JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
-
- 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
-
- 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*
-
- Translator
- ZAIHON, Inc. (日本財務翻訳株式会社), Tokyo
- Salary: ¥6.0M / Year Negotiable
0
Klein2
Looks bad. Really bad. I think Don King told her to take a dive on this one so that Donald Trump can hire her for some other thing later. Problem is that she is not blonde, and we know that Trump likes em stupid, tacky, and very blonde.
Posted in: Reach for the Universe
0
Klein2
Helter Reagan basically took a joke that was popular in the midwest from about the 1950s and recycled it for 80s consumption. Cute, huh? Reagan took the distrust that hillbillies had for REVENOOERS and made it a national mantra. First he championed Prop. 13 as Governor of California, which started the spiral that Arnold is now dealing with. Reagan made fiscal matters much worse for the whole US after becoming president.
Be that as it may, I am not convinced that the health care reform plan is so great. I will say that universal health care makes things much easier for businesses. Just frankly, I will say that I have nixed two investment projects in the US this year because of requirements that would need to be met for workers there. In Japan, you get healthy workers making their own decisions about their own health. A business owner can just run a business and not meet a single health insurance salesman. Claims, liability, regulations, paperwork. Forget it.
SF2K is right on. If American people think the paperwork is bad, what are foreign investors going to think?
Posted in: Obama says health care reform good for small businesses
0
Klein2
Hmm. Rich people should help North Korea? And Twitter? Is that the gist RAJAKUMAR?
How about no? North Korea is systemically flawed. It has an addiction, and if there is advice I could give to anyone, it is that addicts have to help themselves. Giving them money is like throwing it down a hole.
In this particular case, I see an Amy Winehouse of a country screaming threats at a bunch of WWF wrestlers. There is no imminent beatdown, because after all, Amy is the maniac, but she is withering away and getting shrill.
South Korea is doing some launches of its own soon. As summer turns to autumn to winter, North Korean harvests will be coming in. It will be bad. DPRK leadership will have to choose guns or butter, just as other nations do. The threats ring more hollow now that DPRK has broken every deal with every country it must now negotiate with.
Deadly blows? I guess North Korea has not hit rock bottom yet. It cannot change unless it wants to change.
Posted in: N Korea warns of 'unimaginably deadly blows' to U.S.
0
Klein2
I do believe that these magnetic symbols are optional. The green and yellow is optional, as I was told. I think that they all are. They are supposed to warn other drivers of erratic driving habits.
They seem silly and would only be valuable for one reason: they are universally recognized and have been taught to all drivers for many years.
Which means that changing them every few years is in fact the only stupid thing you could do. Giving people more reasons to ignore them truly proves how much people value them.
Posted in: Design of senior driver logo may change later this year due to poor image
0
Klein2
I think I have drunk something like this. I do not know how they can call it beer. I imagined three tanks used to make what I drank, which I think might have been category two. One tank squirts about 340 ml of carbonated water in a can. Another squirts about 5 ml of grain alcohol. Another squirts about 5 ml of flavoring and coloring. It was bizarre. Not mixed or mellow or anything.
I really do not understand. Some of you might remember an American tobacco company that invented a smokeless cigarette. It was basically a delivery system for flavored nicotine. This is the same thing. You get the calories and alcohol, but what is the point? Why drink it if it is not beer anymore?
A different note in the same vein...has anyone seen advertisements for non-alcohol beer to truck drivers? Seems very weird to me. "Drink this because it is not illegal." Get ready for no-calorie, non-alcohol, category three beer... "Beer. It's not just for breakfast anymore."
Article Unavailable
0
Klein2
LFR Your post is mostly right on. The fact that this is Cambridge MA suggests two things to me. MAYBE pulling the race card was a little over the top, and MAYBE expecting that a black person is a crack dealer is a little whacko. Both of those observations support your conclusion that both overreacted.
But wait, whoa wait. One person is allowed and entitled to overreact, and one is expected and in fact PAID not to overreact. To me, the police have to give the apology here because they MUST be the responsible party. To say that they are not is to say that they did not control the situation, and they certainly did. He had the gun, whether he unholstered it or not, and he had the badge, and he had a car and a radio. Society expects that he will represent you and me.
To me, the officer should be a man and just say
look, sorry for giving you a hard time. Someone called and I was trying to protect your stuff from burglars. I had no way of knowing who you were. We should have observed you rather than confronting you. We will try to do better.
No shame there. Everyone gets back to work. Police officers are public SERVANTS and they should act like it.
Posted in: Obama rushes to quell racial uproar
0
Klein2
Bgood You seem very confident without knowing any one of the people involved, OR the facts of the case. Perhaps by becoming involved to some degree, Obama is emphasizing that this is a teaching moment.
Personally, I know all I need to know. Police intruded into this man's home based on what appears to be an anonymous neighbor phone call. That is not probable cause. They should have left him alone and gotten more information. If they had done that to anyone after they had just returned home from the airport, they would have been quite angry. To someone with reason to believe it was racially motivated or menacing, of course they would go ballistic. Private citizens have a right to privacy. He was never armed and represented no danger to anyone.
Molenir: why do the police need to calm him down? If they had just left, he could have gone back to his business, and the police could have gone back to whatever they were doing. Why not give a name and badge number? Why arrest citizens without charging them? Is that really a good idea... or only with black people?
As we know, this is a point of tension in urban America. Going around arresting people based on racial profiling would be tolerated how long in Japan? How long before white people would be screaming epithets as they are led to the KOBAN to cool off for awhile?
Posted in: Obama rushes to quell racial uproar
0
Klein2
Oh they come and go, don't they? Why doesn't the Pepsi conglomerate spin off more of its franchises in Japanese markets? It used to be that KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell were all under the Pepsi umbrella. If KFC and Pepsi are here, there should be more Pizza Huts and Taco Bells, but it never happened. Sure McD's has built the brand, but put KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell under one roof and you might be ahead by giving people some choice.
Instead we all live in a Coke/ McDonald's society with meat and potatoes while the rest of Asia has some choice, with beans and cheese.
Still, it is just junk food. Hard to get worked up over some dessicated cow with liquid smoke poured on it.
Posted in: Burger King adds 'angry' burger to Japan menu
0
Klein2
Well, it is simply a matter of who accepts risk. Guarantors are a necessary evil in a country where lawyers are expensive and legal processes work very slowly. I hated using them, but I do not have to anymore because I am not riff raff. If someone wants my business, they have to look at my paper and not my skin color. Probably most foreigners are still in the riff raff category, so you have to pay the riff raff tax.
So if the renter does not pay for the guarantor, who must accept the risk? It would be the owner, right? That would mean higher key money, higher rents, more rules, more hassles. Eventually, the market would collapse because people would rather bulldoze their buildings than complicate their lives. That is what I would do. My guess is that a lot of buildings are clearing less than their mortgage payments as it is.
And if you really think that the guarantors are making out like bandits, look at what their liability is. They are basically guaranteeing faceless riff raff to X amount of yen for a one time fee of Y. Only in Japan would this seem like a GOOD DEAL to the guarantor and the renter. And foreigners? Forget it. Who would guarantee the typical JT poster?
If you don't like renting, then buy. If you can't buy, why are you complaining?
In terms of social issues, having governments act as guarantors rather than putting up public housing seems like a good solution, but we know that will probably never happen, and it still leaves foreigners out in the cold.
Posted in: Professional evictors target working poor
0
Klein2
14 hours a day for years? You ARE a slacker!! LOL. I have been doing that for over a decade. I worked a year for free, willingly, eating rice and beans to save a company that eventually failed.
I am very fortunate. I am not interested in average, or Tokyo, or the Yamanote either. Been there and done that. Look. I made my choices early and stuck to them, that's all. I found what I found and posted on JT.
Japan is a good place FOR ME to raise children. I am an authority on myself, so there is no need for debate, really.
Posted in: Is Japan a good place to raise children?
0
Klein2
Gee Dick. False utopia. You are just full of oxymorons tonight. I will just let it go, but you are not making a great case for the US educational system.
My kids can walk through stores without looking at dirty magazines. I consider that part of being mature and tolerant. Apparently, some adult Americans have a problem doing that. It says more about American upbringing than Japanese.
Dick. You really should consider that a man who can be successful in another country and raise good children to be good citizens, providing for them and their mother during well, decades of recession, cannot be credibly called a slacker. I do have my shortcomings, but if that is not success, I do not know what is. When you grow up and find love of your own, I am sure you will understand.
It just so happened that Fugu was trying to impress me with how American he was, and it turned out that he started working later than I did. I walked to school more than he did too. I thought that was funny enough to comment about it.
Posted in: Is Japan a good place to raise children?
0
Klein2
Sorry so long everyone. Might be interesting, and it is topical.
The topic is
Is Japan a good place to raise children?
My experience says YES! I vote with my feet. I am sincere.
Fuguyoutoo:
The Japanese elite are unwilling or unable to have kids, and poorer people find it is expensive. Oh well. So much the better for me and mine. Your whole post turns on this idea that Japanese people know what is best. Then you use aggregate data, which might not reflect many parts of Japan. Although Japanese in general are not having many kids, a lot of kids live near me. You make another mistake in that you are contrasting urban Japanese life with rural American life. Your method explains your conclusions.
And you misunderstand my points. I am not anti-American. Do you realize how dumb that sounds? You go enjoy. More power to you. I grew up in the states. I know what is here and what is there. I have great memories of fun times, many of which would land me in jail these days. For the record, I started working when I was 14 (you slacker) and paid for my own car and my own insurance and gas. Started driving my own car--pinkie in MY name--when I was 15. I walked to school a total of 14 years (slacker) if you count college and grad school. So there you go. What is anti-American about that? I was filling out W-4's and paying taxes long before I entered high school.
I wanted to give my kids something like that and felt it was unlikely to be done smoothly in the US in the many places I know of there. So I do it here. In Mayberry, Japan.
I do not see the Japan you see. It sounds as though Cleo and I found similar places. Children bow at crosswalks. The postmen smile. Everyone knows where to find me when they need me. The kids know the names of the neighborhood dogs. We have village idiots, monkeys, tanuki, poison snakes, and a fishing hole. We have community bbqs twice a year. The local high school has a great baseball team. We have a nice house and a productive garden. We live among scientists and doctors and teachers, a Nobel prize winner, and a well known actress. We have a chonaikai. No successful cram schools. My daughter was earning her own money at age 10. My son at 8. My kids have bicycles and no security devices. Oh it is not halcyon, but of the things you list above, almost none exist here. It has been remarked by others that parents matter. That is true. My kids do not watch TV unsupervised. We talk a lot. We are not super consumers. We spend pretty heavily on books, but we download the classics from Gutenberg.org for free. I help the police sometimes. Just like waitresses and bureaucrats I meet, they are politely soldiering on, struggling to do their jobs as things get increasingly complicated. I have not met an arrogant Japanese person in years. Am I just lucky?
It sounds like you live huddled, shaking in a hovel. It must be some dog patch in Tokyo or Osaka. If that is what you see of Japan, you need to set higher personal standards. Most foreigners come here for money. Some bring their kids. Too bad. They hang out in the major cities, avoid learning the language, drink too much, and then complain about what they find. Some people are miserable wherever they go. The money and all the dreck are always going to be in the big cities. I have had my share of bad Japan days too, but I have found a better place.
You keep on telling people how bad Japan is, please. I am not eager for this place to become Provo, or Plano, or Portland.
Posted in: Is Japan a good place to raise children?
0
Klein2
Oh brother. Well, first of all, put me on board with Cleo and Nandaka.
Here is a fresh take on it. If you want your kids to grow up with a super hero mentality, whacko religion, sex, and unrealistic expecations and fears, America is the place for you. I have a personal theory that these kinds of things, when stirred up in a flask, produce psychopathic behavior, but what do I know?
How about this? "Lust", "Gluttony", "Greed", "Sloth", "Wrath", "Envy", and "Pride" vs. justice, temperance, fortitude, truth, faith, hope, charity
Why is it that I see American society teaching its kids all of the former to its kids, through schools, television, sports, consumerism, etc. And I see all of the latter being pushed, at least to my kids, in Japanese schools? Why is that? I recommend the movie IDIOCRACY if you would like to see where Jamie Lynn Spears, Michael Vick, and Eric Cartman are taking the youth of America.
Throw in creationism being taught in schools, "Daddy what is a sex offender", "Mommy, what is Sex and the City about?", mandatory homosexuality education, zero tolerance, guns, drugs, 30 valedictorians per graduating class, Hannah Montana, 400 dollar prom dresses, jello shots, and worrying about all of the other kids' helicopter parents, and whew!! gotta like Japan. In Japan, the date rape drugs and shroooms are in Roppongi. In the US, they are at high school football games. And how could I forget fear? My kids walk to school. They play outside. We know no victims of crime, but do know of a couple of homes with divorces.
Japan is about helping people raise reasonable good citizens. There is a lot of work to be done, and Japan will have its share of capable people, with markedly fewer "ex-athletes" killing people and selling drugs, ex-Britney wannabes, and yes, fewer evangelists.
That is the caustic bit. I believe most of that. The bottom line is that if I did not believe that my children are better off growing up in Japan, I would not live here. It is my number one motivation for being here. I admit the possibility that their aspirations and opportunities might be a little bit less than those of some American people I know, but my children are able to gather skills and grow rapidly into reasoning and reasonable people. In the end, they will be able to move in any circles they choose. Their knowledge of math and science will be top notch. They will be trilingual at least.
No worries here. I made the right choice.
Posted in: Is Japan a good place to raise children?
0
Klein2
I guess I am arguing between the lines, that is fine with me. I am not going to say that any response to 9/11 would have been unjustified. I will not say that Bush was wholly ineffective. That is certainly not the point. "It is ok if it saves a single American life" is great for Steven Seagal(?) movies, but what POTUS ever thought that? Creating a climate of perpetual fear and abusing authority are not what America is about. It is great if you are the abuser, I guess, but look what has happened. Bush created a nation of sheeple.
The Manhattan PET bottle incident above is a perfect example. People do not even consider first that it might be a prank or a kook. They look to government to do something to save them. What does an ORANGE ALERT even mean? I have never met anyone who knows, but the ALERT status is announced on PA systems at all international airports. I guess it is supposed to make people feel better about having armed soldiers walking around while passengers stand shoeless in a queue. What other purpose can it serve?
I consider myself a patriot, as Sarge does. Obviously, our opinions differ. Does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave over the land of the free and the home of the brave? We are much closer to NO than to YES because of Bush administration policies. Terrorist Schmerorist. Bush prevented terrorist attacks? America could have absorbed two or three 9/11 attacks per year and paid for them with revenues from Disneyworld. Instead Bush and crew created an armed camp filled with frightened people who are happy to be ignorant of where they came from and where they are going.
Sarge. You are old enough to remember how it used to be. Tell me honestly that Osama Bin Laden did this to change America. He and his little group did all this. Is it true? No. You know it was someone else. As evil as OBL might be, he did not control the mechanisms of government. By saying that preventing attacks is the only meaningful goal you are subsuming that OBL is more dangerous than a US government that is beyond control. And if you DO think that OBL and his little team justified the unprecedented construction of a police state in the US, then you are really saying that Reagan's shining castle on the hill and Bush Sr.'s million points of light and Martin Luther King's dream and Lincoln's country for the people must have never amounted to much anyway.
God help me, I cannot let go of that America. My children should know that America.
Posted in: Bush surveillance program was massive, report says
0
Klein2
Yeah. Here you go. Let's cherry pick here.
"New York City A small explosive device exploded out front of a Starbucks in New York City destroying a bench it had been placed on. No injuries or deaths were reported in the blast that brings fears of terrorism."
Do you read the news or just cut and paste headlines? This was a 17 year old kid who made a PET bottle bomb with some fireworks and a 350 ml plastic bottle. He confessed. Big deal. No injuries. Some broken glass. If it had not been Manhattan, it would not even have made news. Tell me again how this is equivalent to the Civil War and WWII and demands an unprecedented nationwide intrusive anti-terror administration with a budget of billions of dollars. The dork was imitating Fight Club. I really like your "brings fear of terrorism." Kind of makes my point for me. What surprised me much more was reading that this kid has his own apartment in Manhattan! Wow. That is the real news here. 17 year olds making fireworks a week after July 4 is no reason to call out the troops, unless your name is GoodDonkey.
Anthrax. Sheesh. Good thing we installed all of those expensive mail checking devices.
You know, mandatory trigger locks and gun registration would have accomplished more than setting up a police state, don't you think? But whose interests would that have served? If Rush Limbaugh told people to stop killing doctors, it would stop tomorrow, but he and Bill O'really to go on the air and ENCOURAGE them. Read my post above about how a certain historical figure used chaos to gain and hold power. You have a nice little list there GoodDonkey, but you need a little more imagination to see the big picture.
And Sarge. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. That is tired. Let me try a different tack. Let's just say that Bush did something to deter later attacks. Would you agree that doing so much was overkill? Anyone could agree not to pillory the Bush administration for doing SOMETHING if you could agree that things really did get way out of hand. My whole point is that some Manhattan real estate and 3000 lives was not a sufficient justification for what ensued.
Posted in: Bush surveillance program was massive, report says
0
Klein2
Sailwind... Well, Lincoln was a Republican too. Is that what you are getting at?
I do not see equivalence here as you do. Lincoln was faced with the dissolution of the entire country. He was looking at more people dying in a day than have died in the last 20 years in Iraq. Lincoln never created an intrusive structure, as the Bush administration has. And yes you are correct about FDR. I cannot defend that even to say "well, it was only Japanese Americans". But FDR did not actively spy on well, all Americans. Nobody was checking papers at train stations. Kids pulling high school pranks were not being arrested on felony charges of terrorism. Grandmothers were not getting frisked by uniformed government workers.
And what does your comparison show exactly? Bush set America back 60 years? Bush set America back 120 years? What is really your point? Bad times, sure. Bad decisions, yeah. My point simply is that I don't know how 9/11 justified all this. War? You mean Bush wars against two little nations of brown people on the other side of the world are comparable to the Civil War or WWII? Bush Sr. did not take special intrusive measures during the Gulf War. Why not reinforce pilot doors instead of creating the TSA? The Patriot Act. Homeland Security. Those are unprecedented. Why didn't Truman do what Bush did? Why didn't LBJ? Why not Kennedy or Nixon? They were all hawkish wartime presidents who did not resort to changing the NSA mandate. Nixon put a toe over a line that Bush and crew hurdled after a running start.
As you are, I am waiting for a rollback. I want to see it accelerated. Good to see that we agree on this, Sailwind. Tell me what you would like to see next. Guantanamo is a good, but abortive start. This stupid ORANGE ALERT system seems to be on its way out. AFAIK, the wholesale phone wiretapping has stopped, but as the article above shows, the FBI is still licking its chops.
There is a lot of work to do, but the smell of things is a whole lot better now. I wonder what Walter Cronkite would say. He knew all of these presidents and he was paying attention. I would value his take on this whole thing.
Posted in: Bush surveillance program was massive, report says
0
Klein2
Yeah. Triumvere, I see what you are saying. I think it can be said that it is getting better and better to be a combatant. Evacuation and medical care are good. Even in Patton's day, combat fatigue was recognized. You often hear that driving a truck in X battle zone is safer than driving one in Y large urban area. Their supplies are usually good. It is hard to imagine, but something like 10 times as many Americans died in the three days at Gettysburg than have died in Iraq in the last 20 years.
Unfortunately, for non combatants, things are getting worse. Civvies must increasingly rely on infrastructure for everything, and they concentrate in areas likely to be battle zones. It will become even worse in the future as resource wars come to a head. People on the losing side will have their lives disrupted terribly by war. If strategic supplies of materials suddenly become inaccessible, some industries could grind to a halt.
The MACK quote in the third to last paragraph is hopeful.
There is a rich/ poor divide too, obviously. War is getting better if you live in a rich country. You just hire mercenaries. If you are in a poor country, you go from worse to worst. Fetching water from 5 kilometers away is bad, but doing it with no legs...
Posted in: War: Is it getting more hellish, or less?
0
Klein2
Sebastian, Godwin is at the door, he wants his thread back.
I recently watched a BBC documentary on the rise of the one who shall remain nameless. Calmly, I should just say I would be very gratified to see the US take a few steps back on the path it was on before the election. I am not going to demonize Bush or call him an idiot. I think it is probable that he did not know what was going on -- Hindenburg. Remember that AH was the vice-Fuhrer after all, before making himself "protector of the nation" -- does that suggest an analogy? Just to prove it was all a mistake, the machinery should be dismantled and the data destroyed. If that does not happen, what will it prove?
Looking at some components of the pattern, one can see that the surveillance program knits the whole thing together. It justifies, supports, or is supported by all the rest.
Create an amorphous fear (terror, WMDs, islam, drugs, crime, immigrants). Strengthen the military (Halliburton, support the troops, hundreds of foreign bases). Court big business (environmental policies, tax cuts). Deride and punish dissent (Fox, Rush, libs, prisons) and social justice (medical care, social programs, ACLU). Control information, transportation, and communications (TSA, surveillance, drug policies, ECHEL*N, RFID, embedded chips, degraded privacy). Create separate services for loyal and disloyal citizens (no fly lists, CLEAR, private jets). Hold to the big lie (9/11 justifies it, I have nothing to hide, ??). Then just lather, rinse, repeat. You can continue as long as people live in fear and believe the big lies. After a while grandmothers will get cavity searches in airports and nobody will bat an eye. After a while, "defense" expenditures will be more important than education, health, and public works put together. People will want it that way because you will TELL them to want it that way.
Were the last eight years determined by necessity? If one believes that, then one must believe that the world would be the same place today if Gore had been elected.
That is enough I guess. The use of surveillance can very drastically affect society in too many ways. The internet is the new Press, the new Assembly... it must remain free.
Posted in: Bush surveillance program was massive, report says
0
Klein2
Sailwind, I am not even talking about GITMO. What a can of worms. Guess who opened that one.
You want to paint me as a perfectionist apparently. I am not really sure who you are talking to, and you aren't either. I am perfectly willing to give anyone a mulligan if I am convinced that the mistakes and intentions are not pointed solidly at destroying American liberties for vaguely defined, then demonstrably spurious reasons. What we are finding out now is that Cheney apparently told people to lie to my elected representatives. No mulligans for that. Lying to the American people and usurping checks and balances shows that you are not even willing to play by the basic rules. American rules.
I wish I could be more eloquent about this.
The breakneck pace at which the last administration set about searching, collecting, inspecting, etc. was justified by what exactly? It produced what great intelligence breakthroughs exactly? What justifies spying on American citizens? That was unthinkable and expressly forbidden in 1949, at the height of the cold war. Why did the Bush administration just feel free to run roughshod over due process, habeas corpus, probable cause, privacy, and all those other things that Americans were proud of? Was OBL EVER more scary to anyone than Stalin or Mao was?
I know it would be more comfortable to just shrug and say it was all justified, but it wasn't. When you get mugged, you can just forget about the wallet and the watch and get on with your life. When your rights have been ignored systematically by your own government with no warning or justification, what do you do? Go on with life and hope it gets better? Is that survival or denial? Or denial for survival? "Show me your papers comrade" is a quaint formality compared to what the Bush surveillance team was up to.
That machine is a McCarthyist's dream. It makes me sick to think about it. Why teach civics classes in school anymore if you leave that machine intact? At what point do you not bother with law school?
Posted in: Bush surveillance program was massive, report says
0
Klein2
Hey good point Dick! I think you have a little problem with post hoc ergo propter hoc there, but it is good to see you are hanging in there.
By the way, do all all Americans spell terrorise with an s, or only the patriotic ones?
I think you misunderstand. I am not mocking Bush, or even you, I am simply wondering why, given all the resources used and constitutional problems that have arisen, well, why is it that the results seem to be so disputable? Did you suggest those two accomplishments of Bush as his crowning achievements?
Posted in: Bush surveillance program was massive, report says