Daniel Sullivan comments

Well written :) Personally, I'm stuck here by one of those little crying, hungry things.

Of course - do you really think none of the houses you've ever lived in have never had anything terrible happen in them. The only ghosts are those of the imagination

“You cannot possibly look through all of the rules before you go traveling. Also the rules are different in different places,” he said. “I think it’s not very feasible.”

Don't travel then?

I can't see the issue here. They commited an dangerous and illegal act without concern for international law on national property. Pretty open and shut.

(Personally, I disagree with endangering the Arctic with oil drilling and the like but c'mon guys - we have international law for a reason. It's damn Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace that give people that want to see the world a better place a bad name)

Bertie, I couldn't agree more. These affairs are a LOCAL issue. It is not the responsibility of the US to play mommy. All they are going to do is get more people pissed off at them then surprise surprise more terrorist attacks...

I had one tell me that my bag was overweight and that I had to pay more for it to be allowed on the plane. I didn't mind that. But, they then said "yeah, sorry, it's for safety reasons". So I said "it's for safety reasons, but me paying extra money suddenly makes it safe? How does that work?". The reply was, "Sorry, that's what I've been told to say".

Err that's kind of an easy one. If everyone could take as much luggage as they wanted, people would start taking 30kg, then 40, then 50... you would have normal passenger flights being used for international freight. These limits are there to keep a lid on people going crazy (not to mention that lifting more weight requires more fuel)

I'm going to +1 to the "Hell no!" - that was my first reaction

Child abusers setting their children up for a life of explaining their parent's immaturity

What i'm loving about this discussion is how everyone seems to be completely ignoring international law. There is a correct proceadure to follow if one country has issues with the actions of another. In the case of Australia taking Japan to court, that is completely the right step. While I disagree with whaling at a personal level, SS are nothing more than vigilantes operating outside the law and anyone who supports them is clearly not mature enough to live in a globalised world where EVERYONE gets their day in court to defend their actions. This is how wars get started where one country or group starts pushing it's own agenda due to things not being the way they want them (in one way or another).

My impression seems to be that while people are "working" long hours, a survey of how much time is being spent on smoke breaks, toilet breaks, sneaky phone calls to the mistress, long lunch breaks etc would probably find that the average office worker only does about 5 - 6 hours of work.

What I don't understand is why Japan hasn't tried to do the same thing as Russia does with Sakhalin - just build infrastructure on the damn island. Look, how much money would it be costing to endlessly debate the topic and scramble fighters whenever China starts getting a bit frisky? For that money (and probably a little bit of citizenship lest the islands accidentally become Australian), I will happily move to Senaku, build a house, create agriculture, and start trade with the mainland thereby making it an operational part of Japan. Anyone with me?

But Japanese don't want BE they want AE, and I know of too many people who don't speak AE that have run into all sorts of problems because they couldn't or didn't know AE or American culture. JTE's that got absolutely indignant at their ALT because of it. Ignorant fools that they are.

Or there's option 3 which is what I do and teach both versions at the same time. Ie: "'I put the spare tyre in the boot of my car.' - now I say "boot" meaning the back of a car in BE. In AE it's "trunk"'

Again keeping to remembering that there is no "standard" English.

The constant mistakes and hashing together of two words of American English is terrible. when a language is oversimplified to this extent then all the colour and beauty is drained from it.

I do have to say that I enjoy tracing the origin of the word back to its root language through the British spelling. ie: hound -> hund (German - and others)

It really helps in tracing the history of the language and understanding it better. It's having this knowledge that helps understanding more advanced terms which are derived from Latin and the like.

It's interesting the few people making points about English speakers other than Americans being difficult to understand. I'm an Australian and I have zero difficulty understanding strong American, British, Scottish and South African accents (However Irish does take me about 2 sentences before it clicks that they aren't speaking another language ;)). Might I suggest that these American native speakers who claim to have difficulty have poor inter-cultural experience? Please keep in mind that many students are studying English for travel and if you look at the top world travel destinations, you'll see that only a small number of them are in the States.

Within the cities where you can take a taxi no.

However, intercity services would certainly be useful. Living in Gunma it's a bit of a pain to get out of Tokyo.