JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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- 秘書及び業務サポート
- 加治金属工業株式会社, Tokyo
- Salary: ¥4.0M / Year
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- English Instructor (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe)
- Berlitz Japan, Inc. (ベルリッツ・ジャパン株式会社), Kansai
- Salary: ¥125,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month
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- ALT - Mie Prefecture - Yokkaichi City - June start
- NPO法人グローバル教育推進機構（GLAD), Mie
- Salary: ¥230,000 / Month For a full working month. Some months differ.
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It's so interesting to compare modern Germany's role in Europe with "modern" Japan's role in Asia. Germany lost a quarter of its prewar territory in the war, with millions of its citizens expelled from lands that had been German for centuries. Today there are no territorial disputes and it has joined with its former enemies in what is basically a borderless Europe. It acknowledges the crimes it committed and pays large sums of money annually to the Holocaust survivors. In contrast, Japan has territorial disputes over tiny rocks with three of its four neighbours (the fourth, the USA/Saipan having dropped two atomic bombs on it). It refuses even to acknowledge crimes committed in WWII, much less pay compensation. And the thought that Japan could lead the way to an Asian Union like Germany has to a European Union is unthinkable. Germany is an example to the world of redemption. Japan is an example to the world of, uh,.......
Posted in: 3 Japanese lawmakers give up and return home from Seoul
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Oh yeah, and they sell only imported Thai and Brazilian rice.
Posted in: Radiation concerns for Japan's beef supply intensify
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I'm lucky that in my area, far from Fukushima, there are Brazilian supermarkets where all the beef is Australian and all the fruit juice South American. And I can buy eggs and veggies directly from local farmers.
Posted in: Radiation concerns for Japan's beef supply intensify
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A few people here have asked how to check if a kindergarten has adequate supervision or not. One thing I did was visit the head teacher unannounced at a time when there were classes in session, saying, of course, that I understood s/he was busy, and that I could either wait or make an appointment for later. What I wanted to see was whether the children were starved for attention or not. In some places I visited, the kids were so hungry for adult attention that they swarmed around me, holding on to my hand and trying to follow me to the office. In other places the kids would look up, maybe say hello, and then go back to the more absorbing task of pouring sand into a bucket or chasing their best friend. The former places got ticked off my list. The latter places stayed on because those kids obviously had enough TLC and supervision from their teachers.
Posted in: 3-year-old boy drowns in kindergarten pool
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I spend a lot of time back home in a remote area in a Third World country. The Nokias they sell there are simple, have strong antennas for weak signsl areas, and great battery life The features they have there are the ones Third World people need, like a bright built-in flashlight (our village has no power supply). And those phones are super affordable. No one there could or would buy an expensive iphone with its relative complexity (for illiterate villagers), poor antenna power and short battery life. But for Japan? People have money, strong signals, and power to charge their phones. Not to mention being techno-savvy. Nokia can't compete here with iPhones and Androids.
Posted in: Nokia abandons Japanese market
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Well, every theme park needs an icon couple. Disneyland has Mickey and Minnie and now we Brits will have Willie and Katie to lead our theme park. Just a pity we're just a theme park and not a real country any more.....
Posted in: William, Kate marry as 2 billion tune in across globe
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The writer is right about houses in the country being cheap and about doing the opposite of what Salaryman-san, or more likely his Mrs, wants to do (= expensive, new apt on top of a downtown train station). I bought a house 45 min expressway drive from downtown Nagoya on a 10 year mortgage that had monthly payments about the same as rent. Now I own the place, no landlord to deal with, relatively clean air, and folks in the country are really friendly. Older farmhouses in this village are now going for as low as 7 million yen. But this is only a good option if you're going to be here 5 years +.
Posted in: How to make money on property in Tokyo
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Re mortgages to gaijins: when I went, I took a very on-the-ball Japanese colleague to help with language. The bank manager said they were worried because I might leave the country before the mortgage was paid up and they would be stuck with a bad loan. She said, "Well, I am Japanese working at the same place with the same contract, and you would give me a loan with no hesitation. But I have a masters degree from a good American university and could up and leave anytime for a job in the US. These gaijins who come here to teach English are losers and can never get a job in their home countries. This guy's stuck here for life." I got my mortgage and the two of us have had great laughs over the incident ever since.
Posted in: What do you think of the banking system in Japan? What are the pros and cons?
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My biggest surprise with Japanese gifts was when a typhoon knocked a tile off my neighbour's roof into my garden. I didn't kow if she knew there had been damage, so I returned it to her. She came back the next day with cookies "for the inconvenience". As if she'd caused the typhoon!
Posted in: Navigating the intricacies of Japan’s gift-giving protocol
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Both Hatoyama's and Rudd's parties were elected into power by people who believed in their campaign promises. When they reneged on those promises and became a liability, the party bosses correctly got rid of them. Take note, Mr Obama?
Posted in: Australia gets its 1st female prime minister as Rudd ousted
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Do what Japanese people do-- be a trash tourist. I live in a rural area and am amazed at the amount of garbage people from the city throw away here. everything from plastic bags with the family's bentos to TV sets and refrigerators. This is such a beautiful country; it's just a shame that the people are so dirty.
Posted in: Talking trash
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TV in Japan is typically Japanese-- great on hardware, but lousy on software (=brains).
Posted in: Bureaucrats dig in for fight to the finish with anti-digital TV diehards
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If Fukushima were PM (highly unlikely), she would also have to agree with the Americans. No Japanese leader is allowed to go against his Uncle Sam. Japanese can talk and have demonstrations, but no government is allowed to make a decision that goes against the Americans. After all, this country is still occupied by a very large number of very capable American soldiers and the US is a nuclear power. So in the end, this is a good way to blow steam, but in real political terms it is a fight that begins and ends with words, not true action. Japanese who think they can make their own political decisions in such matters are deluding themselves.
Posted in: What do you think of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's decision to kick SDP leader Mizuho Fukushima out of the cabinet because she disagreed with his plan to relocate the U.S. Marine base at Futenma within Okinawa?
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One important point missing in the discussion here is that these nurses are Filipinas, that is, already bi- or trilingual and used to working in another language. This, together with the financial pressure of coming from a Third World nation, means that one can expect that on average, they will learn Japanese faster than the average American or British person coming here, who has usually grown up in a monolingual environment and who can usually return to life in a rich country (s/he doesn't need to support a large family back home on her/his yen income). Given this, the programme's failture rate is especially catastrophoic. Obviously, thee nurses need proper training and support, and obviously, through no fault of their own, they are not getting it.
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Probably they flushed their passports down the toilet or dissolved them in the liquid in the bag. A large number of Chinese ditch their passports after getting into the plane and then refuse to tell the foreign immigration officials that they are from China. Without clear evidence that they are indeed Chinese citizens, the Chinese government won't let another country to wishing deport them to send them to China. They then stay in the foreign country and hope for an amnesty or a good lawyer. I was once in the men's room in Vancouver Airport just before the passport check booth when Mounties burst in and dragged away a Chinese guy, asking him what he had been flushing down the toilet. I thought it must've have been drugs, but learned it was more likely to have been a passport. Also learned they must have cameras in the men's rooms at Vancouver Airport, at least in the ones between the airplane ramps and the immigration booths.
Posted in: Disruptive passengers force Delta Air Lines flight to return to Japan
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If this is Japan and the Japanese people don't want bases here, why doesn't the PM just give the Americans a year to pack up and leave? They did that in the Philippines and no one has invaded there yet. Guess Filipinos have more cajones than this PM....
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It's not just history. A lot of my students lack basic geographic knowledge of the region. Most can't find Micronesia on a map (= ex-Japanese colonies, very close Pacific neighbours) or even the Ogasawara Islands (Japanese since the Meiji era). These came up in a discussion with my 3rd year uni students last week. Of course, this dumbing down isn't limited to Japan, but all of these things, plus the Nazi and Soviet histories mentioned in the article, are mandatory topics in the Japanese senior high school syllabus.
Posted in: 'What are Nazis?' Today's kids can't handle movie subtitles