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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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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tkoind2
icanthinkofone. Social Darwinism is a much depraved and disreputable set of values that can be used to justify nearly any behavior. While it is a good topic for debate over beer, it is certainly not a good model for how to run a society. And you know it.
Posted in: If you had a baby with an AKB48 member, what would your child look like?
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tkoind2
Hans, I am not Christian and still think this is sick. Maybe you should throw your absence of values some other way mate.
Posted in: If you had a baby with an AKB48 member, what would your child look like?
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tkoind2
Franklin D. Roosevelt. The best friend in a president that working people have ever had.
Posted in: If you could vote for a 5th U.S. president's image to go on Mount Rushmore alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, which president would you pick?
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tkoind2
"AKB48 Official Net says it will add more services for AKB48 fans."
Mercy help us all for what they will come up with next.
Posted in: If you had a baby with an AKB48 member, what would your child look like?
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tkoind2
How sick is this?!? Are not most of the AKB48 girls still children? I mean it is bad enough that these teenage girls have legions of sick 30-40 something guys obsessed with them, but now you want them to think about what their children might look like?
I mean don't you people understand the concept of child abuse, pedifilia and the moral wrong of sexualizing children? Wait.... I guess not. One thing that really bothers me about Japan is the sexualization of young women and society's tacit acceptance of this behavior. Is it any wonder that you have teens selling themselves or being sold by parents? Is it any wonder that so many attacks happen against young girls?
Clean up Japan, this kind of thing is SICK! AKB48 girls are children for the most part, stop promoting them as something else.
Posted in: If you had a baby with an AKB48 member, what would your child look like?
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tkoind2
In over a decade of working in Japan I have found that it is this list of rules that largely hinders Japan's ability to regain her position on the world economic stage and is a big part of why her political system simply doesn't work.
While these cultural behaviors were fine though the Meiji era, and somewhat stormed over during the war and during the subsequent rebuilding and bubble periods, they are all back in strong form in the time that they are least needed.
What Japan needs today are people willing to put these rules aside and change the destiny of the nation. We need arguments against foolish policies like transporting and burning nuclear contaminated waste in population centers. Or more people willing to challenge long standing business leaders who have lost touch with what is required to run their companies in the 21st century.
I know these proposals would be answered with a defening sound of sucking teeth and "chotto" said with considerable tension, but without challenges to these behaviors, Japan is destined to wallow in the shadow of her Asian competitors and her relevance on the world stage will continue to decline.
We all have to change if we are to adapt to the present and prepare for the future. It is time Japan learned to have an argument and put some of these rules aside.
Posted in: How to win an argument – Japanese style
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tkoind2
It is utter nonsense to suggest that China change the name of her military to self defence. Meaningless and pointless suggestion.
Posted in: Asian countries should urge China's military to obey rules of sea: Noda
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tkoind2
China has been acting the bully for a while now. Not only with Japan but with the Philippines and other areas in Asia. When mixed with the state sponsored cyber attacks, is it any wonder that the leaders of Asia are becoming fed up?
I have long been a critic of funding China's growth given her repressive government and militaristic alter ego. Now we have funded the monster into building one of the fastest growing militaries in the world. And China has shown considerable willingness to use this power to shake the tree of neighboring countries like Japan.
While the US and the world worry about Al Qaida and Iran, the real danger to future world stability is the potential arms race that China is leading in Asia and the increasing bullying that they seem willing to inflict upon other Asian countries. We would do well to watch China carefully and to assure that any bullying or cyber attacks are met with broad condemnation and economic restrictions.
Posted in: Asian countries should urge China's military to obey rules of sea: Noda
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tkoind2
Here's a question. Their net profit dropped, right? But are they still profitable?
Just once I would love to see companies take a different stance. For example deciding to keep people on, drop executive salaries first, then share the load required to keep people working rather than lay them off.
And I would love it if shareholders changed their thinking. Rather than expecting only profits from a company, what if we shareholders started thinking about the good citizenship of companies. Reward companies with our investments who show concern for community and choose other ways to get through hard times that do not involve laying people off. I would, even at the risk of some loss invest in this kind of company thinking.
This is what the Occupy movements world wide are really about. Keeping people at work and making companies share the burden of hard times with working people, rather than simply cutting jobs.
Posted in: TDK to cut 11,000 jobs worldwide
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tkoind2
Noda may become the fastest turn around for PM yet.
Posted in: Noda apologizes for receiving donations from foreign nationals
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tkoind2
Good for them. In the middle of this extremely crowded but isolating and lonely city, someone is offering a little human warmth and compassion. We could use a lot more people who take time out to share some humanity.
Well done.
Posted in: Nice offer
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tkoind2
There is a very Japanese message here. He will not officially ban executions, but will not sign off on them, making this essentially a ban.
This is very Japanese and for the time being working in our favor to put an end to capital punishment for the time being.
Posted in: After showing reluctance to sign execution warrants last month when he first took office, it is deeply alarming that Minister Hideo Hiraoka now seems to be under pressure to approve executions despite his own calls for caution.
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tkoind2
Nationality and race never entered into my relation with my wife. It was her artsy, quirky and unique personality that drew me to her. And it was our almost magical connection that made us unbelievably comfortable together that made it last.
We often say or think the same thing at the same time. Oddly enough in the same language, randomly English or Japanese. I know she's had a bad day before she gets home and I can sense her somehow when she needs a call. And she does the same for me. I don't know why or how.
I never think of her as Japanese. Everyone I dated here before it was pretty clear that we were from different cultures. But with my wife she is just who she is. No race, no nationality and no locality seems to matter.
The secret is simple. If you focus on the differences, and this applies to same nationality/race couples, then you may well end up focused upon the things that drive you apart. But if you focus on the simple elements that make you connect and love each other, well... that is blind to race, creed and nationality and will sustain you.
Posted in: International marriages
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tkoind2
Maria. 100% agree. This article is some born again Yuppie spouting new age nonsense that completely ignores the real issue and the nightmare lives that victims live.
When I was a kid I was mercilessly bullied for most of my schools years. Why? I was mixed race, small and not interested in sports. It was hell and very little was done about it by schools. I even had my life endagered several times by these people.
It changed when I grew stronger and could fight back as Ebisen suggested. But that took years.
No child should endure bullying. No adult should have to endure it either. And none of us who love peace should have to resort to violence just to study or live. Society must decide to stand against bullying and to strongly strike out against those who bully others. Only then can all the problems resulting from bullying be resolved.
Like Ebisen, I make more money and have a far better life than my former bullies, some of whom are in jail or dead now. Even they would have benefited from stronger measures to help change their ways before it ruined their lives.
Posted in: Three steps for coping with bullying, privately
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tkoind2
I am sorry to say that these ideas, while all with strong merit, are unlikely to be realized in our life time in Japan. The longer I am here, and it has already been a very long time, the more clear it becomes that change is not something Japan is prepared to face. There are too many people who are too deeply invested in the status quo for change to happen until they are gone. But by then their proteges will be just as powerful and just as invested.
Japan may well be a hopeless cause.
Posted in: Making Japan a more attractive place to do business
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tkoind2
There is very little the government can do.
Posted in: What measures should the Japanese government take to deal with the strong yen?
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tkoind2
What an annoying new age article. Bullying is real. When someone obstructs your live, harms you physically or mentally, works to undermine you or to make your daily work life hell, then you cannot wish it away with new age BS.
Bullying is a criminal behavior that must be addressed as such. What is really required here are stronger more tangible solutions.
Now while all this new age stuff is good for us to remember and to use in our lives, it is not a solution to bullying. No more so than visiting a fortune teller or jumping off a train platform.
Posted in: Three steps for coping with bullying, privately
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tkoind2
There should be no surprise the religion has nearly always come down on the side of the establishment and on the side of capitalism. After all organized religion has been a partner with the state establishment in nearly every government since the concept arose. I am neither shocked nor surprised by this fact, and no person with a foundation in history should be.
At the same time I think that protesting the church is a profound waste of energy. Western religion especially is a capitalist institution heavily invested in earning, keeping and managing money. It is not in their best interests for anti-capitalist movements to succeed. Their patrons are nearly all key capitalists.
Refocus your attention on the real threats. Corporations. They are the linch pin that can change government, not the church.
Posted in: Anti-capitalist protesters defy calls to quit St Paul's cathedral
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tkoind2
I have to agree with Frungy. Landsberg is off the mark here. History is never so simplistic as to be defined by a single event or action. While it is romantic and epic to think so, it certainly does not consider the plethora of alternate outcomes that could have been driven by any given set of potential eventualities.
Japan resisted imperialism, the same that had subjugated much of the rest of Asia, longer than most. But with an essentially Medieval culture at the time when the west had advanced to the industrial revolution, meant that Japan would inevitably be marginalized or occupied.
The actual outcome was not bad when you consider that the people of Japan did not suffer under long term occupation by an imperial power as the Philippines and other nations in the region did. And as a direct result of this intervention Japan went from feudalism to modernity literally overnight.
Now while there were negative consequences, the key being their adoption of imperialistic vision, the alternatives could have been just as bad if not worst if Japan had been colonized or gone through years of independence conflict as many other states have done. And this is before you even consider the early 20th century issue of rising Communism in the region and what could have happened had that taken root in a colonized Japan.
So to assume all that you have in this article stemming only from one set of events is just not sensitive to the massive potentiality that history shows can and does happen from the influence of many events both large and small. From the birth of a Lenin and how that shaped the world, to the influce of an idea. No one thing defines the future. All things, predictable and not, shape the path that nations and time follows. Many things acting in unison with and without predictable outcomes are what create the story of human existence.
Posted in: Commodore Perry & the legacy of American imperialism
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tkoind2
Way to show your barbarism Malaysia. I guess the "Malaysia, truly Asia" Commercials will now feature death sentences.
Whether the girl is guilty or not, killing a person over this is pure barbarism. Pathetic, evil, morally unforgivable.
Posted in: Japanese woman sentenced to death in Malaysia for drug smuggling