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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sydenham
..... i guess that means no takers.
Posted in: Dance all night
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sydenham
imacat, cleo, yang yong, agreed.
the only thing i hate about xmas in japan is seasonal whingeing by certain members of the ex-pat population. i have a blast with my family, roast lamb from costco and all (sorry imacat).
imacat: CHRISTMAS IS WHAT YOU MAKE IT!! here, here! but to expand on that, LIFE is what you make it. if you came all the way to Japan to laugh at and criticize the locals, you sure aren't making the most of it. Maybe Mr. Fields et al should think about making a change of attitude their New Year's resolution.
Posted in: A very Japanese Christmas
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sydenham
Nessie, I do spy the quantifier "if" in that sentence. Still, that's a pretty big "if".
I prefer to point fingers than speculate about the future. The elderly and retiring baby-boomers are the ones who kept the inept LDP in power, while letting the extended family unit and social mores go to pot.
Posted in: Population Decline and Ageing in Japan—the Social Consequences
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sydenham
Cleo, ultradodgy, I've tried to figure that out too.
It's like the elastic band effect. Up to a certain age, Japanese skin retains its form, just like an elastic band being stretched. However, beyond a certain point, there is a sudden, violent change of form where the skin says "enough!".
Maybe I should write a book with that title: "The Japanese skin revolution: When the band snaps"
Posted in: The Japanese Skincare Revolution
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sydenham
cable tv is such a scam. wowow is the best.
Posted in: Jupiter to launch high-spec set-top box with video recording functionality service
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sydenham
The entrepreneurial spirit, formerly the bastion of the Anglo-Saxon business model has been abandoned, and now seems to be alive only in a few small businesses.
Saw a TV piece yesterday on the president of super success E-Mobile, the mobile internet-service provider. The guy's motto is a yen saved is a yen profit, and his company demonstrates this in everything they do. No color copies, no private offices except for the president's which is basic and spartan with faux-wood paneling, 15 minute-max meetings with on-the-spot decisions lessening the need for overtime work, etc etc.
Private jets and the business-class lifestyle are anti-entrepreneurial in spirit, and should go the way of the dinosaur. Which is the purpose of a business, to make money, or spend it?
Posted in: Obama suggests some auto execs should lose jobs
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sydenham
There seem to be a lot of crap pieces like this recently on JT. Ok, maybe not recently, I just haven't checked it out in while and only came back recently, so it may have been going on for longer.
Who is doing the choosing of these things? Can just anyone with a keyboard expect to get his rant published? Where's the quality control?
In any case, I thought Obama's change was all about the WAY in which leadership is conducted. Chuck needs to cool his heels and wait at least a year before his tantrum should even be considered.
Posted in: Where is Obama's change we can believe in?
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sydenham
Mr Hilton's analysis of the foreign news take on Japan is quite strange.
He states that foreign countries are not looking to japan for a way out of this present crisis. The reality, is that the Japanese lost decade has served these very countries very well as a lesson in what not to do. Most countries are taking as much action as fast as they possibly can, rather than following the Japanese model. Uh, so this action is all THANKS TO Japan, not in spite of it.
One could also argue that the international flight TO the yen implies confidence, NOT lack thereof, in the Japanese economy, while ironically undermining its export potential, creating the recession we now have. IOW it is Japan's economic stability which is at the root of it in fact being undermined by foreign investors. Hmmm, this also contradicts Mr Hilton's analysis.
Nissan is introducing Friday-less production. Honda is quitting Formula One motor racing and across Asia, there are certain to be still more redundancies before Nomura finally completes the cullings of its brokerage staff.
I don't get it. This is all evidence of a benign employer thinking long-term.
F-1 is not the money-maker it is hoped to be for car companies, it's merely a chest-puffing contest. Making money only for the corrupt F-1 officials and their cronies.
Friday-less production saves full-time workers from getting axed. Car-industry workers have long been subject to the whims of the market, putting up with too much overtime during booms, with the implicit understanding that they would be able to keep their jobs during the busts.
Over-employment in the mismanaged financial sector, however, has long been a problem, not just in Japan, but everywhere. Redundancies have been a long time in the making. Ever walk into your local Japanese bank and see people basically sitting on their butts while raking in ¥10,000,000? I've seen this for the entire 11 years I've lived in Japan.
This all strikes me as companies getting leaner for the present, while maintaining their long-term outlook.
My main point here is that you can spin the news anyway you want, Mr.Hilton, but the reality is that Japan's lost decade could very well be the lesson that keeps the entire world from having a lost decade of its own. And in the end, Japanese companies may end up coming out on top of it all. How ironic that would be.
Posted in: The Japan model is everywhere
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sydenham
Thanks sailwind. Interesting to see if anyone here will change their opinions. I'd say the teacher taught a lot of people a lesson, and then got a good one in return too.
Posted in: White teacher apologizes for binding black girls in slavery lesson
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sydenham
borscht, seriously? expensive?
until the yen's jump a couple of months ago, stagflation in Japan had meant that it was more expensive for me to visit Canada, than my family to come here. My sister and mother came and stayed in a decent hotel for a week during August this year, and were amazed that it cost so little. restaurants, shopping, accommodations, transportation, entry fees for museums etc, all about the same or less than in Canada. I always feel ripped off when I go back to Montreal, which, ironically, has had a terrible economy for the past 30 years.
The "expensive" line has, until only recently, been a total myth for at least the past 6-7 years. For Canadians anyway, Europe and England are the real bank-breaking experiences.
On the other hand, JTO and the J government do a terrrrrible job at both marketing Japan abroad, and making it tourist friendly domestically, at least for non-asians, who prefer to travel without tour-guides. And now with the yen's surge, they haven't a hope in hell of changing anything for the next year or two.
Posted in: There are still a lot of people who don’t understand what sort of options are available if they visit Japan.
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sydenham
oberst, they're real, and they're faaaaaantastic!
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sydenham
2 words: nai su.
Posted in: Two members of train groping gang grabbed on Saikyo line in Saitama
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sydenham
My wife's father has been saying gu, for about 8 years now, and he never won an award. It may be due to the fact that he is neither funny, nor tarented. Just my guess. Still, the foresight is uncanny...
Posted in: 'Arafo,' 'gu' voted most popular words for 2008
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sydenham
proxy, you nail head-hitter.
this is just further evolution of the meaning for "loser dog", popular a couple of years back. As I recall, it was a term for those in their 30's who suffered from the same condition. I guess we can expect a new term in about ten years time, along the lines of arafifu, or an equivalent.
Posted in: 'Arafo,' 'gu' voted most popular words for 2008
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sydenham
maybe he hasn't realized the aims of commercial tv stations. ie. to make money. they will sell what sells, and not a bit more. and their basic mantra, "if crap sells, sell crap," will continue to be the norm.
if he hasn't realized this in his years in Japan up to now, i think this says more about him, than any plastic tarento could ever say about the state of cooking shows in Japan.
this article is just empty whingeing.
Posted in: Japanese cooking shows and the loss of sanity
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sydenham
My friend asked me to try to help him set up his Nokia phone this past summer, and after a go with it I couldn't believe he had paid money for that thing. Granted, he just wanted a basic model, but it felt like a kids toy, the quality was so crap. The organization of screens, programs and file folders just didn't make any sense to me at all either. Also, even with an English instruction booklet, it was harder to set up than my present Sony FOMA was, using an instruction booklet written only in Japanese.
I've used the Motorolla Razor, and an older Motorolla model, as well as a basic Samsung thingy, a couple of Panasonics, and a really really base model Sharp (10 years ago), all of which were heaps better than this Nokia was, both in terms of feel/body construction and ease-of-use.
Test runs with Palms, Blackberry's and iPhones have always been smooth too.
My experiences are only anecdotal, but I'd say that my only go with a Nokia phone turned me off them 100%. They always look so sh*t-hot in movies, and maybe I was expecting a little too much.
Posted in: Nokia to pull out of Japanese market
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sydenham
Wow, I thought this article was going to be funny. How wrong I was. This guy is seriously complaining about the idiocy of crap TV? This is like being down the rabbit hole.
Why would he continue to watch crap TV, to the extent that he has to write an article about it to sufficiently vent his frustration? The real frustration, should be with himself and his lack of willpower to reach for the remote and hit the "off" button.
Posted in: Japanese cooking shows and the loss of sanity
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sydenham
timeon, you're right. there's a lot of knit-picking and hair-splitting going on here, but the underlying sentiment he expresses is exactly right: children are the future. childhood should be valued and nurtured, not as an exploitable market source, but as the future source of ideas for our world. children with little time spent imagining as children, inevitably have a narrower spectrum of ideas when they're older. exposing children to a variety of experiences spurs the imaginative process. its the long-term investment in children that is too often sacrificed for short-term economic gain. at least, that's my take on what he's saying.
Posted in: Animator Hayao Miyazaki worries about children's future
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sydenham
sounds about right.
Posted in: Afghan teacher wants acid thrown on her attackers
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sydenham
What a pickle to be in. How long would you have to sit in that, I mean just sit, to get a buzz?
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