AussiePete comments

Rio Tinto should do everyone a favour and dig up the damn island, stick it on a pair of iron ore tankers and give half to Kobe Steel and the other half to Hyundai Steel.

The design of the medals is a bit of a letdown. 

The original design looked much better, because they copied it from someone else.

the Tokyo 2020 Olympic medals will be manufactured using the precious metal extracted from mobile phones and other small electronic devices donated by the public

So not only do we have to pay for the damn event, they want us to donate precious metals too?

Can't the IOC officials donate some of the bullion they have hidden under their mattresses?

Major railway and subway operators in the metropolitan area plan to extend operating hours during the games

Salarymen rejoice, you can avoid your wife's cold indifference even longer.

The results of this poll are wildly inaccurate and should be ignored.

By way of example, let's look at Komeito, which is supported by only 4.6% of voters according to this poll.

On Sunday, they received 14% of the vote in Tokyo, 17% in Osaka and 13% in the nationwide constituency, just to name a few. They now have 28 seats (11.4%) in the upper house, three more than they had before the election.

Reiwa Shinsengumi and NHK Kara Kokumin Wo Mamoru To might be supported by 2.2 percent and 1.0 percent of survey respondents, but they each received double the support in the survey that actually mattered.

Is it a coincidence that the 51.5% of people that responded to this stupid survey is very close to the 51.2% of people who were too lazy to turn up to a voting booth on Sunday?

Olympics minister Shunichi Suzuki, who usually commutes by official car, took a subway Monday to the Cabinet Office.

"The train was empty and I felt comfortable," Suzuki told reporters after arriving at his office at 11:30 a.m. under the staggered working hour system.

Tomorrow, Suzuki will return to his normal routine of arriving at his office by official car at 11:30 a.m., just in time for lunch.

@Ganbare Japan!

Abe is as weak as piss. He had the necessary majority for three years and did nothing with it. The only thing flexible about him is his morality.

With all this talk of disabled candidates, I haven't seen any mention of another much-maligned minority - women. Women accounted for 28% of candidates (the highest ever) and won 22% of the seats in this election. The 28 seats won by women tied the record set at the previous election, but with four more seats available than last time, the percentage is down a bit.

In my local district, one woman was competing against five men, with three seats up for grabs. As the only female candidate and with a public profile as a TV presenter, plus belonging to the only centre-left party, I was pretty sure she would be a shoe-in. Yet she managed to come fourth behind three conservative blokes, with 19.8% of the vote.

Of course I do not expect people to vote for a candidate solely on the basis of gender, but I thought she would have garnered enough support to win a seat.

If it important to get disabled people into parliament in order to represent disabled people, then what about getting women there? Do the women of Japan believe Abe's "womenomics" spiel? Are they satisfied with there being a sole token woman in Abe's cabinet?

He had three years of super-majority power in both houses and did absolutely nothing with it. I guess he hasn't got the stomach to bring about any real change.

Probably because some D-grade celebrity tweeted about it on Instagram.

@marcelito

I hope you are right.

But as you noted, he received 660,000 votes as an independent candidate 6 years ago. I dare say that a fair few of those people thought "I'll vote for him again" without looking into it too much.

Also, there is no mention of the special quota on his personal website, nor on the front page of the party's website.

The unique here is the leader of this new and very progressive party put himself 3rd in the list! Thus he couldn't make it but the disabled candidates are in!!! He wanted to make sure if his party is is above the line they to be in for sure!

This raises what I consider a rather interesting point.

Yamamoto personally received almost a million votes in the nation-wide constituency, the highest number by far (by comparison, nobody else got more than 600,000). Those million votes, together with another 1.2 million voters who nominated his party rather than an individual candidate, meant that his party won two seats. However, despite his personal popularity, he did not win a seat due to his party placing the two disabled candidates in a "special quota" which was a newly-introduced feature of this election.

For Yamamoto to get elected, he and his party needed another 530,000 more votes than what they received.

This makes me wonder how many of those million people who took the effort of writing "Taro Yamamoto" on the ballot form were aware of this new "special quota" system, and that their vote was likely to lead to a person other than Yamamoto being elected?

Is this where all my residents tax is going.....???

No, your residents' tax goes to flying your city mayor and prefectural governor to their holiday destinations.

It is your national income tax that pays for this trip.

The only thing I like about America is that there is no royal family; on the other hand, even with private insurance, healthcare... 

Gaijinland, with all due respect, I do not think anyone reading an article about Japan's imperial family gives a rat's behind about America's heath system.

So that works out to an annual increase of 29%?? I have doubts...

No, it is an annual increase of 2.43%. Regardless of whether you calculate it by the day, week or year, the percentage rise is still the same.

I hope they aren't paying hefty commissions to financial advisers or other middlemen.

I don't know about external advisers, but within the organisation alone they have 131 full-time staff, plus a handful of governors, executives and part-time staff.

The work-related drinking culture seems to have completely disappeared for me. Now a days, everyone in my company tries to leave as close to 18:00 as possible and just go home. I see almost no more nomikai in the workplace like there used to be. So, it seems that people are changing, albeit perhaps more slowly than might be beneficial for their health. Or maybe they have become “kitchen drinkers”?

Or maybe it's the case that the parties are still held, but someone is no longer invited.

Great news! But hard to believe this netted 80 million yen from 5 victims.

It doesn't say that "this type of scam" has netted 80 million .

The majority of the amount has probably come from the old "ore-ore" scam against the elderly.

Shouldn't that be a certificate of commendation?

Or is Mr Yamada one of the poor 7-11 franchisees who must spend 500 hours per month in his store?

Taxis in Japan. Expensive rides just for the sake of being expensive with no reason in sight for why it MUST be so expensive. Taxis are relatively dirt cheap in many other countries around Asia.

It MUST be so expensive because (shock, horror), Japanese taxi drivers live in Japan, not other countries around Asia. Do you expect your Tokyo driver to be commuting from Jakarta each day?

The youngest member of the nine-person Yokozuna Deliberation Council will turn 70 in a couple of weeks. Maybe it is time for a few more retirements to be announced?

So, placing your hands around someone’s neck and squeezing until they die is not murder? Wow! You learn something new everyday.

I'm not trying to defend the guy but, for example, it could have been consensual, rough sex that went a step too far. Without the guy confessing his intention to kill, it would be impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt he did have the intention. That is why the prosecutors have to settle for a lesser charge.

A similar case happened in Australia a few years ago, which coincidentally also involved a Japanese woman as the victim.

https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/wa/wife-killer-bradley-jones-may-be-released-after-three-years-ng-4bbd423828db277da4979d1e1462a154

And you are using a foreign definition, however manslaughter in some jurisdictions is a lesser included offense of murder. Also he, again, admitted to killing her, whether it was intentional or not, he murdered the poor girl!

Yubaru, how many times must it be said that killing does not equal murder? In Japan, as in most countries, intent (殺意) is an element of murder.

No, it does not, even in Japanese there are different definitions of murder, including manslaughter as well.

Not to mention the fact that the guy confessed to killing her.

Killing does not equal murder. Confessing to killing does not equal confessing to murder.

In the "official unofficial" translation of Japan's penal code prepared by the Ministry of Justice, the word "murder" is not even used.

http://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/law/detail/?id=3130&vm=04&re=01&new=1

Article 199 defines the penalty for "homicide" (which would equal murder) and Article 205 defines the penalty for "injury causing death". The code does not define the elements of these offences though. For that, you need to look at the judicial interpretation in case law.

If you can read Japanese, you will see from this following page that the crime of homicide (murder) in Japan requires the intent to kill (殺意).

https://www.bengo4.com/c_1009/guides/147/#1_1