Henny Penny comments

In the future, they should turn part of Iwo Jima into an emergency quarantine and supply center since they already have an airstrip that can handle commercial jet planes.

Good idea. The facilities that Australia is using were originally set up for isolating refugees and asylum seekers. When the coronavirus crisis is over, Japan would have Australian-style facilities ready to use for refugees and asylum seekers.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/26/inside-christmas-island-the-australian-detention-centre-with-four-asylum-seekers-and-a-26m-price-tag

The Australian PM is a known admirer of Abe. Australian technical assistance in turning Iwo Jima into Japan's Christmas Island would be a great goodwill gesture.

Its Wuhan plants shut, Honda reports quarterly profit drop

Bizarre headline. The quarterly report covers a period before the Wuhan plants were shutdown.

The stresses of being a junior or senior high school student in Japan are unbelievable! That's without adding bullying. I am in no way surprised by so many high school kids choosing death over the expectations and rigors of the high school system.

No, it is your claims that are unbelievable. I have two teenage sons who have gone through generic public schools in Tokyo. One is still a student in a high ranked public high school. Neither experienced nor reported seeing the kind of stress you are claiming.

For eighteen years I interviewed (in Japanese) high school applicants to a private university. I also taught first year college students (again in Japanese) fresh out of high school in a seminar course that focused on college admission. None reported experiencing or seeing the kind of stress you are claiming.

To be sure, there are some who are stressed, but half of all high school students do not go on to college. Of those that do, the bulk go to private colleges that have what amounts to open door admission. Only a small fraction of all students aim for colleges with competitive admission.

Stories about youth suicides in the US or UK stay local if they are reported at all. In Japan any youth suicide anywhere in the country can become national news.

The Japanese government would solve a lot of their problems if they'd simply hire on the JapanToday commenters, experts in absolutely everything, as consultants.

I think China needs them even more than Japan.

While I was living in the UK I was warned several times not to get involved in police matters. I was given this warning because Brits assumed that as an American I might see something and try to make a "citizen's arrest" or if I came home and found a thief inside, I might try to restrain him and in the process cause injury.

Even in countries with formal provision for "citizen's arrest" you run a risk of getting into serious trouble yourself whether you are a citizen or a foreign national.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen%27s_arrest

I was once questioned as part of an investigation into a double murder in Hachioji because I cycled past the murder scene on a fairly regular basis. The detective who questioned me had absolutely no interest in my status as a foreign national. The questioning was short and to the point. Everyone passing the murder scene was being questioned.

Australia was one of the first countries to pull its citizens out of Huwan at no expense to them and set up an offshore quarantine station.

Japan is doing bugger all by comparison.

Duh…

In Wuhan, they [Australian citizens] have been asked to pay $1000 and sign a waiver stating that they agree to be quarantined at the Christmas Island detention centre for up to 14 days.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/evacuated-aussies-to-go-to-christmas-island-for-quarantine/news-story/a16c6a55b31bdf6cccbdb029f7816b2c

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australians-will-need-to-pay-1000-to-be-evacuated-from-wuhan-20200130-p53w71.html

Was this fake news? Has Australian policy been changed since it was first announced?

Have Australians actually been evacuated? I think that if you check, Japan was actually among the first, not Australia.

Looks to me like some people are doing bugger all when it comes to reading about what other governments are doing in terms of evacuation and even less when it comes to fact checking.

We cannot vote. Just pay taxes, follow the rules and do what you are told.

Some cities allow foreign nationals to vote in local elections.

I am a Japanese citizen with permanent residency rights in Britain. I pay taxes but I have no vote at any level of government.

Permanent residency in the US does not give you a vote but you get to pay taxes even if you have no US income.

Nothing particularly notable about Japan in terms of what (permanent) residency gets you.

Japanese companies utterly refuse to hire anyone with professional experience but low level of Japanese 

Some large Japanese companies have so many such employees that they have made English the language for corporate meetings even in Japan. Some large Japanese companies even have CEOs with no significant Japanese language skills.

Small businesses cannot afford the luxury of people who are functionally illiterate in Japanese. They hire foreign graduates of Japanese universities who often have near native level Japanese, fluent English, and one or more languages from their home countries.

Commentators here have frequently styled Abe a "dictator." I can understand their disappointment when he has failed to act like one.

Odd that no one has mentioned here that Ghosn pleaded no contest and was fined one million dollars and barred from corporate positions for ten years by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for a subset of the charges he faces in Japan. (Kelly paid a $100,000 fine and was barred for five years.) Nissan itself was fined $15 million.

https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2019/09/6026bcabfc5f-nissan-ex-boss-ghosn-settle-with-sec-over-false-disclosures.html

Odd too that no one has mentioned that Ghosn is under investigation in France and the Netherlands.

The Japanese criminal justice system may need reform (I think it does) but that does not in and off itself mean that Ghosn is innocent.

Abe doesn't know what he is doing, as simple as that.

Indeed. Japan would be the envy of the entire world if it was run by the people who post comments here.

If testing can identify asymptomatic people who are infected, there is no need to quarantine those whose results come up negative.

Living close to a magnet for Chinese tourists (Ikebukuro), I am more likely to pick up the virus from a Chinese tourist than evacuees from Wuhan.

That also holds for everyone in Japan, Japanese or foreign, who frequents any of the areas that attract large numbers of Chinese tourists.

I find it bizarre that those who so frequently criticize the Abe government are asking it to treat Japanese citizens the way communist China treats Uighurs.

Question has been asked and answered:

https://business.nikkei.com/atcl/gen/19/00002/012801051/?n_cid=nbpnb_mled_epu

厚生労働省は「人権侵害に当たり、法的にも権限がない」として、退避した日本人の強制的な隔離をせず、自主的な医療施設の検診を呼びかける方針だ。

Because it is a human rights violation and lacks a legal basis, compulsory quarantine will not be used.

Gotta luv it when strictly factual posts like this one are voted down. Shows some JT commentators prefer fake news to facts.

Commentators here frequently complain about the authoritarian nature of the Japanese government yet they seem to also want to Japanese government to quarantine Japanese citizens with no legal basis for doing so.

-If these Japanese companies were genuinely concerned they would have pulled all their employees out of there at the first hint of the outbreak but, no! Production must go on to support Japan Inc abroad.

It has been reported that the Wuhan government knew about the outbreak at least a month before any public announcement was made.

Unless Japanies companies had spies within the Wuhan government, there is no way they could have known about "the first hint of the outbreak."

Odd that people are so forgiving of Kobe Bryant. When Japanese guys have paid money to settle rape allegations, this has been roundly condemned especially in Japan Today comments.

@Do the hustle

What other countries are you thinking of? I read British papers everyday. No shortage of reports on family murders in British tabloids. I rather doubt that every pub fight or robbery in London makes it into the news. If you want more crime stories in Japan, the different police precincts in Tokyo have e-mail alerts you can subscribe to.

You do, of course, have to be able to read Japanese.

-- Some years ago I stated Japan needs to focus more on rebuilding its economy domestically instead of relying on foreign investment and tourism.

Indeed. One of the primary reasons I could not be paid to vote for the LDP. I don't want to see my country turned into a theme park. Pushing tourism, especially casinos, while failing to invest in areas that will create value added jobs in the future is criminally stupid.

The Reliant Robyn although no longer manufactured is still apparently street legal in Britain. It makes a Japanese K-car look like a tank. Three wheeled, fiber-glass body.

When I was in Britain in November-December I saw a couple of cars on the street that looked like grown up versions of pedal cars for kids.

The Renault Twizy which is sort of a futuristic golf cart is street legal in the UK although I doubt they are allowed on motorways.

I do not oppose separate names but this issue if overblown. I took my wife's surname but continue to use my birth name. Japanese law allows this. I could even stand for election using my birth name as long as I write it in katakana. When I took my wife's surname, I filed a standard form with my various employers saying my legal name was X but I wanted to be known as Y.

Many politicians uses their birth name rather than their legal name. For example, the Minister of Justice uses her birth name Mori Masako in elections and official functions. She is married and her legal name is Miyoshi Masako.

In my experience, you only need to use your joint legal surname (1) with the tax authorities; (2) for your national health insurance; (3) on your passport. You can, if you request it, have your original name listed on your passport. I didn't.

It's an investigation into 'possible' prosecution. Once again we see sensationalised and non-factual headlines in the Japanese media.

The Japan Today story comes from Thomson-Reuters a Canadian company. The sources that Thomson-Reuters sites are French, not Japanese. The same Thomson-Reuters story has appeared elsewhere in non-Japanese media.

I thought the Japanese had stopped having sex. Any number of articles on this in major newspapers including the Guardian, the Washington Post, and the New York Times as well as the Daily Beast. The BBC had a special, "No sex please, we're Japanese."

Are there two Japans, one where everyone is going at it, and one where everyone is celibate.

Or, is anything about Japan and sex just good clickbait?

Last time I was in the UK (couple of months ago), I saw XP on POS devices. If the devices are on a dedicated LAN or VPN there should be little risk.

The computer adage "if it's not broken, don't fix it" probably applies here.

Windows 10 runs remarkably well on rather old hardware provided (1) at least 4 gigs memory; (2) SSD; (3) remove MS crapware.

And why in the hell dont they run them 24/7 NOW? Right, Mommy government likes to keep their children in line!

Have you ever been in Tokyo and ridden our trains? Most lines have only one track in each direction. If you are going to do maintenance, you can't have trains running.

Look at New York and London where trains run 24 hours. Breakdowns are frequent especially faults with points (switches) or cracked rails.. In the case of London, when I fly into Heathrow on a Sunday, it is not unusual to find large chunks of the Underground shut down during the daytime for maintenance that they cannot do at night.

When I went from Sheffield to London in early December, I had to take a circuitous route because the direct line was partially shut down on Sunday for track work. This is very common in Britain.

My guess is that Japan's hostage "justice" system is of no personal concern to those politicians and officials.

Why guess when you could research this yourself? Japanese politicians and officials have in fact received much rougher treatment than Ghosn. Start by reading about Suzuki Muneo.

What I don't understand is that he admitted to a scandal, but he isn't in jail or anything like that

He needs to be tried and convicted before he is put in jail. If he has "confessed" there is no point to putting him in jail to "coerce" a confession out of him.

As far not putting politicians in jail, look up Suzuki Muneo and report back here.

"McIntyre said he had shared a tiny cell, which was lit day and night, with a convicted murderer who was appealing against his sentence. Conditions there had almost driven him “insane”, he told the Guardian during an interview at the detention centre earlier this month."

Ghosn didn't have a cell mate so the foreign press claimed he was in solitary confinement.

When did Western countries start allowing defense lawyers to sit in company with suspects at the time of police interrogation? Very recently, isn't it?

Not all do. The UK government publishes "prisoner packs" that tell you what you can expect in various countries.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/prisoner-pack

"I told (Prime Minister Shinzo) Abe several times that the conditions of Carlos Ghosn's detention and questioning did not appear to be satisfactory to me," Macron told reporters.

A bit rich coming from a French leader considering that French prisons are among the worst in Europe.

https://www.thelocal.fr/20190402/french-prisons-have-most-suicides-in-europe

http://www.rfi.fr/en/europe/20161214-french-prisons-conditions-inhuman-and-degrading-official-report

Even the French government itself has said that French prisons are ghastly.

-Why is Saikawa not arrested?

Why should he be arrested? He has already “confessed” and agreed to pay restitution. People posting here should be consistent. It has been repeatedly asserted here that arrest and prolonged incarceration is to get people to confess. If that is indeed the case there is no point in arresting people who have already admitted wrong doing.

-Even after he being sent to detention facility, he still had no clue what's going on. Only after French envoy told him that Nissan turned against him then he realized there is a plot.

Connect your own dots. Even though there were and still are a number of foreign nationals in Nissan top management including the foreign national who blew the whistle on Ghosn, not one of them told Ghosn what was going on. That shows this is not a simple Japanese vs non-Japanese thing.

-The shamelessness is so blatant it just boggles the mind. Saikaiwa literally did exactly the same thing Ghosn is accused of yet

No, he did not. There are multiple charges against Ghosn. The charges against Saikawa are a subset of those against Ghosn.

-Nissan has already pleaded guilty, mooting this point.

Indeed and not just in Japan but in the US before the Securities and Exchange Commission. Not obvious to me why a factual statement such as this should receive down votes.

-Ghosn has already listed the conspirators. Now they have bullseyes on their backs.

The foreign press was generally in agreement that at his press conference Ghosn did not say anything new and did not name any names that were not already known.

I would also note that while some may think Hari Nada is a Japanese, he is a foreign national, born in Malaysia of Indian ancestry. Moreover, he is quite literally a “person of color” as can be seen from his photographs.

The real issues seem to me to be (1) don't eat anything that is going to make you fart and (2) don't drink anything that is make you desperate to take a pee.

As a naturalized Japanese who grew up in the Chicago area, I cannot help wondering if any of those condemning Japan are black, Hispanics, or poor whites who have been busted in the US. I've looked at several hundred English language articles about the Ghosn case. I have yet to find anyone who has analyzed Ghosn's treatment in Japan from the perspective of poor or minority Americans.