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
Yes the media is hopeless in Japan. It's no more than a pastime. But just the other day I watched a quiz program in which panelists are asked to guess a masked phrase in a blank space of a senryu (a sort of haiku). Then I realized that a haiku even if it expresses emotions is basically composed of depiction of deeds or objective facts using terse trimmed words. Truncation and ingeniousness is part of the culture. And you will seldom find "kawaii" used in there either. So perhaps we have not been stripped of our mode of expression completely as yet.
Posted in: The Japanese media and its Orwellian nature
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Seiharinokaze
Life before death (= body and mind) is something that pursues comfort, pleasure, distinction and eros. Believing in life after death is to think amid all the hustle-bustle of passions about what to do, if dare not yet pursue nothingness/emptiness and uncalculating love (agape). Rather balancing act.
I don't think it to be so preposterous to assume that consciousness is a kind of energy that subsists for a considerable time. As nemoflow said, the nature of the energy that supports the reality around us is still much of a mystery. Then the mysterious energy may support our consciousness too. I'm not so biased against Jude Currivan or Robert Monroe said.
Posted in: Do you believe in life after death?
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Seiharinokaze
I think it is getting to be an accepted idea. We are what our soul tries to realize through our body and mind. And more often than not the attempt fails or ends unsatisfactorily.
Posted in: Do you believe in life after death?
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Seiharinokaze
Because Golden week and Bon and New Year are holidays.
Posted in: Why do most Japanese take their holidays at the same time, such as Golden Week, Bon and New Year?
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Seiharinokaze
We better help China rise peacefully to the world stage so that it may contribute to the prosperity and stability of this region. But I didn't take Wen's speech to be so self-congratulatory. It's rather strange for a rising power that about 100,000 cases of riots occur annually in the country (whereas none in declining Japan) and in 2008 alone as many CCP members fled from China after lining their pockets by bribery or abuse of their authority. Also Beijing takes the policy of not revaluing yuan while accumulating huge trade surplus. How can they check inflation and roll off yuans and yuans domestically in exchange for dollars they obtained? About time for the US to take the offensive perhaps. Not sure though if Japan can sit on the rail expecting China to go on very nicely.
Posted in: China is doing very nicely for the moment, thank you
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Seiharinokaze
It's Kanzakura, a kind of sakura. Not a plum. http://www5b.biglobe.ne.jp/~s_mori/winter/kanzakura.htm
And the bird is a brow eared bulbul as other posters pointed out. But nightingale sounds nice.
Posted in: Watch the birdie
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Seiharinokaze
For Japanese women the less masculine image of Bodhisattva or Asura may be a mascot boy rather than a saintly icon. I'm not sure if it has any deeper meaning than that, such as the reflection of their own mind like misandry or some repressed feelings. In their comic artist type of imagination, Judas was forgiven by buying five indulgences issued by Jesus and is now living with other apostles in mutual trust and aid like Arashi. So perhaps Muhammad may also get to have a liking for Bosatsu statues and go along with Jesus to buy Asura's figures in Akihabara.
BTW, it's Goto Sota, not Goto Keita. The latter was a leading figure in the business world and also famous for his collection of stone images of Buddha. You can see them at his art museum (the Gotoh Museum) in Kaminoge, Setagaya.
Posted in: Japanese women go gaga over Buddha boys
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Seiharinokaze
Patriotism is love for one's own country, in most cases for the country where you were born and raised. It's a simple and ingenuous feeling. Nationalism is what you do not get to realize until you are put in geopolitical realities where the national interests of a country clash with other's. To tell the plain fact in today's context, it's simply about how you unctuously resist to the overriding demand by superpowers.
Posted in: What is the difference between patriotism and nationalism? Can they or should they be taught in the classroom?
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Seiharinokaze
Freedom of expression and academism (verification of facts) are not established yet in China. You can find any kind of history books on the war between Japan and China here in Japan. Some of them are written by Chinese themselves which are not necessarily the same as the official views of the Chinese government. Scholars write what they think is true by providing evidence/data and reasoning to be put to the test of the world and time. Nanking should be dealt with by such a social-sientific approach without being swayed by emotionalism or distorted by Chinese cultural habit of mendacity "bihui" (避諱), while recognizing humbly the fact that the Japanese side caused a great damage to the people of China. In this sense it's an advancement that China agreed to state Japan's views side by side in the report that differ from theirs, though it seems that the Chinese government does not want their people to know about it.
Posted in: Japan, China still at odds over 'Rape of Nanking'
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Seiharinokaze
The pacifist constitution serves, if anything, as a preventive measure to keep Japan away from dubious wars US may stage, though we are indirectly concerned with them already by providing the base. It's US that hugely funded Islamic fundamentalists in 1970's through 80's to incite the Soviets' involvement in Afghanistan. Iraq's invasion into Kuwait had also a somewhat similar aspect for all I know. And what was Iraq war at all? Who sowed the wind and reaps what? If Japan really plans to move the top command office of the ASDF into the US Yokota Air Base premises and a top antiterrorism unit of the GSDF into the U.S. Army headquarters in Japan, we cannot be too wary of creating a "more equal and effective defense partnership".
Posted in: U.S. ambassador: U.S.-Japan pact critical for peace
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Seiharinokaze
What the US had to do in Korea, according to Kennan, was an extension of what Japan had faced previously in the region. After the war broke out between Japan and China, it's also the US with its decision of full-scale support for China that prevented China at the last moment from concluding a peace talk with Japan which was almost agreed to after repeated attempts by November 1940. And even long after the war Kissinger persuaded China in his first or second visit there that the US forces are here also for containing Japan. I am inclined to say the US looks rather pro-China historically to Japan.
And today the US government says it regards its bilateral relation with China under the current Communist government as important as any other bilateral relations in this century. China's vice-premier Wang Qishan seems to be quite in high repute with the US government too. So I cannot buy your view that there ain't no love in the US for the current Chinese government. Rather, sorry, China's formidable force and new ICBM and the like sound more of an ad hoc rhetoric for pushing state-of-the-art arms to Japan in the otherwise fairly peaceful and prosperous bi- or trilateral environment. Besides why do you have your enemy, hypothetical or anything, be your biggest creditor?
Posted in: Japan, U.S. remain apart on Futenma
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Seiharinokaze
perspective at 08:07 AM JST
Well, George Kennan called it as a kind of sentimentality American people have toward Chinese. It helped in fact let China disregard the reciprocity of the Nine-Power Treaty concluded at the Washington Conference in which China was also required to perform its duties and make efforts for modernization in order to abolish the unequal treaty placed on her. America at the time seemed to ingratiate itself with China by conniving at China's default with its unrealistic demands. Japan should have this at the back of our mind in dealing with the US and China even today. Not inappropriate at all to think of our security by presupposing that America might be basically pro-China, or at least not an enemy as Kissinger denied clearly.
Posted in: Japan, U.S. remain apart on Futenma
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Seiharinokaze
lincolnman,
If I'm not allowed to say that the Seventh Fleet is enough for helping defend Japan, I may at least wonder how much of the operational or maintenance costs of the assets deployed here has been really necessitated by the defense of Japan, not to mention the extra cost of 6 billion dollars charged to Japan's account for relocating the Marines to Guam. One-sided nature of the security treaty on the part of Japan may prevent us from being involved unconditionally in what the U.S. may have to pursue militarily, if you know what I mean. And if you still think the US is getting taken for a free ride, you are the one who are free to rethink anytime. It's perhaps unilaterally rescindable in this respect too.
Besides I can hardly believe that the U.S. being historically pro-China will be willing to fight with China for the defense of Japan. Rather we should be wary lest Japan has to be militarily engaged with China except for by purely defensive necessity after having the unilateral treaty deliberately modified.
Posted in: Japan, U.S. remain apart on Futenma
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Seiharinokaze
Japan pays about three fourths of the cost for stationing the U.S. forces. For keeping one US soldier, we pay 106 thousand dollars every year. It's 3.8 times as much as for Italy and 4.9 times for South Korea and Germany. Money that maintains the regional economy coming mostly out of the nation's coffers, we may spend it any other way. Vindication for this absurdly generous expenditure is being also undermined by the fact the Marines in Okinawa have been in fact often deployed to Iraq. They are out there not for the defense of Japan but for other purposes. Futenma relocation argument is thus losing its rhetorical strength against the civil rights concerns and common sense of local people.
Posted in: Japan, U.S. remain apart on Futenma
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Seiharinokaze
Many of BS digital programs are not so bad. "2000 years between Japan and the Korean peninsula" as part of Project Japan series on NHK is superb as a historical TV program. Also I'm looking forward to a drama "Soukyu no Subaru" featuring the Empress Dowager Xi-taihou.
As for a music program, I enjoyed "Promise for Christmas (Kurisumasu no Yakusoku) " projected/directed by Oda Kazumasa which has become what I cannot miss at this time. The medley of songs titled 22'50" sung by each singer in turn and unison was quite moving. The voices of Aqua Timez and Ikimonogatari and Fumiya and Shimizu Shota, how wonderful natural voices they all have.
Posted in: What do you think of the quality of Japanese TV programs this time of year? Seen anything you like?
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Seiharinokaze
My understanding is that before 1905 no country had ever recognized nor ruled the island as part of its own territory, though it was actually used for Japanese fishery since at least early 17th century, during which the fishermen from around Shimane did not receive any protest from Chosun dynasty government. Memories of idyllically productive days gone by.
Posted in: S Korea-Japan territorial dispute flares up again
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Seiharinokaze
Jero is another foreign singer on Kohaku but he is an enka singer. It seems Kohaku cannot do without enka. Enka may be this nation's undercurrent heritage of Tuguns tribes. Outcast vagabondism and unrequited love are its all-time favorite themes. For that matter I DREAMED A DREAM conveys a similar thing. But I think Nakamura Mitsuko sings a bit more miserably and self-deprecatingly than Susan Boyle in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctN-AfqYIdQ&feature=related
Posted in: Susan Boyle to appear on 'Kohaku'
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Seiharinokaze
In Oct. 2005 it was decided under the Alliance Transformation and Realignment Agreement (ATARA) that the Marine Corps in the Futennma airbase together with the base be relocated to Henoko. But next year in May 2006 U.S.-Japan Roadmap for Realignment Implementation (the “Roadmap”) outlined details of different realignment that the Marine Corps in Okinawa including those in Futenma move to Guam and the Futenma airbase is relocated to Henoko. At this point is still Henoko so vitally important with no room for listening to the voice of the local people who are even willing to move a no-confidence vote in the governor if he approves the plan, when Guam will take the place of Okinawa and become the keystone for the U.S. military operation in the west Pacific and Asian region?
Posted in: SDP leader wants U.S. base off Okinawa
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Seiharinokaze
Simple question. If the Futanma base’s status is “absolutely vital to the defense that they provide for the entire region" as the U.S. Marine Corps commandant argues, why will approximately 8,000 III Marine Expeditionary Force personnel and 9,000 dependents be relocated from Okinawa to Guam by 2014 which would continue to support U.S. commitments to provide for the defense and security of Japan from "on the furthest forward element of sovereign U.S. territory in the Pacific capable of supporting such a presence, thereby maximizing their freedom of action while minimizing the increase in their response time relative to their previous stationing in Okinawa" as is described in Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Guam?
Posted in: SDP leader wants U.S. base off Okinawa
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Seiharinokaze
Or rather it's still about scrambling for the manipulation of the forbidden area or "kashikoki-atari". Nothing changed or it has even spread to China, it seems.
Posted in: Palace politics