JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
-
- 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
-
- Assistant Language Teacher - TOKYO - late-March start
- Interac, Tokyo
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
-
- Assistant Language Teacher - Kanagawa Prefecture - late-March start
- Interac, Kanagawa
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
2
Hikozaemon
Pardon me but Amy Chua is American, not Chinesr, and the elimination of the kind of culture she advocates as a diaspora Chinese was one of the few positives to come from the cultural revolution.
Posted in: Video of Chinese boy crying in snow sparks uproar
0
Hikozaemon
When are people going to realize that it would be cheaper and much easier to relocate the civilians of futenma?
Article Unavailable
0
Hikozaemon
Wow, some guys trying to stop the dpj party being a bunch of liars like the ldp. Indeed good to make sure THEY are out of the room as Noda carries on acting as the LDPs PM...
Posted in: 10 defectors officially expelled from DPJ
-1
Hikozaemon
I hope he is being paid well for this so that he can pay for more singing lessons
Posted in: SMAP singer Nakai to play savant detective
1
Hikozaemon
He seems to be annoyed about Japan's system of government that gives the people of Okinawa a say in decision making over their lives through requiring consensus and participation in decision making. I know it's annoying, but I thought those forces were there to protect democracy, not undermine it.
Posted in: Ex-U.S. diplomat Maher pulls no punches on Japan
3
Hikozaemon
Half of the wards of Tokyo give free medical care to kids up to 18 - Fukushima doesn't for the same reason it had nuclear plants. It is not a well off prefecture.
Those nuclear plants were put there at the behest of the Japanese government, not TEPCO.
The government is asking them to bear the burden of the reactors, to store all the contaminated waste, to remain in irradiated cities without evacuation, and now is asking them to pay for the health of the children who may or may not end up suffering long term side effects from this accident.
Am I the only one reminded of the government's response to the Minamata incident here?
Just more proof that Noda and Kan are Finance Ministry stooges, and why the DPJ since they came in is no different at all to the LDP. What a complete and utter embarrassment and failure of a government. I feel like an idiot hoping that they might help to establish political control over policy making.
Peace
Posted in: Gov't says no to free medical care for children under 18 in Fukushima
0
Hikozaemon
I've worked in Japanese companies where they include blood types on the seating chart for the office, and B types were pretty directly discriminated against.
I'm O and have worked under a boss in IT who had it in his head that only As and ABs were good for IT, and that Os were not reliable for detail work - that is the most direct case of blood type discrimination I've ever heard of (I've never heard of anyone so directly believing in blood types and citing them that way). However, talking to type Bs in my last company where all blood types were published by the company, there was a consistent feeling that they came in for harsher treatment.
But forget about that. If you want to ever go to a gokon, or want an icebreaker with a Japanese member of the opposite sex, this is essential information. Guessing someone's blood type is code talk for saying what you think someone is like (outgoing or introverted, artistic or logical, etc). It's worth learning.
Peace
Posted in: The importance of blood type in Japanese culture
0
Hikozaemon
Ren Ho is gone. Honestly, is there nothing left to look forward to in Japanese politics now?
Posted in: Noda says new cabinet is best lineup for the job
0
Hikozaemon
Smith - the southern kurils and Dokdo are totally different.
Given the recent SDF redeployment away from Hokkaido, don't be surprised to see a deal on at least the formerly inhabited two islands not long after Putin becomes president.
Posted in: Gemba views disputed island off Hokkaido from Coast Guard vessel
0
Hikozaemon
The DPJ was elected promising no sales tax hike before 2014. This was part of the reason they got elected. The LDP wasn't prepared to commit to holding off for so long.
In the end, Kan and Noda both showed they work for the same people as Aso, Fukuda and Abe did - the vice ministers at the Ministry of Finance, who are the ones demanding the tax hike.
The only problem is now that the public really has no say in this matter - all the major right wing and centrist parties are trying to raise sales tax - it is just the party that lied about it that got voted in.
The poll is irrelevant because voters don't get to decide policy in Japan, only bureaucrats do.
Article Unavailable
2
Hikozaemon
These muppets intentionally boarded a Japanese government ship in international waters, placing themselves under Japanese legal jurisdiction. The Australian government has asserted this. Now they are going to get a very long ride in Japanese custody, and are going to face detention and trial in Japan, where, if the Japanese government still believes that Sea Shepherd members won't do this again, they will get suspended sentences and be allowed to return to Australia in about a year.
I hope they like sushi.
Posted in: 3 Sea Shepherd activists detained aboard Japanese whaling vessel
1
Hikozaemon
Of course, they can't afford to now that they are going to inject 1.5 trillion yen into TEPCO, that just finished paying end of year bonuses to its employees, but needs the funds because it is short of cash.
It was a good idea, but so are other ideas like cigarette taxes, and discretionary budget cuts, that the MoF is also opposing. Never had a chance
Posted in: Japan scraps plan to give away 10,000 free flights to visitors
0
Hikozaemon
It's very simple - the DPJ was elected on a number of policy promises which included not raising sales tax during its first term.
PMs Kan and Noda, both finance ministry lapdogs, have broken this election promise. The people leaving are leaving because it violates the promise upon which they were elected.
If the DPJ is going to let its agenda be set by burocrats, and is not going to consider having policies and keeping electoral promises important, then we might as well just dump them and go back to the LDP, who are much more experienced at running government that way.
The DPJ under Kan and Noda has become just a watered down version of the LDP. Completely pointless having them in power.
Posted in: Noda to press ahead with tax rise despite 9 DPJ lawmakers leaving
3
Hikozaemon
Nice poster, but decidedly lacking in appropriate levels of cat-vomit in front of the seat...
Posted in: Subway manners
0
Hikozaemon
If they had told the cops Kikukawa used to work at Livedoor, they would have raided his house and put him in jail months ago...
Posted in: Prosecutors raid Olympus head office, Kikukawa's home
0
Hikozaemon
The sumo patrol actually managed to corner a group of armed bank robbers yesterday. However, they escaped by walking briskly in the opposite direction....
Posted in: Sumo wrestler crime prevention team patrols streets of Tokyo
2
Hikozaemon
News flash - the quake was biggest in Miyagi and Iwate - and most of the worst affected areas were not irradiated by the nuclear accident - at least no more than Osaka was. Remember, Miyagi is as far away from Fukushima as Tokyo is.
Frankly, the prejudice on parade shown in particular by Kyushu and Kansai residents against helping in the national recovery effort is shameful - Ishihara has been right to berate them over it, and good on Hashimoto for breaking ranks to chip in and help at last.
Japan has almost zero landfill capacity left - this is not America, where you can't just drive further into the desert and dump all your garbage there. People don't seem to appreciate that none of the worst affected prefectures have the landfill or waste processing capacity to process the enormous amount of wreckage caused by these quakes. All trucks carrying such waste have been tested upon leaving and arrival for radiation levels.
It's especially disappointing to see so many foreigners on this site joining in with the discrimination against the affected prefectures opposing support for the clean up. It's a disgrace that so many prefectures have withrawn their initial support for the cleanup effort - heaven help them when they face a major quake an nobody wants to help them.
Good on Osaka and Tokyo for leading by example.
Posted in: Osaka to accept tsunami debris
4
Hikozaemon
Okay, Japan as a dictatorship in WWII was liable as a democracy for compensating comfort women, which it did in 1965. But Korea, as a democracy now, is not liable for the failure of its dictatorship in 1965 to compensate individuals.
Riiight...
The party in the wrong here is not the comfort women and it is not the Japanese government. It is the Korean government, that stole from Japan, lied to the comfort women, and is now exploiting the anger it created toward Japan over this issue to score political points by pretending to support the comfort women instead of paying them the money it STILL owes them that it received from Japan.
Credit to Lee though - he's one of the first Korean leaders to be so brazen as to admit that they got paid, but they want Japan to pay again anyway, because they stole the money last time.
It starts to feel like giving aid to North Korea...
Posted in: Lee urges compensation for sex slaves; Noda says issue is settled
0
Hikozaemon
Scrote - I don't know that, he says it's private, but he satisfied police investigators every time they checked the source of the funds, that they weren't from an illicit source. Other than the claims of some "construction companies" (and everyone on this site should know what that is code language for by now), there is no evidence of any sort that any wrongdoing occurred.
The point of all this is to tie up Ozawa in the courts and keep him outside of the DPJ secretariat until next April. Mid next year will be the next election, and Ozawa won't be able to drag MOF beaurocrats into gymnasiums embarrassing them any more, and this matter will be over, until he next looks like getting a party into government when new, similar, unsubstantiated allegations will be made again.
Peace
Posted in: Ozawa pleads not guilty as trial gets under way
1
Hikozaemon
It's funny that NHK coverage of this didn't even mention Takeshima in the topics for the talks, or the comfort women lawsuit. The talks will be on "economic cooperation and joint approaches to North Korea".
Japan has a legitimate claim on Takeshima, and South Korea should be glad that Japan does nothing more than sustain its claim in word over the illegally occupied islands. They have the islands and Japan does nothing about it other than refusing to give up its own claim, that it has perfectly reasonable grounds to maintain is legitimate. I hope they don't waste the opportunities for cooperation in this meeting over a stupid, and pointless territorial dispute, that Koreans already have the upper hand on.
As for the sex slave thing, the stance, legally speaking is very straightforward. Japan paid compensation, and distribution of that compensation is an issue for the ROK government, not Japan. The lawsuit was another ass-backwards idea of Roh's administration, turning to Japan bashing to revive his flagging popularity, which now puts the GNP in a position that is difficult to back down on.
It's not in Korea's national interest to turn this into an adverserial meeting. They have Dokdo, and Japan's support on economic matters, and coordination on DPRK matters is important. President Lee seems like a pragmatic guy, so let's hope they don't get hijacked by nationalist agendas on either side.
Peace
Posted in: Noda to visit South Korea Oct 18-19