hatsoff comments

They also tend to lean toward apparel that emphasizes their breasts.

I would have liked to have seen some pictorial evidence here.

For scientific purposes.

Serene, bringing calm in the heat of a busy day.

Dan Lewis, If the yaks didn't get contracts for reconstruction work, you wouldn't see them helping out. They only do it as an organisation because there's a pay off. After all, if they really cared for their communities, they wouldn't be extorting business owners and the like on a daily basis in the first place.

Good to see. Thank you, South Korea.

China has built on and militarised disputed islands in the region. A third of the world's oil goes through the region. It doesn't take a genius to see the dangers.

Some parasites living here will find fault with anything Japan does, but then they'll be the first ones to scuttle off to their home countries when the going gets tough.

This is precisely the reason Japan needs to stay strong in the region. China doesn't recognize anything else and ignores diplomatic appeals.

What I would much rather see is an official apology, one that goes in the white-washed textbooks, stating that Japan did indeed force the women into sexual slavery (directly and indirectly), and that they are genuinely sorry for the pain and suffering they caused. THAT would end the issue

LMAO. Course it wouldn't. Whiners love to keep whining. It'll never stop. Oh, and take anything other than the official whiner's line in S.Korea and you get prosecuted:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-3342334/S-Korean-academic-denies-defaming-comfort-women.html

White-washed textbooks you say? Well South Korea's got some of their own coming:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/13/opinion/south-koreas-textbook-whitewash.html?_r=0

Koreans suffer at the hands of their own government. First, they suffered under the post-war dictatorship, then they never got the compensation that Japan gave their government, then freedom of speech is stifled under an unobjective legal system, then they get their new government-approved version of history...

Brilliant so a third world countries should welcome colonization in the name of progress? Is this Taiwan Prez mentally fit for the office? Wouldn't you rather be independent and free than having a foreign ruler as your master?

(sigh) Pick the bits that suit your agenda all you like but anyone else reading the article would see that's not what the Taiwan president is saying. Why, it's right there in the first paragraph.

Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou said on Sunday it was important to remember the good things Japan did for the island while not forgetting the bad

After years of not getting this fixation with white rice, I finally experienced it myself last summer after being back in England for two months over summer. Most supermarkets here stock mostly basmati rice. I tried loads of others too but just couldn't eat them plain. When I got back to Japan and had my first bowl of white rice I just had to laugh out loud.

Being non-Japanese, I guess this shows that it's not so much how Japanese the Japanese are but how entrenched their preferences are. Nothing to do with nationality. The same thing goes for the exceptionally high standards of customer service.

South Korea called on Japan to remember the need for transparency in implementing its new defense policy “while maintaining the spirit of the pacifist constitution,” its foreign ministry said in a statement cited by the Yonhap news agency.

I like South Korea's response. It's measured and not hysterical. The two most belligerent nations in the region respond in an unlike manner. Oh, what a surprise. China's long term plan to control trade routes and close down the South China sea just hit a complication.

“The unyielding Chinese people fought gallantly and finally won total victory against the Japanese militarist aggressors, thus preserving China’s 5,000-year-old civilisation and upholding the cause of peace,” Xi said.

The unyielding Chinese government has also ordered all residents of Beijing to stay indoors and not look out of their windows while the parade's going on, thus preserving China's post-1949 totalitarian grip over the people, Xi conveniently didn't say.

You think at 4 a.m. (think of the lighting at that time) you will absolutely be able to see and avoid hitting the senile old person in the middle of the road dressed in grey, whose chin seems very close to resting on their shoes as they walk?

I assumed nothing.

??? Being found dead at the side of the road at 4am doesn't mean she was killed at 4am. She could have been knocked down at 10pm on Saturday night for all we know and not found until hours later.

As I have often said, no apology means anything if the actions that follow the apology go against what it was all about in the first place

Actions? 70 years of peace not good enough for you then? And oh what a terrible country is with such a stable society, nowhere near going to war again, and all this while a military coup takes place in South Korea and millions of Chinese are killed at the command of their own leader?

Change the record, why don't you?

To be fair to Mao and the commies, they did, unlike Chiange, actually fight the Japanese

They also murdered and starved to death millions of their own people but we don't hear you crowing about that in your anti-Japanese rhetoric, do we?

It's been said so many times in this forum, just own up to your wrongdoing and then everybody can move on

If you think that will lead to less tension over the Senkaku Islands or China reducing its military spend or China giving up its ludicrous claim to nearly all of the South China Sea, you are hopelessly naive. 'Moving on' is not what China wants to do.

Windows cannot be opened, and doors open only when the train fully stops, which takes several minutes.

Yet, in a country with strict gun control and low crime rate, security is lax — no identification or baggage checks required.

How is this different to any other country? No one checks my baggage on domestic journeys in England. The doors won't open until the train stops and the driver pushes the button... Hardly a Japan/shinkansen-specific problem. The thing is to have a clear understanding that of a fire breaks out, the car should be immediately evacuated by moving to another one and keeping any interconnected doors closed.

I would hope that the idiots who voted these idiots in would vote them out. Unfortunately, I can't see it happening.

China’s development has already given Japan very great benefits.

This is very true. Japanese companies have benefitted greatly from Chinese markets. China has a great landscape and history, tourism could and should grow. Unfortunately, the rhetoric that comes from China's military growth is disconcerting for many countries, not just Japan.

Wang said a good Japanese friend had said to him that China was only returning to the position it once held historically, “so we Japanese should accept it completely”.

Excuse me? Imagine if Japan said the same!

The sooner they ban hate speech, the better. Unfortunately, as Papi has shown, it's more likely the kind of 'hate speech' that would be banned is not supporting the filth coming from these morons because it's 'unpatriotic' to be against them.

Utter tosh but plays well with the anti-Japan crowd. These people are fools, certainly, but do not represent the Japanese population at large.

This broke my heart. It's a very human story.

Every country has fallen for similar propaganda from their own government. From the time of Horace: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. "It is sweet and right to die for your country."

Wilfred Owen, a poet who died in the First World War wrote:

"If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, my friend, you would not tell with such high zest to children ardent for some desperate glory, the old Lie; Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."

And yet this quote appears in WWI memorials in English churches and at Arlington National Cemetery.

In 1854, Tennyson wrote of the Crimean War: "Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die." Almost 100 years later it was applicable to the kamikaze pilots of Japan.

And one final, modern quote, from Paul Weller: "You choose your leaders and place your trust , as their lies wash you down and theor promises rust..."

Its nobodys business but japans. Move on!

That's not true. Universities are international places of learning. Yes, the minister was talking about national universities but that's only because he has no influence with private universities.

It's a stupid idea and the university presidents should just ignore this idiot.

As far as I can understand from Smith point of view, China can do military drills, kill people and do their madness with their neighbors, but Japan cannot defend herself and help other nations. If not, so how do you expect an army to be prepared to the war that her neighbor is provoking? Do you think that people should only stand on the corner and eat hot dogs and smile as if nothing wrong is happening? You definitely doesn't know what you are talking about.

Mitsuo, don't bother wasting your breath. Smith is anti-Japan through and through, yet more than happy to suck the good out of this land when it suits. Any sign of trouble and he'll scuttle back to Canada safe and sound.

He says he hit something but didn't know what it was. But if he was innocent and had a clear conscience, he would have stopped after seeing his friends plough into that innocent family's car. But he didn't even stop to help his friends. You don't have to be Sherlock to smell the BS.

No oceans, no planet. No planet, no future.

It ain't rocket science to figure that out.

So here's the crucial question: are the species Japan hunts endangered? If the answer is no, then it's sustainable. Plenty of other things going on that are really killing the planet.

And it is in this kind of context that Japan feels the need to amend its constitution and create closer ties with neighbouring countries. That's sensible and forward looking. The usual anti-Japan crowd - notable by its absence here - would have you believe Abe wants to re-enact the 1920s and 30s and build another empire instead.

BREAKING NEWS - Blatter to resign http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/32982449

“He is responsible for overseeing the organisation,” said Tashima. “But no direct charges have been brought against the president himself so at this point it’s unlikely we will demand his resignation.”

Totally misses the point. If you oversee an organisation, you have to take responsibility if you can't root out the corruption and restore faith in it. FIFA has had a bad smell around it for years and Blatter has been unsuccessful at plugging it.

Honorable men would fall on their sword.

I wish Japan would stick to one method of describing the magnitude of earthquakes. I've now read that the first one on Saturday evening was 4, 5 and now 8. Which was it?

Notice the difference between magnitude and intensity ("shindo"). I think the Japanese way of describing earthquakes is really useful. A magnitude 8 earthquake out in the ocean somewhere might be felt in, say, Tokyo as a "shindo" 3, which is nothing to worry about. The shindo / intensity number gives you the real story. Now, whenever I hear of an earthquake I look for the shindo rating.

I hope more national teams threaten to pull out of the next World Cup, which England and other UEFA members have said is a possibility if Blatter remains. And it would be good to see the major sponsors pull their support too.

This bone passing thing is kind of macabre.

When I heard of this I thought so too but in practice found it to be the opposite. I did this with my wife at her grandmother's cremation. In our western societies death has become a taboo. I interpreted this act as a gesture of love and care for a loved relative, and appreciated that I was able to do this even after she had died. Who better to place the ashes in the urn than your family, rather than the impersonal hands of funeral staff.