harkins comments

Here in the UK it was seared into the population's minds for all of about 5 days. Now it is little more than last weeks 24 hour news channel disaster movie. The lack of a spectacular nuclear catastrophe 10 times that of Chernobyl and a few fighter jets doing live fire exercises over an African desert has wiped the horrific and on going events in Japan well and truly off the general UK population's minds.

Just realised that I said "I don't get the importance of Hooters". I should stress that I mean the resturant! Also a 'good' dining experience.

I'm not American so perhaps I don't get the importance of Hooters. But the number of articles relating to the opening of one new restaurant seems (wrongly I'm sure) to suggest a vested interest somewhere? I'm sure it's a dining experience all the same.

I've flown Manchester to Narita twice and also to Hong Kong with Finnair (ecconomy) and I think that they are pretty good. Nice journey time breaks, nice airport, very competative prices and nice new aircraft.

However, each time I have flown there have been service cutbacks. Free beer on the short haul went first, then free snacks on the long haul and then the complimentary toothbrush/paste and eye-mask went. Still, I'd fly with them again.

It all sounds pretty far fetched to me but I can't help but agree that it is a bit sad that the new TV mast/tower thingy has been called スカイツリ. I don't think that it would ever cross anyones mind in the UK, US etc to call a significant structure sora no ki. So it does seem to say something about the Japanese mind set that they will do this.

For those parents who think that all other passengers are unreasonable for not enjoying 12 hours of screaming, would you be so tolerant if a person seated next to you was perhaps drunk, getting up for the toilet every 5 minutes or listening to their ipod at full blast for the whole flight (or stinking of BO as I once experienced)?

I appreciate that there is little that the parents can do if a child is upset on a flight but to be so vitriolic against passengers without children is unnecessary. Long haul economy flights are not much fun with or without children.

So, perhaps not subjecting small children to such long and uncomfortable flights, unless absolutely necessary, is the best cause of action?

I don't think that Japan's training camp has helped much. I saw pictures yesterday that showed them playing a practice game in about 3 inches of water.

Their performance against England showed that they do have the potential to escape that group but they'll need to be at their best and have a dose of good fortune. But I can't see anyone other than the Dutch finishing top of the group.

Very tragic. But this site never fails to amaze me - I'm not sure what is more stupid; chancing everything by running across railway tracks or some people believing that this kind of incident is somehow uniquely Japanese.

They really are a pain and it's about time they were clamped down on. But what I can't understand is; how they are there. I wouldn't be allowed to live in Japan due to not having a degree nor a specialised proffesion. So how do they get in? Or can you get bachelor degrees in pestering people in Nigeria and take a TNFL course?

In Japan, what age are elementary children? If they're say about 10 I'd imagine that they might have been woken by a generator running and at that age have taken some persuading that it was normal, nothing to worry about and they should go back to sleep.

My heart goes out to their mother too. Can't imagine coming home from work to discover that scene.

From the outside looking in (ie don’t live in Japan and not a paedo) it seems to me that it might help if the sailor uniform was phased out. As far as I can make out it’s this uniform that seems to add to the appeal of Japanese schoolgirls. Most kids in UK schools now wear trousers and embroidered sweatshirts, regardless of gender. Not particularly smart but certainly unremarkable.

VA2Tokyo - What 'IF' he is innocent? And what IF it was your father being accussed? As much as there are a lot of perverts out there, it strikes me that there are just as many people prepared to make false accusations these days.

Are there any repercussions in Japanese law for falsely making these types of accusations?

I'm supposed to be taking the Toyota factory tour at the end of March. If they are manufacturing again by then and still running the tours it might feel a bit uncomfortable. A bit like touring a hospital or something?

I can’t see a problem with 90cm deep pools. As she was apparently training for a competition to be held on Thursday I assume that she could already swim. And as she’s only 10 years old I guess she isn’t very tall or heavy. If anything, the only concern could be about the level of instruction given for performing shallow entry race dives. But even then, sometimes people make mistakes, which she might have done. If Japan has to stop podium diving for youngsters or stop using shallow pools, they’ll need more than state of the art Speedo swimming suits to be competitive in international competition in the future.

But, I hope she makes a speedy recovery and gets back in the water soon.

Cancelling a train does seem a bit dramatic but by reacting so strongly, I guess it helps make what many people in the west consider ‘trivial’ vandalism remain a serious matter. And by doing that, hopefully Japan won’t find the majority of it’s rail stock covered (inside and out) with the crappy and inane scribbling of some so-called ‘artists’.

And in response to an earlier post saying that Shinkansen stink – I’ve never ridden one that was anything other than clean and fresh. Although putting the smoking carriage in the middle of the five unreserved cars is odd as the smoke does drift into the neighbouring cars.

As a tourist visiting Japan, I found that the level of spoken English was pretty good. In fact I was quite surprised because I’d been led to believe that spoken English was very rare and very poor in Japan.

I found that the Japanese were far more surprised by my Japanese abilities. And that wasn’t always done in that legendary ‘patronising the foreigner’ fashion I often read about.

Two things that did stand out from the times we communicated with school kids was that the younger ones loved saying ‘hello’ and that the older kids had an oddly polite and slightly old fashioned style of speech – for example; “how do you do?” Perhaps that second example backs up the theory that the English taught in schools is not very flexible.

Finally, I quite admire the fact that the Japanese nation doesn’t need to be fluent in English as a whole. In Britain, we don’t need foreign languages to get by and by god, have we made great efforts not to learn any!