JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION

chubu's past comments

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  chubuMar. 02, 2010 - 06:39AM JST

  I agree about the despicable record. I was just in tiny Launceston, Tasmania, Australia, population maybe 70,000. In the past year, they have accepted and resettled about 200 ethnic Nepalese refugees from Bhutan (with more family members coming). What could be a more different culture and setting? Yet no one makes a fuss over it, this in a country with its own problems of unemployment. This is more refugees than entire Japan accepts in a decade. And Japan sits and frets about its ageing shrinking population base

  Posted in: Tokyo artists set the table for Refugees International

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  chubuFeb. 03, 2010 - 08:40AM JST

  Re Pukey2's question about what happens with abusive J fathers and Nj mothers: I do know of a case near me where a very physically abusive Japanese father was given a Japanese court order not to have any contact with his American ex-wife or child. And it upheld this even after the father made several court appeals. I'm sure it helped that the mother was fluent in Japanese and could navigate the Japanese social services and legal systems.

  Posted in: U.S. warns Japan child custody laws could harm bilateral ties

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  chubuJan. 28, 2010 - 03:32PM JST

  Let's see if I got this right: this guy doesn't make an English menu because it would make the atmosphere "too Western". And he's selling hamburgers?!?! Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, is he?

  Posted in: Setagaya burger master goes for traditional touch

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  chubuJan. 21, 2010 - 08:49AM JST

  Quite part from the Marine's widow, what about his parents? To lose a 22-year-old son must be terrible. The one solace they had was their new grandson--an American citizen-- and now the government he was fighting for won't allow them to stay. I hope this young boy grows up in Japan and never thinks about living under a government that would send him off to die in a war for oil and then treat his family like this.

  Posted in: Marine's widow, baby return to Japan but visa problem with U.S. unresolved

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  chubuJan. 15, 2010 - 08:02PM JST

  Does anyone know how much (or how little) France has been doing to help in the disaster? Much of Haiti's current economic woes are due to the drain its former colonising "motherland" had on it. When Haitian slaves had the audacity to fight for their freedom in the early 1800s (the second American nation to become independent), an important part of the peace treaty was the requirement for Haiti to pay huge reparations to France for property (land. slaves, and deserting soldiers) France lost. With huge annual interest rates on unpaid reparations, Haiti wasn't able to finish paying until the 1940s! No other American nation had to pay its ex-colonial master for its freedom. This was the basis for continual poverty in Haiti throughout its post-independence history.

  France, maybe time to pay back that money now?

  Posted in: U.S. takes charge in Haiti — with troops, rescue aid

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  chubuJan. 14, 2010 - 10:11AM JST

  The movie is an obvious (too obvious?) metaphor on European colonialism of the Americas and much of the rest of the world. Part of that history included a minority of Whites who took issue with people being colonialised, assimilated into them, and tried to stop them being enslaved or having their land taken from them. Movies like this celebrate those heroes either directly or indirectly, and they remind us that not all Europeans were evil colonisers.

  When we see a movie like "Avatar" or "Dances with Wolves", we White people like to identify with that hero, just as we like to read "Anne Frank" and think that we, too, would have hidden a little Jewish girl if we had lived in Nazi-occupied Europe. Maybe we wouldn't really have been so heroic, but the first step to having the courage to conquer the racism inside us is thinking about how we would do (or would have done) things differently.

  Is it a movie about racism? Sure. Is it a movie about examining the racism in our society and saying "no"? Sure. Is the movie especially effective because the man turning his back on European-style racism is White? Of course.

  Posted in: Some see racist theme in alien adventure 'Avatar'

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  chubuJan. 13, 2010 - 07:10AM JST

  For someone with certain eye disorders like me, e-books are a godsend. I need very high contrast to read and without e-books, I would have to sit with a bright light and magnifying glass. This half-blind bookaholic has no nostalgia for hard-to-read and heavy-to-carry paper books.

  Posted in: E-reader boom kindles a variety of new options

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