Charles Noguhi comments

Who cares about her smile. She ruined three lives with flimsy unproven excuses, and then smiles about it. That, my friends, is schizophrenia-like behavior.

Typical Japanese divorce. Father loses and gets a pic of the kid.

Seems like a simple case of 'Throw law out the window.' IF there was abuse, why did it take so long for her to take action? Taking so long would suggest she is not a fit parent.

Moral Harassment? No such word in modern psychology.

Divorce as a birthday present for her father is a strange thing to say after a divorce with no background information. The whole case sounds like a big expensive and judge-mediated barrel of substantiated claims.

IF the claims are true, where are the police reports? Evidence? Sounds like a mighty thin case to me. Now she can find a younger guy and bleed him dry too.

The Judge might have liked the old Mifune movies more than music. Rarely do decisions follow law or reason.

As far as she goes, smiling for the cameras is not a natural reaction. Divorce rips families to shreds, and a press conference is not warranted unless we hear his side.

This story goes much deeper than anything that has been reported.

Children playing in the sandbox.

Even in the same culture, these are the very basic items that both parties should be know BEFORE getting engaged.

So even Japanese couples need this advice. It's not only for marriages between people from different cultures.

So while the advice is something that applies to everyone, how the author can claim its only for 'international marriages' is beyond logic.

If you are a bad seed, Japan will help you be a better bad seed. If you are a 'good person' you will be a better person.

You are you are, and Japan will just become more of who you are.

The biggest issue I have is the stereotypes, and the generalizations. First, the sage advice he offers is common sense for business in any country. Nothing special here. But then he smears millions by saying 'Binge drinking Brits and alcohol and testosterone fueled Aussies with short tempers,' is he actually commenting on culture by bringing up a stereotype which insults a great many people who are polite, hard-working citizens who did nothing to deserve his ranting?

Japan does certainly bring some of the most 'interesting' people from all over the world, but it is his comments which serve to strengthen stereotypes, ruins the image of those of us who make Japan our home, and makes it harder to be taken seriously here.

Thanks Doc.

How does this 'ruling underscore ' the persistent challenges for working women'? It should be for women, working or not. If it about women's rights, working women are a just a small sub population of women that seem to show prejudice against women who make a choice to stay home.

Considering the choice is taking on a father's name or the hudbsnd's name, there is little to gain.

If keeping your father's name is so important, Why not go to family court and change to whatever name you want before getting married?

Never in a million years. They will just continue to throe huge amounts of money or come up with any excuse to keep people out. They would rather die that allow anything but short term immigration, limited to people with money or professional skills.

About 95% of all lifeforms on earth are already extinct. Gone. Never to be seen again. Climate change happens over tens of thousands of years, and scientists who state unequivocally that global warming has occurred are not scientists. Science, because of its every nature, will not make definite statements of fact (because a hypothesis can never be 'proven'), but will speak in terms of possibilities and probabilities. Since it wasn't warming fast enough for the tree huggers, they had to change the term to 'climate change' so they can remain a viable PAC in any weather to gather more government funds to waste, playing around with alternate power forms which are even worse for the atmosphere.

The earth has taken a lot of wear and tear over the years, and humans are not even a concern to the earth. If the earth decides we are a concern, we will be eliminated, just like the rest of the 95% of the life forms which have disappeared.

There was an article I remember reading that a majority of tourist hotels did not want NJ, and during the World Cup, the media was warning J-women to beware of rape by 'foreigners,'' Just as Tokyo wants to set up an area for foreign investment well outside the major business centers, tourism too, will be limited by where dear Abe wants the 野蛮人 to visit.

It's interesting that someone can board a train with a large amount of flammable liquids.

The ROI for Japanese companies in bailing out Greece is just not there, so the BOJ will sit this one out. Nothing to capitalize on.

It is pointless for the pundits to keep flapping their traps. The Japanese government, and by default, the Japanese, have approved of spending upwards of 300 billion yen in a one night fantasy. By the same token, Japan and it's voters have given tacit approval to abandoning the survivors of Fukushima. Out of site, out of mind.

Q-tip, Robert Glasper, and Marcus Miller played in NYC and the venue and all costs for the tickets was of considerable value, and was distributed to victims even before the J-government had any idea what was happening.

So, are any of you really surprised that the government will build for looks at the expense of the needy? Wake up.

After 30 years here, this kind of tasteless humor at the expense of a country is tiring. Mel Brooks, who will make fun of any culture, does it well. For Japan to still be stuck in the proctologist as humor mode, is a sad sign. RocketNews is in the same category: lame.

Japan has been producing war armaments since the Korean Conflict (an order from U.S. at the beginning of the conflict saved Toyota). Look up ow much profit is made by Fuji Juko (Subaru cars) and Nissan from war-matériel. This is old news and now is time for some 'internationalization.'

@kenjiooi: Excellent points. Even on TV, I have not seen it explained in such a manner, which would be a matter of course in countries where debate and strategic thinking are taught. The average Japanese and average NJ often do not get the crux of the issue, so your comments were appropriate and were not just emotional arguments for which there is no solution. I wish your opinion were available in Japanese so non-English speakers would be able to read it.

Even though not always enforced, be sure to read the first line. It says 'allegedly attempted.' Suspects are innocent unless proven guilty. That has many meanings in many countries, but at this point it is alleged.

If we don't constantly remind people and stand firm about this point, society will revert to the days in many places in the world where you were arrested in the afternoon and found guilty the next morning.

If you want to have fun, walk in to a store, listen for the irrashimase, go out for two seconds and listen for the arigato gozaimashita, step in again, savor the second irrashimase, go out for two seconds and listen for the arigato gozaimashita. Rinse and repeat.

One employee is usually assigned to listen for the door and notice which way the customer is going, not to look at the face in most cases. Other employees follow without looking. Try it and it will make some of the Japanese customers laugh too at the senseless of the custom. Still better than the 'waddaya want' I get on trips to the U.S.

UAL and Thai doubled the number of miles to redeem a free tickets and reduced the inventory of such seats. So the frequent business/first class flyers whom the airlines are more and more dependent on are now leaving in droves, not only because of an upgrade seat before at 90,000 one way is now 190,000 (depends on the carrier/route) but the carriers are instituting a spend minimum and a segment minimum. Some Star carriers are doubling the price for half the size seat. And NRT-LAx has been sold by an American carrier for 5,000plus, for a 2-4 2, while a island country with double the size seats (1-2-1 layout in business!) sold for about $2,300. Same day, same route, same class.

Some airlines stopped flying profitable routes and gave them to their alliance partners, who do not offer as many miles for the same class ticket. So the high-end customer whom Thai or UA or Delta or any legacy carrier needs now had to accept another airline for the flight, owes the count of that segment, loses miles, and generally gets no pre-seating, etc. So high end members, as they have been doing with MP, will thrash or dump miles, search for the cheapest flight and forget about loyalty, as the airlines have clearly shown how they feel about loyal customers.

Unless someone replicates Obakata's research, she will never be taken seriously as an academic here or anywhere else in the world. Other researchers will keep a distance from her, both physically and in research.

Frungy is an academic or has a close relative who is one; The kyoshitsu system is ruthless and even if there is no kyoshitsu system, professors know who is getting international exposure and who is not.

And the politics in academia; they spend so many hours dreading over something so trivial that they order bentos to continue until the last train to decide something any thinking human could answer in seconds. The vacations are good, and the schedule is nice, but the bull makes the decision making process in any company or political group look like a walk in the park.

My sympathies to his family. However, bad research is bad research; they failed to retract or to find a researcher anywhere in the world who could replicate the results after all this time. He was one of the people who could have and should have slowed Obokata down and stopped the publication of the paper until they could replicate it internally and have the union members of the research team (and they have plenty of them) ensure all the pictures and details were in order.

Bad Translation Last night the J-News was reporting SkyMark canceled the order by fax yesterday.

drakedogma: Do some homework on your numbers before you chime in. In FY 2013 the U.S. spent $643 billion on the military, but $1,984 billion on social welfare programs and handouts. That is almost 2 trillion on social welfare. How much more needs to be spent on social welfare before people say the U.S. should spend less on the military and more on handouts?

JT Do us a favor and find out how we can contribute to the citizens' legal fee fund, so we can support them. 1000 yen from each JT reader will help, and it will help them psychologically too to know we support them.

They should have simply said so at the beginning as no one no one in their right mind would have even considered that Japan would fold or even bend. Japan would rather break.

Tokyo wants to become 'international' and that too, will be only for certain sectors, for a limited time, and on Japan's terms.

For this country, internationalization means 'Japan will show you how you will do things, which is our way.' The world should give it what it wants: Just leave Japan alone and let the population shrink back to 50 to 75 mil., and allow Japan to revert to a self-sustaining, closed-door country which is what most of the population wants anyway.