cartier comments

Toyota is in trouble. No one buys a Toyota car because they are cool and stylish, they aren’t. They buy them for reliability, they are. EVs don’t have an engine or a transmission, just a big battery. Reliability is not an issue. EVs will compete on style and design. They will also compete on software, definitely not a Japanese or Toyota strong point. Toyota will still sell lots of pollution generating cars in poorer countries where infrastructure is not ready for EVs. Toyota will shed market share to the more innovative and design centric makers in richer countries. Who wants a Prius when a Tesla is the same price? No one.

Big fish meet small pond.

Why would anyone voluntarily be a member of a religion that forces them to remain uneducated? Afghan women should get on a bus and put their country and Islam in their rearview mirror.

The boy is from Nagoya and attends Tokai High School. It is the most elite high school for boys in Nagoya.

I don't understand the criticism of her "kimono." It looks like a short dress with a long train to me. It is definitely not like any kimono I have ever seen.

He confessed, so the real reason prosecutors decided not to try him is the case is related to yakuza. Prosecutors are scared. A homeless person does not just walk in to a a construction company's president's office and beat him to death for no reason.

Japanese companies all raise their prices on the same day but no investigation of collusion or price fixing?

Apparently, the law of contracts which frames the Olympic Games, only the IOC can cancel the Olympic Games. Suga does not have the power to stop the Games and probably lacks the savvy to finesse the IOC into cancelling without ending up in court and being sued for billions of USD.

Under certain clauses, there is the possibility to cancel, which would still end in litigation. There is insurance, but it is unknown what the terms are for the parties involved.

This is an interesting post. The Prime Minister of Japan certainly has the power to shut down the Olympics. He would just withdraw all financial and security assistance and the governor of Tokyo would close the stadiums. The Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee could just stop working on preparations. There is no way a Japanese court would force them to continue working. The financial penalty in the contract is the big question. What court or arbitrator would decide and how would the IOC collect from a bankrupt Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee?

Bach cannot guarantee that all of the athletes, coaches, and trainers will be vaccinated, but the number will be extremely high. The US, China, Japan, Korea, Canada, and the European countries including Russia will be at near 100% vaccination rate. That is the overwhelming number of the 90,000 people coming. They will also need to show a negative test before entering Japan. The foreigners are not the problem. The problem is the Japanese spectators and volunteers will not be vaccinated. Social distancing and sporting events and wearing masks should mitigate the dangers. That has been effective at Japanese baseball games, football games, sumo tournaments, basketball games, etc.

Being vaccinated means you don't get seriously ill if you do catch the virus, but it doesn't mean you cannot pass it on to others. (Transmission appears to be less likely, but not impossible - up to about a 50% reduction rate, according to the BBC).

This is an argument for never having the Olympics again and is unscientific. The Pfizer vaccine is 95% effective, Moderna is 90%, and Johnson & Johnson is 60%.

There will be at worst case 10% of the 90,000 who are not vaccinated. That is 9,000 people all of whom have tested negative before entering the country. How many Japanese business men and women travel to Tokyo on a daily basis who have never been vaccinated and have never been tested? How many travelers land at Haneda and Narita every day? The number is much much greater than the 9,000 foreigners. Do you want to shut down the shinkansen and the highways to Tokyo? Close the airports? No. But you think it is reasonable to shut down a $15 billion event because of 9,000 foreign visitors for the Olympics. Again. I'm glad you are not in charge of any large projects. Your risk assessment skills are questionable.

Cleo

Who is coming to Japan without being vaccinated? Bach cannot guarantee everyone but using your numbers there may be 3,600 non-vaccinated in a population of 38 million people. You think the solution is to cancel a $15 billion event because of those 3,600 people who tested negative before entering Japan and will be tested regularly in Japan? I'm glad you are not running any large project.

I guess the other 72,000 will just have to "quarantine" for 14 days before leaving their accommodations each day...uhm, errr, nevermind.

Why? The foreigners will be vaccinated! The foreigners are not the problem. The Japanese are the ones who are the problem because they are not vaccinated. Do you really think if the Olympics are cancelled the people in Tokyo will be staying home because of the virus? No! They will be shopping and going to restaurants just like they always do. So, how does cancelling the Games help?

So some politicians and IOC ignore the doctors and want to hold the Olympics.

Have any countries said they have decided to not come to the Tokyo Olympics because they are unsafe? No.

If the US Olympic Team decided not to come to the Tokyo Olympics, then the Games would be cancelled. There are no Tokyo Olympics without US TV rights money. There is no discussion in the US about not attending.

Many expect new variants created in Tokyo game, which will be called Bach or Suga virus.

Who? There are 38 million people in the Tokyo metropolitan area. Fewer than a thousand got coronavirus yesterday. Every country on the planet would be declaring victory if they had that low of an infection rate. There is no way you cancel a $15 billion sporting event that has been planned for nearly a decade because a 1000 people got sick and a tiny fraction of them died.

Does anyone here really think that the US Olympic Team is coming to Japan with no US doctors? How about any of the European teams? How about the Chinese team? Of course, they have doctors.

https://www.statnews.com/2018/02/08/olympics-medical-team-doctors/

There has always been rumors and articles about the Olympic bidding process and the bribes and corruption associated with it. I don't care about the Olympics and don't really watch them since they allowed professional athletes to compete and became packed with overpaid prima donnas .

So, you are against the Olympics regardless of the pandemic.

What got my attention in the case of the Tokyo Olympics was the IOC crawled out of its hole and really showed how depraved the whole process and the IOC organization really is. The health, wellbeing and preferences of the people of the host country and by extension, the participating athletes count for naught. Once the IOC has a contract to attach themselves to your city, it is like having head lice, fleas and genital crabs at once, but with deadly consequences in this case.

The democratically elected representatives of Japan are choosing to hold the Tokyo Olympics. They have the power to cancel if they believe there is a serious public health risk to the people. All of the foreign athletes and coaches will be vaccinated. They pose no unreasonable risk. The Japanese government has said the Japanese athletes and coaches will be vaccinated as well. So, all of the athletes and coaches could walk around Tokyo with no masks and pose little to no health risk. The problem is with spectators, but Japan professional baseball and football are holding games with spectators with no outbreaks. This is not a difficult decision. The Tokyo Olympics should not be cancelled.

There is no reason to panic and cancel the Tokyo Olympics. The foreign athletes and coaches coming to Japan will most likely be vaccinated. Who would come to Japan without being vaccinated? The foreign athletes are not a problem. The problem is the Japanese spectators will not be vaccinated, but sporting events have been held around the world during the pandemic. Baseball is played with spectators in Japan.

You can buy 100 Astra razor blades at Amazon Japan for 1499 yen.

Kawamura is great. It way past time to demolish the concrete monstrosity and replace it with a new wooden Nagoya Castle.

When you roll the dice and lose a war, there are consequences. Germany lost 30% of its territory. Japan lost a few worthless islands. I think Japan came out pretty well. It could have been much worse for them. The Soviets wanted Hokkaido and they wanted to divide Tokyo like Vienna and Berlin.

It could be the second time the Tokyo Summer Olympics have been cancelled.

Even when using caloric intake, Japan is ranked number 9 in food self-sufficiency. This is hardly an emergency.

Food self-sufficiency measured by production value increased by 2% to 68%. There was a decrease in vegetable and fruit imports and an increase in domestic production of both. Rice self-sufficiency was at 100%. No one in Japan is going to go hungry. Wheat production is low. Nearly all bread is made with imported wheat because domestic wheat is used for udon.

Japan is the only country in the world that uses caloric intake to measure food self-sufficiency. This is just propaganda from the most protectionist ministry in Japan. The statistic has little meaning. McDonalds and Moss Burger for example import beef from Australia and chicken from Thailand in large volumes. Japan is 100% self-sufficient in rice. It is 80% self-sufficient in vegetables and could easily be 100% if it chose to be. Meat and pork are similar.

TPP will only partially open the Japanese agriculture market in 20 years! What a joke.

The collapse of the Tokyo stock market and the bubble economy is because it was a bubble. It had nothing to do with American pressure. The BOJ raised interest rates to kill the overheating economy. Asset prices became insanely high. Later, Japanese companies completely missed the Internet in the 1990s and early 2000s. Japanese consumer electronics and appliance companies were defeated by Chinese and South Koreans. Japanese computer companies were defeated by Intel, Microsoft, Micron, HP, Dell, and later Apple and Lenovo. Domestic cell phone makers were defeated because NTT was lazy and arrogant so did nothing to develop iMode from 1997-2008. iOS and Android destroyed them.

As for US tariffs - There have been sugar tariffs in America since the 18th Century resulting in a price 6 cents per pound above the world average. That is nothing compared to the import taxes Japan imposes on agricultural goods. Rice costs several dollars per kilo over the world average. The savings would free up lots of money to be spent on other goods to boost the economy.

Grain, citrus, dairy, and wine tariffs have nothing to do with taste, Monsanto, or diet. They are to protect domestic manufacturers. In the 1980s Japanese negotiators argued against importing more American beef because Japanese intestines were too small for American beef and that American beef was not as good as Japanese beef. Then, in the 1990s a major Japanese company was caught relabeling American beef as Japanese beef and raising the price. They had been doing it for 20 years and no one complained that their beef didn't taste right. They were caught by a whistleblower. Japanese had been eating shabu-shabu, steak, ground beef, etc. for 20 years thinking it was Japanese beef. So, American beef is equal or better than Japanese beef. It can't be worse or someone would have complained during the 20-year scam.

If you don't like American food don't buy it. But, the fact you don't like it does not justify high import taxes that effectively ban American products from the market. The fact there is a tariff would imply fear that American products will gain market share. American rice is often used in frozen goods and at cheap sushi restaurants. Japanese have no problems eating it. American tobacco would destroy domestic growers. American wheat and barley would devastate Japanese farmers. I can buy a bag of American apples in the US for a few dollars but one Apple in Japan is more than 2 dollars. Just look at Japanese people's faces when they enter Costco for the first time and realize how badly they have been cheated by domestic companies.

It is irrelevant if Japanese rice is best. I don't need the best rice in the world to make onigiri. It is a joke that a rice ball costs 100 yen. It should cost 15-25 yen. Imported rice would kill Japanese rice in convenience stores across Japan. Japanese students would buy the 25 yen rice balls in a second over the 100 plus yen domestic ones.

Why is this a surprise? Tokyo University always has about the same ratio of boys to girls with girls being around 20%. That is impossible! Girls around the world and in my university classes on average perform better on tests than boys. There are more women going to medical school and law school in America than men. Cambridge and Oxford have even discussed affirmative action for boys because girls out perform on entrance exams 60 to 40. Every university in Japan blocks women from entering.

Cars, whiskey, and beer are the only products Japan makes that are any good. Furniture is crap, home appliances are crap, speakers are crap, houses are crap, apartment buildings are crap, movies are crap, music is crap, clothes are crap, shoes are crap, cigarettes are crap, computers are crap, software is crap, rockets are crap, satellites are crap, etc.

Japanese cars are good but the difference between them and foreign cars is not as wide as the 1980s and 90s. Rarely a week goes by without millions of Japanese cars being recalled. Japan is still years behind in terms of styling. No one, including Japanese, dream of owning any Japanese car. That is not true for American and European cars.

As for the quality of Japanese cars compared to US cars - according to J.D. Powers American cars are number one or number two in nearly every type of car. Japanese are number one in nine categories while American cars are number one in four. The differences between number one and two are basically a coin flip. European cars are number one in just two categories and are nearly non-existent in the other categories.

The non-tariff barrier that prevents US cars from making headway in Japan is the illegal control Japanese manufacturers hold over their dealer networks. A Ford dealer in America has no problem selling Toyota cars. He makes money on the sale of either car. US manufacturers cannot stop the dealer from selling other makes of cars. In Japan, a Toyota dealer will not sell a Ford car because Toyota will not allow it. That control is illegal in Japan but the government does not enforce the law. The cost to build a dealership network in Japan is prohibitive considering the size of the market.

This commercial is not original at all. It is a blatant rip-off of the Nokia Lumia debut in London. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX2Gd-kqV5s