77bro comments

@finally rich

Nah I understood, and agree with many of the things you've mentioned. Indeed the US is indeed majority white. Yeah actors should be judged on their skills, and whether they fit the character in question. However I'd argue while the majority of actors are white (it's reasonable to assume, though I don't know the facts) there is not a lack of great actors of minority ethnicities. I'd also say it's worth questioning whether or not the majority white target audience just like to see a bunch of white people on screen.

@finally rich

White washing in Hollywood as I understand is when a stable of perfectly capable actors of a movie character's original ethnicity are overlooked in favor of a Caucasian equivalent. America is fortunate enough to be full of great actors of almost every ethnicity, so characters in movies never need be changed to Caucasian without good reason. The same can't be said of the other countries you've mentioned.

I used to walk past there twice a day for 3 years straight, sure they'd always try to coax people in verbally but I never had any of them physically try to get me into their shops or see them do it to anyone else... so to read this story kinda surprised me...

Other areas struggle to keep even locals from being sucked in by the omnipotent black hole known as Tokyo, so it stands to reason they'd struggle hard with tourists too. It's a shame because there's so many beautiful places to visit here across the whole country.

Such negativity here... this looks fun. Some women genuinely enjoy the attention, are a perfect fit for this kind of thing as long as it's safe, and shouldn't be shamed for it. Any kind of angelic squeaky-clean image Japan tries to portray ahead of the Olympics would be a facade. Who would even believe it?

Why would we support this kind of place?

It's just a bit of fun mate. Everyone and everything in these kind of places is pretend, its all just a performance. Take it for what it is and enjoy.

There's a number of predominantly Muslim countries not on the ban list, which would go some way to reinforce the assertion that it's not about religion.

Still sucks though.

LINE's music service already offer lyrics, I think. At least for Japanese songs.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda. It wasn't a good idea to leave the kid alone at all, but hindsight is 20-20. If she came back and the kid was still completely okay this wouldn't be a news item and she probably wouldn't have thought twice about her decision as being bad. Sometimes (a lot of the time) we can only learn from mistakes. Unfortunately this one was particularly tragic.

As much as this kind of stuff is extreme denial/avoidance from a pretty serious issue as opposed to a solution, people need to get off their high-horses calling it pathetic, embarrassing etc.

If people think these huge companies with tons of money and ability to influence the situation are just gonna sit by and allow anything to change to their determent, they're seriously mistaken

Pfft, sounds like an average weekday evening in my beloved hometown, London

Didn't know you could do it without any apps like LINE, Skype etc. Can it access your LINE contacts list? Most people (even me to a point) have all their contacts contained within the app...

I know lots of younger people here in Tokyo that basically only use LINE, and maybe Twitter and Instagram, since LINE can do both voice calls as well as messages, using only the data (or WI-FI, for free). I reckon this new carrier is gonna be huge.

Having no limit on the amount of photos you can take via smartphone or digital camera diminishes the amount of care and thought that goes into taking each one. And on smartphones especially can end up cluttered with thousands of photos, sometimes only incrementally different as you try to capture the same thing from various angles. There's advantages and disadvantages to both, for sure, but physical photos feel more valuable, at least.

To have your life so constrained and scrutinised like that... well, there's no business like show-business.

This kind of thing seems to happen way too often in Japan, or at least according to the reports I see every day on this new site. Why is it so common in Japan?

Maybe I'm missing something, but why are they making such huge costly gestures like this for the sake of around two weeks of Olympic events? Japan will be the same afterwards as it was before. As a Londoner during 2012, I know this to be true.

For women specifically, yes it's outdated. For people in general, no.

No. Much of the current iconic imagery we associate with Christmas nowadays have no basis in religion or have been morphed beyond recognition anyway. I can't understand how people can sweat the details like this.

Ignore the cynics, Roppongi is fun, even more so with a bit of 「イルミネーション」.

Are you kidding? I sincerely doubt there are many working mothers who are happy with the way their work and home lives are currently 'balanced'. Certainly not in my experience working in London.