Derek Grebe comments

Fun police are knocking on my window.

I have never known any local government to spend so much time, effort, and taxpayer money on such a crusade against people trying to have a good time on a day of celebration.

When did the Taliban take over Shibuya?

Does anyone seriously believe that the LDP has any genuine intention of turning off this bottomless spring of free money?

If so, would you be interested in sole ownership of the Sky Tree? I can give you a good deal.

Redline = decline

Thanks autocorrect. You cnut.

Phenomenal.

Just what Japan needs: a more divided opposition with even less chance of having the slightest effect on the monolithic monopoly of the LDP.

No matter how disastrous the policies of the LDP hegemony are, how badly they fail, how much corruption and incompetence is exposed for all to see (and respond to with a “shoganai, ne?”), this will remain a de facto one-party state until long after a unified opposition party can offer genuine solutions and, what’s the word? Opposition.

Until then just watch your standards redline and your savings get hoovered up by porkbarrel under-the-table deals (q.v. Osaka Expo).

This joint is Edo with smartphones.

Kuroki was quoted by police as saying he couldn’t see the woman walking behind his vehicle because of other cars parked beside him.

No rear-view mirrors in your car, Kuroki?

Or were you engrossed in your dashboard telly?

Bad driving. Dead child. Broken family.

Send this jiji to the Big House.

The number of hours I used to spend at bonenkais, biting my tongue and trying to avoid telling my idiot bosses what we all thought of them while the witless arafos sat clutching a warm glass of white wine until they could leave the party and get back to their cats.

Id much rather sleep than spend another moment in that purgatory.

Not a single worker I know is doing better now than they were in 1995 when I arrived here.

I swear to god, if it weren’t for the shoganai mindset inculcated into young minds, with the concomitant “gambarimasho” (in other words, “we are powerless, so let’s just put up with it), this country would be awash in revolutionary zeal.

But no, we’re just going to be “thank you sir, may I have another “ and voting LDP next election.

Death spiral.

Asking for a friend:

Is the same deal on for Cialis?

TEPCO says TEPCO did something right.

Stop the press.

Anyone else remember when TEPCO announced that there wasn’t a meltdown at all, and the explosion we had just seen on tv was simply steam escaping?

Don’t tell me: he confused the accelerator with the brake?

Will Oppenheimer be available to stream in Japan, and if so, on which provider?

As far as I know it didn’t get a cinematic release here and I am eager to view one of the biggest films of 2023.

A lot of people don’t like being told what they can and cannot watch.

There have been fewer less enjoyable "holidays" I have ever taken than having to sit through a lecture of times at which I may do basic things such as eat an unvarying menu of prescribed oishii meals at a time dictated by the Ryokan owner, and having the entire weekend devoted to lying on the floor ("relaxing", I was informed) with NHK the only source of entertainment, alternated with sitting in the bollock-water of a dozen octogenarians.

I took a stroll out to look at the environs I'd paid to visit and was chastised because maybe the owner thinks his hotel isn't good enough and I should consider other people.

Ryokans are fine if you enjoy being told what to do, what to eat and when and where to do it.

Not my idea of a holiday.

Why is this buffoon ever allowed out in public?

He was a humiliation to Japan in his failed 2008 stint as PM, and has done nothing to reprieve his reputation since.

Stupid comment after stupid comment, sneered out of the corner of his mouth with the confidence that only immense inherited Wealth can bring.

This geriatric buffoon is a blot on the face of Japanese society.

Retire, you daft s0d.

None of this matters.

Kishida will be well taken care of for the rest of his days, and whichever nonentity takes over from him will be elected in a landslide.

This is a one-party state without the purges.

It doesn’t matter when the election is.

The LDP will be re-elected and continue their 30+ years of failure.

The voters will say shoganai and bite down on another sh!te sandwich which will last until the next election at which point they will vote for another sh!te sandwich.

Nothing is going to change here. The electorate just keeps asking for sandwiches.

Industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura and Hanako Jimi, minister for the World Expo 2025, told a press conference Thursday that inflated expenses ... are inevitable ... given soaring material and labor costs.

I'm not sure I know anyone outside the LDP/concrete/yak cartel whose labor cost has soared for quite a while.

Perhaps the cost of manufacturing brown envelopes has increased without my noticing it.

nearly double the organizer's initial estimate.

Well gee, ain't that a big surprise?

Strange isn't it, that there's never any money to invest in daycare, or boosting pensions for people who paid this money in for fifty years, but the concrete boys always get a nice slice of the one-month white-elephant action?

This didn’t work when Aso did it.

It didn’t work when Abe did it.

it won’t work when Kishida does it.

It doesn’t work.

I’m surprised this number isn’t higher.

The number of times I’ve been told by Japanese coworkers to go to the hospital when I know full well that I only have a cold is baffling.

Similarly, these same people fight tooth and nail against every suggestion to turn the office aircon to below 28°C Summer, Winter, Autumn and Spring, because anything less than 28°C is cold, and being cold causes “catch a cold” to spontaneously erupt.

What was the name of the stimulant?

I’m going to guess it was meth, but why not inform the public?

Nothing to see here folks. Just move along and keep paying your ever-increasing utility bills so the old boys who let this disaster happen never have to lose a single yen out of their pockets.

Let the people party.

I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be 21-year old whose fledgling party days were stolen by Covid.

Were I a younger man, I’d be down there tonight, quaffing and wooing and having a ball, and no oyaji in a pretend police-lite security outfit would stop me.

Young people want to have fun. Old people want to inculcate a mindset of joyless drudgery.

Until Matsuri is banned, or the tens of thousands thronging outside temples on New Year’s Eve waiting to joylessly throw money at a tax-free ritual, I say let young people do what young people do.

Live, laugh and love. And don’t let anyone ever tell you not to.

Someone's getting a nice fat brown envelope in exchange for funneling our tax revenue to this little bit of alchemy.

Having spent nearly 18 years in a Japanese office, I can say that a lot of this sleep deprivation is caused by the culture of fear inculcated by the nonsense belief that completing one’s work on time = leaving early.

This is why “meetings “ in which no agenda is set, no objectives are put forward and no actions are committed to fill much of the time from 9-6.

Once the working day has been micturated away in kabuki performance of busyness, the arafo hordes can begin replying to messages their clients sent during work time.

Then they can arrive home late, safe in the knowledge that their boss saw them still at their desk when he shuffled out (having done nothing of merit all day) at 11pm.

11:05, boss out of the way, hey presto! The work’s all been completed and there’s a stampede for the door.

There’s plenty of time to sleep if you have the guts to prioritize your health over performance art.

I would argue that an organisation so steeped in corruption that even the Tokyo Old Boys' Club are seeing legal repercussions for such blatant bribery (albeit with nothing more than suspended sentences) is not in any position to be lecturing anyone about appropriate conduct.

Nice to see we get downvoted for daring to have an opinion which goes against the organized crime syndicates’ plans to defile a century old tribute to the Meiji Emperor.

I guess I’m doing something right.

It doesn’t make a jot of difference how many signatures go on the petition.

The concrete boys, the yak-controlled construction companies and the LDP cronies they have in their pockets smell cash and nothing will stop this desecration of an historic area of cultural heritage.

It is a national disgrace and and nothing will be done to stop it.

Dear me.

What a ludicrous thing to delay.

why isn’t it an automatic thing that if you diddle kids, you don’t work with kids anymore?

Great work, LDP. You certainly earned your next guaranteed election victory.

In other words, J-inc corruption and incompetence causes a huge disaster, milks it for 12 years, then just pours radiation into the sea, then cry victim when people don’t just bend over and take it.

Climate change is certainly a factor, but let us not forget the unsustainable and catastrophic effects of overfishing.

We are raping the oceans of massive amounts of sealife daily and the day is not far off when entire systems collapse.

Then falls mankind.

It's so woefully avoidable, too. All we need to do is stop eating/harvesting seafood for five years, and abundance would return. But no, the usual suspects would start bleating "this is our culture", so nothing will be done until that culture is irrevocably destroyed.

I'm quite glad I am old and on the way out. The next few generations will not be having an easy ride.