kohakuebisu comments

"We have developed the most incredible culture and civilization. The rest of the world is very jealous of what we are, of who are are, of what we achieved."

That's a direct quote of Nigel Farage, speaking to a UK audience yesterday. If you believe the above about the United Kingdom, please upvote this comment. If you don't, please downvote it. I am especially interested how "very jealous" those of you from "the rest of the world" are.

This strikes me far more as manufactured fear rather than actual threat.

There has definitely been an increase in clickbait, i.e., engagement/profit driven reporting.

However, the article is about trust, and if you look at the most heavily reported big lie in the past year, the "40 beheaded babies" that didn't happen on October 7, its hard to conclude that that story was driven by media profit. It was clearly driven by media bias. A bias so strong that we get shocking lies being repeated despite zero evidence for them. As we enter an era where video etc. evidence can be created by AI, this is a scary situation.

I dunno what actually happened here and it would be interesting to know. The company will be taking a huge loss. As for the reason, loud complaints from only a small number of people is highly believable.

Persistence pays, folks! Japan is the country where the nail sticking out gets hammered down. Except when it doesn't. Which is more often than that expression would suggest.

Fantastic film (of course)

This is an American article. Will there be any anniversary showings in Japan?

I don't think Kurosawa's are, but a number of classic Japanese films (Ugetsu, Tokyo Story etc) are on Amazon Prime. No subtitles unfortunately. I just thought I'd mention it because Japanese Amazon Prime is so terrible for Western films that its easy to assume that there's nothing good on there.

Under Japanese law, Kurosawa's films should have an expired copyright, but they might have extended it, like the thing with Disney and Mickey Mouse.

For lazy people like myself, I recommend getting a fan with a remote. If its a question of getting up to turn on a fan or pressing a button on an AC remote, the AC will win every time.

If you have a Switchbot hub or similar, you can turn a fan or any other infrared remote controlled appliance on and off with an app on your phone.

I hope his name is public because he did what he is accused of and every piece of evidence points to it.

I do not have a problem with men being publically shamed (before being actually convicted) for repeatedly sexually abusing people, Epstein, Weinstein, Spacey etc., but I do have a problem if accusations about a single he-said, she-said type incident are treated in the same way. Even if Ito is guilty, this type of process leaves plenty of scope for another man who has simply taken a woman to a hotel to have his reputation destroyed or to be blackmailed by the woman to stop her making public accusations about him.

This article reinforces the incorrect belief that there is and can only be right wing xenophobic populism (Orban etc) which is likely to lead to Mussolini types.

The original "populists" (in the US in the late 1800s) were mildly left-wing and more akin to trade unions demanding things like non-slave wages, non slave working hours, health care, education for their children etc. Stuff that right wing populists will deny people if they can get away with it, basically because they are part of the Establishment and only pretend to be a challenge to it. Trump is not part of the Clinton set and makes a populist appeal as being so, but he is still definitely part of the Establishment. Boris Johnson could hardly be less of an Establishment figure. Johnson made various high-profile populist promises, such as "leveling up" poor parts of the country. This was probably the biggest of his many lies.

I got a used X100 about a year after it came out. It got rave reviews on a camera forum called DP Review. It was the first digital camera to be retro styled with lots of physical dials for setting exposure, and had an at-the-time big sensor with a unique colour detecting tech (Fuji call it "X Trans") that produced really good image quality without Photoshop. Another old-school semi-innovation was it having a fixed lens, so kind of pure and no messing about with lenses. At the time, the jpegs it produced , esp the black and white ones, were stunning. Note that the photo above is of a cabinet of what look like old film-era Fuji cameras and none of Fuji's X series cameras can be seen.

I now seem to work all the time, but back when I didn't, I had a lot of fun with X100. I'll have to get a wireless card and start using it again.

Fuji's X series were a big hit before Tiktok, so that's why I wrote the above. I don't have one, but I suspect the greatest digital camera of all time is actually a Sony one called the RX100. It produces v high quality photos but (crucially) fits in your pocket. Even very old ones hold their value second hand.

I roast a block of Chashu Pork in my oven with a rotisserie taking about one hour to make it crispy on the skin.

Its hard to find pork with skin on in Japan. Okinawas eat it, I think its called "rafti", but noone else does. I think Meat Guy and a couple of online folks do it, but none in my local supermarkets. My local butcher doesn't sell it either.

You need to make it in a pan, but our new favourite cheapo ramen is a miso one by Nissin. Its a slightly posher version of the Rao ones they sell in regular supermarkets. We buy it online because its not available here. The product name is 極楽ラ王 濃厚香熟味噌. If I had unknowingly had the same soup and noodles at a miso ramen joint, I would have thought it was a good one and made a mental note to go back.

What you describe is basically everywhere in the world!

Well, "location, location, location" is not a Japanese expression, its an English one!

However, if I'm allowed one example, a meh 25 year old house in fairly central Karuizawa will be I dunno 50-60 million yen. 20km away in Gunma, you can get an akiya for 2-3 million yen. The cost of completely redoing the walls and windows, neither house will have good insulation or good windows, will be roughly the same. The purchase price though will be twenty times different.

20km outside a posh town in the UK, say Cambridge, will be much cheaper than central, but it won't be 95% off. It will also be appreciating in value so long as Cambridge real estate goes up. Akiyas in north west Gunma will have essentially zero "Karuizawa premium". They will be dirt cheap like the rest of inaka and they won't be going up in value.

So what if only wealthy people and non time-poor people can take advantage of the travel discount system? It’s about helping to create financial support for the affected areas.

Just give (taxpayers') money to people who've lost their homes. Don't give it to tourists who'll give it to the corporation with the earthquakeproof reinforced concrete hotel that was barely damaged. This is trickle down economics. Everyone knows it doesn't work.

If Kyodo could be bothered to delve deeper into the data, and the data were better to begin with, I think you'd find what's happening in Japan confirms the "location, location, location" real estate adage even more.

Yes, land prices are definitely going up, but only in certain cherry picked locations. Mostly prime city centers and certain resorts or resort-like hotspots. Note that since building costs have also gone up, the price of old houses in such places will also be going up, on the assumption that you'd renovate and not knock them down. Someone may tell you that houses of a certain age are worthless and they were built to last "twenty five years". That might be true in that town, but it won't be true for a twenty five year old house in Karuizawa or Shonan.

In some non-descript, quite-far-out commuter town or the vast majority of the countryside where lots of akiya exist, prices will not be going up.

Where the hardship is genuine, give people money. For less affected areas, earthquakes affect areas with weak subsoil that shake a lot and that's certainly not evenly distributed, don't give people money. An area with Shindo 7 will be extensively damaged. Somewhere 500m away that was (in reality) only Shindo 5+ won't be.

Let's not bother with this "help people via tourism" charade. There can be hardship in towns with no tourists. Only wealthy people and non time-poor people can travel. The government should also help people who are not wealthy and time poor. Giving cheap travel to the relatively wealthy (in money and time) to help what may already be the wealthier bits of Noto is far from ideal.

I think the best word for England is "unconvincing". Maybe the best thing to do in Japan is just go to bed and celebrate the result in the morning without having to sit through 120 minutes of very turgid football.

We won 6 knockout games from 1968-2016.

This is undeniably true. Even in 1990, a now legendary England were outplayed by Belgium but won with that David Platt worldie volley. They were also outplayed by Cameroon but Gary Linekar got two penalties from what looked 1990-level diving. They outplayed Germany, but lost on penalties.

This depends if the teacher has a home room, if the kids in that homeroom are third years (jukensei), and if the teacher is responsible for a high-needs club activity.

If none of the above, i.e., a simple JHS or SHS teacher who teaches class but not much else, then probably not overworked. I don't know what percentage of teachers that would cover, however.

The number font is really ugly and as pointed out above, the 1 is different on the 1000 between the 10000. This is a clear mistake. I would expect a "its perfectly acceptable because this is Japan" reason/excuse to be provided if you pointed it out, but I'm sorry, Japanese people do not get to exclusively say how non-Japanese writing systems should be used (cf. romaji). Non Japanese writing systems have non Japanese rules and customs.

On its website, the BOJ calls itself the "Bank of Japan", not "NIPPON GINKO" in romaji. The expression "NIPPON GINKO" only has meaning if you can understand the words "Nippon" and "Ginko". There won't be many people who can understand "Nippon" and "Ginko" but cannot read and understand the "日本銀行" kanji on the face of the note. It would therefore make more sense, i.e., add meaning to hundreds of millions more people, to simply write "Bank of Japan" and not "NIPPON GINKO".

If only Japan had built a decent football stadium instead of this multi-purpose thing that puts the fans so far away from the pitch behind the running track that you might as well just stay at home and watch it on TV.

The elephant permanently in the room is that big Olympics Sports like athletics and swimming do not regularly attract fans, making building huge stadia for them a vast waste of money. This is then cranked up to the max for sports with probably under 50,000 participants worldwide, like competitive kayaking.

My kids went to a JHS with no swimming pool. It used to have one but they closed it ten years ago due to lack of funds. The local leisure pool I took my elder kids too has also since closed due to lack of refurbishment funds. It was only open in summer, but was always full during the holidays.

I love football and went to matches in 2002, but no thanks.

Tottenham in the English Premier League just built a 60,000 seater. Cost 1.2b GBP. I don't know how much the stadium in Niigata cost, but I bet it cost a fortune and loses a fortune every year in running costs.

How hot will Japan be in summer in 2050? Would it be another winter break World Cup?

Both candidates are terrible and are too old for the job. Comparing their mental capacities is, to use the Japanese expression, "comparing the heights of acorns".

Even if both men were twenty years' younger, they would still only know the rich bubble of privilege and influence they exist in and have no idea what life is like for an ordinary Americans. Both are also more likely to place the interests of the military-industrial complex and a foreign government, yes Israel's, above the needs of ordinary Americans and the American national interest when viewed in a global context.

Kyoto could of course just run more buses without asking the Transport Ministry anything.

The vast majority of bus problems in Japan is low ridership and buses losing money. It happens on almost all bus routes in inaka.

If buses are crowded, they must be full of people paying, so the issue is then to find more drivers and operate more services. Raise the hotel tax if the cost of running extra buses involves extra costs.

I try not to be judgemental but I feel sorry for parents leaving their toddlers as young as 3 months old at the hands of total strangers so "both can work".

Society should fund parental leave as much as it subsidizes childcare.

Japanese society should move more towards a flexible job market. Women should not have to use childcare from a young age because the seishain job they got aged 22 is likely to be the only decently paid seishain job they can get ever get. This inflexible job market also encourages worker mistreatment and mental health problems. Anyone stressed from working should leave, go on holiday for a while, and then reassess their situation. As things stand, this likely means joining another company on the lowest rung and with breadcrumbs as probationary wages.

This person sounds completely unsuited to looking after kids. I doubt you can remedy that by "training".

Note that the skills required to be a good nursery school teacher are in demand is basically all customer-facing jobs. I would not assume there is an infinite pool of suitable people out there who can do this job well, for the wages and status given to this nursery school teachers. Smartphones, instant gratification shopping, etc. ruin attention spans and make us more impatient. This means hoikuens are looking at recruiting from a smaller pool of people (Japan's demographics) who are likely to have less patience than previous generations.

This doesn't make sense from traditional fundamentals, but with wars going on and likely to escalate, bubbles in AI, real estate, crypto, etc. its hard to know anything for sure.

As an importer of vital energy and food, global tensions are especially bad for Japan, regardless of how normal life may feel here.

Yoshinoya Holdings Co, the operator of a major beef bowl chain, switched from domestically produced rice to a blend of Japanese and foreign rice this spring, 

I bet they've keeping that quiet. "We use gaimai" is a sure-fire way to send customers to their beef bowl rivals.

The industry was originally privatised because of underinvestment by the state, which didn't want to be held accountable for higher utility bills. 

I think it was privatised due to free market fundamentalism and a desire to free money for the politicians to (temporarily) fund things like tax cuts. What underinvestment there was at the time of privatisation, the rivers and beaches were cleaner then than they are now, despite people paying more for water.

With other people who are in charge, this sounds like a nightmare.

If it's your company, it would probably be okay. It will be very common for family businesses.

The original Costco was set up like a worker's coop so many of the original staff become millionaires. It has since restructured or been sold on, I can't quite remember, so this won't happen again, but it's good that they still pay considerably more than other retailers in Japan.

We've been going to Costco for nearly twenty years. In that time, some products have literally doubled in price. I don't know anyone whose wages have doubled.

Its mostly corporates who are pushing this, so yeah, as UAfan says, don't go to famiresu.

A possibly bigger issue is computerization of government services, so that you cannot apply for assistance, following injury or sudden illness for example, unless you can navigate an app on a smartphone that you don't have. This was shown in that "I Daniel Blake" movie five years ago.

The backstory here is that the island it's on should never have been built and is a Showa-era overdevelopment project that nearly bankrupted the Osaka government. They've been looking for some use of the land for years. This included the failed Osaka Olympic bid.

If the Expo were to be a big success, long delays and/or huge overcrowding on transport to get there are likely to happen.