Colleen Rain comments

The Shinkansen and the completion of the 157 through Higashi KZ already killed the downtown core as well as many neighborhoods and caused some pretty hideous suburban sprawl in one of the last beautiful places in Honshu. We've been watching the concrete creep and consume the area since the mid 90's and its so disgusting.

This article and all of you macho types are hilariously uniformed about the culture you live in. Wagasa were a sign of the aristocracy and used primarily by men and women of the (wait for it!) ruling and samurai class, who were, (GASP) vegetarian, until the Westernization. Only a bunch of losers would insist on living in a foreign culture and then criticizing it using their own cultural mores. Wait, did I say losers? I meant ignorant arrogant foreign men. My apologies.

Nice try, Aso. Could the real reason have been your 1990's bubble bursting, mortgage/ real estate crisis predicated on inflated real estate that caused banks to fail all over Japan and there was no money to be had? You remember, the one where it was revealed your "economic miracle" was all on paper and was really one giant Ponzi scheme funded by Japan Inc?

GW is never going away. Any of you who haved worked in an office and observed or have been subject to the "last man out is the best" syndrome KNOWS the true allure of GW, O-Bon and O-Shogetsu is everyone is doing the same thing at the same time and people having fun or sleeping in can do so without guilt or the thought of someone else at their workplace toiling away and being more majime than they are.

There are no Health and Safety Inspectors in Japan. No one visits restaurants to check on cleanliness, food temperature or proper storage, ever. Such an institution doesn't even exist. As long as you have a hand washing sink installed in your kitchen ( which doesn't even need a hot water tap, btw) and the fire inspector can verify it, you're good to go. Really.

It's pretty hard to be interested in a man who cares more about his manicure and hairstyle than you do about yours........

<SchopenhauerJul. 11, 2012 - 08:19AM JST

In the old days when there were legal prostitution systems in the world, it was not viewed as it is criticized today. Clinton! Don't forget that America had the legal slave system until the civil right legislation. It was not a long time ago.

You are obviously not a scholar of US history or you would know:

Slavery was abolished by Presidential Proclamation on January 1, 1863. A war followed between states who refused to recognize this and the states who were dedicated to enforcing it. We call it "The Civil War".

The civil rights movement began in the 1950's and culminated in a 1966 law striking down segregation or separate but equal facilities or " Jim Crow" laws that were prevalent in the Southern states who went to war to fight the enforcement of the 1863 Presidential Proclamation. See above.

One hundred and forty five years later the USA elected a Black President, the first "first world country" in modern history (CE) to do so. He is in office today.

Secretary of State Clinton is an accomplished women whose address to the UN in 1995 on the rights of women was considered groundbreaking. Her nomenclature regarding "comfort women" is exactly as it should be. http://eloquentwoman.blogspot.com/2011/11/famous-speech-friday-hillary-clintons.html

Japan isn't even in the top ten of high suicide rates in the world; those honors go to 9 former iron curtain countries and Finland at number 10. I think that might make the East vs West discussion a bit moot.

"The only thing more disgusting is a beggar getting food rations?" Because someone with real hunger is disgusting and eating is just another art form. No one really needs food. Once again, the veil of Japanese form is shredded to reveal the misanthropy that permeates the entire culture.

Seriously? As if the human body would survive the enormous battering a tsunami would inflict on this? It's a ball and somehow, miraculously the air holes would stay above water, not become submerged because all the weight is in one place, i.e. opposite the air holes? It looks like a good solution to the body bag problem, however. Just make sure you write your name on the outside before you climb in and drown.

The color is absolutely possible, taken at sunset from the north on a long exposure and very stopped down. Surely some of you have heard of Le Heure Bleu? Or the Golden Hour? Before digital photographers actually had to be able to read the light.....