Frankus23 comments

@Reckless:

WHO says you don't need to wear mask if you are not sick so you don't need to if you don't feel like.

I will not forgive the staff for their gross negligence and incompetence. You are paid to work well and not to commit blunders that have egregious consequences for the health of the entire citizenry. As the saying goes,some mistakes are expensive. This case is a classical example of a pricey mistake that no apology can suffice irrespective of the position of the person rendering it. Their apology is unacceptable. They need to be fired as soon as possible or better still prosecuted and jailed for willfully endangering human life.

ALT job was a life-saving opportunity for me a few years ago when I was struggling to break through in Japan. I am forever grateful. In this trying times, my thoughts are with those who may be affected by the current situation and I am not referring to only ALT's but people who work in other sectors that have been hardly hit like the tourism and aviation sectors. No job is safe in this world. Let's just understand that and let's allow people to make choices freely without the fear of being judged.

Mental health is real and none of us regardless of your social status is immune. Let's take our mental health seriously. RIP Noriyo-san

There is no smoke without fire as the old adage goes. We shall soon know whether the report by FT is true or not. Good luck to Nissan.

Is this supposed to be good news for Japan or bad news for Ghosn. Ghosn clearly understood the risks involved in escaping and clearly knows he may well spend his time in Lebanon. After all, rich men can live anywhere and still enjoy luxury. The only thing he will miss is meeting his business associates but again that can be solved by them travelling to Lebanon which Lebanon as a country will welcome because it inures to their benefit. The country may be looking up to him to use his network to bring in investments. The internet can also ease his communications with his associates. He has nothing to loose really except that fugitive tag on him which he must do everything to clear.

Over to Japan to cooperate if they have watertight evidence against him. When the evidence is solid, you can win your case anywhere in this world. I hope finality is brought to bear on this issue as quickly as possible.

Kazuaki Shimazaki:

I am not a lawyer and I will not pretend to have any knowledge in legal jurisprudence. What I know is that lawyers can criticize the legal system. It is done all over the world,except if that country does not practice democracy. How are you supposed to improve on your legal system if dissent or criticism is not allowed? Even judgement by the supreme court can be criticized. What cannot be done is to bring the whole legal system into disrepute. If the lawyer you refer to has said anything derogatory,that is a different matter but if he has impugned the integrity of anyone without incontrovertible evidence ,that person so affected has the right to sue. When I read his statement, I did not find anything close to what you claim he did. He criticized the system and not an individual or did not purport to malign anyone.

Your assertion that he showed sympathy towards his client is tantamount to him being complicit lacks merit with all due respect. He represents a client and works for his interest. Did you expect him to be sympathetic to the prosecutors? He started his article by criticizing his client and expressing his regret but continued by saying he understood why he did so. Then he took on the system. Lawyers have always been complaining about the system and these lawyers by Ghosn as I have followed have been at the forefront of this crusade. How then can you conclude that they are aided and abetted a crime? You who has rushed to reach this conclusion is the one liable for a suit here if they are reading. Becareful.

He wrote an article and it must be treated as such. Your conclusions lack basis and so your issues are dismissed and struck out. Court rise.

Folks, the prosecutors were turned away by the lawyers and refused entry into the office citing Article 105 of the Criminal Procedure code. What next for prosecutors? This is getting interesting and messy at the same time.Like I said, Nissan back off from this. The company has everything to lose in this saga. Ghosn is 65 and has nothing to loose except his jet flying life. He would continue to live in luxury in Lebanon but your share price is falling. Get away from this unending negative press.

Ordinarily,I wouldn't comment on this but I have to this time. My simple advice to Nissan is that they should focus on business to create value for their shareholders instead of spending time on Ghosn. If they fail to do what I am imploring them to ,then they should be ready to go through a painful restructuring exercise that may lead to several job losses worse than when Ghosn took over. Nissan is too big to fail but if there is no vision, no leader ready to do what is needful but rather involve themselves in squabbles then all stakeholders would be negatively affected. If I were a shareholder, I would be upset with what is going on. I will sell all my shares in the company and invest in other companies. Ghosn is an individual and he is gone. Pick up the pieces and get to the boardroom and plan how to save Nissan. How a state and a global firm in concert fight one man is intriguing. It's repugnant and I thought the big men at the helm of affairs will think straight. You are wasting too much precious time and resources on one man who may not return to Japan again. What if Ghosn dies today, are they going to pursue his ghost? Come on Nissan, your share prices are going down everyday.You should be concerned about that instead of Ghosn who is gone.

My fellow foreigners will complain about everything. When the information is translated in easy Japanese for us, those of us good at Japanese get angry that NHK is looking down on our Japanese ability. When it is not translated, those of us who lack Japanese skills complain. It is high time we foreigners understand that we are in Japan; a foreign country and so the Japanese have no obligation to pander to our whims. Let's appreciate the little they do in terms of language support whilst also making frantic efforts to be good at Japanese. After all, when a Japanese visits another country, they do not expect, rightly so, that things would be translated into Japanese for them. They accept that they are in a foreign land and just play by the rules. When you go to Rome do what the Romans do. Many Japanese have died in this disaster. Are we saying they do not understand Japanese? When you see an alert, for your own safety examine your environment. If you feel unsafe,rush to the nearest evacuation center. You don't necessarily need to understand every word to know that the alert message is referring to something that needs to be taken serious.

You may not appreciate my argument about borrowing to consume. At least, I know of a country that borrows even to run its own elections. That is directly borrowing to consume. You may call the investments in infrastructure wasteful investment but the point I am making is that that investment is feasible. Contrast that to a country that is badly in need of infrastructure, yet takes the money but you cannot see the infrastructure. At best you see half-built infrastructure that is left to rot. It may not make sense to you but if you introduce the element of corruption and kickbacks resulting in over bloated contracts, you would begin to appreciate the point I am making.

Japan can repay its debt if it reduces further investments in infrastructure which you think is wasteful. In the case of many African states, this is not option. There is another important point on this but it is not popular so I will hold on to that argument.

The argument about domestic borrowing is simple. When your debts are domestic held debts, you are able to wean yourself from external shocks. You can make economic decisions that favor you . Once majority of your debts are in foreign hands, you are at the mercy of external investors.

Of course, he is warning them against China. I speak as an African. The Chinese cannot be trusted. They are just taking advantage of the bad leaders on the continent and ripping them off. They know most of the leaders are corrupt and unaccountable to their people, so China promised not to interfere in their internal affairs. This way they got them. Also, China is getting all the advantages on the blindside of these greedy bastards.

1, They pretend they are giving huge loans at competitive rates but the sheer size of those loans make it impossible for them to pay back.

2, Since they know it is practically impossible for them to repay, they insert a clause that says failure to pay by this period, you would forfeit this resource. Many African countries are trapped in this but cannot get out because they badly need the money.

3, The Chinese government is giving these loans but at the same time creating a job market for Chinese citizens on the African continent. The Chinese population is increasing very fast. Any project backed by a Chinese loan must be executed by a Chinese contractor and you would usually find that about 60% of the staff working on a particular project would be Chinese.

4, Most of the projects are executed poorly at exorbitant costs

So all what Abe is telling them is becareful. Think about the next generation and not only themselves and their immediate families,

Japan may have a huge public debt but they have invested the monies in projects that are feasible , verifiable and in the long run financially viable. The opposite is the case for African countries. Most of the debts have gone into consumption and so there is a huge mismatch between what is on paper as debt and what actually pertains on the ground. Whereas Japan can repay their debts, and by the way, a chunk of the debt is owned domestically, a chunk of Africa's debt is owned externally and there is no hope that they can repay. May countries in Africa just came out of HIPC and many of them have taken loans sometimes exceeding the dreaded 60% levels. In addition, the projects that have been embarked on using these loans have been executed poorly because of corruption.

So what Abe is simply saying is that African governments must watch out otherwise the future looks bleak for the next generation who have the responsibility to repay all these loans but would have no resources to depend on or even enjoy the so-called projects that these loans have been procured for.

@Aly Rustom. Vodafone was here sometime ago but could not compete. Infact, they failed to understand the market and so they eventually sold it to Softbank.

For those of you arguing that going to the UN will worsen his case, just remember that the lawyers are not stupid. They are more experienced than we here parading as street lawyers. International diplomacy works and any action meant to exact pressure on any government does work effectively. No government fears its people but fears outsiders. If it is part of their strategy to get him out, so be it as long as they are not doing anything illegal. I can understand that people will argue that they are putting Japan in a bad spotlight but to whose expense. Rationality does not count when you are pushed to the wall. The prosecutors are doing their thing ,let the defendants do their thing. He cannot be suffering and still be thinking about protecting his captors.

Finally gets bail.

It is very refreshing to hear that the job market is improving for job seekers. In my personal view, I prefer that there are more opportunities for workers to choose who to work for than less opportunities. More options means employers have to work hard to attract and maintain their staff. This means they have to do the right things like paying well, treating workers as assets and not as dispensable tools. It is all good for me.

There my lovely Bureaucrats go again. I can tell you with certainty that foreigners in Japan are one of the most law abiding in the world. The laws are stringent enough to scare foreigners from doing bad things. Nonetheless, there are clear cases of foreigners not playing by the rules. Those foreigners must be investigated and punished as deterrent to others. Having said that I think, this action by the ministry is much ado about nothing. The results of the survey has failed to validate their thinking especially about foreigners. You have about 125,000,000 million Japanese and yet you want to target about 2,000,000 foreigners. The result of their painstaking and expensive survey showed nothing against foreigners. The question then is ,is this not the typically stereotypical mindset of those in authority to find fault with foreigners at all cost for any rot in the system? They should look within and they will find the answers.

All the best