hokkaidoguy comments

@chopchop

The only people talking about Assange are the ones desperately trying to deflect attention from the CONTENT of the leaks. That's as true today as it was during the Bush administration.

Clinton and staff have committed numerous crimes. Ignoring this because of the messenger is insane.

@thunderbird2

The David Cameron thing wasn't Wikileaks. It was someone's book.

Odd that you think it was, though. Somehow a lot of people have recently become convinced that Wikileaks is just celebrity gossip - as opposed to verified, vetted leaked government information with a 100% accuracy rating.

Good to see that someone's damage control dollars are paying off. You can actually read the emails where clintons team are discussing this kind of damage control. It's right there, but so few people will bother. I'll take my downvotes now...

@Madverts

That's called shooting the messenger. Just sayin.

Assange isn't writing the leaks, Wikileaks is publishing them. Dismissing them wholesale because you don't like the frontman is simply burying your head in the sand.

These potatoes are so small as to not even been mentioned.

Compared to what else is in this leak, you're absolutely right.

Collaboration with journalists, Bernie backstabbing, foreign cash, and full knowledge of deleting the emails. Next leak is coming in a couple of days. Interesting reading.

@Davix Howell

What chemicals do you think are in Asahi that aren't in craft beers?

So the choices are:

Old man who stays up late tweeting nonsense

Old woman crusading against crudely drawn cartoon frog

Dammit, America. How does a nation that has produced the greatest number of intellectuals, innovators and creative genii of any country since the fall of the Roman Empire wind up with these as their only options? Seriously, get your s--t together, you're embarrassing yourselves.

Is she diabetic? That looked a lot like a seizure to me.

Kind of surprised how little coverage Hokkaido has been getting in either English or Japanese.

The east-west JR link has been severed in a few places. There are busses for people, but nothing extra for freight. Two of the three passes through the mountains are impassable, likely for months. One lane of expressway each way through the mountains, or a 4-5 hour detour via the north coast.

Agriculture has been hit very very hard by this typhoon, mainly because it comes at harvest time, on the heels of two others in August and a very wet June-July. Soba, rice and wheat were hit hard. Over half the corn has been lost in Tokachi as of this typhoon. Root vegetables are looking very bad. Potatoes, onions and carrots especially. There were also heavy livestock losses in a few areas. That translates into job losses in production and transport.

Not Tokyo, not news. It will be news in a couple of months though, when food prices jump. I suppose everyone will just blame Abe for that when it happens, though. Stock up on potato chips. Seriously.

@gary Raynor

I got PR years ago, it was simple. I lived here for 10 years on work visas, paid my taxes and didn't get arrested. It cost less than 10,000. No lawyer needed to fill out a couple of forms.

Citizenship is way easier. Live here for 5 years. Cost a couple thousand yen for paperwork from city hall. Have an interview with immigration - that took 10 minutes, tops. The biggest cost I incurred was getting copies of things from overseas. All in all its still cost less than PR.

Wow, that's a lot of downvotes. Why are people so opposed to the idea of becoming a citizen and voting?

@redfender

If you want to vote, citizenship is very easy to get - especially if you've bern here for 23 years.

@anotherexpat

This story is simply re-assuring investors that the BOJ is ready to intervene if there's another panic. That's what every bank was doing on Friday. But you're right, there probably won't be reason to intervene until the UK gives the markets something to react to. People are still on edge, though - that's why everyone in the G7 is making these statements.

@Alphaape

London banks were doing well before the UK joined the EU. All that means is that now when they go to the airports, they have to follow the same procedures as someone from the USA going there. I doubt the banks will move, since like it or not, of all the EU countries, England is probably the most stable.

Wow. ..er..

I don't know how to break this to you, but "passporting rights" has nothing to do with the airport.

It refers to the agreements that have allowed all of those foreign banks, insurance companies and investment houses in London to do business in the UK (and the EU and their respective home countries). Said rights also allow UK banks to do the same. It refers to the free movement of money and financial services across borders. Without those rights in place, London will no longer be a financial centre, and the UK will lose a very large portion of its GDP.

Didn't you read about any of this before the vote?

@gogogogo

Translation, Abe can't break promise to G7 about currency manipulation but yes man Aso can.

Everyone in the G7 has been pumping money into the markets since Friday. That's the only thing that stopped the free fall of the pound. It's what you might call an emergency.

@garymalmgren

Agreed, this article makes no sense at all. Optimum operating temp for a diesel is in the 85-90 degree Celsius range. I'll wait for the actual tech report.

@jefflee

Farming makes up a lot of land, but not a lot of voters. Farmers are generally anti LDP (because of TPP), but anyone involved in the value added chain sees TPP as a positive.

5th district is a lot of manufacturing and military families. Pretty sure Chitose Air Base is in there, and about a half dozen other SDF camps in the area.

@smithinjapan

if you think that food rots in freezers, you might not be the person to comment on scientific merits...

@cleo

...To date there has been no practical need for final HLW repositories, as surface storage for 40-50 years is first required so that heat and radioactivity can decay to levels which make handling and storage easier....In other words, We (=the people making the decisions and the money) won't be here then so let's just leave the mess for our kids' kids to clean up.

No.

If the problem were being ignored, there would be no construction of deep storage sites. There are several under construction around the world (Norway has one scheduled to go into full operation by 2020), and about a dozen in the site selection and licensing phases. There is also significant research and development ongoing internationally regarding the engineering of these sites.

Sealing radioactive waste in a tube under 450m of stable granite is as secure as anything is likely to get. The only way it's going to be exposed to the atmosphere is natural erosion - which is on the scale of tens of millions of years. Or a massive meteor strike, of the scale that created the moon. I suppose that could do it.

Shall we compare that with the pollution and environmental destruction caused by petroleum? Elevated Mercury levels from hydroelectric flooding? What's the total environmental impact of the battery arrays used for solar and wind? Rare earth mining for solar cells? What's the industry solution for those issues?

@cleo

Which makes more money for your "powerful people": petroleum or nuclear?

Yeah. That's where that whole argument breaks down. No one is invading countries to secure access to uranium. Uranium ore prices aren't shown on the nightly news, and no one talks about uranium futures at the first sign of social unrest.

The nuclear lobby exists. This is true. People make money from nuclear power. Also true. However, the size of the nuclear lobby and the profits that they generate are absolutely dwarfed in scale by coal and oil. Why ignore this truth?

Who benefits when coal and oil are used as a stopgap over nuclear? You guessed it. The same ones that force countries to war, the same ones who led the climate-change denial charge, and the same ones that worked hard to kneecap nuclear generation in the 50s and 60s, using a lot of the same rhetoric unwittingly used in anti-nuclear tirades here on JT. You're being played.

Nuclear - even with the risks involved - is less harmful than anything else we dig out of the ground. It's the only thing we have right now that will allow us to somewhat mitigate climate change while working towards alternatives.

Nuclear today.

Pump the money not spent on coal and petroleum into R&D and installation of other renewables. Gradually phase out nuclear as alternatives take up their share of the power grid. That's the only green solution. Everything else is relying on coal and petroleum to bridge the gap.

Probably being shipped to Australia and the US. It's a car culture thing. Most people here will just buy one from Autobacs or whatever for a few hundred yen, but there is a market overseas for the real deal.

Google "subway strap" and "JDM" (Japanese domestic model) if you have no idea what the hell I'm talking about.

Apparently this was worldwide today. England, France, Australia all had a lot of school evacuations. A group called " the evacuation squad" is claiming most of them. Odd.

@citizen2012

Yes, it can happen to anyone.

Anyone who repeatedly lies to immigration about their visit can find themselves denied entry to any country in the world.

Get the proper visa, tell the truth, or be prepared to find another way home.

Cevin7

They said that he couldn't enter Japan because he was lying about his reasons for coming.

He told immigration he was coming as a tourist, but they feel he is here in his role as an activist. Which isn't really a stretch of the imagination.

He refused to leave voluntarily, so he is being held pending deportation.

Citizen2012

I think he is right and his arrest seems purely arbitrary,

He hasn't been arrested.

He has been denied entry. The two are very, very different.

Right now, O'Barry is free to go. He can get on any plane out of Japan, any time he wants. They'll even help him but a ticket and carry his bags through the airport.

No, you aren't, Ric. A prisoner is someone who can't leave.

You're more of an unwanted guest.

@sfjp330

BMW sells slightly over 20,000 vehicles a year in Japan.

Try again. BMW Mini is around 20,000. The rest of BMW is north of 45,000. They outsell Lexus, to put that into perspective.

@GW

Prejudice against NA cars?

I don't think that's the case. I think that's the case here on JT among expats who love to beat on America, but I don't think it's true with the Japanese car buying public.

I see plenty of Jeep commercials on TV, plenty of Jeep tie-ins and product placements in movies, plenty of Jeep dealer outreach events at shopping centers. As a result, I see plenty of Jeeps on the road. People know they're available, so they consider them when its time to buy.

Ford has virtually zero presence here. I drive past a Ford dealership once or twice a month. They don't advertise, not even in the local paper. They don't even put up posters in the windows advertising promotions. Needless to say, they don't do things like TV commercials or product placements or anything else that might cost money. As a result, you don't see many Fords on the road - people don't know they're an option.

And if you do walk through the door, interested in buying a Fiesta (as I have done recently), you have one option - the one on the lot. Want one of the other 5 colors? Want leather? Sorry, have to order that, could be up to six months. Actual quote, that.

Contrast that with the VW Polo. 5 trim levels to choose from, 8 colors IIRC, plenty of other options, can have it for you by the end of the month. Sold.

Ford is exiting a game they never tried to play.

Some last minute fodder for the anti-TPP lobbying?

Whatever it is, Ford has been phoning it in as far as Japan goes. There are models that people would want to buy - fiesta and focus are both excellent cars - but Ford haven't even tried to access the market.

@smithinjapan

And heck, there's even a pretty good chance the gun is illegal and was brought in from the US. So, probably not wise to go there, sarcastic and tasteless or not.

An illegal shotgun? In Northern Sask? I'd say the chances are almost zero that's the case. That town is overwhelmingly Dene and Metis, it's pretty rare to find a home that doesn't have a gun for hunting.