JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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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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- Assistant Language Teacher - TOKYO - late-March start
- Interac, Tokyo
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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- Assistant Language Teacher - Kanagawa Prefecture - late-March start
- Interac, Kanagawa
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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cleo
Funny, my dog never wears sweaters or clothing of any kind, yet he still drinks water. Same with the cat. And the birds. They all demand water. What am I doing wrong?
(Is the dog in the picture pregnant? That tummy seems to be hanging awful low...)
Posted in: Drink up
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cleo
Do you refuse to eat in posh restaurants where they serve little dollops of food on huge plates?
With or without ice, you're getting the same amount of drink as the next person. It's not good customer service to charge people the same for different amounts, which is what they'd be doing if customer A gets a glass full of ice with 200cc drink and customer B gets 300cc of the same drink for the same price.
If we're in the burger shop, an L-size drink costs more than an M-size drink. What you're demanding is an L-size drink for an M-size price. The napkins aren't specifically included in the price.
Posted in: What do you think of the level of service in shops, restaurants, airlines, banks, offices and so on in Japan?
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cleo
Roundup-Ready soybeans are immune to the herbicide Roundup, which kills everything else it comes into contact with. This means farmers can zap all the weeds in their fields with Roundup and plant their crop immediately, without waiting for the poison to leach out of the soil. They can also blanket-spray the crop with Roundup while it's growing, to keep the weeds away. Wonderfully labour-saving for the farmer maybe, but he then markets a crop that has grown in a field soaked in a very strong poison. Who wants to eat that?
Developing salt-resistant crops for growing in coastal areas, or in areas where changing climate patterns have brought salt to the surface, sounds like good use of otherwise poor land. But the tsunami-affected land isn't contaminated only with salt; there's all kinds of oils and chemicals that the water took out of tanks and storage facilities and spread over the land. I don't really want to eat rice grown in fields soaked in petrochemicals and other unknown contaminants.
Posted in: Gene breakthrough to help farmers hit by tsunami
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cleo
The entire reason? No. The bottom line is.....the bottom line. When GM strains do contaminate a farmer's crop, instead of compensating him Monsanto demands he pay for the 'privilege' of growing their frankenfoods.
Percy Schmeiser was no environmentalist; he was happy spraying his crops with herbicides. But he never bought any seeds from Monsanto. http://www.percyschmeiser.com/conflict.htm
The Mayfield brothers were sued by Monsanto for allegedly saving and planting seed (obviously not sterile) and for planting more acreage than Big Brother Monsanto approved of. http://www.organicconsumers.org/Monsanto/farmerssued.cfm
Monsanto also sues farmers who have never bought their products and never use their products either knowingly or unknowingly. It sues them for advertising the milk they produce as being free of the bovine growth hormone Monsanto sells. A 'No Artificial Growth Hormones' label is, according to Monsanto, 'deceptive' and disparages Monsanto's products 'by implying that milk from untreated cows is better than milk from hormone-treated cows'. Duh. http://www.keepmainefree.org/suesuesue.html
Catch-22 my eye - sterile or not, GMO companies are creating dependency, and they are destroying the environment.
Posted in: Gene breakthrough to help farmers hit by tsunami
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cleo
If you ask for a burger with no pickles, do you expect to get extra fries? More burger?
If you ask for a single whisky on the rocks but hold the rocks, do you expect to get a double scotch? If not, why expect more soft drink for the same price?
Posted in: What do you think of the level of service in shops, restaurants, airlines, banks, offices and so on in Japan?
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cleo
Qaueckernaeck - My main bug with GMO is that the businesses manufacturing them try to pass them off as 'no different from conventional crops'. That obviously isn't the case because no business-savvy huge corporation spends billions on developing stuff that's just the same as what's already on the market. If their product is so wonderful, then fine, they can explain exactly what it is that's so different and wonderful, and convince me that I ought to want it in preference to ordinary stuff. They don't do that; they just cry about consumers wanting GMOs properly labelled. If it's so beneficial, they should be the ones wanting it labelled.
I have never yet heard a single explanation of why I should want to buy GMO. They say it's easier to grow, produces larger crops, requires fewer pesticides and less labour - all of which should make the end product cheaper. Yet they want to mix it in with conventional crops, at the same price. So what's in it for me?
Allowing a handful of large corporations to hold patents for basic crop seeds, and allowing them to charge small farmers a fortune for the seeds each year, is a recipe for disaster. India for example has seen an epidemic of suicides by small farmers unable to repay the debts they incurred to buy the so-called 'magic seeds'. Small farmers should be able to save seed from their crops for the next sowing, but the big GM companies don't allow them to do that.
As for feeding the starving millions - there is plenty of food. It's wars, revolutions and politics that keep the food away from the people who need it. Allowing the big GM corporations to get still bigger isn't going to change that.
Posted in: Gene breakthrough to help farmers hit by tsunami
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cleo
I don't care if they're safe or not, I don't want them. Same as if I'm looking to buy a red sweater, I don't want a blue one even if it will keep me just as warm. It's not what I want.
When people call their product/actions perfectly safe/legal/normal you can be sure they're anything but. Nothing is perfectly anything. Except claims that genetic modification is no different from selective breeding. That's perfectly bogus.
Posted in: Gene breakthrough to help farmers hit by tsunami
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cleo
Means nothing, I moved to Japan, doesn't mean I'm going to actively stop my kids learning English.
She could show you any number of stories about the US that I'm sure you couldn't explain away. You don't have a point at all.
No one's saying anyone has to adopt a 'fully Japanese' lifestyle. On the other hand, you are preventing your kids fitting in even a tiny bit by cutting them off from the culture around them. What happens if one of your kids is out and about and has an accident, is injured, gets lost, is caught up in an earthquake? How are they going to ask for help? How is anybody going to give them help if they don't speak even basic Japanese?
You don't know what you're talking about. And you still haven't explained how cutting your kids and their mother off from the Japanese side of the family in any way benefits anyone.
Posted in: How foreigners’ daily lives change when they live in Japan
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cleo
I would add that since you refuse to learn the language, you have no idea about Japanese culture except what others with the same mindset as yourself (=other people who know nothing) feed to you.
Posted in: How foreigners’ daily lives change when they live in Japan
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cleo
And you're doing it by taking away their individual freedom?
Posted in: How foreigners’ daily lives change when they live in Japan
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cleo
Mr cleo and I met in Japan and the kids were born here. I speak perfect Japanese and am very well assimilated, but if he'd ever suggested I not speak English to my own kids there would have been a huge problem.
Try reading people's experiences with American culture (gun crime, muggings, rape, porn, fundamentalist Christians burning down doctors' surgeries, lynchings, police violence.....much, much worse than anything you'll find about Japan on JT). If you judge it on the same level you judge Japan, you won't be able to go home.
And maybe your first topic of conversation is Columbine? Non-existent weapons of mass destruction? The Gulf of Tonkin? My Lai? The KKK?
But you're not allowing your wife and kids any independent thinking or equality, and you're cutting them off from their family. You're trampling your so-called American values in the mud.
Posted in: How foreigners’ daily lives change when they live in Japan
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cleo
That is not only ignorant, as Hima has already said - it is extremely insulting to your wife. If her culture gives you the 'heebie jeebies' what on earth induced you to marry her? And to have kids with her? You are not being careful with your kids, you are being insulting and overbearing. They deserve better, much better.
Posted in: How foreigners’ daily lives change when they live in Japan
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cleo
You're seeing arguments where there are none. Little wonder your students 'just didn't seem to get it' - they were probably afraid of giving their opinion cos Teacher would brand them argumentative! :-)
'The very fact that the hospital staff didn't point it out' doesn't speak volumes so much as raise a question mark. Why would they not answer a direct question from you? Doesn't make sense.
Posted in: Doctor jailed for buying kidney from gangsters
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cleo
You need to take an anti-paranoid pill. Even if the kids speak only the same language as you, are you going to sit on their backs every time they interact with another kid, or adult, just to make sure you know everything that's going on? Because if you're not there monitoring their every word, what does it matter what language they're speaking?
In addition to English and Japanese, which we share, my son also speaks 2 other languages fluently (sounds darn fluent to me, at least) and is working to acquire another couple. I think his bilingual upbringing has played a very large part in making it relatively easy for him to pick up languages as an adult, and his bicultural upbringing has given him the ability to walk with confidence in a variety of milieux. If you're not a troll, you really do not appreciate what a disservice you are doing your kids.
Nothing wrong with wanting all kinds of stuff. But you're selling your kids short if you think that they can handle only one or the other culture/language. Your kids have much, much greater potential and capacity for learning than you give them credit for.
No it doesn't. Despite having 50% of their DNA from their mum, they're not going to be able to speak Japanese if they're not exposed to it.
Posted in: How foreigners’ daily lives change when they live in Japan
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cleo
They don't any more because it's on the back of the insurance card. I'm surprised the hospital didn't point that out to you.
It was news. Mentioned on the news. Mentioned in the newspapers. I don't use radar when I watch the news, so no idea if it went 'under the radar' or not. Can't remember if it was mentioned on JT - do you rely on JT for your news?? Oh dear.
Posted in: Doctor jailed for buying kidney from gangsters
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cleo
Never thought about that when I signed the card......It doesn't say anything about nationality.
Posted in: Doctor jailed for buying kidney from gangsters
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cleo
There used to be donor cards on hospital reception desks for people to fill out and carry if they wanted to. I understand they also used to have them when you go to get/renew your driving license. Now there is a space on the back of the national health insurance card that you sign or not then cover up with a little privacy sticker so that your doctor doesn't know until you're dead whether he can harvest your organs or not.
It was in the news, hence I (and I imagine many others including ambrosia) did hear about it.
Posted in: Doctor jailed for buying kidney from gangsters
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cleo
I've lived the past 20+ years in a very small rural town in deepest darkest Tochigi. Before that I lived in a tiny village on the Japan Sea side. PLease don't try to tell me what it's like 'far away from the big cities'. Here, people accept you for what you are; in Tokyo they insist on trying to speak English, or stay away because they don't speak English.
My MiL has commented that she used to have a son and a daughter, then her son got married and now she has two daughters. I've never felt not accepted. Can't say we've never had our problems, but no more than Japanese ladies have with their Japanese in-laws - maybe less, because they expect a foreign SiL/DiL to be different and can just shrug their shoulders instead of insisting that we do everything their way or 'the Japanese way' (which I gather differs from family to family :-)).
Posted in: How foreigners’ daily lives change when they live in Japan
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cleo
It will make anyone with a healthy digestive system nauseous before eating it. Just reading the article was enough. I will spend the rest of today feeling thankful that I don't have to eat that muck.
Posted in: Try cooking a Big Mac in rice cooker
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cleo
Better than the UK, too.
Posted in: What do you think of the level of service in shops, restaurants, airlines, banks, offices and so on in Japan?