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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jeancolmar
Well, one thing I can say about the North Koreans. They know how to get attention. What if no one cared if they launched a vintage sputnik into space. The regime might collapse.
Posted in: Japan goes into crisis mode for possible N Korea missile launch
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jeancolmar
Let us hope that this is the end of Conservative power in France at least. Pay attention. French workers, unlike their American and Japanese counterparts, are not sheep. In France the government is afraid of its people, not the other way around as it is in Japan and the US.
Posted in: Anger mounts in Europe over job cuts, exec bonuses
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jeancolmar
There will never be peace until Japan's deniers of the Japanese Asian Holocaust are silenced and the Japanese government admits the guilt of its rulers, from the emperor on down.
Posted in: Chinese movies on Japan's wartime atrocities clear censors
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jeancolmar
Paris, like the rest of France, had a major dog poo on the sidewalks problem. This is now less of a problem because the French, not the Japanese, finally decided that they were tired of stepping in other people's dog's dog poo no matter how much they loved their own dogs. So there is less dog poo on French streets these days after a concentrated anti-poo campaign. Now, cigarettes is the latest thing to get the boot. Suddenly French public places, including restaurants and cafes, are no smoke free. No thanks to the Japanese, who added to the pollution before the ban.
I would like to send a contingent of French ecologists into the Japanese countryside to clean it up. Besides the bags of garbage, neatly wrapped in plastic bags, the countryside is filled with industrial refuse. The French would near high tech equipment to clean up the Japanese countryside.
It is certainly heartening that these Japanese have been able to escape their concrete homeland and helped clean up beautiful Paris. Paris is no doubt grateful.
Their next job should be to help the Metro crickets. Since the ban on smoking in the metro the crickets have been unable to feed on their favorite food, tobacco from cigarettes. The Parliament has set up an emergency Metro cricket committee to deal with this problem. So far voluneers have been depositing cigarette and cigar butts in cracks in the Metro. But what we need is a horde of Japanese tarheads to give the crickets of Metro the butts they usually dump in the street or inadvertently stick on the arms of passersby.
Posted in: Japanese teach Parisiens about street tidiness
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jeancolmar
Much ado about nothing. Japan has gone into moron mode.
Posted in: Japan goes into crisis mode for possible N Korea missile launch
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jeancolmar
I'll begin with a confession. Baseball bores me. In fact most competitive sports bored me. But baseball bores me more than any other sport. I have to let this out so that the rest of what I have to say can be put into its proper perspective.
Not being excited about the outcome of the WBC one way or another I was interested in only one thing: How nationalist passions were aroused by this business.
It seemed to have aroused ill-feeling between Japan and South Korea in particular, though, from what I could see, this was not registered in how the opposing teams interacted, unless I have missed something. Japan's win certainly aroused Japanese chest-thumping, led by Prime Minister Aso. Maybe baseball fans can sympathize with this. I found Aso to be idiotic once again.
We read the following: "If we didn’t know it before, we know now that, much to Tommy Lasorda’s dismay, baseball is no longer just America’s game." Hurt American nationalist pride--and you wonder how many Americans share this view. As an uninterested bystander, I have to wonder what difference it makes to the Americans if non-Americans happen to enjoy the game. I would think it would a source of national pride that the game has achieved the popularity it has. I doubt it affect the quality of hot dogs or Cracker Jacks or whatever Americans eat at baseball games these days.
George Orwell wrote that international sporting competitions are among the biggest sources of international ill-will and I agree. I am just happy that this event did kept passions down to a fairly low boil.
It's now life after the big game. Nothing has changed in the world outside the stadium and the locker room. What all this means for fanatic fans of baseball I do not know. I do, however, have a question about the title of this article, "Great final shows WBC has potential." Great potential for what? I think of "great potential" in terms of medicines that could cure pandemics or treaties that forestall wars. I don't think of an event that will simply create the possibility of more baseball games as a "great potential." But then I am not a fan.
Posted in: Great final shows WBC has potential
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jeancolmar
It is obvious that the tazer is a lethal weapon and its use had got to be abolished. It will save lives and consciences. I do not think that the cop who killed the boy is feeling good about himself at the moment.
Posted in: 15-year-old boy dies after being Tasered by police in Michigan
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jeancolmar
Yahoo updated its story on Officer Hege after I wrote. He is apparently brain dead, poor man.
The point about gun control brought up by JoeBigs is right on the money. The gun industry and the gun lobby are accessories to the fact. Thanks to them guns are as available for the asking as chewing gum in the US.
Posted in: 3 police officers dead, 4th on life support, suspect killed after traffic stop in California
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jeancolmar
Keep investigating.
Posted in: Realistically speaking, what do you think the police should be doing to catch Tatsuya Ichihashi, the suspect in the 2007 murder of Lindsay Ann Hawker?
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jeancolmar
Okay, latest news is that a fourth policeman, Officer Hege, has died in hospital. This news from Yahoo: "Reached by telephone late Saturday, Dr. John S. Hege said his son loved being a policeman and recently became a motorcycle traffic patrol officer. 'He liked excitement,' he said. He obviously did not see his job as thankless.
Posted in: 3 police officers dead, 4th on life support, suspect killed after traffic stop in California
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jeancolmar
This has nothing to do with this terrible case, but the idea that police work is thankless is bogus. If it was there would no police, or people would have to be drafted into the police force. If anyone know of a police officer who has gone on record as saying that his or her work is thankless I would like to hear about it. In most places police jobs are highly competitive.
With that out of the way, getting killed is an occupational hazard of police work, but probably less so than construction work; it is far safer than going into combat.
This is an especially terrible case because the police as far as well did nothing to provoke the killer's attacks on them. The killer was a con on parole who had somehow managed to arm himself with two weapons, including an assault rifle, which he knew how to use with deadly force. How he managed to get his weapons will eventually be revealed but what was on his mind when he shot the officers we'll never know. Did he imagine that he could stand off a whole SWAT team?
The one thing that this matter makes clear is that it is way too easy for sickos to get assault weapons in the US. Living in a country like Japan you forget just how violent the United States is.
Posted in: 3 police officers dead, 4th on life support, suspect killed after traffic stop in California
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jeancolmar
Well who knows? Maybe that "bunch of obese black women and some old ladies" will state something. Ten years from now those mansions might be owned by the people and the CEOs and their families will be eating out of garbage cans :-)
Posted in: Protesters visit AIG officials' lavish Connecticut homes
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jeancolmar
Unfortunately, you have to be on guard in Japan as you would be anywhere else. If you are going to get drunk in a bar (which is acceptable here in Japan) then make sure you are witgh a lot of your friends. Make it a point of having someone sober meeting you at a strategic point later. At all times try not to be alone. These are simple universal precautions.
With the current recession on top of the lingering recession from the 1990s, Japan isn't the easygoing place it used to be. In the old days you could hook up with a friendly stranger, get totally smashed together in some smoke-filled dive and feel perfectly safe. Alas, no more.
Posted in: Three men arrested for robbing drunken salarymen in Tokyo
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jeancolmar
Indeed the US is less safe without Cheney and his fellow thugs behind bars.
Posted in: Cheney: Obama's detainee policies make U.S. less safe
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jeancolmar
The police murder of Oscar Grant is still hanging over Oakland, as one respondent said. That no doubt accounts for the taunts. The taunts represent a well-earned fear that cops in America can get away with murder and other human rights abuses. It does not make the taunting right, of course.
Posted in: 3 police officers dead, 4th on life support, suspect killed after traffic stop in California
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jeancolmar
Well, friends, Japan is not such a safe place after all. Oaji gari stories are indeed nothing knew. The late and lamented Wai Wai column had stories about it. You don't have to be drunk to get rolled. I recall reports about salarymen getting attacked when going to work early in the morning.
Posted in: Three men arrested for robbing drunken salarymen in Tokyo
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jeancolmar
Now they know where these creeps live.
Posted in: Protesters visit AIG officials' lavish Connecticut homes
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jeancolmar
Amen SushiSake3
This is no time for a moral vacation on the part of the people who opposed the evils of George Bush. Just because Obama was elected does not mean everything is okay. Everything is not okay. Gitzmo remains. Bush's wars remain. Enough of Bush remains which Obama seems not in a hurry to get rid of. Also Obama wants to continue that idiotic war in Afghanistan.
Above all the US remains an empire. And that is a dangerous thing.
Posted in: Ex-Bush admin official: Many at Gitmo are innocent
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jeancolmar
Jumpers for goalpost?! Translaion please!
Posted in: U.S. Embassy warns Americans to avoid Roppongi bars due to drink-spiking increase
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jeancolmar
I cannot recall the US or any embassy ever issuing a warning to its non-military nationals about any place in Japan. Pity about Roppongi. Used to be a nice place. Darts at Bernie Inn. Best to say way from Roppongi en mass. When the the good businesses start complaining that the scummy businesses are ruining them perhaps the police will take an interest.
Posted in: U.S. Embassy warns Americans to avoid Roppongi bars due to drink-spiking increase