Glen McAlevey comments

Well, that usual Japanese Guidance worked out well, like the woman who consulted the police before being murdered

*casually ignores the millions of times guidance was given that helped avoid escalation to a greater crime

What about the 83.5% of workers in Japan who are not part of unions?

Join one!

So many downvotes for the above comments that are correct.

The only legitimate reason a company cannot raise wages to attract staff is if they are in some kind of bad fixed price deal as a supplier/subcontractor to another firm and even that is simply bad foresight and lack of negotiating ability.

At least in US they don't accept bow and closed door settlement unlike in Japan,

Wait till you hear about Michael Jackson

This is the problem with Japan: The apology is not good enough. What are doing to compensate the affected customers? What are you doing to make sure this doesn't happen again? There is never any detail, just empty apologies and bowing.

Utter nonsense!

The bank is covering it and the procedure is already changing.

Already a bounced that the spare keys will be kept at head office not the branch now.

Actually, you know what, I get where the rulemakers are coming from in a sense.

Rules in old Japan were more like guidelines. Unpoliced, but a great avenue to be able to come down on actual serious offenders like a tonne of bricks.

Make it illegal. Still have most people do it. When someone fu@#s up, punish them to the extreme.

It actually works as long as most people realise the law is thte guideline but it has buffers for reasonable excuses.

Recently (last 20 years) it seems to me the inflexible type is growing.

Look at speed limits. 80 zone. 100 ok. 110 grey 120 no good. Everyone knows this. And you get to ping the guy/gal/thing doing 120 for 40kmh over the limit. Set it at 110 and you can only give 120kph him/her/it a slap on the wrist, or end up like Australia with ridiculous fines for minor infringements.

I fully agree with this but on the other hand I'm torn as Abe's assassin is getting EXACTLY what he wanted.

Might want to reword that quiz. Saitama is NOT expected to be the first. They literally just rejected it.

You know what, when my wife first suggested leaving our 1 month old at home while she dropped the 2 year old off at childcare I was a bit surprised.

Logically it's a 10 minute round trip and she would be exposed to multitudes more danger being carried around crossing the main road etc.

We've decided it's safest she stays in her cot alseep. Rulemakers and ignorant do gooders can piss off. Thanks.

Japanese homes have been a depreciating asset (in most instances) for 30 years since the bubble burst...

But Japan has had no inflation in that time either.

Knock knock. It's inflation time.

The 30 years without a payrise or the price of beer changing is over.

The yen is cheap.

I'm no economist but it's hard to see prices not rising under these circumstances, except in the rural areas suffering from the population decline.

There are going to be some real ghost towns out there.

Seems most commenters are either not reading or not comprehending the article.

'tripled' is Vs a year ago, ie before import increases really hit and before tourism recovered.

It's down month on month.

Basically every metric is heading for the worse.

Great if you're a tourist though.

The obvious solution is to raise wages. Corporations are raking in the foreign and tourism sales and the workers are being left to suffer the increasing costs of imported goods and the flow ons from that. Domestically we're on a terrifying trajectory.

It's pretty telling when travellers from southeast Asia are coming in to stock up on cheap goods. They're cheap because of the exchange rate and more concerningly the cheap labor.

Masks have their place but mandates do not. Alienating the people you are trying to convince is dumb.

Japan doesn't even recommend wearing them outside when social distancing can be maintained, yet 99% of people do anyway. And several deaths from heat exhaustion due to it last summer too.

I dont understand why there is any talk of a necessity to mandate it, other than a bunch of virtue signalling politicians trying to score points "because that's what they do in the West and it was popular there".