Derek Grebe comments

Gin & Tonic, and salted watermelon.

This is humiliating. The billionaire Lutnick won't even make time in his day to meet the man he's supposed to be negotiating with.

I really hope against hope that Japan will show some spine and tell Trump and his lackeys to sod off. There are plenty of other places to do business, most of whom are growing weary of the corrupt kleptocratic Trump plunder club.

This is what I worry about most if the Nankai Trough kicks off.

Yes, there will be immediate and devastating loss of life. But a week later there will be 30 million people in the Tokyo metropolis and no usable sewage system.

The disease resulting from that issue will be catastrophic.

Many major train stations still don't even have soap in the restrooms, five years after pandemic required us to wash our hands regularly.

Japan is totally unprepared for this.

My local government decided to spend my taxes painting a 20-cm green line down one side of the road, calling it a cycle lane, then put bollards along it, making it too narrow to drive a bike along.

Thus cyclists have no choice but to ride that much further into the path of traffic on an already narrow road.

Now it's a 6,000 yen fine for riding on the pavement?

When they start busting the obatarians who go ploughing through pedestrians with a constant ding ding of the bell, I'll start worrying about this.

Also "listening to music" gets a 5k fine? So if I'm listening to a podcast and get smashed into by some twosser with his stereo pumping music, I assume I'm in the clear.

Remove consumption tax on necessities - food, sanitary products, children's clothes and shoes, etc.

Increase it on luxuries: Tobacco, alcohol, fashion goods.

Everyone has the right to eat and clothe their children. P!ssing money away on fripperies is an option.

Also - TAX THE DAMN CORPORATIONS! Why am I paying more tax than the whole of Starbucks?

Here's an idea, LDP - if you're looking for revenue, why not take a peek at the construction guys, the property cabal, all the people with ostentatious wealth, instead of making it more difficult for your Joe Sato to keep his baby's bum clean?

Matthew 25:35-37

‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

Its difficult to think of a philosophy more antithetical to the word of Christ than the MAGA demonization of the poor, the needy and the hungry.

$2.5 TRILLION wiped off the stock market yesterday.

Now can you Magtards see how your painted buffoon bankrupted casinos?

I’m with Bertie above. Let the US pay for the occupation.

Unfortunately, that would require some spine from the LDP, who have done very well out of this deal over the years, so won’t happen.

In the meantime, simply don’t buy anything American. If we don’t buy it, we don’t pay the tariffs.

Interesting. I remember similar rosy predictions about how the Olympics would make the economy stronger and we’d all be better off.

I also remember the same bolleaux being spouted about the 2002 FIFA World Cup.

In reality, it’s bonanza time for the concrete boys, Dentsu, and the LDP old guard who are in their pockets.

The rest of us just pay for these boondoggle projects for decades.

‘Yesterday’s enemy has become today’s friend’

Ain't that the truth? I'm old enough to remember when the USA stood up against communist dictators.

And vice-versa: Trump can't get enough of that Putin/ Kim D***, while he antagonises long-time friends and allies.

I would be very interested to learn the value of the Golden Parachute Hieda will receive for ceremonially resigning in disgrace.

I suspect it would be enough to take care of several generations of people who didn’t pipe crap into the viewing public’s homes for sixty years.

An 87-year old pulling all the strings at a Japanese company, making sure nothing ever changes and sexual harassment goes unpunished?

Im shocked, shocked, I say.

I’d never cheat on my wife.

Because call me old-fashioned, but I happen to love…my house.

Bob Monkhouse.

Dango bongToday  10:09 am JST

you could import....

They do. A huge quantity of Japonica strain rice is bought from Australia, mixed in silos at the port of entry, then sold as 100% Japanese rice, at Japanese prices.

Japanese people eat imported rice every day. They just don't know it.

I will never, as long as I live, understand this fetish.

On the same phone you used to commit the crime for which you got busted, you have more hours of wankfodder than you could use, Scot-free in a thousand lifetimes.

what is wrong with you? Have a good admiration spectacle at a 3-d woman, put her in the memory bank and let her go on with her day.

Don’t let all the world know you’re a deviant.

A pound to a penny says these ceremonial resignations are followed up by placing Minato and Kano in other roles at Fuji at the same salary.

It’s all a big kabuki. Ceremony over action.

I do hope these firms operate with a stronger ethical approach than my former company which hired western staff on one-year contracts for up to twenty years, then having led us to believe that we were valued members of the team, fired us all in March 2018, one day before Abe’s revised labor law would have granted us the same permanent contracts which Japanese staff enjoyed from Day One of setting foot in the building.

Eighteen years I gave them. And they threw us all out on the scrapheap rather than treat us equally.

@Japan GlimpsedDec. 31, 2024  09:46 pm JST

I've never seen the point of mochi. It tastes of nothing, has no nutritional value, ruins a decent soup

You've never had proper mochi. Clearly.

The Japanese lady I've been married to for the last 25 years would beg to differ.

I've never seen the point of mochi. It tastes of nothing, has no nutritional value, ruins a decent soup and kills grannies every year.

As Kohaku Uta Gassen settles over my living room like a four-day-brewed cabbage fart, I retire to the other room with a bottle of something warming and a couple of good films.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the ease with which the Japanese TV-viewing public can be rendered docile.

So this is going to start trickling down to the rest of us pretty quickly, right?

the way they promised us it would 45 years ago?

Because if it doesn’t - why, it would almost be like 99% of us have been harvested.

if so, could anyone give me a good justification not to tax the pips out of these robber barons?

Here's an idea:

How about UNESCO refuses to consider any of Japan's constant needy requests to be rewarded for Unique Cultural Heritage until Japan owns up to the atrocities it committed?

You want your bauble? Admit what you did.

30 years of blundering failure, economic ruin and acres of publicly-known corruption, and this bloated clown is the best the LDP can do to take the reins of a once-great nation?

When, in the name of all that’s gracious, will the people of Japan decide enough is enough and vote these venal buffoons out?

Since they all come down on Christmas Day to make way for the traditional New Year decorations, might as well let the Christmas sparkles bring a bit of delight into the eyes of the Children.

I never understood why the Japanese make such a fuss about an event they don’t celebrate (beyond eating KFC), but New Year decorations get only a week or so.

0.1 gram?

please. That’s an extremely paltry amount for one so wealthy.

I’d move the decimal point two places to the right if there’s any validity to this case.

Kurisupisu: on Sundays?

Now do three drivers going through red lights before the stop signal counts.

Just look at the raw animal charisma oozing from every pore of that dynamic bunch.

Oh my…

And it looks like the only way to cling to power is to reinstate the very few apparatchiks who were even too flagrantly corrupt for the LDP. So the message is “help yourself to every yen you can bilk out of people and even if we put you on the naughty step for a while, we’ll take good care of you after a short period of penance”.

 I want them to make sure they follow the rules."

The new rules brought in by joyless functionaries who view the idea of young people being young people and enjoying themselves.

God forbid young people forget their duty to be as miserable as their elders.

This swill is undrinkable for anyone with a discerning palate.

pure Emperors New Clothes.

The only wine less palatable is that Bon Marche which isn’t even fit to put into a stew.