper reach into the Japanese collective conscience. I know a handful of dignified Japanese women, professionals, most of them have worked abroad, some married foreigners. They have a whole different spirit. I wish more Japanese women had the courage to be like them, but that is being unfair. In their own context, it's hard to miss that they do not know.
Posted in: Let’s talk about you-know-what
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Azrael
Japan is in the Victorian age in more than one aspect. Sexuality here in Japan is eerily alike to sexual attitudes in England's Victorian period (wow the 1800s). There is a sexually strict and repressed front, and a libertine and depraved backstage, coexisting in apparent harmony. However as history has proven, once women are treated as equal in social value (or close enough) to men in both law and society, things change. Sexuality comes front, it becomes healthier (sexual education does help) and people have a more real power of choice (yet as ever, murky by ignorance). For professional women, Japan is a time warp the moment she gets off the plane. I agree with Dolphingirl (08:00 PM JST - 15th October), but I add the following:
Saying that women sell sex by choice is a typical knee-jerk reaction from men in patriarchal structures where women are seen as inferior creatures and do not have the same rights as males. Women here in Japan have an expiration date set at 25 years old (Christmas Cake). Women are expected to quit jobs when they marry (even professional women are socially pressured to quit) and give birth within the first two years of marriage. Women have a -waiting period- before they can have a child from her second husband or else, the child will be under the authority of the ex-husband. The list goes on and on. Then you have Japanese males as promoters and users of the sex industry here, to the point that they don't even feel guilty at buying sex and don't seem to mind their spouse knowing. Women here are taught that intelligence in a woman is shameful and squealing kawaiiii is preferable than giving an opinion of her own. Intelligent women are called kowai (scary), something young girls dread to ever be called. Children are sexualized and women must remain childlike to be attractive. Blacklabel's self-inflicted blindness perplexes me. Yes, women have equal value to men. Yes, women are different, but difference does not mean inferiority. Yes, women have a vagina but that does not mean women are meant to be for sale. Selling sex does not empower anyone. As in any market system, the power is on the buyer's side. Demand defines the market - remember that.
Posted in: Let’s talk about you-know-what
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Azrael
He could humbly reject the prize. That would be interesting.
Posted in: Obama's Nobel honors promise, not action
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Azrael
Typos @.@; - sometimes do the trick - the two here in Japan.
Posted in: Domestic jeans makers panting for survival
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Azrael
I wish shops here offered petite sizes, but unfortunately Japanese women have long torsos as an average. As a petite woman, normal pants have waists too high for me and I don't like to look like Fred Astaire. Low-waist jeans sometimes to the trick, but then there's the waist/hip ratio. Japanese women have thin, square hips. I have a thin waist but round hips, and Japanese jeans are unflattering. Also being petite but as tall as an average Japanese, my legs are longer. I buy Uniqlo because they have low-waist jeans without being low-riders, and they offer different leg lengths fixed at the store itself without extra cost... Their midly stretch jeans are life savers to find a middle ground between my hip and waist, since it's a two sizes difference between the two her in Japan.
Posted in: Domestic jeans makers panting for survival
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Azrael
I cried when Uncle Carl's wife died ;.;
Posted in: Uncle Carl
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Azrael
I think it's due to racism and nationalism forming a bad mix (as they usually do). It's something between Nihonjinron and the myth held in Japan that "Japanese" is a race, not a nationality; that mixed kids are "hafu" and not fully Japanese; that children of two Japanese parents born overseas are "nikkei" and "nissei" as a way to catalog them below the level of Japanese born of two Japanese parents on Japanese soil. It is more than obvious from the change in the physical characteristics of Japanese that live in big cities from the first half of the 20th century till now that what Marie mentioned above does make sense. Just go to any museum and look at the faces of the early 20th century and check out the sizes of old clothes and samurai armor on display; the height of trap doors in military castles and attics like Himeji Castle; how a tatami mat used to allow one person to sleep comfortably on it but now it's too small for modern people is also enlightening. Check out the craze for whitening skin, breast augmentation and eye plastic surgery; though a widespread craze it's impossible it alone has changed the faces of Japan. However admitting that the mixed population is already numerous enough to need legislation concerning their citizenry and safety is difficult to accept for the Old Boys that rule Japan. Perhaps the change of regime (after almost continuous 50 years of LDP rule) may bring more modern ideas to the table concerning internationalization and children of mixed heritage.
Posted in: Why do you think successive Japanese governments have refused to sign the 1980 Hague Convention on International Child Abduction, which seeks to ensure that the rights of access of both parents are protected?
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Azrael
^^; I wrote the line "I want one! In midnight blue!" not Kirakira; the emoticon is the same for quoting and I didn't notice before posting the message.
Posted in: What is the best way to deal with the groping problem on trains?
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Azrael
Seriously, I -would- buy one. I have not been gropped (I always keep a sharp lookout, but thankfully now I live in a smaller city and ride the bus to campus instead of a packed train like in Tokyo) but I have been filmed and photographed on trains, train stations and other places and that gets seriously creepy. One time I hadn't even noticed and my friend scared the guy off. Now I wear a chopstick-style hair pin because it can double as an ice pick, should I need to defend myself.
Posted in: What is the best way to deal with the groping problem on trains?
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Azrael
I loved to watch Twilight Zone when I was a kid! It was the series in color. Years later I found the original black and white show hosted by Rod Serling himself and I can't quite decide which one is the best (yet I tend to favor the black and white series now that I have watched them). I hear in the 2000s there was yet one new season, but I have not watched it yet.
Twilight Zone is really and strikingly a dimension of imagination. I love the twist endings, the unexpected and the "atari mae" kind of reflection on the ills of human society at large. I find a not-so-distant similarity between Twilight Zone and the fables of Aesop: the persistent human aspect in all its strength and fragility, what is that makes a person tick and therein lies the fine line between sanity and madness.
Posted in: 50 years later, 'Twilight Zone' bridges time
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Azrael
How getting married again makes him evil?
The Japanese ex-wife kidnapped children and forced them away from their father. She is a criminal and must be made to abide by the law she broke trying to hide in Japan. Japan is a worldwide known child-abductor haven. It's about time Japan does the right thing and signs the Hague Convention on the legal aspects of international parental abduction. The gall she has, to call the police because he "took" the children. I don't condone his action, but seeing how Japan slams the door on foreign parents desperate to rescue their children from Japanese abductors, I can understand his despair.
Posted in: American arrested in Fukuoka for kidnapping own kids from ex-wife
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Azrael
This sounds like a hoax. How did he cut two hands while the father was asleep? Severing a hand no matter how sharp the knife takes time, unless you get a machete or something like a sword. Also, how did the hands get reattached by the doctors? That is kind of a breakthrough in medicine, considering how many bones compose the human wrist (guessing that the two forearm bones are too hard for a teenager to saw off, the wrist seems a better choice in this context). So how didn't the father wake up during all the operation? An ironsmith (blacksmith?) must certainly have a killer punch, and one good jab in self-defense would have kept him at one hand safe, at least.
Posted in: Taiwan teen chops off dad's hands
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Azrael
Where did he get the courage to have a haircut? XD The ads at 7-11 combini for his bento line and other stuff showed him with long, feminine hair till quite recently =). Won't his more masculine image affect the size of his fan base in Japan?
Choi Ji-woo is very pretty; her face is nicely proportioned and has a pleasant expression. Her skin looks terrific, considering she appears not to be wearing makeup. However I cannot help but wonder if she was dressed down so that she would not upstage Bon Yoon-joon. Her hair is not even groomed; her clothes look like a blanket wrapped over some tired tights and her shoes look like wool socks and ribbon sandals. In contrast, he is wearing a fine suit, yet the jacket seems to belong to a different suit of clothes and is badly crumpled. Once Choi Ji-woo gets dressed up she will look stunning.
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Azrael
Is this one step towards ending the "research whaling" charade?
Posted in: Iceland firm plans huge whale meat export to Japan
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Azrael
Ducky! ^0^! Kawaii!
Okay, now I go back to work.
Posted in: Duck!