ephesus comments

Why don't the asian countries just handle their own problems? Why do American tax payers have to pay to mediate all these squabbles on the other side of the world?

in accepting his recent Nobel Prize you could say he became World President.

What does that even mean? He's not the world president, he's the USA's president and he should have American welfare as his primary goal. Do Japanese make decisions based on the detrimental effects of their actions to the American public? Of course not, so why would you expect Obama to do it? World President. I would laugh at the absurdity, but unfortunately this is what the USA has become. Everybody else's "parent" and they think America owes them something. Why does everybody think it's okay to leech? People should understand that war is horror, and if you start a fight you shouldn't complain about getting beaten "too badly." 50 million people died in WW2. 2 million Japanese died. Stop crying and get over it. The American occupation was the greatest thing to happen to Japan since the meiji restoration. They wouldn't be where they are now (kind of like Korea). The previous thing to force japan to modernize was in 1854 with Perry, and he was an American, too.

//obviously a little facetious near the end; not really, though. People need to stop worrying about what America is or isn't symbolically doing and get to work themselves.

The real question is "how is this a bad thing for men?" The article seems to assume men would be bothered by this. Marriage is an antiquated religious construct. Men don't gain anything by marriage as opposed to having several girls to suffice the various needs they may have for companionship. I say, dispose all you want, ladies.

To quote East Bound & Down: “I play real sports…not trying to be the best at exercising.”

haha j/k Congrats! 2 hours and 12 minutes is fast as hell.

I was at Pitchfork festival and Public Enemy definitely did not perform. I would have gone to it.

This is probably the best article i've ever read on japantoday. And I was just coming to check if there was an article about the two Japanese smuggling 1.35 billion USD in Italy. A pleasant surprise.

Your post is rather goofy! Few elected officials can afford to wait around for "spring." Besides, as T.S. Eliot wrote, "April is the cruelest month."

Kind of off topic, but actually the reason T.S. Eliot said April was the cruelest month was because of the promise of life, with the fresh memory of death (winter) also on the mind. He doesn't mean that April or Spring are in themselves bad, but rather too good to be so closely juxtaposed to winter. You're forgetting the rest of the line about breeding lilacs, mixing memory and desire, and stirring dull roots. ;-)

Japan, by contrast, has a government that is much more pro-active in pursuing things like industrial policy which emanate within the bureaucracy.

I think you mean that Japanese auto makers happen to be the mighty in Japan, and as such have orchestrated low interest rates and undervalued yen to insure high exports and the carry trade using yen. Or not.