Adam Shrimpton comments

'Your post in wrong. He's entering Japan under the visa waiver program. From the Ministry of Foreign Affairs - "Nationals and citizens of those countries and regions shown below are not required to obtain visas to enter Japan when their visits are tourism, commerce, conferences, visiting relatives/ acquaintances, etc.'

Correct. Also, it's not even called a 'tourist visa', it's called a temporary visitor visa and whilst it does cover tourism, it also covers business activities including holding meetings, negotiating contracts, conducting research etc. as long as the person is not employed or being paid wages within Japan. If meeting with business associates and / or negotiating contracts was outside the permissions granted by this visa, then every person visiting Japan on business would be acting illegally.

That's why there's the option to tick a box describing the purpose of your visit to Japan, where one of the options is 'business'.

Therefore it's pretty reasonable to assume that the immigration bureau decided that he's PNG, probably because he's on a government-generated blacklist of people who have spoken out against Japan and there was some element of risk of him stirring up protests or worse during his stay. And the direction of negative press that he would bring. Japan is not alone in doing this, most countries would bar people that bring a risk of disturbing public order and each country has its own definition of what constitutes disturbance of public order. Japan obviously has its own, and it is more than entitled to have it. Japan is well within its rights as a sovereign state to do this, as it is not obliged to let anyone in - it only lets people in at immigration checkpoints, same as anywhere else in the world.

Put it this way, if you were a radical Islamic preacher who bent religious teachings to support your own world view and called for a 'jihad' on the West, then it would not be very surprising if some (or all) European countries and the USA denied you entry. People in your own country may be morally outraged by this, as these teachings could be acceptable there, just as acceptable as stirring up protests against dolphin hunting and supporting militant pirates, sorry, Sea Shepherd. Just because your view may be correct in your country and just because some things may be accepted in your country doesn't mean that they are accepted in Japan. Nor should they be, Japan as a sovereign state has the right to decide what is and what isn't acceptable there and should not be obliged to allow everything that is allowed in the USA or Europe.

Lawson also plans to have its new type of ATM accept Visa, MasterCard, JCB and other credit cards issued outside Japan.

About time, Japan!

I am really debating whether or not it's worth getting an iPhone 6S. I got an iPhone 6 six months ago and could only use it for 2 months, after which it got frozen at an update, with iTunes showing 'error 53'. I've done all I can to fix it and the store I took it to said they can't fix it under warranty as it means it has been tampered with (no it hasn't).

So I just tried updating it with iOS 9 and guess what? Same problem!! My iPhone is still a £600 useless brick that I could only use for 2 months and Apple doesn't want to know about it.

Am really seriously considering whether it's worth getting Apple products any more. The customer service, support and fixing of really serious problems is abysmally atrocious.

Shocking, Japan.

Abysmally shocking, Japan.

I would have expected better, given that Japan needs assistance itself every so often with natural disasters, but never mind.

I'm not quite sure what China is celebrating here, given that China didn't really win anything in the war.

Sure, Chinese forces tied down the Japanese army, but this was part of the occupying army and didn't really mean Japan shifted forces from other fronts into China. The Chinese never really won any territory back from the Japanese and the only 'liberating' that went on was when KMT forces took back control of Japanese-occupied areas and 'liberated' lots of money and resources from newly freed civilians, ostentatiously to finance its continued war against the CCP, but in reality it ended up greasing the palms of anyone in the KMT chain of command who touched it.

If the Americans had not caused a Japanese surrender, had Operation Downfall actually happened and resulted in some kind of stalemate (just as things were in China), the Chinese would not have 'liberated' anything.

The KMT in Taiwan has some reason to celebrate, given that it contributed the most (i.e. not much) in the Chinese theatre. The CCP has no reason, given that only 10% of its resources were given to fighting the Japanese at the very most. And, as others have written, the PRC never came into existence until 1949.