JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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- Core Developer - コアディベロッパー
- Midokura Japan K.K. - ミドクラジャパン株式会社, Tokyo
- Salary: ¥4.0M ~ ¥10.0M / Year Negotiable
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- Translator
- ZAIHON, Inc. (日本財務翻訳株式会社), Tokyo
- Salary: ¥6.0M / Year Negotiable
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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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Seiharinokaze
Noliving,
Hodo Station on TV Asahi (aired May 2) featured an aged couple who lost their son, Sugiyama Yoichi then aged 34, in the 9.11 disaster. His mother said so on the news program. At the same time his father Sugiyama Kazusada (73) commented that he feels bin Laden's death marks the end of one stage, but he wishes bin Laden had been arrested and brought to trial to clarify the whole truth as he is the most important attestant.
Posted in: Celebrations
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Seiharinokaze
I would rather share the feeling of a mother who lost her son in one of the twin towers in 9.11 disaster. She said on a TV program this evening, Why are they so delighted at the death of bin Laden? Nobody will return home. Is it anything for you to dance for joy? The picture looks somehow uncomfortable to me.
Posted in: Celebrations
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Seiharinokaze
GE and the U.S. government were aware perhaps rather guiltily of the gravity of the occasion already on the day the quake hit and offered immediately to send powerful coolant or cooling device to Japan. But Kan's government, the nuclear safety agency and TEPCO did not share the sense of crisis and declined it. On the next morning Kan visited the nuclear power plant posing as a hero by letting them put off venting hydrogen from reactor casings for all of us to see fanfare of explosions that followed. And many people were expelled from their home town and many animals discarded and dying. Such is is our leader.
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Seiharinokaze
Everybody and even Kan himself knows that he cannot steer the country anymore. The unbalanced parliament and discord within the DPJ at this time of crisis leaves no choice for Kan but to ask the opposition leader to join his cabinet. And even the senior lawmaker Watanabe Kozo who split from the LDP has to suggest that Tanigaki (not Kan) be premier in the coalition government as he has already given up on Kan, though strangely he never urges unity within his own DJP. That tells a tale. But don't forget it's this yakiga-mawatta senile Watanabe who should have visited Fukushima first of all and deeply bowed to the evacuated people. He is the one who strongly promoted nuclear power generation helping build power plants in Fukushima.
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Seiharinokaze
For all what's happened, the cherry tree in Miharu-cho, Fukushima will begin flowing again later this month for anyone or no one to see. Cherry blossoms, methinks, still go well with some Viennese waltz such as Wo die Zitronen Blüh'n rather than pondering over the transience of life or mutability’s immeasurable vortex of sadness. Life is mellifuluous, as Buddha said in his last years.
Please image search by google "Miharu" and "Sakura".
Posted in: Earthquakes and cherry blossoms: Japan's reminder of mortality
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Seiharinokaze
fds, the lawmakers who tried to do that (making it legal to dismiss bureaucrats) are being fired through manipulation by bureaucrats. Hatoyama was the one who got the sack that way. He meant to say Japan is an all time Egypt. But Deigo revolution may come up from Okinawa.
Posted in: Hatoyama blames bureaucrats for his failure on Futenma issue
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Seiharinokaze
List up municipalities with lowest death rate from cancer. Many of the top ranking cities/towns are green tea producing centers. And Kakegawa city of Shizuoka Prefecture comes at the top. The city has not only the lowest death rate from cancer among all the municipalities of Japan but also the city's medical expenses are only three fourths of those averaged nationwide. The secret they have found is: Drink "deep steamed" green tea (深蒸し煎茶), which is greener and more cloudy than other kinds of tea. Less bitter in taste but full of nutritious ingredients because it's cell membranes are much more broken by steaming leaves for a longer time to soften bitterness. Take it ten cups a day. From NHK's Tameshite Gatten broadcasted on Jan. 12. If any help to Americans.
Posted in: Smoking, obesity are why U.S. lifespans lag a bit
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Seiharinokaze
How do you call the system in technical terms that the Treasury Department issues bonds and the central bank buys them? Isn't it a sort of legalized (or illegal technically?) self-deception? But anyway the U.S. intends to depreciate dollar. G20 last October in South Korea agreed to evade currency war in which they try to expand export by depreciation of its own currencies. (Which means everybody wants to depreciate its currency actually.) Since then the main currencies (euro, real, renminbi, yen) are rising against dollar. Well, I desist from saying about what happened between yen and dollar in the last 35 years, but do you really think that dollar will not be weaker against most well known other world currencies in future? As for TPP in question, to take into consideration the trend of dollar depreciation and required abolition of all tariffs, I think it's obvious which country of the two Japan or the U.S. will gain in the foreseeable future.
Posted in: Are you in favor of a trans-Pacific free trade accord between Japan the United States?
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Seiharinokaze
GW,
If the world, as you say, is caring less and less about Japan a declining market whose export accounts for only 20% of its GDP, why does the U.S. urge Japan to join? As you may know, Japan and the U.S. account for more than 90% of the total GDP of the member countries if the two join. It's practically a FTA between Japan and the U.S.
Japan's food self sufficiency rate is 40% on calorie basis. The lowest among the developed countries. It means Japan which "has coddled their farmers for far too long and doing absolutely nothing to make farming here more efficient" has actually opened up its food market most openly to the world. The farm products such as rice, wheat and sugarcane on which heavy duties are levied account only for 10% of the total imported farm produce. The other 90% are not so highly tariffed. Yea true Japan should improve its own agricultural industry. But the bottom line is TPP is an excuse for large farming countries to rush Japan into opening ad hoc its rice/wheat/beef market. They do care and very shrewdly.
Posted in: Are you in favor of a trans-Pacific free trade accord between Japan the United States?
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Seiharinokaze
Japan's is a free economy. Its tariffs for industrial goods are already fairly low. Will America buy more industrial goods from Japan after joining TPP when America intends to increase export by continuing an quantitative easing policy and depreciating dollar? For technical/manufacturing industries, tariffs are not a big concern anymore. Just depreciate your currency to increase your export. And Japanese auto makers have factories in the States too. So, first and foremost it's to pry open the agricultural market of this country so that cheap made-in-America food can come in abundance to devastate the domestic agriculture and deepen deflation still further. TPP is a sign of the weak-brained Japanese spaniel government fawning again on the master without thinking about its own safety net.
Posted in: Are you in favor of a trans-Pacific free trade accord between Japan the United States?
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Seiharinokaze
Though America's military power is its last ditch effort to have lesser countries like Japan under its thumb, everybody knows it's not a war anymore but "currency war" or exchange rate that revives economy today. That's maybe why military industrial complex doesn't seem to care so much who wins the Iraq war be it Tehran and Shi'ite clerics in Bagdad or whether the new oil there is exploited by Chinese and Russian companies, as long as they can get new as well as back orders regularly and have service members employed. America's pillar industry also has to live on hand to mouth basis. A monstrous world is often being much expected, if not staged outright.
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Seiharinokaze
Invest huge military budget in development of weapons and use it in some hot spot for inventory clearance as well as for performance demonstration of new weapons to sell to the world. Whether Iran gets back Iraq as a result does not seem to be so important. Not sure what's become of Afghanistan at all but now the trouble shooter seems to have its eye on the periphery of China.
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Seiharinokaze
America's military spending in 2009 was 650 billion dollars whereas China's is 90 billion. And the U.S. accounted for 54 percent of the increase in the military spending from the previous year (2008). China may be increasing its military spending mostly because of America's huge military expenditure. And Japan is routinely urged by the same token to increase its own because of China's. Japan might sometimes squirm amid all this wolf crying and dare suggest kicking the stupid vicious cycle rather than always standing by Washington.
Posted in: Gates touts role of U.S. forces in Japan in dealing with N Korea, China
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Seiharinokaze
OssanAmerica,
Which clause of the peace treaty specifies the jurisdiction over the islands when a problem arises? Which means I presume that China never accepted any clause that denies China's claim over the islands either.
Violation of territorial waters and trespass onto the islands happened many times in the past. But never before were those cases put to the jurisdiction of Japan. Ramming the Japanese Maritime Agency's patrol boats may justify arresting the Chinese captain, but applying the domestic law and indict him disrupted the customary rules. If the district public prosecutors had to decide somewhere along the line to drop the case and release the captain out of diplomatic consideration, the government should have settled it through diplomatic channels from the beginning. When the Futenma base issue has been stalemated and the cause to deepen the alliance is somewhat wavering, it's as if Maehara pulled strings (or himself is pulled strings) to let the Maritime Agency's patrol boats provoke the boozy skipper to go hellbent on a narrow way so that bilateral relations would be brought to the lowest level in years. I mean he better step aside and mull rather than dance to the strings between the devil and the lion.
Posted in: China has some major issues coming
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Seiharinokaze
vinnyfav,
When the peace treaty was concluded between Japan and China, the issue of the Senkaku islands was of course discussed but the Chinese leadership at the time (Deng Xiaoping) suggested to shelve the issue for the next generation. Otherwise they could not have concluded the treaty. It's a well known fact and often cited by the media. Google by the words 尖閣諸島 and 棚上げ and 鄧小平.
When the Chinese captain was arrested and his detention was extended over 10 days, China considered it as Japan's intention to indict the captain in spite of the tacit agreement. Japan disrupts the norm. That's the main reason for China's fury which made Maehara and others shudder and recoil from pursing indictment of the captain by off-loading all the responsibility on the district public prosecutors of Naha who said he did it from diplomatic consideration.
Posted in: China has some major issues coming
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Seiharinokaze
In 1978 the Chinese leadership suggested that the issues of territorial rights over the Senkaku Islands be shelved and put into the hands of the next generation, which means that Japan, while practically ruling the islands, does not exercise jurisdiction over a problem that may arise around the islands. The Japanese government accepted it and concluded the peace treaty with China. Even though in the last 32 years collision did happen many times between Japanese patrol vessels and Chinese fishing boats in the area, Japan sent back Chinese skippers/crews to China immediately or after a certain period of detention without applying its domestic laws. But Japan broke the tacit agreement last year and indicted the Chinese skipper. FM Maehara denied the existence of such an agreement and let the Maritime Safety Agency's patrol boats act the way as we saw. So it's Maehara rather than China that brought bilateral relations to its lowest level in years.
America's strategy is to contain China by fanning China's threat and letting Japan and East/South Asian countries depend on the America's military. Dealing with America and China, the Japanese foreign minister should tread warily, sometimes even looking the other way and blink rather than just dance to the tune as between Scylla and Charybdis. But Maehara is hopeless.
Posted in: China has some major issues coming
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Seiharinokaze
China will have to revaluate renminbi anyway knowing that habitual foreign exchange intervention brings about excessive fluidity in the country. But China will do it shrewdly with Japan as an example of how not to behave (see how Japan's lost decade followed the Plaza accord). Though I don't know why China now buys Greek's and Spain's government bonds that nobody buys and speculators sell off, as if by way of retaliation for the Nobel peace prize awarded to its citizen, China may take a similar approach on democracy and human rights issues too. Japan should just urge and wait without taking sides with a containment policy that only fans confrontation.
Posted in: China's spats call into question 'peaceful rise'
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Seiharinokaze
ElJeffeEnJapon, the international community now is manipulating their currencies by putting them out in great volume to the market. When the devil drives they must emulate Beijing somehow or other. Devalue their own currency is the world norm now. See what South Korea does guiltily. China is just shamelessly clever, knowing perhaps that China's rise will be realized peacefully as they ride out America's liquidation if with a bit of berserk fury. Though as many as 100,000 cases of civil unrest at state run work places are reported annually in China, which seems to have escaped you, it may still act to improve rather than implode China.
FYG, OssanAmerica, majority of the North American continent has also been occupied by people who came from other parts of the world whether or not the indigenous ones are now treated as a second class minority. The definition seems to be invalid or great countries are all of a sort.
Posted in: China's spats call into question 'peaceful rise'
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Seiharinokaze
ElJeffeEnJapon,
They manipulate their currency to export so that you can buy goods of fairly good quality at a reasonable price and the resulting trade surplus they get is used to finance your State budget, which means that unless they "abuse" their currency the bonds they bought will become a mere scrap of paper which they fear measures up to the actual marrow of the U.S., a great country. Pot or kettle, they're making the best of a bad job.
Posted in: China's spats call into question 'peaceful rise'
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Seiharinokaze
Sorry for cutting in.
OssanAmerica,
When and where did China tell such a thing to them?
The reason why I suggested that they should release the entire footage of the ships collision at the Senkaku islands is because it's not clear how it started. Which side took a provocative attitude actually? Or did it take two to make it as if there are some people on both sides who want to prevent both countries from getting along well?
What merit will China get by cutting off the oil supply from the Middle East to the democratic Asian countries? South East Asian Nations do not want any country's hegemony in the region and at the same time they do not want confrontation with China. What Japan should do is to sympathize with their real intention and sweat and strive for realizing it instead of just lining up with the U.S. and funning confrontation. Or rather the U.S. is just trying to move its battlefield to East Asia from Iraq and Afghan because their military adventures out there went wrong?
As for your last question on the definition of a "truly great country", I would add to it that a great country does not abuse a key currency as endless fictitious bills or confuse the irrational maximization of greed by the laws of probability with rationality.
Posted in: China's spats call into question 'peaceful rise'