Speed comments

A big beautiful park is never considered.

I usually look to see if a hippo has a weiner or not.

Who cares what they do with the items they bought for tax free afterwards? They paid, the companies and the retailers have made their cut and the government has helped attract more tourists to Japan by offereing tax-free products to travellers. What they do with them is up to them.

Even if travelers are reselling to locals here in Japan, the locals aren't making out very well since the travellers are selling them at marked-up prices and/or slightly less expensive than regular stores here but at a higher risk to the buyer.

And like what a poster above said, if this is going to cause all this new expensive beauracratic procedure, then just tax the items and get rid of this so called "problem" which I don't really see it as such.

The government always has to try to get a bigger cut of everything. Always so greedy.

Showing a picture of ABBA from over 50 years ago shows how irrelevant this contest show actually is.

Looking at the Phillippines and the Clark Air Force and Subic Bay closures, the economy would flounder - like mentioned above by tango6467.

It'd take decades for the economy to strengthen and stabilize. Hotel resorts, tourism, and non-military industries take a lot of time to set up, employ and make a profit.

I would guess a twenty to thirty year depression in the area at least if it were to bounce back at all.

Maverick?

Why aren't they investing in the future for the people of their own country?

So many would benefit from having factories here.

Russia, NK and China = bad.

Can't have competing apps competing for your people's choices, can we China?

Also, a little tit for tat for possible banning of TikTok and previously Hwa Wei.

This can be slippery slope. What might be deemed offensive for some, might not be for others.

I've had quite a few posts on social media removed for very innocuous comments or jokes. Even for having a specific word written that their bots deem no longer politically correct. Some deletions didn't even make any sense at all.

The illness paralyzes the central nervous system and causes birth defects, but legal battles have continued for sufferers who have been left out of the measures.

The government has also maintained that the 20-year statute of limitations for damage claims has expired.

This is why I hate these large corporations and the J government that tries to let them slide.

Everyone who even slightly was affected by Chisso and Showa Denko should be flooded with apology money.

They poisoned, maimed and killed so many people by dumping what they knew was toxic chemicals and mercury into the rivers and bays.

There should be a price to pay and the govt. should make them.

Absolutely heartbreaking. Poor, poor girl.

God, I hope they weren't burned alive.

Is the Japanese mainstream media picking up on this? Or is our little foreign group that is getting any of this information?

METATTOKYOToday  12:43 pm JST

@SpeedToday  

Do you set limits?

Yeah, actually depending on the app. Things like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and other social media sites have a total 3-hour limit. But Line is left limitless since she primarily uses it to talk to or text friends, which I have no problem with. Kind of like those long phone calls teenagers used to make back in the day.

What a bunch of dummies.

Murakami seems like he's going to be a bust.

Just because someone was a good player doesn't necessarily make for a good manager. Shinjo's a good example.

Sasaki Ryo is gonna bolt to MLB as soon as he can.

Seeing how good he was when he was finally able to pitch regularly, made me wonder what the hell the Marines were thinking limiting his pitching the first two years.

I'm sure seeing Yamamoto's $300,000,000 contract has Sasaki salivating.

My JHS kid spends about two hours chatting on Line - phone and video calls - and a couple of hours watching the stupidist things you can possibly imagine on TikTok. So yeah, this survey matches my kid's amount online per day.

These kids have to be getting dumber watching TikTok though.

The reason Japan is playing catch-up and is using the help of foreign, mostly American companies, is because they fell so far behind from the mid-90s to the 2010s.

I remember trying to get the board of education in my villages to connect the JHSs I worked at to the Internet. They had nice computer rooms with none of the computers connected to the Net. They were there for the kids to learn word processing (Ichitaro), Word and some other now defunct apps.

The three boards of educations all gave me the same answer of sucking air in through their teeth and saying that it was "difficult." They didn't want to spend the money to go online. I heard they finally got those computers online around 2003 or 4 for the students to start practicing.

At the milennium, I went back to teach in the US and the kids were already practicing online research, navigating and writing papers using the Internet in our classrooms. They were given Apple iBooks to use about once a week. Around the year 2000, the difference couldn't be any starker.

I like how Macron's playing Tetris on his smartphone during the online meeting.

6th Sense really made me go, "Ohhhhh..." near the end when I saw it. Nowadays, it seems so obvious but at the time, "Ohhhh......"

Japan's been constantly building car plants and branches in many places in the US, which is good for them, but I'd like to see them building more plants in various places in Japan.

Outside Aichi and the major metropolises in Japan, the economy is suffering and depopulation is accelerating.

I don't think it had much to do with the upcoming Internet culture like this article claims but it did vividly show a nation completely divided by a racial line and it was damn depressing.

I never got hay fever in Hawaii so...

It's either this or you have thousands of steelworkers out of work and the shareholders know this.

Plus, Japan and the US are tight and well managed and efficient steel mills staying in operation will benefit the workers too. Beats bankruptcy.

I like my beer strong.

I like the picture.

"And then when I pulled his finger...."

Surprised this wasn't one of the top news.

wallaceToday

It is best to remain polite do what they request and soon move along.

Yes, but that's not what always happens. When I was getting a parking ticket and I ran up to apologize and move my car, as soon as he saw I wasn't 100% I was quickly escorted to a koban. I was walked three blocks away through a throng of people who stared at me as if I was a criminal. Very embarrassing.

Once there, that policeman mistakenly thought my international driver's license was expired (he didn't know the difference between "June" and "July") and I was held there for an hour and a half. When I was finally given a chance to explain his error, there was no apology and slid me my 25,000 yen ticket and pointed to the door.

I've had friends, wearing suits and business dresses, being constantly stopped and questioned on their way to work which resulted in them being late periodically, which negatively showed in their performance reviews by our company.

The police really are not supposed to be stopping and questioning people unless they feel their is something suspicious or that a person is likely to commit a crime. That is the spirit of the law and it's being ignored and abused.