Daninthepan comments

This is brilliant! It's so hard to get discussions going when everybody just wants to agree with the first opinion that is raised for fear of causing offense. Why stop at classrooms? Get one in every boardroom. (Just power it by chatgpt).

Names seem to be so generational in Japan. Every five years or so a new set of names will appear in my school register.

from my lost past, "Akemi" will always be my favorite.

You haven't met my ex.

Spending money on forecasts = bolting the stable after the horse is out but telling everyone you are going to do so.

18??? If you can't tell the time, don't do the crime.

An alternative headline:

Johnny's agency and the media do too little too late in a desperate bid to salvage any kind of credibility whatsoever.

Japanese riot squad? Must be rushed off his feet.

C'mon guys! Band together and at this rate we'll take over the country by the end of the decade.

Don't lose sight: 20% of not very much is still not very much.

Cooking oil? What was he trying to do? Make people slip over?

Lighter fluid? As a kid we used to pour this on our trainers and run around pretending our feet were on fire. It burns out in about 30 seconds. Unless he had two gallons of it, it's hard to say he was going to kill anyone with it.

There must be a lot of angry cats now - people getting the app and kicking their cats just to see if it works.

Chatgpt is finally levelling the playing field for foreign people like me who want to work independently in Japan. I speak intermediate/advanced level Japanese (JLPTn2) but my correspondence with my customers has always looked amaturish at best. Now I'm able to run my messy emails etc through Chatgpt, check the output and get super-professional emails in return (as well as advice on best practices).

I'm able to get business advice that was just unheard of before in a matter of seconds. Two examples: 1) Is it legal to show prices excluding tax? 2) Can I sell alcohol from my eikaiwa? Previously I would've had to sift through unreliable gaijin posts on reddit or something or spend hours translating pages that turn out to have nothing to do with my question. Now I get clear, reliable answers in seconds.

It's the gamechanger I've been waiting for.

(btw the answer to 1 and 2 are no, if you pay consumption tax, and no, you need a license).

The ticket pricing is markedly higher than usual, as last year's most expensive tickets cost around 5,000 yen.

The gift of understatement is alive and well at the JT.

No mention of a motive?

106 million, according to who? Insurance job?

Cool is in the eye of the beholder: Some of the best roads, paths etc for riding a motorbike and the home of Ichiro's Malt Whisky.

If they want to double their number of tourists, just ask Ichiro's to do their bit and start giving distillery tours. You get a pretty decent caliber of tourists with those who can afford Ichiro's.

It's funny AI can't do hands or eyes - a lot of people struggle with the same when they do art. I was hoping AI images might be a break-through for me making textbooks but I've yet to get even one usable image.

Unknown occupation, financial dispute with people who carry knives. Hard not to make assumptions here.

AI images are appalling, I have tried again and again to get a usable image but they just can't do eyes at all.

Glad this is finally out in the public. I often think the Japanese see this type of scandal abroad - Jackson, Saville etc - and think "would never happen in Japan".

Could this be the beginning of an operation Yew Tree?

@proxy

You can't pay people to have kids, it hasn't worked anywhere in the world.

Not sure that's true - the UK has a problem with people having kids just to claim the benefits.

I'm not suggesting a cash-for-kids program, I'm saying make the average Joe's income/stability better and watch the population take care of itself.

(You'd also be surprised what I would do for cash)

People who are well-off have children. Make people better off and watch as the population explodes. People don't think "I'd like to have a child but diapers are so expensive these days." Or "If only they gave me two weeks off when my child was born, then I'd definitely have a kid".

How about "My economic situation is barely enough to see me through to the end of the month, what would I want with having a kid around?".

Give me lower taxes and a higher salary, I'd happily have another couple.

@ geoff gillespie, elementary school is from 6 to 12

Seems to me the driver did exactly the right thing. What would confronting her have achieved? I doubt she would have just said "Oh, okay, here's your money". I suspect, he probably asked for her ID when she refused to pay and just reported her to the police.

I speak from experience: I once got so drunk I took a taxi home, didn't have enough cash to pay so they asked for my ID, forgot I'd taken a taxi home the next day, got a phone call at work a few days later. Needless to say, I paid immediately.

If it helps them bring the price down, I'm all for it.

(Also good to know I'm the "authority's designated weight for people 13 and over". Shame I'm so damn short).

Were they triplets? Did they all die at the same time?

Condoms should be free for the over 85s.

If I were to commit a crime using perfect Japanese, they would never suspect me.

Fighting over an umbrella? Sounds like an open-and-shut case to me.

Why did it take the BBC to uncover this mess?

Japan ranks 68 on the world freedom of press index:

the weight of traditions, economic interests, political pressure, and gender inequalities prevent journalists from fully exercising their role of holding the government to account.

(Or any company involved with Japan inc.)

Johnny's should be shut down - I don't care how big it is - but the wheels will keep turning spitting out tragedies as by-products in the name of big business.