HaraldBloodaxe comments

Babs ClarkAPR. 22, 2015 - 09:22AM JST what about the way the Japanese treated/mistreated thousands of Prisoners of WAR

Don't expect anyone to admit any of that. Angelina Jolie can't even get her film released here because it dares to acknowledge that atrocities took place in japanese POW camps. That doesn't fit in with the Abe narrative, so the film isn't permitted to be seen here.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1809398/releaseinfo?ref_=tt_ov_inf+

What an odious little man.

Well, if Pixar has to apologise to japan for stealing the concept from them, then whoever wrote Poison Berry in my Brain needs to apologise to the Beano for ripping off The Numskulls, which I used to love reading 40 years ago.

This constant drive to make Japan out to be some kind of wronged innocent, wallowing in victimhood really does get very dreary very quickly.

http://usvsth3m.com/post/is-that-new-pixar-movie-just-ripping-off-a-comic-strip-from-the-beano

Just stop cutting all the trees down to buggeration every year. Let them grow and offer shade.

Or would that be not wasting money in the right direction?

This canard that no Japanese would ever sully his mouth with imported rice needs to be dispensed with.

Japan is not self-sufficient in terms of rice production. Vast quantities of japonica strain rice are imported from Australia to make up the difference between what a 127 million-strong population requires and what antiquated, piecemeal domestic practices, propped up for generations by LDP largesse can produce.

If you are eating rice in Japan, you are eating Australian rice. That's a fact.

The only difference between what's happening now and what the TPP would require is merely a matter of labelling.

If the knee-jerk apologia that "We Japanese would never buy foreigner rice because Japanese rice is very unique and delicious" has any validity, let's see it proved. Give people an option. You never know, a nice bit of long grain for a biryani or a paella might go down well as a refreshing change.

But don't hold your breath for this government to venture towards progress. You will eat the officially-sanctioned menu, and shriek that it's delicious - nay, the best food in the world:

The Foreign Ministry’s budget for propagating its official views on history and territorial disputes was raised to 52 billion yen ($438 million) this year from 2 billion yen last year to “correct understanding by the international society,

Is anybody else interested in seeing an itemised account of how this money gets spent? Because when I signed up to pay 3% more tax on everything I buy, it was on the understanding that it was necessary to save the country from fiscal ruin.

I certainly didn't sign up to putting my hand in my pocket to finance yet another boondoggle for Abe's right-wing, revisionist, history-denying buddies. First the 900 billion thrown at Abe's concrete chums for a tsunami wall, and now this? I want my money back.

I want to see how anyone can spend 52 billion yen on propaganda nobody wants to read. Or is it just going into a bank account somewhere?

What a surprise. A year after this gravy train got started, the expert panel of sixty-something (and above) time-served amakudaris have done nothing but meetingu, hot air and filling in expense claims.

There is no doubt about this issue. The Olympics will be detrimental to the environment, yet another massive boost to the concrete industry, and utterly unsustainable. Our grandchildren will still be paying for it.

"what I've seen so far are very general statements". We must make sincere effort. Snouts in the trough.

For the first time in my twenty years here, I suddenly and wholeheartedly support the pixelisation of mucky movies.

Prices of items such as butter... rose from between 4% to 13%.

What, we can buy butter again?

When I was shopping at weekend, all customers were rationed to one 100g pack per family, and it was much more than 13% more than it used to cost before our Great Leader bestowed his fiscal wisdom upon us.

Smith - quite so. Still I hope he's soon feeling well enough to tell some more Japanese Olympians that they're not good enough for their responsibilities, like he did to poor Mao Asada at Sochi.

I'm actually quite angry that this buffoon, who was an international joke as PM, still has his snout so deep in the trough of public revenue.

Or, more accurately, "Mori to continue being very generously paid from the public purse for doing next to nothing, despite being even more unfit for the position than he was before".

I can think of few things less funny than clowns.

Sadly the figure in the foreground would not look out of place on a J-TV "variety" show, with a pack of mediocrities clapping and falling around shrieking in the background.

This has been "impossible" for the twenty years I've lived here. Suddenly, now there's a trough of Olympics money to get their snouts in, politicos have decided it's not impossible after all, and should be completed within four years.

Hmm, I wonder if this sense of urgency might lead to a higher-than-average price being paid to a contractor with a lot of concrete to slosh about?

This shamelessness of this is sickening.

Wait a minute - Cruz was born in Canada. I thought not being born outside the US was kind of a big thing for Tea Partiers?

Or that's just important when the President's dusky?

The chap in the middle photograph doesn't look particularly Japanese.

To further japan's green credentials, I'm delighted to see the chap above is recycling MC Hammer's trousers.

I really hope Mrs Obama gets to see the magnificent He-gassen scroll when she's looking at cultural artifacts. It's my favourite example of the magnificent Edo culture.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Hegassen_scroll.jpg

I hope the First Lady gets to see the Ho-Gassen scroll. It's a magnificent 200-year old artifact, showing the rich sophistication of Japanese culture.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Hegassen_scroll.jpg

Two Girls One Cup. Utterly terrifying.

I'd like it if someone were to release it here. After all the brouhaha, I want to make my own mind up about the picture. But someone's decided it's not suitable to be shown in japan. Thanks Sony.

I'd like to see crisps that taste of something other than salt, nori (salty seaweed) or consomme (wet salt), for those of us who aren't prepared to fork out 400 yen for something with a bit of taste to it.

A good variety of Walkers or McCoys, reasonably priced, would go down a treat.

Blofeld: "This is the penalty for failure, Mr Bond"

...

Nothing happens.

The facts: Monday’s revision reflects downward inventory adjustments, lower private demand and flat-lining corporate and residential investment. It also showed a slight drop in incomes.The revision puts inflation-adjusted growth for the year flat at exactly 0.0%,

The Government mouthpiece: “The economy is growing. Wages are growing. There is a rosy future for the Japanese economy,”

Another triumph for the Dear Leader's revolutionary economic policy.

This might not be a bad idea, thinking about it. Some of my students have been ideal MI6 material. They're very adept at not giving away any information.

"Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr Kondo, I expect you to try"

And how much of the donations raised will be spent on the people who need is, and how much will be misspent like half of the original donations were?

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-20150364

This constant infantilisation is truly depressing. And the worst thing is they think this babyish immaturity is causing the rest of the world to laugh with Japan, when actually they are laughing at Japan.

Why won't people grow up?

Can you imagine the pong?

Kickboard - when companies promote their products, they do it with their own money. This little junket is coming out of your pocket and mine.

And like borscht so wisely points out above, this campaign will be carried out in Japanese restaurants worldwide, wherein we can assume the diners have already decided to eat Japanese food. The whole thing is a navel-gazing, pointless waste of tax revenue which would be far better spent on the Tohoku recovery.

I absolutely agree. If Japanese food is so great, why do we keep having to fork out on expensive campaigns to get people to eat it? It really is quite pathetic, like a plain girl asking you over and over again if you think she's pretty.

It's not mainly a language film, although that will serve as an absolution for those acts who don't want to face up to the essential truth that most other countries are not interested in infantile, squeaky, cutesy schtick.