Asiaman7 comments

The eternal question: Is gambling a tax on stupidity?

Do large casino resorts have a positive impact on the people among us?

A former diplomat said embassies often reached out to film festival organizers when Japanese films were planned to be shown.

"We are required to assert Japan's position, whether it be from a cultural or economic standpoint, …

Should bureaucrats be determining the people’s position on cultural topics?

For example, if a film about whaling presents data from the independent Nippon Research Centre showing that 95 percent of Japanese residents very rarely or never eat whale meat, should the Japanese government be using our taxes to push an opposing viewpoint?

Amid concerns over stable continuation of the imperial family, the male succession rules have been questioned on a number of occasions, most notably under the government of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in 2005 when an expert panel called for allowing women to succeed to the throne as well as scrapping the rule allowing descent only through the male line.

But the debate quickly lost steam when Prince Hisahito was born in September 2006 as the first new male member of the imperial family in nearly 41 years.

More precisely, the debate was paused when the news of Princess Kiko’s pregnancy was whispered to PM Koizumi by one of his advisers during a televised diet session months before Prince Hisahito’s birth.

NHK Close Up Gendai did a special on insulating houses yesterday.

Can’t imagine who downvoted this contribution.

Modern insulation, allowing us to be comfortable year-round, has certainly had a positive impact on my life. No longer cold in the winter and hot in the summer.

I recall a Canadian acquaintance mentioning 30 years ago that he had never been as cold in Canada as he’d had in Japan.

in the fall, when people often travel by car.

Hmm. I would love to see the data on this.

I would have guessed that peak personal-car travel would have been during the New Year holiday, spring school-year break, Golden Week holiday, or summer school-year break — none of which occur during autumn.

Perhaps it’s the changing of the leaves that’s “driving” this car travel in autumn.

What's with the cop's ridiculous stance?

He certainly seems fearful of placing a foot on that covered manhole — for some strange reason.

mountainpear

Can you name one famous visual artist who went to Harvard!!

Why do you continue to search for visual artists at Harvard?

Those students go to schools like the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Parsons School of Design, and the Savannah College of Art and Design.

mountainpear

@Asiaman7 You are talking like everyone who applies at Harvard can enter! 

YOU chose to compare MAU’s tuition with Harvard’s, not me! I suggested the Savannah College of Art and Design as a better comparison school.

No student should waste their time applying to Harvard unless they have a demonstrated history of excellent in a certain field.

mountainpear

@Asiaman7 But those private elite universities are already charging exorbitant prices! (As of the 2024-2025 academic year, the tuition for undergraduate students at Harvard is **approximately $59,000***, 

An MAU comparison school better than Harvard would be SCAD, the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Its average annual cost is $45k, its graduation rate is only 70%, and the median earnings of graduates is only 46k.

mountainpear

*@Asiaman7 But those private elite universities are already charging exorbitant prices! (As of the 2024-2025 academic year, the tuition for undergraduate students at Harvard is approximately $59,000, excluding room and board, fees, and other expenses. When you factor in room, board, student fees, and other miscellaneous expenses, the total estimated cost of attendance is around $84,000 per year.)*

Musashino art university's fees are pittance in comparison!

This article is not about the fees at MAU vs. Harvard.

However, since you bring it up, at Harvard, for families (including internationals) with annual incomes below $85,000 (12.4 million yen) the expected contribution is zero. That includes room and board, books, and other expenses.

Families with annual incomes between $85,000 and $150,000 contribute between 0 and 10 percent of their income.

Those with incomes above $150,000 are asked to pay proportionately more than 10 percent based on their circumstances. 

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Tuition and other expenses at MAU are about 1.65 million yen per year. So for families making less than 16.5 million yen ($113,000) a year, Harvard would be cheaper than MAU.

Harvard and Yale universities, Williams and Amherst colleges, and the like — basically all the elite private universities and colleges in the U.S. — do not charge higher fees for international students.

I should clearly indicate that no private university or college in the U.S. charges higher fees for international students — regardless of whether the school is considered to be “elite.”

Most nations' universities charge higher fees for international students. 

This is a bit of a non-story.

In the U.S., higher fees are charged for international students if the university or college receives public funding.

Harvard and Yale universities, Williams and Amherst colleges, and the like — basically all the elite private universities and colleges in the U.S. — do not charge higher fees for international students.

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Musashino Art University (MAU) is a private school. However, private universities in Japan do receive public subsidies to fund their capital development. Therefore, an argument can be made that international students at MAU should pay more because public subsidies are being used to support the school.

However, an argument could also be made that private U.S. universities and colleges receive public support/benefit in the form of government student aid and research grants and exemption from taxation, but international students at those schools are still not burdened with additional fees.

The government should follow the Fanuc example and give incentives to good-paying companies to locate in small towns outside major cities.

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From “How one small town in Yamanashi manages to have high birthrate,” Nov. 5, 2023 

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FANUC is a manufacturer of robots and other factory automation products. In 1984 it moved its head office to Oshino from Tokyo. Oshino is beautiful. Mount Fuji towers beautifully over it. The air is fresh, bracing, stimulating. It breeds ideas, so the thinking went, and ideas are what a cutting-edge high-tech venture like FANUC needs.

It’s a generous employer. The salaries it pays rank 20th among corporations nationwide, Playboy notes, citing 2023 figures from Toyo Keizai Online. Moreover, it hires some 100 freshmen employees a year. What does this have to do with Oshino’s birth rate? Everything.

It brought a sleepy old village to new life – or is it old life? – because, youthful dynamism and futuristic technology aside, there’s something just a little old-fashioned about FANUC’s transformation of Oshino.

The company compound is the size of three Tokyo Disneylands. It contains company housing, a company culture center, a medical clinic, a daycare center, a children’s park – just about everything a family needs to dispense with the outside world altogether, if so minded.

The compound swarms with rich young men – for FANUC’s researchers are overwhelmingly male, Playboy reports. With stable employment and salaries averaging 12.5 million yen a year, they are good catches for women looking for husbands in uncertain times. In times not long past they came from miles around, filling local coffee and tea shops in the hope of being noticed by FANUC men. A lot of families got started that way.

That’s considered undignified now, so it’s back to an even older recourse: the miai or marriage party bringing singles together to form, if the gods smile, couples.

The miai are often company events, the women coming from the local teachers’ union, the local nurses’ union, the local bank employees’ union, and so on. The trouble is, complains a FANUC researcher, “all the women tend to be of the same type.” He doesn’t say what type but he sounds discouraged. “Or,” he says, “we might get introduced to the single friends of colleagues’ wives.”

However it happens, happen it does, and the results, if fruitfulness is a  measure of happiness, are decidedly happy.

There’s no economic need for wives to work, and by and large they don’t. They bear and raise children instead.

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https://japantoday.com/category/features/kuchikomi/how-one-small-town-in-yamanashi-manages-to-have-high-birthrate?comment-order=oldest

the girl could have easily complained to other passengers or scream to stop this quickly. Easy to say but…

These kids should be educated at home and in the school about how to handle these situations.

Anything other than your "gut feel" to back it up? You have read Ms Osaka's sponsorship contracts, I take it?

From a Jan 2023 article at Tennis.com:

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The tricky part for Osaka is that her own activities, and especially her lack of activities—as in, competing at tennis—may contravene her contracts and make her a risky investment. Sponsors may feel that they are just not getting their money’s worth.

Mike Nakajima was, among other things, Nike’s Director of Tennis for North America until he left the company some five years ago. He was intimately involved in marketing and managing the contractual obligations of numerous Nike stars, among them Serena Williams, Roger Federer and Pete Sampras. Nakajima told me in a conversation that all those whopping sponsorship deals a player lands generally come with plenty of obligations and conditional clauses.

There are participation targets to hit, bonus payouts contingent on performance, and other strings attached. Ignoring commitments can, and do, lead to a reduction in player compensation.

“If you’re a Nike athlete but not playing, it doesn’t do Nike any good,” Nakashima says of Nike’s sponsorship priorities. “The No. 1 thing for us has always been exposure—to show someone like Naomi hitting a tennis ball, or holding up a trophy.”

To sponsors, visibility is the end-all and be-all.

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https://www.tennis.com/news/articles/naomi-osaka-is-at-the-crossroads

I’m just happy the victim did have the awareness to immediately report this man once she got off the train.

Seven minutes is a very long time. In all that time, not one of the hundreds of people could sense something being amiss?

Not defending this troubled fellow’s actions, but the victim, a high school student, could have and should have stepped off the train.

There are no two stations on the Tozai Line that have a 7-minute interval. For most stations, the interval is 3 minutes.

It must be challenging to return to top form after an extended break from elite tennis.

After 10 months away for surgery to address a recurring injury, Czech Karolina Muchova won only her eighth singles match since her return by downing Osaka in straight sets. Congratulations.

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Aside: Muchova hit the “shot of the year” in her first-round match; Video: https://x.com/usopen/status/1828459066626044039

… as well as increased demand related to record numbers of foreign tourists.

Quote from Mainichi article “Why has Japan been hit with rice shortages, soaring prices despite normal crops?”

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As for the suggestion that inbound visitors are consuming more, we cannot say this is a major factor. Even if around 3 million visitors were to stay in Japan each month for a week and eat rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner like many Japanese people, it would still only account for around 0.5% of total consumption. And in actual fact, not many visitors have rice for all three meals, so their consumption must be even lower.

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https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20240823/p2a/00m/0bu/024000c

A new harvesting season has started with 40 percent of the crop available by the end of September, a farm ministry official told AFP.

The main rice-producing regions start to harvest new rice in September, so the shortage should end soon.

Some dude

I dunno. It's still probably preferable to hiding nearby and spying on them.

Your “other option” is hiding nearby and spying on them!?

Why not just walk away?

Police are investigating the motive, according to the last line of the Yahoo news article (in Japanese).

(◔_◔)

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https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/5095a7eb3665bcb57475ded93426fa855f473b3a

Actually, it seems like the Trump campaign wants the microphones off, but both candidates want them on.

Exactly. Trump just said, “I don’t know, doesn’t matter to me, I’d rather have it probably on.”

However, his team wants the mics muted to mute him — because they realize how alienating he can be.

TaiwanIsNotChina

Absolutely insane that Harris wants Trump unmuted. You cannot argue with the deranged. Keep him in his allotted box.

Perhaps you misunderstand. He’s not in an “allotted box.” He standing next to her. Muting his mic mutes him to viewers but not to her.

Must be supremely annoying to have an incessantly bickering old man in your ear while you’re trying to respond to a moderator’s questions.

Unmute the mics and let the world hear the annoyance or seal him in a sound-proof box.

That was Mainichi Shimbun

Why has Japan been hit with rice shortages, soaring prices despite normal crops?

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20240823/p2a/00m/0bu/024000c

Very informative article!

— Quote —

Because consumption of bread, pasta and other alternative foods is increasing, if farmers produced the same amount of rice as before, there would be a surplus, causing the price of rice to drop. To avoid such a situation, production has been cut year by year, and recently only about 60% of rice paddies are in use, with the others set aside under the acreage reduction policy. Production has thus been kept at under half of the peak of 14.45 million metric tons annually.

There's nothing but to believe that this man's actions was intentional sabotage.

“Sabotage” might be too strong a claim.

I guess it depends on his job duties and whether NHK news program reporters ever go off-script.

If they don’t, I would imagine that it’s a mighty dull place to work.

But Japan is currently in a transitional period as new rice is being released into the market.

The main rice-producing regions start to harvest new rice in September, so the shortage should end soon.

NHK said his contract was terminated, and it plans to seek damages from him.

Anyone considering future employment at NHK might want to keep this in mind.

Additionally, who is listening to NHK news in Chinese on the radio? Sounds like a complete waste of money.

Gaijinjland

Asiaman

I think your numbers are wrong. Not even gonna look up the exchange rate at the time but 97,000 yen/ 265 to the dollar would be about $366

Did you adjust for inflation?

According to the inflation calculator linked below, $366 in 1977 would be worth $1,894 in 2024.

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https://smartasset.com/investing/inflation-calculator#CpZJlkdeOZ