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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GJDailleult
Good thing I noticed this story, realized I forgot to post my "ironic" comment on my rabidly anti-monarchy English second cousin's Facebook page. Better go do that before I run out of time! As for me, I will probably watch at least some. It is, as said above, history being made, and it is pretty obvious that this wedding is being used to heavily promote the monarchy and influence (indoctrinate?)the younger generation. Don't see the point of it all myself, but clearly some people are keen on keeping the monarchy going and have their reasons.
Also, just my feeling, but they really seem to come across as decent and normal people. Not their fault if everybody else is nuts and going bonkers over their wedding.
Posted in: William, Kate marry as 2 billion tune in across globe
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GJDailleult
On another site (BBC actually) it was said that the information was not encrypted, computer guys shocked that it wasn't.
Posted in: Sony PlayStation disconnects 77 million user accounts after massive data breach
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GJDailleult
No, it is the same crisis. Ron Paul sometimes says some interesting stuff, but at the end of the day he is just another guy who doesn't understand, or pretends he doesn't understand, what money is and where it comes from. Not just in the USA, same fools everywhere.
Posted in: Ron Paul announces 2012 presidential step in Iowa
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GJDailleult
This stuff makes Harry Potter seem like reality. Thirty plus years of fake prosperity blew up as it was always going to. The debt was intentional and has nothing to do with politics.
Not bashing the USA here either. Every country is in the same race, just on different parts of the track. Japan still leading but USA and UK closing fast. Canada, Australia, China etc. hiding out in the pits right now.
Posted in: Obama says gov't must reduce staggering debt
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GJDailleult
disillusioned, you missed the meaning there. They survived a quake that at that location was much less than magnitude 9 in intensity. Claiming they survived a 9.0 quake is just TEPCO spin doctoring. But they did survive the quake and then the tsunami knocked out the power, as you said.
Posted in: Gov't under fire for disaster response; TEPCO chief heckled in Diet
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GJDailleult
Let's say it again. Radiation can not be hidden. It can be monitored by anybody, has been from the start. It can be monitored from a distance, and by running the figures and wind patterns through a computer they can figure out the radiation situation at Fukushima. Any government who saw a danger to their citizens would have been able to raise the alarm. They didn't. The we didn't believe the government, and we don't believe TEPCO lines, the question is why were you listening to the people who created the problem in the first place?
As brittling said "We gotta respect everyone's decisions" is the kind of opinion that annoys me most. Stop telling me I am full of myself and that I have to respect everyone's decision. I am not and if I want to joke about "Flyjins" I will. I made my decision, and I am not full of myself for making it, I was completely oblivious to what was going on with other foreigners at that time. I have no problem with other foreigners making a different decision, but looking at the calendar it is now April 19 and I am not yet dead from radiation poisoning.
Posted in: Why did those foreigners who decided to leave Japan in the aftermath of the March 11 disaster come in for so much derision from some people who labeled them with words like 'flyjin?'
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GJDailleult
Clearly, the percentage of Japanese people who left Tokyo is a tiny fraction of the percentage of foreigners who left, and I would bet that of those who did the percentage who left because of radiation fears was lower too. A straw man.
And revip, no problems. I think I have made it pretty clear in my posts that I am confused about the situation, not angry. Also, something that is never pointed out, for many foreigners in Japan they experienced their first major earthquake on March 11th. Not just an earthquake, but a subduction zone earthquake, an extremely rare event. If the stress of going through that affected how they reacted the next few days, that is understandable.
But I also know that even though I am not angry, plenty of people are, and that is their right to be. "Flyjin" is a derogatory word I see many people claiming. OK well the street goes both ways. Smug, sanctimonious, "don't respect other peoples' personal decision", "think they can fit into Japanese culture" etc. etc. I have seen plenty of that too. Give it a rest.
Posted in: Why did those foreigners who decided to leave Japan in the aftermath of the March 11 disaster come in for so much derision from some people who labeled them with words like 'flyjin?'
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GJDailleult
The only socialism in America is the imaginary one that is trotted out to justify and distract from the insane neo-liberal, crony capitalism that is killing the country.
I am not a socialist myself, but I am also not an insane neo-liberal crony-capitalist.
Posted in: Obama says Republican budget 'wrong for America'
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GJDailleult
Those darn scientists again, what do they know! Looks to me these US air traffic controllers need to form themselves a union. Oh right, good thing that was taken care of long ago.
Nothing makes me feel safer on a plane than knowing the air traffic controller following my flight might be asleep.
Posted in: U.S. gives tired air controllers an extra hour to rest
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GJDailleult
Who are you suggesting they cast the stones at? There appear to be a lot of stones to be thrown, you are going to get somebody killed!
Not looking so cheap anymore.
Posted in: Gov't under fire for disaster response; TEPCO chief heckled in Diet
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GJDailleult
OK, first off the reactors did not survive a magnitude 9.0 earthquake. They survived the intensity of the earthquake when it hit Fukushima, it is 9.0 only at the epicenter. I have read somewhere that the intensity was within what the reactors had been designed for, but I would have to double check that before saying it was fact. As for an unprecedented once in a 1,000 year event, that line seems to have come straight from TEPCO itself. But for the umpteenth time, a magnitude 9.0 quake is the once in 1000 year event, a tsunami capable of wiping out the electrical equipment as things were set up was not and is much more common.
As for whether Shimizu should be arrested for criminal negligence, maybe his health problems and "ill-at-easeness" are due to him knowing he will be. Government is between a rock and a hard place here. Make this a criminal case and that would likely increase TEPCO's liabilities even more, and the government will be on the hook. But arrest him and make this all about the tsunami, and they can take off some of the heat about nuclear energy (not saying there should not be heat put on about nuclear, just that the electricity situation is obviously a big economic problem for the government, especially if plants were to get shut down over safety). One thing though, there was long, strange gap of close to two weeks when there was nothing said in the media about the role of the tsunami in the crisis. New York Times even did a whole story "TEPCO ignored risks" that never mentioned the word tsunami once, then a few days later had a very long and detailed article about the lack of tsunami preparation. Just a possibility, but maybe the media was asked to hold off while an investigation was conducted. We can only hope!
Posted in: Gov't under fire for disaster response; TEPCO chief heckled in Diet
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GJDailleult
It seems to surprise some people still that there are people known as "scientists" who understand what radiation is and how it works. They know for example that exposure can not create a new animal by combining a gorilla and a whale! They also know that radiation can not be hidden and that what is going on in Fukushima can be monitored from anywhere, they are in fact doing it from Seattle and (I think) Austria. They also know that radiation weakens quickly as you move away from the source according to the laws of Newtonian physics, and they also know that there were 106 nuclear tests in the Pacific and 911 in Nevada. And of course the Tokyo situation has played out exactly as they said it would all along. Clearly I was an idiot for listening to them.
Posted in: Why did those foreigners who decided to leave Japan in the aftermath of the March 11 disaster come in for so much derision from some people who labeled them with words like 'flyjin?'
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GJDailleult
That sums up exactly how I have been feeling the last 5 plus weeks, I have become neutralized!
As for the tax increases, for earthquake and tsunami victims, no problem. For bailing out and/or cleaning up after TEPCO, big problem. If the tax increases tips things so that some people decide to leave Japan for good it will be completely understandable.
Posted in: Why did those foreigners who decided to leave Japan in the aftermath of the March 11 disaster come in for so much derision from some people who labeled them with words like 'flyjin?'
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GJDailleult
herefornow- actually I am not painting everyone with hysteria logic. I happen to think there were/are a number of good reasons to have left Japan, especially if you were/are a short-timer anyways. But if a person DID leave because of hysteria, then stop feeling a need to justify yourself and attacking people who didn't leave. Hey, the foreign media came here with a plan to milk this to the hilt and some people got swept up in all that and reacted exactly how the guys who know this stuff predicted they would. Humans being humans, just admit it and move on.
As for the expert opinion, I spent a lot of time on science sites like MIT and science news sites in the days after the quake, because I had no intention of making a major decision based on the information provided by the news media. And it was the same everywhere, Fukushima a very bad situation but no threat to Tokyo. The reason you didn't see those guys in the media is because that didn't fit the story they were peddling.
And no I don't think I am such a smart guy for all that, just somebody very skeptical of the corporate media. If this has happened 15 years ago, pre-internet, I probably would have been at the airport myself.
Posted in: Why did those foreigners who decided to leave Japan in the aftermath of the March 11 disaster come in for so much derision from some people who labeled them with words like 'flyjin?'
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GJDailleult
That is a Flyjin myth. Every expert in the world knew that there was no danger of airborne radiation reaching Tokyo in hazardous amounts. Tokyo was at a distance that was safe after Chernobyl. Aha, but the Russians and the scientists lied!!! The radiation spread all over Europe and caused sickness and death! Hey maybe, but if true then fat lot of good it is doing you sitting in Osaka.
I will repeat, I have no problem with people doing what they did, I have a problem with people making stuff up to try and justify it.
Posted in: Why did those foreigners who decided to leave Japan in the aftermath of the March 11 disaster come in for so much derision from some people who labeled them with words like 'flyjin?'
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GJDailleult
See a few straw men arguments here. One, nobody is talking about people leaving Fukushima, they are talking about people leaving Tokyo. Two, Japanese people who left generally did so without making a mad dash to the airport and abandoning their jobs. It was school holidays anyways, and often they had family in western Japan to stay with. With the general post-quake situation as well as the Fukushima situation they made the call to leave. I know one woman who did so, and she now seems a bit embarrassed that she did, but I don't think she has any reason to be. Will agree on the hoarding point though, the level of toilet paper hoarding has been described as if trees had become extinct, it was and maybe still is at insane levels.
Also, to add to Mittsu's point, if you get on that internet thing (I believe Smorkian is the poster who has been telling people for weeks they should try using it) you will learn there is a whole field of academic study on risk assessment. Things played out exactly how the experts said they would. The instinctive way to deal with the risk of radiation is to run away, the instinctive way to deal with earthquake risk is to ignore it. Now, I had always assumed that other foreigners were like me, that they accepted the earthquake risk as a price of living here, but clearly most people just ignored it. The problem is that the radiation response is pretty harmless, maybe some individuals screwed-up their jobs and personal lives by jumping the gun, but it doesn't get anybody killed. But the response to earthquake risk is what gets people killed, because they and society are not prepared when they come. We live in time when buying a Geiger counter is considered prudent, but planning for earthquakes is fear-mongering. Moving from a non-earthquake area into an active earthquake zone is done casually, but an incident at a nuclear plant makes the place suddenly too dangerous? It's a head-shaker, and that has been my opinion from the start.
Posted in: Why did those foreigners who decided to leave Japan in the aftermath of the March 11 disaster come in for so much derision from some people who labeled them with words like 'flyjin?'
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GJDailleult
My opinion too. I am not going to get into my personal feelings on the topic though, would just come back here in few hours to read that I am a know-it-all who thinks he is better than everybody else. Also that I claim to have had access to information that just wasn't available, and that I don't respect other people's personal decision. Actually I have no problem with people leaving Japan, I may apply for flyjin status myself before too long, as I have my own personal terror. But it is called "summer", not radiation.
What is really interesting to me are not the foreigner vs. foreigner battles, they were predictable when members of a group have such different reactions to a situation. What I find interesting is the Japanese reaction. The only Japanese people I know who are angry about the Flyjin situation are my wife (but she has spent too much time living outside the country and so has lost her mysterious "Japaneseness" - hah, I wish that is what it was, but is just her being her) and people whose lives were directly affected, ie. job, home-stay guest ordered to leave country, etc. Everybody else I talk to either just doesn't care, or are baffled and wondering what these people were doing here in the first place. Me too. Stuff happens in Japan, and it can happen at anytime. Check the scoreboard if you don't know what I am talking about. As was said to me, "They chose to live here, we were never given that choice". Seems clear to me that a lot of people's risk assessment equations were missing a variable or two.
Posted in: Why did those foreigners who decided to leave Japan in the aftermath of the March 11 disaster come in for so much derision from some people who labeled them with words like 'flyjin?'
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GJDailleult
This just show again that the JSA has only themselves to blame for the current situation. It was common knowledge that there was match fixing going on, and that these guys had demonstrated it statistically. The JSA either needed to put a stop to it, or to say it was no big deal, just an issue of the ranking system for lower ranked wrestlers, and didn't affect the overall integrity of the sport at the top level. They did neither, they denied it, and that is what blew up on them.
Posted in: 'Freakonomics' documentary looks at sumo match-fixing scandal
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GJDailleult
I know a woman whose brother lives in Kamaishi in Iwate. She said the first thing he told her was that the people who knew what to do and reacted correctly were alive, those who didn't were all dead. Why different people reacted differently is something the experts will likely be going over for a long time, especially after Indonesia and with the history of the area. My amateur guess is that 21st century scientific and historical knowledge is up against 1000's of years of human behavior regarding earthquakes and tsunamis, and that denial and fatalism run very deep.
One other thing, the traditional get-under-a table earthquake advice is 100% wrong for the kind of quake we had on March 11th. With a P-wave alarm system, and the slow build-up time of a subduction quake, most people could casually walk out of the building they are in and find a safe, open area to sit down and watch the climax from. Then if they are near the sea, move it. That seems to me to be knowledge that everyone should have, but if you talk about it you will be accused of "scare-mongering". The way to protect yourself from scary stuff is to not think about it apparently.
Posted in: Earthquake, tsunami drills may have been counter-productive
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GJDailleult
Don't have to time to check word for word, but I think this is pretty much exactly what the IAEA advised after the Indonesia quake. Which of course TEPCO ignored, for the simple reason that they are TEPCO.
Posted in: Nuclear plants ordered to check outside power links