crazygaijin comments

@mummet read and be informed yourself before you start preaching to other people. It is a FACT that MacCarthur spearheaded a massive PR campaign to find Hirohito and the rest of the Royal family not guilty of war crimes that they committed. Read MacCarthur's memoirs. It is a FACT that most of the blame for Hirohito's own actions was laid squarely on Tojo's "willing" shoulders.

Islamic end-zone dancing.

i love it. that has to be one of the best phrases i have heard in a really long time.

susano

i think a japanese person would point out to you that they don't mean Apache as in the Native American tribe. it's all in the japanese intonation ... they are merely trying to say Ah Pa Tchi, which of course means that the comment couldn't possibly be racist you see.

the US was terrified that Soviet communism would spread into Japan. that's why the occupation forces were primarily US, and that's also why the US's MaCarthur spearheaded the campaign to find Hirohito et al "not guilty" of war crimes. Finding him "not guilty" meant the US had a ready made puppet and could control the threat of communism spreading to Japan that much more easily.

@hogehoge

Actually, I was referring to the Tehran Conference in November 1943 when I mentioned the quasi-agreement, not the Yalta Conference in February of 1945. If they wanted to the Soviets could have entered the war against Japan in 1943; but they didn't. You are however, correct that the Soviet attack against Japan began precisely three months after the German surrender on May 8th, however the attack began AFTER the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, on August 6th. At that time Japan was already effectively defeated. Stalin knew this quite well, ergo, IT WAS A LAND GRAB PLAIN AND SIMPLE. Don't sass me you whippersnapper.

As I stated and i'm sure any descent historian would recognise that the USSR invasion of Japan was not Just a land grab but a decision brought about by a allied request to stalin for him to attack Japan.

there was no request for stalin to attack Japan; it was more of a quasi-obligation stemming from a British-Soviet agreement. had the Soviets had any real intention of honoring that agreement they would have entered the war against Japan earlier, instead they waited literally until the final days when the writing was on the wall and then they made a land grab; nothing more, nothing less. they knew that the US and the UK were divvying up certain parts of Asia and they wanted to get something too.

ha ha ha ha ha...

From the ashes of World War II, the country rose to become a global manufacturing and financial powerhouse. But its so-called “economic miracle” turned into a massive real estate bubble in the 1980s before imploding in 1991.

ever wonder how Japan was able to accomplish this considering that it was just emerging from absolute economic devestation?? perhaps b/c the Japanese military had looted massive amounts of items all across Asia during Japan's reign of terror. the looted gold, silver and jewels helped finance Japan Inc's economic rise in the years following the Occupation.

up until they day that the Soviet forces invaded the Japanese military leaders including Hirohito were in constant communication with the Soviets and believed that that they were still friendly. this JT news story (if I can even call it that) was extremely poorly researched. moreover this "historian" who thinks the Soviets played a key role in Japan's defeat needs to give up being a historian b/c when one gets their facts so blatantly wrong they deserve to be spanked. this is just one more petty excuse to say "why did the big bad Americans drop those 2 terrible bombs on us when we would have surrendered anyway because we were so afraid of the Soviets". and BTW the Soviets move was 100% a land grab.

be nice if you want to but if you expect some acknowledgment in return then its your own ego at work and you've done it for the wrong reason.

leaving

Additional Information:

By Daniel Kelly

Foreword by Banana Yoshimoto

Commentary by Hollis Goodall Kodansha Int’l Hardcover 128 pages ISBN: 978-4-7700-3133-4 / 4-7700-3133-5

seriously ... the guys name is really "banana" yashimoto, come on what were his parents thinking?? anyway, checked out the guy's site and the artwork seems interesting.

why just a Japanese salaryman's pocket money? what about my pocket money?

doesn't matter what the election results were. plain and simple the Japanese gov't, in whatever form it takes, is what's really bad for the Japanese economy.

guess granny got her point across in that argument.

IMO the JT question is poorly written. are you talking about public places or private places? public schools or private schools? you list recreational facilities, do you mean private fitness centers or public rec centers and swimming pools? please clarify the question. i think most people would agree that a ban or restriction in a PUBLIC place would violate a person's fundamental right to freedom of religion and speech; unless there is some compelling governmental SAFETY issue at stake. if it's a private place then that's a completely different matter. private places can create any rules that they want to. i mean fitness centers in Japan won't even let you join if you have a tattoo.

totally disagree, i think DiCaprio has done nothing but get better since Blood Diamond. played the hell out of his roles in The Departed and Shutter Island. didn't like him in the beginning but have since changed my op.

what a laugh riot, i love this guy.

i hope hawaiian will also accept air freight which will hopefully reduce the cost of import/export between here and hawaii

we can't all live in bicultural's heady world of wealth. take his/her comments with a grain of salt. he/she is the same person who doesn't mind spending 15,000 to learn how to bake a cake, or spending $100/month on an unused gym membership.

looks like cotton candy, which bride is brave enough to wear that to a wedding?

increasing taxes for Japan given its constant deficits may be necessary to correct the situation

IMO it's not a question of may be or not; it's a clear answer of necessity. also raising the consumption tax to 10% may end up having little to no impact in raising additional tax revenue since Kan, in all his glorious wisdom, is talking up a near 50% reduction in the corporate tax rate. it doesn't take a genius to figure out that this formula will still result in an overall deficit; unless Kan can miraculously increase the overall corporate tax base.

someone already said this in the comments earlier; it's not a question of raising taxes, rather it's a question of what the current administration does with the tax revenue that's received. i have absolutely zero faith that any of the past or present administration members will actually act in the best interests of this country. until such time as the voters of this country stop allowing themselves to be led around by the nose the various adminstrations will continue to rape the tax revenue for the benefit of their zaibatsu cronies and ultimately themselves.

hafu me likes it and the other hafu me doesn't.

the woman in the middle, her lower legs look suprisingly similar to some daikons i saw in the supermarket yesterday.

5 people plus a driver in 1 taxi cab, seems like that's over the limit to me.

15-yr-old girl asked politely if it wouldn't be too much trouble to refrain from stabbing her classmate again.

people have you not yet heard of chilly Tees??? unbeleivable! invented 'em myself back in '96. kinda the poor man's aircon. grab an oversize T-shirt, soak it with water. slap it in the freezer for about 1 hr. slip it on ... ooh, la la, refreshing. now, next i'll tell ya about chilly boxers and chilly panties ...

props to the other lady for actually doing something and not just acting like it wasn't happening

yasukini

think i'd like your screen-name better if it was yasu-bikini. anyway, back to the point of this article.

Wives still have passion, but how to get their husbands to realize it?

Answer - jiggle it just a little bit ... yeah, jiggle it just a little bit!

makes complete sense to me. rakuten is the 9th largest e-commerce company in the world. it has acquired buy.com in the USA and priceminister.com in France as well as 6 or 7 other B2B2C companies throughout the world. it's actually doing what many other japanese companies should be doing - namely striving to become a globally competitive company. this is basically what toyota did back in the 70's, just it didn't hold a press conference and make a big announcement about it. IMO rakuten's move to make english its language of communication makes complete and total sense. chinese, although spoken by more people, is not as important because all the top chinese execs at companies like baidu.com ($50 mill JV with rakuten) also speak english.

Guess he's in a pickle now, he'll have to mustard the strength to ketchup to Joey Chesnut and retake his title.