DropPhone comments

Hm...not really offensive.

I'm just happy they didn't put the actor in a fat suit, baseball cap, delivering his closing lines with a mouth full of McDonald's french fries... ^_^

I believe the YouTube link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lgk5ui-nHTk

I'm confused...doesn't Nagaya-san have diplomatic immunity? If so, he should have never been arrested, let alone dragged into court. Did the Japanese Consulate in SFO strip him of diplomatic status?

If he were on the fast track from a "good" family, then he should have been immediately whisked out of the country on diplomatic immunity, and then nothing would have surfaced in the press over this.

Sounds like Nagaya-san must have really pissed off some of his co-workers.

At the very least, the Japanese should build some sort of structure (heliport?), and maybe even build a post office on the islands. That way they will have a better argument for ownership of the islands through greater affirmative acts of sovereignty on and around the disputed area.

Then, when China or Taiwan or whomever takes an official dispute to the ICJ, the Japanese will have better legal standing.

This is similar to what the Chinese have already done in the South China Sea, and what Korea has done with the Liancourt Rocks.

As the old expression goes, "Posession is 9/10ths of the Law." Make it yours, live on it, and it's yours. If you fall back on an ancient paper trail, the folks who are living on the land will claim you abandoned it, and they own it under homesteading rights...

(Oh, I wish I were an international lawyer...this is a wonderfully juicy debate!)

I agree that the rocks/islands themselves aren't worth much. However, it's the natural resources around the islands that make them worth, at the very least, making a diplomatic play for ownership. Allegedly there are natural gas deposits around the Senkakus. Also, as traditional fishing grounds get over-fished by rapacious Chinese (and other) nations, the fisheries around the Senkakus and Takeshima (a.k.a. Liancourt Rocks) will become increasingly important over the next few decades.

So, I'm pretty sure it's in Japan's interest to keep their claims for those natural resources. Food and Energy are always good things for a nation to control... ^_^

Just out of curiosity, what are the structures on the island that show up on google maps? They look fairly recent.... http://goo.gl/maps/cTI62