Wednesday February 15, 2012

Scrote's past comments

  • 1

    Scrote

    Cleo: we looked at a local Japanese private school for my son. It is supposed to be for able students and has high academic standards. However, the "example day" of a 13 year-old student in their prospectus consisted of getting up at 6 am, study, tennis, breakfast, school, lots of study, tennis after school, more study, bed at 11 pm. To me there just seemed to be too much focus on study and the maths lesson we saw at that school involved going through worksheets at a frantic pace.

    Another thing I don't like is the emphasis on learning facts, rather than thinking for yourself and questioning things. They sometimes publish junior-high school entrance exam questions in the paper and the humanities parts are always things like "what is the largest lake in Japan?", "how far is it from Sendai to Hachinohe?" etc. Where are the essay questions that require thought and planning to answer? They don't seem to exist. I don't want my son to become an automaton, only able to spout useless facts. This country needs more people who ask questions, especially of their politicians and bureaucrats. But this isn't what the bureaucrats want, so nothing will change for the time being.

    Posted in: Salarymen families assess pros and cons of international schooling

  • 2

    Scrote

    My son attended a Japanese primary school for the first three years of his schooling. It was OK, but he was always complaining it was boring and the pace of the lessons was too slow. I could see his point as one lesson I observed they spent 45 minutes discussing what 6x7 was. This is great for the slower children, but if you already know your times tables it's excruciatingly tedious.

    It seems to me that the Japanese schools are good at turning out young adults who are literate, numerate and able to follow instructions. Such people make ideal factory workers, but lack the ability to question anything they are told or to think for themselves. Unfortunately, much of the factory work is moving overseas so the education system needs to change to produce people who are creative and innovative. Alas, the bureaucrats in the education ministry are unable to see this and are completely fixed in their ways.

    Eventually we moved our son to an international school where he was much happier and now he is at a UK boarding school. He still has the option to return to Japan when he is older and hopefully it won't be to take a job in a company that insists you work all hours and never take holidays (what a great "reward" for all those years of study that is). After all, I have a good job here, I'm home by 6 pm every day and I didn't need to study like crazy to get into the "best" school, the "best" university and all this nonsense that Japanese children are faced with.

    However, I have a Japanese friend who took his daughter out of the international school once she got to junior-high age so that she wouldn't have any issues with entering university here in the future. It's probably true that the best option for a child with two Japanese parents is to stick with the system and hope that you live near a good school.

    Posted in: Salarymen families assess pros and cons of international schooling

  • 4

    Scrote

    The Yen is strong, but oats still cost Y1000 a kilo, about six times the UK price. Someone is making large profits.

    Posted in: Strong yen spurs Japanese consumers' purchase of U.S. goods

  • 0

    Scrote

    The paper the other day mentioned a possible 15% price hike for TEPCO. I thought it interesting that 15% was also the amount the government asked companies to save during the summer. They will probably say "look, you can reduce your consumption by 15%, we will increase the price by 15%, your bill will remain the same but TEPCO can increase it's profits to pay higher salaries to its directors".

    Posted in: Gemba expresses reservations over rumored electricity price hike

  • 1

    Scrote

    The next minister to visit Fukushima should say something like "It's regrettable that the LDP allowed and supported the building of this nuclear power plant, knowing all along that it lacked adequate protection from earthquakes and tsunamis. I hope the LDP will reflect on this and express sincerely their remorse to the people of Fukushima for their failings in this matter."

    Posted in: Industry minister resigns after 8 days over 'town of death' comment

  • 1

    Scrote

    So Osaka transportation bureau plans to take the initial results seriously, but completely ignore the results of the second test? Perhaps they should explain the reason for the discrepancy between the results and explain what evidence they have that proves their first test was accurate and the police test flawed.

    Posted in: Two Osaka subway drivers test positive for illegal substances

  • 0

    Scrote

    Ishihara, the "driving force behind Tokyo's failed 2016 bid", will no doubt soon be dishing out taxpayer's cash to his friends and family, again.

    Posted in: Tokyo Gov Ishihara to lead 2020 Olympic bid

  • 0

    Scrote

    I suppose NHK will completely ignore the event, again. Last time I wrote to them complaining that they showed Waseda v Keio in their 7 pm news but said nothing about the national team. They replied that they did mention the score on a 5 am news bulletin. They didn't answer my question as to why university rugby was seen as more newsworthy than a world cup. I guess it's because all the NHK guys are graduates of Waseda or Keio.

    Posted in: Japan makes 11 changes for France match

  • 1

    Scrote

    When I went through immigration in China there were two lines: "中国人" and "外国人": which line must the Japanese go through? That's right "外国人". When outside of Japan Japanese most certainly are "外国人", as the term simply means "a person from another country".

    Posted in: Gaijin -- just a word or racial epithet with sinister implications?

  • 8

    Scrote

    In a country that attaches much importance to the use of honorifics it seems impolite and ignorant to refer to people as "gaijin". How would Japanese like it if I referred to the emporer as "Aki chan"?

    Posted in: Gaijin -- just a word or racial epithet with sinister implications?

  • 2

    Scrote

    I do hope that the "well known company" that dismissed a worker for reading news "on company time" pays its workers in full for all the overtime they do. I wonder if they dock pay for managers who slope off to the smoking room every hour?

    Posted in: More companies using Big Brother tactics to spy on workers

  • 5

    Scrote

    I find it difficult to believe some of the things in this report. For instance "Moriyama said TEPCO officials used a piece of paper to explain their findings but did not submit any documents". Whenever I have meetings with people from companies they always have computer presentations and give me either a hard or soft copy of the document. We are expected to believe that TEPCO officials "used a piece of paper" in the meeting, but no copies or other records are available? Were the calculations done by hand on the back of an envelope?

    I would suggest that both TEPCO and NISA knew of the risk of a huge tsunami long before March 11 and decided to ignore it. This nonsense about a "piece of paper" being presented on March 7 is a pack of lies intended to make it appear that they were going to address the problem but the tsunami occurred before they could get around to it. Perhaps Moriyama can tell us the names of the TEPCO officials who were present and they could be asked about this? Or will the "journalists" just let this nonsense go unchallenged?

    Posted in: TEPCO knew of tsunami threat: nuclear agency

  • -1

    Scrote

    I believe that Japan will eventually default on its debts: raising taxes won't be effective when the workforce is shrinking and salaries are being cut. Bureaucrats have had several years of salary and bonus cuts, but what is needed is a cut in their numbers, and an end to corruption and waste. None of this will happen until it's too late.

    Posted in: Moody's cuts Japan debt rating by one notch to Aa3

  • 0

    Scrote

    If Maehara wins the LDP will immediately start going on and on and on and on about the donation he received from a non-Japanese. They will constantly ask him to "explain" it, refuse to co-operate on the pretext that he hasn't "explained" it sufficiently, demand his resignation, boycott the Diet and call a vote of no confidence.

    Such is the predicatability of Japanese politics.

    Posted in: Maehara's candidacy shakes up PM contest

  • 0

    Scrote

    A good way to deal with the likes of al Qaida is to turn them into a laughing stock, making jokes at their expense. Being full of self-importance and righteousness they can't handle it at all.

    Anyway, I thought fatwas could only be issued by Islamic scholars, not any random nutcase writing on an internet forum, so it's incorrect to say Letterman has a fatwa against him.

    Posted in: Letterman mines laughs from website death threat

  • 1

    Scrote

    Let's see how worried he is once he sees Gadaffi's head on a post.

    Posted in: Syria's Assad: 'I am not worried' about security

  • 1

    Scrote

    The only abduction issue the Japanese government is interested in is the North Korea one.

    Posted in: Rally planned to raise awareness of parental abduction issue during Biden visit

  • 0

    Scrote

    About a month ago Maehara had 5% support when people were asked who they would prefer as the next PM and now he's suddenly up to 28%. "Fickle" is the ideal word to describe the Japanese people when it comes to politics. We know that the next leader will see a support rate of about 60% immediately after being elected, falling to around 20% within six months.

    And despite Kan's 15.8% approval rate he is sure to be re-elected in the next election, along with all the other clowns like Mori, Aso, Abe, Hatoyama etc who also scored similarly low in the ratings. If all these people are so unpopular why do people keep voting them back into parliament? Why say that someone is useless one minute and then vote for them the next? The voters must be a bunch of idiots.

    Posted in: Support for Kan falls to new low

  • 0

    Scrote

    The Yen is strong against the dollar because of doubts about the US economy, this has nothing to do with speculators. If we look at the exchange rates over the past year there has been a gradual decline of the dollar versus the Yen; the "violent" changes in exchange rates are due to BOJ intervention.

    If Japan's "top financial diplomat" can't understand simple things like this what hope is there for this country?

    Posted in: Vice finance minister describes yen's recent moves as 'violent'

  • 1

    Scrote

    If Ishihara wants to see the salvation of Japan the best thing he can do is resign forthwith. It's Ishihara and his crooked LDP mates that have brought the country to its knees. Massive debts, endemic corruption and waste, self-serving politicians, large parts of the country rendered uninhabitable due to a foreseeable and avoidable nuclear fiasco. This is the legacy of the LDP, the party of Ishihara and his "Japanese" mates. Give me the "non-Japanese" any day.

    Posted in: Ishihara calls Kan, cabinet 'not Japanese' for not visiting Yasukuni Shrine

Follow us

Facebook
Twitter

View all