ADK99 comments

@Alongfortheride, it seems somewhat unlikely that the mother would have called the police and he would have been arrested if he had patted her on the ankles.

For a long time the crime section in the English speaking news refused to write the words buttocks, ass, or more intimate areas when reporting train groping. I think we all knew that when the report said "the school teacher was arrested for touching the girl's waist" that we was touching her somewhere else.

Yes, but the deal should be that only volunteers are kicked off the plane. Make an offer, increase it until someone says "yes, OK, I'm happy to not board this one". In the 21st century this should be straightforward enough to accomplish prior to boarding.

They should not have the option of just randomly selecting someone regardless of their circumstances.

Doesn't seem as though they actually abandoned the body - quite the contrary!

Similar story on the front page of the BBC today, talking about Canada, with some quite striking video showing identification of periods by sediment.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66132769

I remember how kind everyone in Tokyo was that day. I lost count of the number of times a stranger asked me if my family/friends were OK.

@Abe234: given the way he reacted it is very likely that he was being extremely obnoxious, possibly scarily so.

There were no other customers there so seems much more likely that he was harassing the staff. Completely ridiculous to blame them, given that they were clearly dealing with an extremely irrational individual.

@Commodoreflag the answer to your question "how'd I do?" is "quite badly" as y our comment contains a blatant falsehood.

There were not "384,203 hospitalizations today alone", in fact there are a total of 384,203 active cases. The overwhelming majority of those active cases did not arise today, and an even more overwhelming majority have not and will not be hospitalized.

There was in increase in people in hospital of TEN so you're out by approximately 384,000.

Aside from that, you're spot on.

A 0.2 drop is huge because although the scale officially runs from 1.0-5.0, in reality almost everywhere seems to fall in between about 3.1 and 3.9. It is ridiculous to make that change just because they are a chain - as @Asiaman7 says, if people like the chain then surely their rating should reflect that.

In what way has he been canceled out??? He said what he believed, other people said "you're wrong and you're a silly old fool" and now he has reiterated his opinion - and his remarks have been reported in the national press. Nobody has been canceled, you snowflake!

The real problem this highlights is that government money, once allocated, never seems to be unallocated even when the need doesn't exist. That's one of the biggest reasons public spending never goes down.

In a sane world this town would have said "Hmm, it seems there was only demand for 24,000 books. Let's just scrap the rest of the program WHICH PEOPLE DON'T SEEM TO WANT, then we don't have to pay out the additional 3,000 per book on 36,000 books. We can use the 108,000,000 yen to fund something else that people actually do want. Or, you know, reduce our spending by 108,000,000 this year".

This isn't the only reason why people don't like paying taxes, but it is one of them.

Women may or may not talk more than men on average but they are certainly not the drivers of long meetings in Japan. Anyone who has worked here for any length of time will tell you that the amount of endless, pointless, directionless meetings is off the charts. This is undoubtedly driven by men, and the closer they are to Mori's age the more they "contribute" to this.

@hellokitty

If you had ever been on a rush hour train in Japan, you would realize that cameras would not be able to see anything in the mass of people.

Perhaps if we put the cameras on the floor looking up….. no wait…..

@commanteer, if by "agenda" you mean "having a diverse cast doing stuff" instead of "straight white men doing stuff" then I'm not sure what the problem is. It turns out that in real life women, gay people, and people of different enthnicities also do stuff. Why this is a bad thing in a program aimed at kids, I cannot imagine.

I do, however, agree with you on some of the criticisms of the writing.

Can't quite work out whether those offended are upset because he's black or gay. Seems to me that of all the characters in fiction where ethnicity/sexuality really don't matter, it's this one.

No they should not get life in prison. This was an accident; there is a case to answer for negligence, and punishment may be appropriate but this remains an unintentional act. Life might have been appropriate if they had locked the poor child in the bus as some kind of punishment, but let's not forget that these are human beings likely traumatized by their mistake.

@Zoroto it certainly exists in Britain.

Makes sense. They'll be keeping the platform displays. It makes no sense to be spending a large amount of money providing a service that 99.9% of people have on their wrist or in their pocket.

Whilst it may be true that TEPCO is a shitty company which badly let us all down with regards to nuclear safety, I think we should all use a bit of common sense here. They're asking us to try and cut consumption so that we don't have power cuts. I would personally prefer not to have a power cut, so I will be taking some small steps to reduce my consumption. Perhaps if we all do that, as requested, nobody will have a power cut and TEPCO's revenues will be ever-so-slightly reduced.

@diagonalslipToday 06:53 am JST

"one dead".... sad enough, so why do 'they' feel they have to make the headline "at least...."

Well because - obviously - it takes time to establish a precise casualty count just a few hours after an event affecting millions of people.

You will note that since your post, the count has been updated to 2. Turns out the headline writer was absolutely correct to use "at least".

He had almost a decade when his opinion actually mattered - perhaps he should have said this then.

Almost a third of the cases are among kids (0-19), who represent only about 16% of the population. On top of that, it's clear that a significant proportion of the adults got it from their kids. That being the case, it probably is time to stop leaning on the hospitality industry and let the restaurants and bars go about their business.

"A freezer" in a hotel room refrigerator very likely means the little freezer box inside a small refrigerator. I wonder if he broke the poor kid's bones stuffing him in there. Disgusting.

@ OldNormal

I and my 3 children have been forced in a tiny hotel room because of 3 positive pcr test with no symptoms. We were told we must stay here for 10 days or until we can all have 2 negative test in two consecutive days starting after the 6th day.

I can't be the only person here who both sympathizes with your situation, and also thinks, well, people testing positive should stay in quarantine.

I understand that you want your children to "get out and move around" but that is exactly what people with Covid should not be doing.

Hope you all test negative and can get out asap.

@PerformingMonkey

How much money does he think the average Internet cafe (in 2022) has in the till?

It's an interesting question and I don't know the answer, but my local internet cafe has 5 floors including internet booths, pool/darts, karaoke, serves food and drinks etc. When I was last there I'm guessing there were 100 or so customers so the till probably held a chunky amount, depending on how frequently they empty it.

Headline really should include the word "killing", not just "throwing".

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of her detention, a criminal act was committed here. If the poor woman had been Japanese and died in Sri Lankan immigration detention then the Japanese government would be kicking up all kinds of a fuss if no action was taken.

@Numan - what situation are you imagining where someone is buying a product in Japan, shipping it overseas, and then selling it as Price X plus 10% Japanese consumption tax?

I don't doubt that some good bought in Japan get shipped overseas and sold. That is NOT what this article is about. It's about people buying stuff WITHOUT paying consumption tax, then selling it to other people and CHARGING THEM CONSUMPTION TAX. That is what is written in the article - everything else is simply speculation on the part of other posters. Some of their speculation MIGHT be happening, but once again, that misses the whole point of consumption tax - it's levied in goods that are bought and consumed in the country.

@Numan

The anecodotes of people on this thread are NOT what is written in the story. There is no mention of the sales being overseas.

It literally says in the article "It believes they may be buying large quantities of duty-free goods to resell at higher prices, including a 10 percent consumption tax, to make a profit."

It's right there: they are charging 10% consumption tax to people because they are selling the goods in Japan. Why would they be adding 10% consumption tax to sell them in China, when Chinese consumption tax isn't 10%?

@Mark, all sorts of shops participate in the duty-free scheme. 711, Uniqlo and so on.

I can't be the only person who has a little shopping spree when a foreign visitor is in town.

@Numan & @Silvafan you have literally invented the part about the sales being overseas. There is nothing in the story to support the "overseas" part - the whole point of not charging the CONSUMPTION TAX on good that will be CONSUMED OVERSEAS is that the government is OK with that.

They are not OK with good being CONSUMED IN JAPAN without JAPANESE CONSUMPTION TAX being levied.

If a foreign tourist loads up on a mountain of stuff - and we've all seen them do it - and leaves with the stuff, that's fine. Economy stimulated and no harm done to Japanese businesses.