JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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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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- FT English Teachers for Kids - Osaka
- Kohgakusha Co., Ltd. （株式会社興学社）, Osaka
- Salary: ¥255,000 ~ ¥275,000 / Month Travel Expenses, Encouragement of Japanese learning*
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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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oyatoi
Already groaning beneath a tottering mountain of debt, the kind that other countries have wisely begun deleveraging from, our fearless leaders elect to throw caution to the wind by taking on yet more if it. We`ll know the jig is up when deposit interest rates begin climbing and the money being shifted offshore becomes a torrent.
Posted in: Yen weakens as BOJ eases monetary policy
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oyatoi
Stuart Cundy
s nonplussed reaction to the fuss is typical of somebody who knows only too well which side his bread is buttered. I tried to imagine Stuarts Japanese counterpart similarly flippantly brushing the matter off if the situation was reversed and it was a planeload of flu infected NZ schoolkids touching down at Narita, but my imagination failed me.Posted in: NZ admits overreacting to flu scare on plane from Japan
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oyatoi
Having a docile and malleable workforce that can
t say no to "tanshin funin" gives Japan an enormous cost advantage over other nations that arent prepared to sacrifice family on the altar of economic efficiency. The downside is that the fragmentation of families sometimes results in incidents such as this. Western nations would be doing both themselves and the Japanese people a huge favour if they were to quantify its value and then impose equivalent acoss the board duties on imports from Japan.Posted in: Woman arrested over murder of 5-month-old son in Kobe
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oyatoi
Since when did a portfolio of gravure shots qualify as stardom?
Posted in: Japanese star charged over Taiwan taxi driver assault
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oyatoi
Assuming they themselves were not complicit in ordering that no meeting records be kept, politicians are now duty bound to give us the names of those guilty of gross dereliction of legal duty. Symbolic though it may be, an axe needs to be taken once and for all to that hydra headed beast TEPCO. The time to hesitate, let alone wallow in the mire, is through. The longer they delay, the less likely the possibility of effecting real cultural change in the "we know best" bureaucratic mindset.
Posted in: At least 10 groups dealing with disaster kept no detailed records of meetings
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oyatoi
**According to police, the woman visited her parents’ house in Higashiomi on Dec 23*.
And.....?? We can only assume that the reader is being invited to speculate that the visit may have been a final farewell. If it is not the writer`s intention to encourage such conjecture, it would have been better omitted.
Posted in: Bodies of woman and baby son found in Shiga forest
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oyatoi
Every country has its own unique cultural pattern. If Japan wishes to share the benefits of being part of the global system then it has to be willing to flex a little. Rigid adherence to archaic and unbending rules that do not reflect the reality of international couples and their very different needs just doesn`t cut it in this day and age.
Posted in: Girl reunited with father in U.S. 4 years after being taken to Japan by mother
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oyatoi
The point is that both Japan and China are no longer prepared to put all their eggs in the US basket case but are diversifying OUT OF IT. As it loses its status as the world`s reserve currency, the US will gain the freedom to let its currency track much lower against the likes of the Yen, Won and Yuan, thus weakening the competitive trade advantage until now enjoyed by those mercantilist competitors.
Posted in: Japan to buy Chinese bonds
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oyatoi
Nope, not a misprint. The way it works is, you are forced to stop working, simply because of your age. Then you sit and wait for five years for your miserable pension to kick in at 65.
What you just described is the system as it is NOW. Reread the article and you will see that they are talking about raising the compulsory retirement age to 65 and that in line with this proposal, the pension eligibility age would also be raised. Raising it to 65 is a missprint BECAUSE IT ALREADY IS THAT. You are right though in pointing out the unfairness of forcing people to live a twilight existence from 60 until they reach the pensionable age of 65. If the new retirement age becomes 65 and the pension age 70, as the government appears determined to engineer, expect to see more and more geriatrics affixing waribiki stickers to unsold bentos at your local super late into the evening and doing whatever other jobs are open to those who, as the thinking goes, are so used to hard work that a little more squeezing won`t hurt them. Forgive the cynicism but it reminds me of Catch 22, where the number of flying missions keeps getting raised and flight crews are more likely to die on the job than survive to return home.
Posted in: Gov't, business groups discuss raising retirement age to 65
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oyatoi
Cleo:
I`d say the figure of 65 in the article is a misprint. Explosive growth in the number of pension recipients and the rapidly dwindling ratio of workers to pensioners sets the stage for a progressive rise in the pension age. This will probably occur in two steps, firstly 67, later it will be upped to 70. It is also likely that the government will impose deflation adjustments that result in a net lowering of pension benefits. Together with the various "Tohoku tax surcharges" and an all but guaranteed rise in the consumption tax to in excess of 10%, that old truism about death and taxes being the only certainties in life once again proves true.
Posted in: Gov't, business groups discuss raising retirement age to 65
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oyatoi
Until Japanese bureaucrats (and China
s too) get the message that the days of free riding mercantilism are over, the yen will just keep getting stronger. There are too many other countries now doing it hard that have a vested interest in seeing the Asian export behemoths return the favour and move to growth based more on domestic consumption. Contrary to American assurances that they are not behind the dollars weakening, the reality based community knows this is exactly what they want and are contriving to bring about. The day of sub-seventy yen to the dollar is fast approaching.Posted in: Japan announces $100 bil program to deal with strong yen
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oyatoi
Cleo >
In your attempt to deflect and minimise the problem with facile retorts such as that above, you merely confirm the truth of my observation. Had you interrogated the literature more fully, you would have realised that suicide is the leading cause of death in Japan for males aged between 20-44 and for females aged between 15-34. The positive spin you put on the fact that those under 35 account for only a fifth of suicides would`ve gone down better if you had been less dismissive of the damning numbers of older folk who choose suicide as the only way out.
Posted in: Second suicide in two days at Shin-Koiwa Station
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oyatoi
Sadly, Japanese society does not view the winnowing of the gene pool to the tune of at least 35,000 people every year as an indictment and something to be addressed with the full resources of the state. Instead, suicides are shrugged off in stereotypical shikata ga nai * fashion as the price that must be paid for maintaining those very modes of thought which contributed to the deaths in the first place. The paucity of psychological help available doesn`t help. Far more significant though, as a factor in fomenting the high suicide rate, is an underlying Social Darwinism that accepts and excuses suicide as a safety valve that rids society of disaffected people who might otherwise constitute a living rebuke to ingrained modes of thought which the majority accept more or less unquestioningly.
Posted in: Second suicide in two days at Shin-Koiwa Station
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oyatoi
Now that the precedent has been set, when can we expect the Japanese Government to begin liquidating part of its trillion dollar US treasury bond holdings to help pay for relief operations?
Posted in: Stradivarius violin sells for record $15.894 mil at auction to benefit quake victims
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oyatoi
There will be plenty of yajiuma witnesses to this incident as this is quite a busy station. Once the closed circuit video monitors have been analysed and corroborating statements obtained, the gaps in the narrative will be filled and a clearer picture will emerge of how and why said incident occurred.
Posted in: One man killed, another seriously injured following subway quarrel in Osaka
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oyatoi
Speaking of the perils of bilingualism, it was very interesting to observe language interraction between Japanese parents and their kids while abroad recently. Witnessed on numerous occasions parents insisting on speaking fractured English to the kids and the latter, obviously annoyed, ignoring the implicit invitation to converse in English and replying completely in Japanese with both parties continuing the charade oblivious to the absurdity of the situation. I visualised Western parents in Japan attempting to do the same thing to their kids but my imagination failed.
Posted in: Jenny Periman sparkles in NHK's 'Eigo de Asobo'
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oyatoi
Typo. I meant to say 10% of the workforce.
Posted in: How-to books on living comfortably on welfare selling well
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oyatoi
"Long lines outside City Hall on payment day". Sounds like a beat up to me. Welfare eligibility is virtually impossible for anyone who doesn't have a current domicile. Also, Osaka's allegedly high rate of one in eighteen people on welfare is still less than 6% of the city's population and hardly unexpected given the still relatively depressed state of its economy. In Australia, with its vastly smaller population, close to 10% of the population rely on unemployment benefits, a disability pension or special benefits. The preferred tactic of government there in fact has been to shift the long term unemployed onto the latter two benefits in order to disguise the fact that it has basically given up on efforts to eliminate welfare dependency. By Shukan Post's reasoning, Australia must be close to collapse.
Posted in: How-to books on living comfortably on welfare selling well
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oyatoi
Women's front line service as shock troop economic buffers has its analogy in the desperate sacrifice of those TEPCO workers scrambling to avert nuclear catastrophe. In both cases, those tasked with authority are absolutely beholden to the idea that the ends justifies the means and that you do whatever you need to do to get the job done. Any moral doubts the political and technocratic elites may harbour about their roles as defenders of an order based on fear and exploitation of the weak is assuaged by a utilitarian belief that they are working for the greater good.
Posted in: Divorce means liberation for some, virtual servitude for others
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oyatoi
Ask a Tibetan or Korean what they think about China's land grabs over the millenia. They too have suffered the wrath and vengeance normally meted out to China's own people and would be the first to echo Palin's questioning of the one party dictatorship's intentions now that it is on the cusp of challenging US hegemony.
Posted in: Palin warns of China's rise in visit to India