ConnorH93 comments

I have no problem at all with professional gamers - good on them for turning something they love doing into a career. But let's not call it eSports. Sports are a healthy, active pastime whereas gaming isn't. I would consider it an insult to both to put professional gaming into the same category as marathons, sprinting, cycling, football, rugby, cricket, baseball, american football, boxing, MMA, etc.

Especially when some media outlets call professional gamers "athletes". Professional gaming is a far cry from the healthy activities of sports and shouldn't be associated with it.

Brilliant! Glad to see the young aren't going to sit back and let businesses and Government screw them over like previous generations have.

To the people saying that the guy must have let her beat him or a long those lines for him to have been killed; put aside your male ego, women can do as much damage as any man in a fight. It is likely that the guy did just let her beat him from some false sense of chivalry or simply because he was stunned that she was beating him at work.

I've grown up being told never to hit a woman - however, I should defend myself if a woman comes for me looking to hurt me. If she can throw a punch or slap then she should know to take one.

Glad to see the young generation of Japanese are breaking away from the idea that being affectionate or showing affection is a bad thing. All power to them I say.

shower in the morning, and a nice soak in the bath before bed. Does wonders.

Immigration is good for helping Countries grow and rebuild. So long as it is regulated. Us Brits would never have been able to rebuild if it were not for the Jamaican, Indian, Polish, etc. migrants who came, worked and paid taxes. However, in the EU, the migration is unregulated between each member state, so long as you're an EU you can go wherever you want.

This unregulated migration was fine between the richer member states such as Britain, Germany, France, Spain or Italy because the migration would be similar each way. But with accepting poorer Countries such as Poland, Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta and Slovakia you now have a huge amount going one way from the poorer nations to the richer ones and not so much in the other direction. This rather sudden(?) increase in has put too much burden on infrastructures not designed to cope with such booms in population growth.

This is why immigration needs to be better regulated and brought down to a manageable level. I think properly regulated immigration policies could be the big boost Japan needs to counter its birth rate decline.

Oh, no. I hope she's found alive and unharmed. Beginning to see this more often back home in the UK and here in Japan in the last few years and too many of those are ending badly.

I can only hope that one of the promises Cameron is bound to break is the in-out referendum...

I take it you're opposed to democracy?

Oh wow, I meant isn't. Checked that sentence twice as well, I guess I should put my glasses back on...

Thanks for pointing that out.

I can only hope that one of the promises Cameron is bound to break is the in-out referendum...

I am a royalist and quite frankly I don't get what the fuss is about. Every time a new Royal is named, in England that name becomes one of the most popular names for the next year or so. That includes pets as well. I had a dog named Harry and a cat named Billy (William), I'm sure it's as has been said before, people getting offended for people who "should be getting offended" but aren't.

Wow, how this made it to court let alone how it took that long to finally see a proper ruling is beyond me. If she was buying Gucci bags and expensive make up with the earnings I could understand. But she was using it for her education, if you want to see a real benefits cheat I'll show you the UK where people can get upwards of £60k a year if they have so many children.

That's equates to roughly Y10.7m or $89.6k and we're not just talking one or two there's a few hundred getting away with that level payout and a lot of them haven't worked a day in their lives with children who'll never do a days work yet have designer clothes, iphones and huge tv's. That's what I'd call a benefits cheat, not a family who have worked hard but been forced to accept welfare due to health issues with a child trying to ensure a better future for herself and therefore more tax yen for the Government, a businessman would have called this an investment for the future. Utterly ridiculous.

No longer*

I can't wait for the day when gay marriage no makes the news, because that'll be the day when gay marriage is so widely accepted that it'll be seen as normal.

I'm from the UK and I think backing out of the global stage is a bad idea. However, I think we should switch from trying to follow America in being the World Police and "getting into everyone's business" we should improving trade and relations with other Countries. But before we do that we definitely need to sort out issues back home; NHS, education, obesity, alcoholism or drug taking in general, housing, wages, employment (most notably getting rid of these ridiculous zero hour contracts) and decreasing our need for foreign oil and gas by using renewable energies.

Going to stick with growing my own and living with the tears, thanks...

Will be more pensioners committing crimes when there's no kids to pay for their retirement due to the declining birth rate. While now it probably mostly done because they're bored it'll be done in future because they'll not be able to afford to live.

What a bunch of scrooges, they'll be the first to complain when their pensions are hit due to the lack of tax paying young to pay for their pensions and other welfare. Simply because others have not been able to have kids due to lack of day care centres because those very future pensioners complained about happy children playing.

If you don't like the noise, move or just put up with it. Selfish. Karma will come back and bite them when they are older.

@LAcajun

True, if they were waiting for the Government to help, they'd be waiting a long time. The Government is more concerned with restarting the nuclear reactors to care what happened to its citizens.

I'm not a fan of nuclear energy but out of a choice between Nuclear and fossil fuel, I'd take Nuclear. It is cleaner and safer than fossil fuels (nuclear power stations are less likely to have faults compared to coal, etc. but when things do go wrong they can be tragic, eg. Chernobyl).

However, I don't think Japan, which sits on the edge of the ring of fire, is really a Country suitable for Nuclear power. Abe should instead focus more on renewable sources such as Geothermal, Solar and Tidal. Countries like the UK would be more suitable as they are not as prone to earthquakes and other disasters and if they do get them they are nothing compared to what Japan experiences.

Although, I'd still prefer all Countries to try more to switch to renewable energy anyway.

I am glad that Tohoku is starting to see a comeback even it is small at the moment, it's also great to see more farmers switching to vegetables instead of just rice paddies, as I think the rice market in Japan is over-saturated.

Be a definite no no. I live in a family of smokers, my mum, my dad, my brother and my sister all smoke. It's disgusting. I just can't see what benefits they get from sucking on these cancer sticks?

Wait, so Americans have to pay tax even when they're not living there?

Japan is way off the mark in what it thinks is the majority attracted to it. They seem to think it's the otaku culture that's mainly attracting the West but it's not, if I wanted to watch anime or read manga or buy merchandise I can easily have it shipped to the UK.

What I want to see when I finally do go to Japan is it's culture, I want to see the festivals, the shrines, temples, nature spots and, I know it's likely impossible but, I want to see a Geisha or Geiko or even a Maiko. This is a culture that's survived over 2000 years yet it feels like it's finally being pushed aside by, to be honest, this rubbish.

That traditional Japanese culture is the one Japan should be demonstrated at the Olympics not this cute-sified Western import.

@bullfighter

That's not completely true about high stakes testing in Britain; I am currently in College studying BSc Computer Science and I haven't had any tests since GCSE. I also did not do well in those (only got 4 GCSEs and one of them, English, was a D grade which is probably evident from my poor punctuation and/or grammar), but I still managed to get into the third best college for computing in the UK.

Well, I say that but I've been doing retakes for my English each year (at a count of 9 attempts at the moment) since college. But it hasn't affected my ability to attend a somewhat prestigious college.

Sorry for the bad English, just woke up...

As I've told my Japanese friends before, it's never OK to be asked to work for free. If they need you stay back late to do some cleaning, that's OK. But they MUST PAY you for doing so.

if my manager, after me working me to the bone on my shift, said to stay behind and clean up without pay, I'd walk out the door. If he told me the next day I'd been sacked, well, that's fine with me. I'd go somewhere else, this is literally slave labour and shouldn't be tolerated in a developed, democratic Country.

If every site I went on didn't have 2-3 popups per page or every video didn't have a popup whenever I paused it to go get something I'd happily uninstall ad-block plus to allow them their revenue, but I don't stuff like that shoved in my face.

I also don't want to hear the new Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber album suddenly blaring out of my speakers on some websites, and I am certainly not going to pay to get rid of them.

Unobtrusive advertising doesn't bother me at all though, they're just like billboards, if they do their job and catch my eye instead of my ire they've worked, no?

A Country should never have to rely on another Country to protect its shores. Japan should do more to look after itself and only ask for US help when absolutely necessary and not just be dependant on it from the get-go.

If that means Japan needs nukes then so be it, no one wants them but they are already here and the only defence against nukes is, unfortunately, more nukes.

So glad our cousins north of the border decided to stay with us. Glad still also for this referendum, as Westminster have had to offer devolution to not just Scotland but to other parts of the UK as well - hopefully that includes England.

Thanks Scotland! :)

In Asian Countries the parents are a lot more strict when it comes to education. The reason I think for this disparity in public spending vs. private spending is not because Asian Countries underspend compared to European Countries but because it is very common for parents to supplement their kids' education with private tutoring, at the cost of the child's time to play and socialise.

This way of doing things brings up well educated but emotionally stunted worker bees who's goal will be to work until they drop generating tax for their Country, while breeding future workers.

I see this is as one of the biggest causes of so many suicides and murder-suicides in Countries like Japan, for example the two girls, this week or last, who jumped off a building together. Coming from a European school I doubt I could imagine the stress that is put on Japanese, and other Asian students in terms of education.

When I read that article there was no information about what was put into the suicide note so I'm going to guess at it being stress from over-education being the "straw that broke the camel's back".

However, I do think there needs to be more discipline in European schools, particularly the UK where I am from. Too often those who want to learn are easily dragged down by those who don't because the liberals here made it next to impossible for teachers to instil any discipline, they are not even allowed to send the troublemakers outside unless it is a very serious offence.

I went off on a tangent there but I will also add I think European education itself is on par with Asian education it's just most European parents choose to allow their children time to play and socialise with other children over private tutoring.

All of this of course is just my opinion from what I've seen.

@Disillusioned

The fence and sign was adequate, just the parents in Japan expect the state to do their parenting for them which is ridiculous.

I don't get it, how exactly does it exercise your face? They all seem to be just jumping up and down with the thing in their mouths, that's hardly exercising the facing muscles.