Ash Edwards comments

What does it take to win any nomination? The ability to raise money. Hillary can do that. Joe Biden can't. Warren might be able to do that. Bernie Sanders can't. Jeb Bush will absolutely be able to do that.

@Gary Malmgren I know Iwaki very well. So well that when Pico Iyer wrote a piece for Vanity Fair about Fukushima I could quickly see what he got wrong about Iwaki (much, much). Not sure what you mean about the "once dead precinct." Iwaki Station is in Taira and that area was never dead ...

There well could be 3 times the amount of sea life in the area and I surmise that is because the area is no longer over-fished.

Forgot all about this idiot after I left Japan. Thanks for the memories JT!

The Japanese economic model just doesn't work well any more and hasn't for a long time. We all know that. I suspect it might be because of a dearth of genuine risk-takers. Japan doesn't need any more salarymen, OLs, teachers or civil servants. It needs risk takers to start businesses, fail and start again.

Had the Japanese government made this move in the 1980s things in Japan might look quite different today.

Uniqlo Japan, according to my wife who once worked there, has a code # for "gaijin in the store" ... no kidding. And the meaning behind it is that employees should be alert to gaijin shenanigans.

n Strangerland's defense there are news reports of Japanese women taking the kids and without a word to the non-Japanese husband going to the airport and returning to Japan. Then the gaijin husband makes his way to Japan and demands to see his kids ... and is promptly arrested.

the guys who complain about not getting enough money usually don't make enough money to spend more

Money problems affect most if not all marriages. You aren't saying anything that can't be applied to every married couple.

The comments here by men and women married to Japanese are gold:

<>http://www.stippy.com/japan-culture/is-japan-really-sexless/<>

"He told delegates that the situation was “under control”"

If only it were true.

Once I heard an American say that "radiation is a political problem." Seems that it isn't just American politicians that can wave a magic want and make it go away but the Japan IOC has the magic power over radiation as well.

@Neko_Nebula, many of those hired to clean up are ne'er do wells and petty criminals. They live in and around Iwaki-shi, south of the disaster area, and the residents there complain about how unsafe the area has become because of them. Those are the kind of people that are willing to walk into that nightmare.

Most any foreign man in Japan can say that married Japanese women are quite interested in having an affair ... just not with a Japanese man.

Think of these "nuclear watchdog inspectors" like this: suppose the hunt for WMDs in Iraq had been conducted by a handful of UN inspectors who had been handpicked by Saddam Hussein; others on the team would have been simply friendly to him; still others would have been former colleagues,classmates and drinking buddies. None on the team would have been unknown to Saddam or unbiased or even neutral. Had this team found WMDs they would have given him the benefit of the doubt and acted with restraint.

"In Tomioka, a coastal ghost town north of the Fukushima plant,"

The article doesn't make clear that there are two nuclear power stations, daiichi and daiini. There is no "the Fukushima plant" and for those familiar with the area makes for frustrating reading.

The idea for the village was published in a scholarly journal which means no one will actually read it much less act on it.

Something just clicked. Once I (a gaijin) went to my local post office and asked for what I can only call a " special international transaction." I was told it could not be done. I insisted it could as I had asked for and received it several times before. He then turned to his colleague who backed him up. I persisted. The employee gave me a baleful look as he pulled out his binder of procedures. Having seen that same binder before I told the postal employee where he could find the instructions. The tension increased but I left the PO victorious. Now I see the poor many was under pressure to sell nengajo and who knows what else and not assist lowly gaijin.

This woman wasn't sick - she was a cougar.