JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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Why do Japanese change their attitude when they communicate with foreigners?
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Confrontation
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U.S. Navy investigating how parts fell off aircraft near Atsugi
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4
California court to decide if SeaWorld whales are illegal 'slaves'
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5
Kuroki reported pregnant 2 weeks after denying relationship with Akanishi
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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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openyoureyes
there is an interesting article on kotaku about the ipad that discusses some of its glaring weaknesses. (though, to be fair, most end users aren't tech savvy enough to care about them...)
http://kotaku.com/5458822/why-the-ipad-is-crap-futurism
Posted in: Nintendo chief unimpressed with iPad
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openyoureyes
RE: societymike and pawatan's discussion:
no one can deny that MW2 has broken sales records during its release, but i highly doubt that anyone will be talking about Sgt. Roach (one of the characters controlled in MW2) in 30 years. mario is an icon, and will continue to be one.
and to call it a "niche" or "cult" following seems disingenuous. mario, in his many iterations, has sold over 200 million units. that is NOT niche.
to be fair, the call of duty series has sold over 50 million in only 6 years, but the saturation level of pc and console gaming has never been as high as in this decade, so it should be expected that good games now (and the call of duty series IS good) should outsell good games of the past.
i personally prefer multi-player FPS games, but overall, mario stands as a cultural icon in a way that the call of duty games will never manage to do.
and, yeah, counterstrike rocks. ;)
Posted in: Nintendo's Mario endures even as games come and go
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openyoureyes
the link doesn't work because JT script changes it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/you-are-being-lied-to-abob155147.html
the end of the link shouldn't have an italicized b, it should be 'you-are-being-lied-to-ab UNDERSCORE b UNDERSCORE 155147'. just search "huffington post + lied to about pirates" in google. you'll get it.
at any rate, even if you don't read it...
timesup:
yeah, i should definitely open my eyes to your enlightened way of thinking. you really think that an entire nation of people loves that they have no government and live in a hellish world of violence and oppression? yeah. that just makes so much sense. not sure why i didn't see that before.
a few snippets from the article (fair use)
everyone just loves nuclear waste... right?
so... could it be that an entire region of people just hates everyone else and wants to wage violent campaigns against them for no reason at all? or could there be a plausible reason why this is happening?
sure... a lot of opportunists have latched onto this feeling of support to be greedy thugs... but the reasons this situation exists aren't so clear cut as "they're bad, and we're good."
maybe thinking that there are many facets to any given situation disagrees with your plain and simple/non-liberal view of the world... but what would you do if you had no food, no government to help you, and the world started taking giant dumps on your backyard?
Posted in: What is the most effective way to put an end to Somali piracy?
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openyoureyes
Stop dumping nuclear waste in their waters and stealing all their fish.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/you-are-being-lied-to-abob155147.html
Posted in: What is the most effective way to put an end to Somali piracy?
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openyoureyes
i might be mistaken... but i was pretty sure that i saw him in a commercial in the 90s...
Moderator: The story has been amended.
Posted in: Hideo Nomo appears in TV commercials for air conditioners
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openyoureyes
doesn't this kill the idea that smoking pot somehow limits your potential? this guy has more gold medals than some people have teeth!
Posted in: USA Swimming suspends Phelps for 3 months; Kellogg drops him
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openyoureyes
Are you suggesting that there is a valid reason for SHOOTING and trying to KILL two people?
You're the same person who, in another post today, said
in regards to a marijuana arrest. So it's maybe ok for this Japanese dude to try and murder his ex girlfriend and her father, but every single foreign teacher is a potential criminal who should be tested and probably kicked out of Japan?
Surreal.
Posted in: Man arrested for shooting ex-girlfriend and her father in Tochigi
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openyoureyes
you mean how strict and resistant the Japanese establishment is towards marijuana. the people are too ignorant to be either aware or resistant.
Posted in: No other country is making such a big fuss with some 1%. This shows the strict awareness Japanese society has against drugs.
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openyoureyes
oh, come on. you could see this coming for years and years. it was obvious that the honor system would only last as long as the riches.
Posted in: The dark side of the change in the labor market is becoming pretty clear. The safety net has always been weak because the idea was that companies would take care of their workers. That’s no longer happening.
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openyoureyes
Triumvere, you’re right. It is hard to distinguish marijuana from harder drugs, and many people are terrified by the thought of drug use. Only 36% of people in America (which, like it or not, leads the way on world drug policy) favor legalization of marijuana.
But why? Mainly because of a widespread and well-funded (dis)information campaign that the U.S. government began in 1937, perpetrated by the suddenly jobless alcohol prohibition establishment. That group, combined with industrial interests - because hemp had the potential to radically alter our production landscape (meaning there were large textile fortunes at stake) - began an aggressive anti-marijuana campaign harnessing prevalent fears of Mexican immigrants to demonize the plant.
So there are the racist and corporate interests I spoke of. As for military strategy, in 1945 a country could not wage war without hemp. As much as MacArthur probably didn’t want his troops toking up, the prime motivation in criminalizing hemp in Japan (and by default marijuana) was a tactical one to prevent by default any future military campaigns by the country.
Why are these things not common knowledge as they should be? Because of the topic of this thread: there is a serious lack of responsible objective journalism and education regarding marijuana.
isthistheend, it is ironic that you mention Nixon, as he is precisely the president who halted marijuana reform in its tracks when it was finally gaining some legitimacy. The American Medical Association, at Nixon’s request, put their minds to the marijuana issue. Their findings? They could find no plausible reason for marijuana to be criminalized as a hard drug. Nixon’s response? He threw the report in the trash and appointed a drug czar. But… as he said… if I expect politicians to change, I must be smoking something. ;)
Posted in: What do you make of all the publicity over the recent arrests of Japanese university students for smoking pot?
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openyoureyes
I agree with many of your points, but I don’t necessarily think they’re relevant.
As the topic at hand is about media portrayal, my main point is that there needs to be reportage of positive aspects of marijuana. You are not wrong in saying there are detrimental aspects of marijuana, but the media focuses solely on detrimental aspects (many of them suspect in credibility) without portraying that other side. As you said, ‘the bigger the front, the bigger the back,’ so where is the other side in the media onslaught?
Referring more specifically to your statement, even your idea of ‘banned’ is more akin to what I would call regulated. You say that it should be fined for public use but ok for private consumption. Great. I think many pro-marijuana reform activists would be pleased with that scenario. The problem is that the current situation isn’t nearly that cheery. It’s NOT ok for private use or even medical use, and if you pursue it anyway, the police boots will be marching to your door. All because of a useful little ‘herb from mother earth.’
Again, you aren’t wrong when you say there are negative aspects of marijuana, but those have no relationship to its legal status. It is illegal because of racism, corporate interests, and military strategy. Not because it’s harmful to your lungs.
Yes, smoke is bad for you. I cannot argue that point. But that alone is not sufficient grounds for criminality. We are allowed to choose to permit some level of harm in our lives. Non-ergonomic keyboards are still legal, right? Sports cars made of plastic still cruise the roads. I breathe the dioxin-filled air of Tokyo on a daily basis, ne? I strain a muscle now and again on the Footsal court. And, yeah, maybe even drink alcohol or smoke some plant matter. And when that happens, it is with other smokers, so there won’t be any second-hand smoke to affect you.
And when the munchies come along, someone can whip up some snacks of fruit and nuts, because not everyone can eat (or wants) junk food. Healthy eating doesn’t come from not smoking pot, it comes from education and positive role models. And responsible drug use comes from education as well. OBJECTIVE education. That’s where responsible research and journalism comes in. This demonizing of marijuana must stop. As you said, there are two sides to it.
The media has plenty of negative stories about marijuana. Where is the good stuff?
Posted in: What do you make of all the publicity over the recent arrests of Japanese university students for smoking pot?
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openyoureyes
Like Bill Hicks used to say, why don't we ever hear the good drug stories on the news? This media hysteria is neither surprising nor welcome.
Maybe a little balance on the issue could help.
I'm not sure whether to growl in frustration or laugh in pity at some of the opinions on this board and in the world. The logical statements from non-users I can at least respect (and comprehend), but some of the garbage coming from the horrendously uninformed non-smokers just boggles the mind.
I don't think experience with marijuana is a prerequisite for discussion, but a little perspective might be helpful.
Take my own story of how pot helped me.
When I was a young university student, I caught mono and my immune system set out at full tilt to take it out. Unfortunately, right after my diagnosis, I also got salmonella poisoning from a bad restaurant. Anyone who has had either mono or salmonella can attest to their being very not fun. To have both at the same time is hellish. I'd never been so sick in my life and hope to never be so again.
My ability to eat was annihilated. Now, when you are horribly sick and can't keep any food in your guts, your body starts to burn through its reserves (i.e. itself) to keep going. So I began to waste away.
Thankfully, being on college campus, I had access to pot. Smoking made it possible to eat again, and I made it through my illness (which put me into the hospital at one point) without starving to death.
Pot helped me. It can help people. And that perspective needs to be out there. The Japanese media (and most of the media in the world) are failing at the duty of all journalists: objective reporting.
Can pot be a negative influence on someone's life? Absolutely. Most anything can, from television to chocolate. But it can also be an amazingly positive influence on someone's life.
And when I see someone who can't string two logical sentences together write that using pot makes you stupid and dim-witted, all I can do is growl in frustration and laugh in pity.
So put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Posted in: What do you make of all the publicity over the recent arrests of Japanese university students for smoking pot?
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openyoureyes
you're right. you need to learn how to use it better. ;)
Posted in: Two men arrested for possessing 108 cannabis plants in Fukuoka
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openyoureyes
That speaks to your problems, not the problems of marijuana.
Posted in: Two men arrested for possessing 108 cannabis plants in Fukuoka
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openyoureyes
and to those of you who think this should be a crime, many of your sick and dying relatives may wish otherwise.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTJCMgenP9M
Posted in: Two men arrested for possessing 108 cannabis plants in Fukuoka
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openyoureyes
"street value." what a joke. it's ridiculous how the authorities always calculate a street value based on the smallest quantity of sale, as if these two guys were going to get that much.
and for the anonymous tip... well, these guys should have remembered the first rule about weed in japan: nihonjin cannot be trusted when it comes to weed. ;)
i kid. NO ONE can be trusted. Rule number one: Don't tell anyone. Rule number two: See rule number one. Rule number three: Are you an idiot or something? See first two rules!
and the hemp plant is indeed native to japan. the world record holding strain (for height) is from Tochigi-ken (although that stat is at least 6 years old... not sure if it still holds true), and a school in Tochigi mentions the plant in the school song.
japan (and the entire world) has a rich history with this plant, and it's a shame to see it so demonized.
Posted in: Two men arrested for possessing 108 cannabis plants in Fukuoka
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openyoureyes
Draw in the families and friends of foreigners already here.
Allow foreigners living in Japan to purchase the JR rail pass on the condition that it is purchased in tandem with a non-resident's pass. I generally prefer to meet friends and family abroad (either back home or in another country) because it can be prohibitively expensive to try and travel with friends who have the JR rail pass. If I could get a rail pass to travel with them, I'd have a never-ending string of tourists coming through the country.
Posted in: What does Japan need to do in order to attract more tourists?
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openyoureyes
how can you blame him for being smug? the republican candidate lost in 2000, but still got the presidency. massive voter disenfranchisement can carry the day for him.
of course, this is not 2000, and i think that he's going to lose even WITH the disenfranchisement campaign. and i will celebrate the day.
Posted in: McCain says pundits being fooled; promises victory
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openyoureyes
don't get me wrong. i don't exclude the religious from participation in politics. i personally wish that religious influence on politics and government would lessen the world over, but i would never presume to exclude those with religious beliefs from participating in politics and government.
i just question SGI's partnership with the LDP, and what that association says about the nature of the organization and its leadership structure.
Posted in: Soka Gakkai boosts advertising on TV
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openyoureyes
the only valid criticism of SGI that i've seen from anyone here so far, and the only problem that i have with SGI.
i was quite surprised to find out how negatively SGI is viewed here in japan. after knowing a few SGI members over the years, it was hard to understand the vitriol. i view SGI as no more or less sane than any religious grouping. there are some extremely bright people involved and some extremely susceptible ones as well.
but most criticisms here could extend to any/all religions.
the only valid one being what kukai asked: what the hell business does a buddhist organization of "peace" have with the LDP?
Posted in: Soka Gakkai boosts advertising on TV