JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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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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- Assistant Language Teacher - TOKYO - late-March start
- Interac, Tokyo
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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hokkaidoguy
Ever tried making it?
Easy to do, difficult to do well.
Got to say, tough - thanks to this article I'll be buying a copy of the Michelin guide and stopping by that oden place on my next trip to Tokyo. Probably not the reaction the author wanted from his piece, but there it is...
Posted in: The great Tokyo Michelin sham
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hokkaidoguy
béchamel: scald a litre of milk, and add roux. Stir.
roux: 1:1 flour to butter. Cook until flour taste is gone.
That's IT. that's all there is to it. It's not rocket science.
Now you have your béchamel. Let's make a little soufflé.
Separate two eggs. put about a half cup of béchamel in a pan, whisk in the yolks. low temperature. add a bit of cheese, or whatever you want the souflé to taste of. throw the whites into a mixer until they peak, fold that into the sauce. Put into an oven and bake until dry in the centre. use a toothpick to check. serve immediately. Done.
Béchamel is hot milk, flour and butter in the same way that sushi is raw fish on rice, or that soba is noodles in broth. A soufflé is bechamél and egg whites, baked. Gyuudon is beef on rice, served in a bowl.
Any fool can be taught how to cook anything in an afternoon, but it takes a lifetime to perfect a recipe. And that's the point. The Michelin guide recognizes the restaurateurs and chefs that have mastered their recipes. To insinuate that one is inherently more complicated than the other and thus more worthy of praise only shows a staggering ignorance of basic cooking skills.
Now, get out of my kitchen.
Posted in: The great Tokyo Michelin sham
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hokkaidoguy
I noticed the bold on "crazy".
Got a laugh out of that, because when I got my firearms certificate in Canada years and years ago, I had to have a doctor assess and certify my mental and physical health. In addition, I had to provide references from people in good standing to assess my character, and submit to a police check. Having that license in your wallet is as close as you can get to an official document confirming you're NOT crazy.
Let's face it, Cleo, you're a vegan. And as such, you're never going to like things like hunting to feed your family. But calling people crazy for wanting to do because it goes against your dietary habits is out of line.
Posted in: The gun control debate: Do you support the right of citizens to own and bear firearms?
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hokkaidoguy
HIgh on sensationalism and speculation, low on fact. 1/10
I really wish that writers of these opinion pieces would stop for a moment to consider the inconsistencies in their own logic before submitting these portfolio-padding fluff pieces.
Take this gem:
(Forgetting for the moment that karoshi and suicide are not the same thing.) The most reliable data from 2007 tells us that karoshi was the cause of death for 147 people - and that roughly 800 people reported mental health issues due to overwork. Given that extremely small percentage of Japan's workforce, what grounds does the author have for claiming it to be one of the leading causes of suicide in Japan? Aside from placing their work in gogle searches for "karoshi", that is...
And then we've got this one:
8,000 yen is not too expensive for the average person, and it's a relative bargain when compared with other countries with a lower suicide rate. The USA, for example. That said, how does the author resolve the discrepancy between lower suicide rates and higher cost of psychiatric care in other countries?
And finally:
Infamously slow to adapt to change? Funny, usually people complain about the way the Japanese are so crazy to adopt whatever the latest tech/fashion/media/culture/culinary/travel/social trend that rears its head. Now it's "infamously slow to adapt"? Explain that one to me - with a bit of fact, if you'd be so kind.
Posted in: Suicide in Japan
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hokkaidoguy
books (japanese and english), contact lenses, music, and auto/motorcycle goods are the biggest for me. things I need but either can't find locally or just don't need today.
maybe once a year I'll order some kind of homesick food that I can't get here, when that unstoppable and inexplicable craving hits.
(alphagetti was the last one for me. 30 years without even the slightest desire for it, then one day, out of the blue, my brain told me that life would not be complete without an overpriced can of processed pasta. oddly worth it, though.)
Posted in: What do you like to shop for online and what do you still go to stores to buy?
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hokkaidoguy
This. If Japan had better over the counter painkillers, I'd exercise more.
Take care of your knees, kids. And your back. Mind the shoulders, too - that clicking noise gets really irritating after a while. I could go on.
Posted in: Why do most adults tend to exercise less as they get older?
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hokkaidoguy
Between the hats and the shades, it's tough to take those guards seriously..
Posted in: Tomb of the Unknowns
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hokkaidoguy
Maybe you're not paying attention? I've seen two reports on NHK since new years.
Posted in: New storms soak flood-weary Australian communities
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hokkaidoguy
Do you have any idea how difficult it is for me to resist editing this post?
Posted in: Editing for the medical community
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hokkaidoguy
Given that these areas flood quite often, I'm surprised the Australians haven't invested in spillways to divert floodwater around cities. It's worked wonders for Winnipeg.
Posted in: Relief flights help flood-affected Australian city
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hokkaidoguy
Most marine species, actually. It's called a research catch. Google it.
For extra fun, google it with whatever country you're from added to the search terms.
Posted in: Japanese whalers, activists clash off Antarctica
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hokkaidoguy
Wikileaks. World Cup.
Posted in: What do you think was the biggest news, domestic and international, this year?
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hokkaidoguy
The SDF really needs to up its game if they want to be seen as a proper international force. Public indecency? Please. That's so... bush league. Call me when they're caught cooking meth or cranking out serial killers.
Posted in: SDF member flashes staff at drive-through restaurant in Saitama
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hokkaidoguy
There were 5 of them, so that would be 54,000 each at the shop, probably less than half that in wholesale terms. That's worth a written reprimand, but not much else.
Posted in: Fisheries agency warned not to accept whale meat gifts
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hokkaidoguy
No, you said "last I checked, IT IS BANNED IN JAPAN", implying that the government (as the only ones capable of issuing a ban on a film) have chosen to do so - which is an outright falsehood of your own design.
Posted in: China's Zhang says Bale to star in Nanjing project
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hokkaidoguy
Prove it.
Posted in: China's Zhang says Bale to star in Nanjing project
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hokkaidoguy
The only cure for China's opium addiction was Mao's cultural revolution. That's not hyperbole, that's what it took. Going from some of the responses here, seems there's a bit of denial about the scope of what the west did to China..
Moderator: All readers, stay on topic please. Posts that do not focus on the Zhang's film will be removed.
Posted in: China's Zhang says Bale to star in Nanjing project
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hokkaidoguy
..and that's where western analysis of Japan's robotics research tends to fail. That sci-fi dream is the western image of the Japanese goal, not the Japanese goal itself.
In the west, we have other terms for the majority of the robots in use - or imagined for use- in Japan. "A machine for X" or "an automatic X-er" to do work that used to be manual (or impossible) has been a cornerstone of innovation for decades, likewise the adoption of digital automation in the workplace.
The key difference between the two has always struck me as this: the western goal has been increasing profits through reducing the workforce (have a look at the number of staff in your local bank branch compared to 20 years ago, if you still have a local branch), while the Japanese goal has been maintaining profits as a workforce shrinks.
Taking banks as an example - my hometown used to have 6 banks, with a staff of about 10 each. Today, we have 5 ATMs for each, and the two banks that still have an actual presence have staffs of 3 - a net loss of 54 jobs that paid well, for no reason other than increasing profits. Repeat that across the country, and the economic impact is tremendous. Contrast that with the Japanese approach of filling a void left by a graying workforce.
The process is the same, but I would argue that the Japanese approach is a lot more sustainable (and sane) than the western profit-driven approach.
Posted in: Robots: The future of Japan? Maybe not
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hokkaidoguy
I personally knew one of those. He was in his late 60s, and was diagnosed with an inoperable cancer that had spread through his lymphatic system. He was given six weeks.
Rather than a drawn out, painful death in hospital, he decided to end his life on his own terms. He got his affairs in order, made sure everyone was taken care of, and left the way he wanted to. Good on him, I say.
To put his death into the frame of this article - his choice to end his own life saved his estate quite a lot of money that was passed on to his widow and kids. A few hundred bucks for the coroner, vs ... how much for four weeks of hospital stay, drugs to keep the pain away, and a couple of futile attempts at surgery to coax out another week or two of bedridden slow death?
For some people, it's about quality of life, not quantity. Considering that over half of the suicides in this country are health related, it might be worth exploring the attitudes of that majority towards their own deaths, and if we're going to talk about the cost of suicide, we should also be talking about the cost of end of life care.
Posted in: Suicides can run up a posthumous bundle
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hokkaidoguy
Not one comment about the Korean over-exploitation of the Mero fishery? No Kiwis jumping up and down about the Koreans coming halfway around the world and harvesting an unsustainable resource in their waters? No Greenpeace lackeys to chime in on this?
no surprises here.
Posted in: S Korean boat sinks in Antarctic sea; 22 feared dead