BNiigata comments

According to the Okinawa Times (March 23), the girl who tested positive is aged 10-19 and was in the company of four family members, all of whom were tested at Narita on the 20th upon returning from a trip to Spain. The family were asked to remain at the airport but ignored the request and instead traveled to Haneda and boarded a flight to Naha. The following day Okinawa authorities were notified the girl had tested positive. She has been admitted to hospital, while her family members are self-isolating.

The spring invitational baseball championship 選抜 offers teams with an outside chance of winning their respective prefectural tournaments to qualify for the summer Koshien tourney the opportunity to compete at the Mecca for HS baseball. A real shame.

If after such terrible disasters I still had my loved ones I too would feel fortunate and grateful.

Rather presumptuous of you to assume Mr Ouchi doesn't.

Nicely written, poignant.

Buy more stuff and heal the world.

The tournament, if held, will be played to empty stands, but the organizers have yet to decide whether to go ahead with or cancel the annual spring tourney known as 選抜- that decision will be made on March 11.

If Senbatsu takes place, only the officiating crew, coaching staff and 18 players per team will be allowed in the stadium (as well as camera operators and photographers).

As nippon.com points out in an article from 2018, the ministry's annual survey is far from comprehensive as it fails to include homeless individuals living out of net cafes. Another group the study overlooks comprises those forced to live out of their vehicles.

https://www.nippon.com/ja/features/h00221/

Results of the 2019 Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare:

https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/12003000/000505478.pdf

The PM's "recommendation" is just that, not a legally binding executive order. The theater's own website currently shows that it will resume normal operations from March 16th, hardly a death sentence.

Niigata City's after- school program (until 6:30 pm weekdays; from 8- 6:30 during the long vacs, Saturdays, and school closures such as at present), Himawari Club, is run by the city and is available to children whose parents work during the day. While Niigata's facilities include classrooms, they are not primarily study halls but a kind of recreation and activity center. In fact, a quick search of such programs throughout the country reveals that 放課後児童クラブ, as they are known, are usually operated by municipalities, contrary to the assertion above.

Kyushuu Bill- don't reside in Miyazaki myself, but the prefecture your taxes support provides information about the virus in English- Mandarin and Korean as well. Did you not think to look? Didn't take me long to find.

https://www.pref.miyazaki.lg.jp/kohosenryaku/kenko/hoken/covid19_eng.html

The hotlines offer no English language support, but after 18 years in the country, you should be able to handle that.

The following from the Asahi Digital provides an informative and regularly updated timeline of Covid-19 developments dating to Dec. 29 of last year: まとめ】首相「換気悪い密集空間を避けて」（1日）

Japan's first fatality was reported Feb. 13, it's second and third on the 20th.

The initial outbreak in Hokkaido has been traced to this year's Sapporo Snow Festival.

As noted above, the venue was Live House Arc, in Osaka. The Ehime woman becomes the fourth concert-goer out of a total of 100 to test positive. Photos and more info here: https://note.com/gekiura/n/nad525081c261

No refunds- typical for such events, see the NY Marathon, 2012.

Where does the money go? Legally binding commitments to vendors, among other things.

except the Chinese are getting their money back or their 2020 fees are being deferred to 2021.

Not so. Learn some Japanese, read the press reports, Patty.

What does the japanese sports community means by elite ???. I thought in japan everyone is equal ???.

What the rest of the world's sporting community means by the term.

How was this allowed to go ahead? Double standards

How was it allowed to go ahead? Learn some Japanese, read the news reports, We're living in the Reiwa era, by the way, Heisei-kun.

For the commenters unable to see the forest for the trees, the larger story here is the economy as a whole, which has seen a dramatic increase in low-paying, non-regular jobs over the past 20 years. What is true of the young women in the article is also the case for growing numbers of Japanese workers, regardless of age. The same race-to-the-bottom conditions likewise apply to many English teaching positions and other types of employment for expats.

Japanese labor statistics show that 10% of all men and 40% of all women in the workforce earn less than 2 million yen annually. Such individuals are called "working poor", unable to make living wages for a number of reasons, among which 'idleness' and 'disinclination' are rarely to be found. Indeed, not a few working poor, many single mothers among them, hold down multiple jobs to pay the bills, send kids to school, and so on. This issue calls for a more serious and considered treatment than that afforded by the article and more maturity and compassion from some of the commenters.

To be quite honest, that's all I had to read.

The Cabinet Office is not making this up.

Japan is no land for hafus

This will come as some surprise to my own "hafus", born and raised in Japan and now grown.

“And some have been turning to the nature gods of Japan's native Shinto religion to pray for more snow.”

gods of convenience. How’d that work out? 

Hyogo and Yamagata prefectures, not Hokkaido, smithinjapan.

Moving Tsukiji, briefly: The market opened in 1935 and outgrew its premises over time. In the 1970s the idea of relocating Tsukiji was officially broached but met with strong opposition from wholesalers, among others. Renovations were begun in 1991, but it became clear that continuing with the project would prove too costly and entail significant construction delays. By the end of the decade, the opposition supported a move, which became official in 2001, the second year of Ishihara's first term. .

The customers have been complaining that the shop is not open 24 hours.

Not the reason for the complaints, but you wouldn't know it from SoraNews24's reporting.

For a more informative article on Matsumoto the man and former franchisee, see here: https://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20200102-00010620-bengocom-soci

The author of the article writes for the Associated Press, not Japan Today, contrary to what some commenters suggest.

As for passports and residency cards, the relevant passage, in full, is:

All foreigners in Japan are required to have their passports or residence cards with them to show to police or other officials.

Nothing erroneous there.

AND the health officials here are really NOT doing their jobs by not teaching the public about something called the Heimlich Maneuver !

Heimlich maneuver saves many lives if only they would teach this in Japan

In the time it took you to write that I found numerous sites that do a good job of educating the public about the Heimlich maneuver, also known as abdominal thrusts, or 腹部突き上げ法。

 They never ever learn.

Sweeping, that statement. "They" refers to? Presumably not the millions who safely consume mochi.

We stopped eating mochi more than a decade ago.

Good on you.

Thanks for the update.

The dreaded "center test" will be given for the last time, next month. Following that, individual universities will be administering their own exams, and many are outsourcing the exams to businesses like Bennese and others.

Yesterday's announcement by the education minister makes clear that the "Center" test will not be introduced in the 2020 fiscal year (which runs from April 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021) but at some later date yet to be determined- and in any case, the exam will not be laid to rest when that occurs but will survive in its updated iteration as the 大学入学共通テスト. Individual universities currently administer their own exams, among them the AO入試、指定校推薦入試、スポーツ推薦入試、一般前期・後期入試.

What yesterday's announcement by the education ministry demonstrates, following as it does on the heels of its decision to postpone changes to the English component of the 大学入試センター試験, is the ministry's failure to address concerns regarding fairness and marking standards.

.If the answer is not black and white, it's not allowable.

University entrance exam. Stakes extremely high. Subjective marking a critical issue.

This is the reason why I don't want to raise kids in Japan. They're just taught to obey and repeat, not actually think...

Might want to talk to some who have raised kids here to see if there's truth to your assertion.

and there is no thesis.

Ever hear of a 卒業論文?

The older, humbler 185 series 特急踊り子 (from the Kawabata Yasunari short story "The Dancing Girl of Izu"), 5730￥ (non-reserved) from Tokyo Station, will continue to operate. Think that's expensive? Take a bus. Or don't go.

Bit more than 800￥/ 100ml (going by Shodojima prices), given extremely limited production. So buy your adulterated Spanish extra virgin at 800/ liter- no one's forcing you to purchase Made in Japan.

The name of this temple is Risshaku, or 立石寺, not "Yamadera", which simply refers to a mountain temple. Risshaku is located on Mt. Hoju (宝珠山) in Yamagata City.

Whatever its problems may be, quality of education is not among them. With a "hensachi" of 73, Seiseiko HS is ranked 2nd out of 249 high schools in the prefecture and 49th (of 10,050) nationwide.

The writer suggests Kumamoto prefecture's "combative stance" is the reason the suit seeks a mere 1 yen in damages. However, the boy's mother, quoted in the Mainichi's reporting on the story, explains「賠償金が目的ではない。学校はシメ文化を見直し、謝罪してほしい]. In other words, the point is not the money. Rather, what is sought is a reexamination of shime culture and an apology.