JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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To be healthy, live in the big city
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Japan's nuclear safety standards flawed, says commission chief
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3
Teacher nabbed for using miror to peek up girl's skirt
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From carnivores to herbivores: how men are defined in Japan
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Why do Japanese change their attitude when they communicate with foreigners?
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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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sk4ek
Uchishiba is a member of Asahi Kasei's judo club, which has about 30 athletes and staff, including several other winning judoka.
Posted in: Uchishiba defends judo title for Japan's 1st gold; swimmers advance
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sk4ek
Toyota itself has said it has no plans to commercialize the technology, this is just a platform for testing various kinds of hardware, including sensors, gyroscopes, steering mechanisms, and robotic functions. In fact, most of the prototype robots and other eye-catching technology rolled out by large companies like Toyota and Honda serve mainly as development platforms and publicity tools--and thus are not really expected to have any great relevance to their possible use in our daily lives.
People take things too literally around here... :-/
Posted in: Toyota unveils next-generation scooter
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sk4ek
Yohan had a near monopoly over the import of foreign publications, magazines especially, which they often marked up as much as 200-300% over the foreign retail price. I went to get the latest issue of "Monocle" and was shocked to find it stickered at almost 3,000 yen. Maybe their departure from the market will finally bring some of those prices down.
People who don't understand the lure of books probably grew up without any. Recent articles in the Atlantic and other publications point to a wholesale change in the way people today approach, acquire, and use information from all sources--a change not necessarily for the worse, they say--that is largely attributable to the way we use the internet. I don't mind getting new and commentary this way, but I can't imagine enjoying fiction or lengthy non-fiction works on anything but the printed page.
That said, if Amazon improved the look and feel of its Kindle electronic book reader, I might be willing to give it a whirl, if and when it ever comes to Japan.
Posted in: Book retailer Yohan goes bust
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sk4ek
While Tokyo taxi drivers aren't the service-oriented, conscientious bunch they used to be, they also work under a great deal of pressure--most of it imposed by their employers (I'm not including "kojin" drivers here), who are trying to extract every drop of profit out of their drivers instead of finding other, more effective ways to increase revenue and operate more efficiently.
Most drivers work 12-to-20-hour shifts, four or five days a week. Thanks to advanced technology, many of them are subject to constant monitoring via real-time GPS tracking, have speed and braking sensors fitted on their vehicles that can result in fines from the company if they brake to hard or exceed posted speed limits too often, and are stymied--especially at night--by a network of arcane road laws that govern where they can and can't go to pick up passengers.
That said, there are a lot of lazy, rude, slovenly drivers out there, and there's no excuse for that in a service business. Companies such as MK, Hello Tokyo, and KM, though, are really working hard to focus on service quality and driver education, and it shows when you get into one of their cars.
I refuse to ride in the "kojin" cars (in Tokyo, usually white with a blue stripe), though--despite the fact that you have to have had at least 10 continuous years of accident-free, exemplary driving to get a kojin permit, many of the drivers seem to take that as license to refuse fares, act rudely to customers, and follow their own rules of the road.
Posted in: Life is one rule after another for taxi drivers
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sk4ek
Ah yes, a justice system that kills over 30 people a year (at a cost, through actual execution, of between $1 and $2 million dollars per inmate), incarcerates more people per population (nearly 750 per 100,000) than any country in the world--nearly 3,000,000 were in prison or in jail as of June, 2007--in a country that has just 5% of the world's population, but 25% of those incarcerated worldwide.
Certainly a laudable role model!!!
Posted in: Dodgy justice
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sk4ek
Surely FairandBalanced is being facetious.
Between unfathomable plea bargains, a broken public defender system, the ability of federal prosecutors to blackmail and coerce witnesses, and the flat-out wrong convictions of hundreds of innocent people, the U.S. system is a long way from serving as a role model for any country.
The ideals underlying the system are sound--presumption of innocence, haebeus corpus, the right of the indigent to a defense--but these ideals are so regularly subverted, by zealous prosecutors and charge by the minute defense lawyers as to be almost meaningless in today's courts.
That said, when looked at strictly in terms of the subject of this article, for the most part America's system works for most people. Forced interrogations/confessions are relatively rare, extended incarceration without charges is pretty much impossible, and denial of access to counsel under almost any circumstances would put the police department involved in some real hot water.
UNLESS, of course, you're dealing with the federal 'justice' system, in which case you can pretty much kiss your 'rights' goodbye.
Posted in: Dodgy justice
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sk4ek
Their lemon sorbet is excellent, too bad it's not available in Japan. The green apple version that appeared last month is also excellent, crisp and refreshing.
Posted in: Green tea ice cream from Häagen-Dazs
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sk4ek
A topical subject of great interest to a great many people, covered in a shockingly lazy fashion by the ubiquitous Mr. Hill.
Perhaps his colloquial style works with lighter fare, but he renders his opinions in this case with a flippancy unsuited to the subject, and with a journalistic sloppiness that does an injustice to the reader.
"...;opinion polls suggest that most Brits would like to see suspects in terrorist cases banged up immediately, but Japan’s appear particularly nasty."
"banged up"?? Japan's WHAT appear particularly nasty? Its opinion pools? (preceded by a semicolon, this phrase should stand on its own).
"A variety of long-established techniques were employed, including the distasteful one of inventing letters purporting to be from family members of suspects that required the accused to trample on the writings."
"... inventing letters...that required the accused to trample on the writings." This is just bad writing.
"...and one individual has been able to secure some pretty limited compensation from the state."
"...pretty limited..." How limited? What kind of compensation? Again, sloppy.
"...the very least one can say is that Japan has a problem and a half."
Even if one grants that this is an op-ed piece and not the work of a journalist, this is a laughably weak and inconclusive way of summing up the issue. Mr. Hill seems to have just run out of whatever steam he was using to power his prose.
It would be nice to see coverage of such critical issues handled by professional journalists who understand them.
Posted in: Dodgy justice
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sk4ek
Nice balanced post, tkoind.
In my experience, where Japanese young people (18-30 or so) are politically involved, it is usually more on the left than on the right (I don't count participation in gangster-backed extreme right-wing noisemaking "political involvement"), but until now more with a pacifist than a socialist bent.
While conditions for those young people stuck in essentially day labor work (moving companies, trucking, road crews, retail temp work, "event support", etc.) don't even remotely approach the harshness of life on a crab ship, their day-to-day lives are increasingly barren, marked by deep anxiety about housing, daily needs, and their futures. This turn to a more socialist orientation has come as they realize that the larger issues of the once-dominant pacifist movement are luxuries for them, and hold no answers to improving the burden of their own lives. Still, the two are connected in many ways--at the least, by their overlapping presence in this younger age group--and it's possible that, at some point in the future--their interests will begin to merge.
Still, if the JCP is truly interested in making something of this perhaps aberrant rise in membership, it should more aggressively address its traditional responsibility of educating its younger members, rather than weakly wondering if "the new recruits are even aware of Marxism's background." One key plank of any latter-day, post-dictatorialist socialist party must be a focus on education, not for propagandist mass mind control as in the past, but as a powerful tool for developing an intelligent, free-thinking, activist populace.
Posted in: Popular novel on Marxism draws young people to communist party
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sk4ek
But one-seg looks even crappier on a computer screen than it does on a mobile phone--why not just get a digital tuner for the computer and pick up the real broadcasts???
Posted in: Combining PCs and TVs
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sk4ek
LOL...
Oh yes, I forgot to mention, I've had a Mixi page since 2005... :pp
Wheeee... :)
Posted in: King of the queens
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sk4ek
JeanMarie--I am not in the least bit jealous of his success, more power to him, I'm glad he's been able to make something of his talents in a very crowded and competitive market. I still find his feature on MX annoying, and if he is indeed just putting on that clumsy accent for television, I'm all the more mystified. But that's just my opinion, and it certainly doesn't constitute 'hating', on the internet or anywhere else.
Meanwhile, I'm successful and happy in my own work here in Japan, spend only as much time in front of the computer as my profession requires, am "out" to anyone who wants to know, and frankly don't give a fig what you think.
Posted in: King of the queens
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sk4ek
lipscombe yes that's just what I meant. Academically he's certainly got me beat, I was just never able to make myself speak in an accent I don't have just for a chance at my 15 minutes...
People do what they gotta do, I guess.
Posted in: King of the queens
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sk4ek
He's annoying but his Japanese is just bad enough to to make him saleable on TV...
Posted in: King of the queens
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sk4ek
Whatever other software and services are offered, I still think this will be a slow start without an e-money affiliation--Suica, ID, whatever. One-seg is not such a big issue--I don't see people watching TV on their cell phones much anyway.
Posted in: Apple fans camp out in Tokyo for iPhone 3G launch on Friday
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sk4ek
None of the statistics quoted by 'medieval times' does anything to prove a connection between the globalization of economic and labor markets and 'improving' world conditions.
The number of people living on less than $1 may have dropped, but that does not mean their lives are any better if they have only gone to living on $1.01.
World income per head is also a meaningless average when most of the real income growth is in developing or developed nations, and restricted to the top 1~5% of income earners at that.
The doubling of life expectancy (where???) since World War II can hardly be attributed to the globalization trend of the last 30 years, when hundreds of millions still have no access to clean water or adequate health care.
I don't see how globalization has helped to promote universal sufferage, except perhaps to the extent it forces more countries to modernize their political structures in order to take part in the new economic order. Again, the move to universal sufferage has been going on for long before globalization was ever an issue.
Worldwide, 20% of the population has no access to clean water. In China alone, more than 325 million people have no reliable, safe water source. Access to technology may be improving in some parts of the world, but thus far it has shown little potential for closing the gap between the desperately poor and the rest of the population.
Apologists for the actions of developed nations enjoy pulling figures out of the air (and sometimes out of real reports and studies, but only selectively), expecting people to take them at face value. I think real life evidence--and numbers--often show that globalization shifts more resources out of developing nations and into the hands of the G8 and other developed countries, than it leaves behind in benefits.
Posted in: 5,000 rally in Sapporo ahead of G-8 summit; 4 arrests made
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sk4ek
RMGTTF
Actually, the article specifically states that consumption of corn tortillas is down 25%, and that of instant noodles is up 30%, and that 1 billion+ servings were sold in 2005, when the country had a population of about 103 million. So I'll concede that at about 10 servings annually for every man, woman, and child, it's perhaps not yet a "staple" in terms of absolute market share.
Still, I stand by the point of my original post, which was that something that was relatively nutritious, local, and inexpensive, is rapidly being replaced by something that is equally inexpensive, but of little nutritional value and possibly even damaging to the body when consumed in large amounts.
Posted in: U.S. has 'ramen moment' as chefs, foodies embrace Japan's beloved comfort food
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sk4ek
Note that the above trend pre-dates the dramatic rise in corn prices, which has only exacerbated the issue.
Posted in: U.S. has 'ramen moment' as chefs, foodies embrace Japan's beloved comfort food
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sk4ek
RMGTTF: Regarding the source of my opinion about instant ramen in Mexico, I could start with this article from the May, 2006 issue of Fortune Magazine, which I believe is considered a fairly reputable source...and one of several media outlets to bring up the issue over the past couple of years.
Posted in: U.S. has 'ramen moment' as chefs, foodies embrace Japan's beloved comfort food
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sk4ek
Instant noodles are so pervasive that they've nearly become a staple food for poor people in Mexico, replacing the more nutritious, or at least less nutritionally harmful, corn tortilla (especially with the price of corn rising like it has). Nutritionists are warning of a serious health backlash for people who subsist on the stuff.
I was bemused to see spoons distributed along with the miso soup even in a restaurant in Hawaii, where people generally know better... :-/
Posted in: U.S. has 'ramen moment' as chefs, foodies embrace Japan's beloved comfort food