kohakuebisu comments

The residents estimated that 3,000 of 4,800 trees on the site would have to be cut down

If this is natural forest then yes, its a concern.

If it is just planted conifers, then we should invite them to chop all 4800 down and replant a more diverse range of trees. Most lowland Japan and areas near cities, which should not be confused with "nature". Something like 12% of all Japanese forest consists of sugi trees and what little can grow below them.

The fact that he is even mentioning this shows that Israeli exceptionalism is wearing thin.

Last year and years before, Israel had "occupied territories", which are what you get from fighting people. The mayor is only justifying Israel's presence at the ceremony now because other countries, and I hope ordinary Japanese themselves, are speaking up about Israel. There is no way the average Japanese supports the bombing of apartment blocks, hospitals, schools, and refugee centers or shooting civilians with snipers.

I think the writer overestimates the current interest in the Olympics, especially amongst Americans, particularly when compared to a few decades ago.

Yes, if there is so much interest, why does US TV want the Olympics to happen in summer and not during the seasons of other televised sports like NFL and NBA? US TV is the main obstacle to the moving the Olympics to a cooler time of year to protect the athletes and fans.

Fantastic goal from Watkins!

England were very good first half, easily the best of this tournament. They were finding lots of pockets of space and passing it vertically, most noticably to Foden at last. After the Dutch changed systems, this dried up and it was back to passing it sideways. Offside goal aside, England struggled to create anything.

Spain are a much better side, but still gave the French a number of chances. If they can be more clinical than the French, like Watkins was last night, they could win this.

Its paywalled and I can't read the story, this popped up on my Twitter. The Telegraph is as Establishment as they come and they are saying NATO does not want Ukraine anyway. If this is a merely excuse for a different real reason, whoever gave this excuse was still happy to press the big button marked "publically humiliate Zelensky".

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/07/02/ukraine-to-be-told-it-is-too-corrupt-to-join-nato/

Yeah, cold is a bigger problem than heat. Its going back 10 plus years, but the original Nissan Leaf used an electric heater for the cabin and that proved to be a big drain on the battery. EVs sold now use a heat pump, which much more efficient. Petrol cars in winter just use waste heat from the engine.

Its different for folks in the city, but here in the countryside, it is not unusual for folks to have space for many cars. I do not own multiple cars simply because I do not want to pay multiples of car tax. I would happily own an EV that was short range and didn't work in winter if I didn't have to pay a whole load of taxes just to legally drive it 1m or more on a road.

I've done it in Japan, but there were always crowds of people during season. This is central Tokyo, so this beach must have slim pickings for no-one to be there.

Some of them, bakagai I think, have to be boiled twice and deshelled just to get rid of the sand. Its great getting them for free, but much more work than asari or hamaguri from the supermarket.

Japanese cities generally have narrow pavements/sidewalks, so there is little and often no space for rental bikes, electric scooters, etc. Such things, while convenient, can also look really bad when casually dumped wherever users feel like it. So yes, lets plan for personal transport and make sure it can be accommodated into the urban space.

Great match!

France have generally stunk this tournament and the daggers are going into them and Deschamps now for doing so, but they took the lead here and had three very good chances second half, to Upacameno, Hernandez and then Mbappe himself. Spain knock it about great in the middle and have eyecatching wingers, what a goal here by Yamal, but can still be got at. The final will not be a foregone conclusion.

My kids learnt on a balance bike with smaller wheels than the ones pictured or a Strider. We have a big house with a flat floor, so they actually learned indoors. We have a kitchen-hallway-dining room loop they would do at super high speed. It was really funny to watch.

There are Strider races around the country for super keen parents. However, competitive Strider involves the kids essentially lying on the bike and running at high speed. It doesn't look like anything that would cross over to bmx or mountain biking.

That pipe-shaped cup is epic. I hope its washable so you can use it again.

Biggest issue is how fit is Vingegaard after the big crash earlier this season, and can he do it without his main mountain man, Sepp Kuss, and a compromised Wout Van Aert. Pogacar has a very strong team, probably stronger than ever before.  2022 and 2023 say Vingegaard is the stronger TdF rider with all things equal, but all things are not equal this time.

Looks very bubbly to me.

Does using AI actually make money for companies? Its clear from the article that selling hardware for implementing AI does, but what about regular business doing regular business things who comprise most of the economy?

Israel is not an agent for peace.

The income barrier one says

According to Japanese tax law, primary wage earners can receive tax deductions if their dependent spouse earns less than ¥1.03, ¥1.06 and ¥1.3 million in annual income, each representing a different tax bracket. According to one study, nearly 37% of wives reduce their number of working hours to lessen their husband’s tax burden.

I seriously hope no-one outside Japan takes this seriously. Of the various "low earner" limits on what a married person can earn, by far the most important is dependency under the rules of shakai hoken, i.e., whether you get free healthcare and a free pension (not a "tax deduction"). This is worth about 400,000 yen a year. That's what you lose if you hit the 1.3 million yen wall. The only thing Savvy mentions, the number at which a wife will "lessen their husband’s tax burden" is also the number at which the wife will herself start paying income tax, so framing it as "she's doing it for him" is incorrect and shows zero understanding of what goes through a Japan's woman's mind.

Spousal dependency under shakai hoken can work as a poverty trap, but at the same time, gives a pension and healthcare to homemakers. It is indirectly and somewhat clumsily rewarding women for domestic labour. Paying women for housework was one of the tenets of 1970s feminism, if the people at Savvy could be bothered to read any. Almost every "equal to a man" full time working woman, the type of woman Savvy cares more about than homemakers, will earn vastly more than 1.3 million yen a year, making spousal dependency or spousal taxbreaks for low earners irrelevant to them. Tax breaks for low earners only help low earners.

The LDP once tried to get rid of dependency under shakai hoken, but it proved to be extremely unpopular. Maybe its because it rewards housework. Do Savvy have a problem with that?

Strange choice of tool. 200 yen will get you a garden saw for delimbing at Daiso. 7000 yen (?) at a home center will get you a corded Chinese electric chainsaw with a 14 inch bar. That will fell big trees.

If he was intending to use a circular saw to remove branches while standing on a stepladder, its probably just as well he got caught. That could get very messy indeed, even if you are not 79 years old.

Maxxed out at just under 34C at our place yesterday, but that's in the shade. The sun was beating down and it was way hotter if you were in it. If the science bods are to come up with a new heat index data thing, I would like it to include a "temp in full sun" aspect, not just the shade

If anyone wants to reduce their cooling (and heating) bill, inner windows are heavily subsidized again this year. We had them fitted last year and its definitely cooler now upstairs in our place.

60.62%? In other news, they said only 34.12% which make sense 60% is too high for Japanese.

The story sounds like it is correct. NHK is saying the same. Koike got nearly 3 million votes. 60% is slightly higher than the UK general election this week, so well done people of Tokyo for participating.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20240707/k10014502181000.html

Kyoto, the ancient capital and spiritual home of Japan, has a bar called "Hawkwind", no doubt after everyone's favourite space rockers.

I can sing most of the lyrics of the Quark, Strangeness, and Charm album, but have never been to the bar. I'll definitely go next time. I might deliberately go by bus, just make them more crowded and p#$" off some locals.

The Tories did more damage to the UK economy than anyone else since WW II. Now, after Brexit, there isn't much left to break.

They have also destroyed the Conservative Party. Its a shell of what it was and struggled to raise any money going into this election. Its votes halved from 16 to 8 million. Labour actually got fewer votes than 2019 but won a landslide.

The policies in Labour's manifesto look incapable of making a dent in Britains biggest problems, but we'll have to see what they can do in office. Based on the policies that are written down, Labour is now a center-right party.

England doing their classic thing of rising or falling to the level of the opposition.

This means lots of close games, but with little goalmouth action that makes for very poor entertainment. Another semifinal for them, so you can't argue with the results, but they are a frustrating watch.

It had a record 245.98 trillion yen in assets at the end of March.

Divide by 125m and that's about 2 million yen per capita. Or just over 6 million yen per capita over 65. The over 65 population is still increasing, but according to projections should only go up another 5% or so from now. It will start falling in the 2040s, when the pensioners dieing off every year will outnumber new retirees.

I'm from the UK and also have a UK state pension. This will pay out more than my Japanese pension after starting 2-3 years later, but is a PAYG (pay as you go) scheme with zero million pounds in assets at the end of March.

For hotels, their own homepage may not appear on the first page of results of a search using the hotel name.

Instead you just get a list of booking sites who pay Google for placement and get a fee for booking you into a hotel you know about already. This is the worst kind of middleman, someone who adds nothing to the experience.

The mountains. Big ones you hike up. Lower down, little roads in the mountains, best explored on two wheels, engine optional.

There is the odd nice spot, but generally there is too much concrete at the coast for my liking.

For anyone playing Tory Cabinet bingo, Grant Shapps is out.

Mourdant, Mercer, Keegan, and Jenkyns gone too. Some really awful people.

The two crazies, Braverman and Badenoch, have got through and will probably be up for next leader.

Its just a prediction from the BBC election "expert" John Custice. 

The new BBC prediction for Reform is 4, which is less than a third of 13. Only wrong by a factor of three. How do people get these jobs?

I never see any of them referring to Japans LDP as far right,

Because it's not far right. Look at how much money the LDP prints to pay for social programs. The LDP is opening the country up to more immigration, as "trainees". The LDP places virtually no restrictions on Japanese marrying foreigners and giving them spouse visas. Its not that difficult to naturalize as Japanese if you want to. Britain is way more difficult and involves a language, a history test most British people would fail, and huge application fee.

13 seats for Nigel?

Probably no. Its just a prediction from the BBC election "expert" John Custice. He's a berk, just like other big BBC politics presenters like Laura Keussenberg and Fiona Bruce. BBC politics coverage is absolutely terrible.

Its great to see the back of the Tories, but based on the forty seats declared so far, it looks like turnout is well down at about 56%. Starmer is going to get a huge majority, but not that many people are voting for him. Starmer's approval rating is minus 19. At the previous changes of government, both Blair in 97 and Cameron in 2010 became PM with positive ratings. Starmer is starting off as not very popular and is unlikely to gain popularity if all he does is talk about spending limits.

10 million yen is just over the average student debt in UK, which I am told is 45k GBP (9 million yen). That's not a big sum for a business, and a strange place to put a starting line demarcating businesses going bankrupt.

I would imagine most nursing home owners have much more than 10m yen in assets. Going bankrupt means workers and creditors going unpaid, and should not be an easy way of not paying people.

Here's a YouGov poll, saying that a full 5% of people intending to vote Labour "agree with their policies". 61% either want to "get the Tories out" or think "the country needs a change", both of which are judgements of the current government. In its campaign Labour has actually moved all of its policies toward those of this government. Unlike Obama, it is not even offering a lip-service slogan version of "change".

https://x.com/YouGov/status/1808458226142196083