Howaitosan comments

Timely and apposite. I admit to being a little conflicted by Nike's ads, given that they are made for self-serving purposes; however they do raise issues to national and international prominence which people often try to sweep under the carpet.

Racism and bullying are both serious problems in Japan - as they are in many parts of the world.

For those trying to deny this or to deflect criticism to Nike itself - facing up to the problem is the first step to fixing it.

Deal with it.

I have several clients who work in the Medical field in Osaka.

They have ALL told me that hospitals here are quietly gearing up for a big rise in the number of infections.

Given the paucity of testing in Japan and the fact that a significant number of infected people will be asymptomatic, the real number of infections is almost certainly larger by an very big factor.

The Government seems to think that if they just ignore the virus, it will go away on its own.

I will be sad to see them go, but the fact is that Japan lags well behind most of the developed world when it comes to digital technology.

Having moved here from Australian little more than a year, I can say that most bureaucratic and official procedures are almost comically archaic here; in a great many instances, procedures are still used here that were abandoned 20 years ago in Australia. The use of Hanko exacerbates the difficulties.

There has to be a change, although I think that one Hanko-maker's idea of creating digital Hanko is a good compromise.

What a terrific idea!

It's fantastic that they have people volunteering from different time zones, so that people can contact them any time at all. I have worked on similar services before in Australia - Lifeline and the Gay and Lesbian Switchboard. I would love to help with this one, but my Japanese is not nearly good enough.

These services can make a real difference and there can never be too many of them.

What really concerns me is that anyone that stupid and ignorant got enough votes to be elected in the first place!

Osaka certainly isn't that walkable; the car traffic isn't so bad around my area, but the cyclists are deadly!!!

In my view the Japanese Government's refusal to change the law is absurd.

I am legally married to my Japanese partner in my home country of New Zealand and in our mutually adopted country of Australia, but when we step through Japanese Immigration at the airport we are suddenly no longer married!

Why?

The marriage laws in Australia and New Zealand are virtually identical to those in Japan, but marriages performed under those laws are only legal in Japan if they are between a man and a woman. Why the difference?

Do people from Islamic countries married under Islamic law suddenly become single when they enter Japan because Islamic law is not recognised here?

Then there are the issues of visas, hospital visits, inheritance rights - all manner of rights and privileges that accrue to married couples that are not available to us.

Japan needs to get into the modern era with this and stop pretending that a person's sexual identity is anyone else's business.

Workers who do the same work under the same conditions should get the same payments - that's it.

Japan is going backwards on this issue.

These doddering old relics of the 1980s still dominating Japanese politics have to go.

It's time for some new blood.

Doesn't seem very sanitary to me.

Well .... you could always take them into the bathroom and give them a thorough wash ;).

Small steps ...

Nobody wins in this case.

Geoffrey Rush will be forever tarred with the accusation, even if it was defeated in court; his accuser will be forever identified as a young woman whose assertions permanently damaged another actor's career - she will struggle to find work after such notoriety.

Meanwhile, the genuinely guilty party - Rupert Murdoch and his notoriously sensationalist and fallacious "news" services - will pay out the paltry (for him) sum of $2 million and blithely go on distorting the truth and wrecking people's lives for money.

He shames the very concept of journalism.

Japan is still so far behind most of the Developed World on this issue! There are even some Third World countries that have moved ahead on it, but Japan still lags behind for some inexplicable reason.

I think the statues should be removed but not destroyed - rather, placed in museums where they can stand as exemplars of the colonial/slave era mentality and where their history can be recorded.

Similarly to the retention of some Nazi Concentration Camps - they are monuments to how badly Human beings can behave towards on another when a madman takes control of a country.

We need to be reminded of these events so that we can try to ensure they do not happen again.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

employee to employer: I'm gay

employer to employee: that's nice what does that have to do with your job?

In Australia, Dango:

employee to employer: I'm Gay

employer to employee: well this is a Christian institution and your lifestyle does not accord with our values, so your employment is terminated immediately. Please leave as soon as possible.

Yes - that is actually legal in Australia even now. Any religious organisation can fire someone for being Gay, religious schools can expel students for being Gay or even for having Gay parents - and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

THAT is the sort of discrimination LGBTIQ+ people face.

But the requests and the rules DO change.

When? Where? I've been fighting for my Rights for nearly 50 years and we still haven't achieved equity or even equality, as Japan's official attitude towards my marriage shows only too clearly. We want the same rights and freedoms as every other law-abiding, voting, tax-paying citizen. What is confusing about that?

Because not every LGBT has the same opinion.

...because LGBT people in different countries suffer different levels of discrimination. Again - where is the confusion here? Think about all the rights and freedoms you enjoy and then imagine not having some or all of them. That is what we want.

Who is their leader? Where is their edict? Where can I read their official demands?

We don't have a "leader"; we don't have an "edict"; we don't have a list of "official demands" because every case of discrimination is different.

But we all agree that we want to be treated the same as everyone else - that's it.

If you really want to learn about it, you can start by reading this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_social_movements

And if I would have to answer to a similar questionnaire, I would probably answer I don't know what special measures should I take.

It sounds like you don't need to timeon - although I wonder what would happen if I worked at your office and brought my husband along to an office function.

It's easy when you are not a member of a minority to fail to see any problems - but they are there and they can get really bad for some people.

For example - I am legally married to a Japanese national in my home country of New Zealand and our adopted home of Australia - but when we get through Immigration at the airport here we are suddenly not married anymore because Japan refuses to recognise our marriage as legal.

Why? If it is legal in other countries with similar laws, why not here? Japan has no problems with marriages made under Islamic law or Hindu law as long as they are between a man and a woman - so why not a legal same-sex marriage? It makes no sense and makes our lives here unnecessarily complicated.

That is just one example of the systemic prejudice that exists here - two people who love each other and who are breaking no laws by doing so are prevented from marrying just because the Marriage law - which actually does not specify the biological gender of the two people - is interpreted to mean male/female couples only.

The problems arise when there is harassment, and just because it's all cool where you work doesn't mean that is the case everywhere. There need to be laws in place to protect all minorities subject to discrimination - not just LGBTIQ+ people. What you can do is start educating yourself and other people about the problems LGBTIQ+ and other people face.

What issue needs to be addressed by companies RE lgbtq? What actual discrimination has taken place? Seems like an answer looking for a problem.

I'll issue you the same challenge that I did to Michael; tell everyone at your workplace that you're Gay and see what happens.

And FYI - a young, anti-Gay Christian in the US did exactly that and kept it up for a year. It profoundly changed his views on the need for legislation to protect LGBTIQ+ Rights.

it's no wonder that many people find it difficult to figure out what y'all want.

It's called "Equal Rights", Bugle Boy - and the requests haven't changed at all.

I you can't figure out why a persecuted minority is demanding that their persecution be ended, then there is no point in even trying to enlighten you.

Why do business need to do anything about this issue?

Tell everyone at your workplace that you're Gay - or even that you support LGBTIQ+ rights - and see what happens.

Why should anyone be treated differently from anybody else in the first place?

I've been asking myself that same question for over 50 years. Why on Earth would anyone who isn't interested in dating me care at all about my sexuality?

Unfortunately some people seem to think that:

a) it's is their business, and

b) they can say and do whatever they like about it.

Japan is still a long way behind most other developed nations when it comes to issues of LGBTIQ+ rights.

I can't breathe... with that thing covering my mouth and nose.

Oh come on! I worked in hospital ICU and A&E Departments for 20 years where we wore them for hours at a time.

I admit they can be uncomfortable, but there is no problem with breathing.

why do I sense some backdoor defence of the man with that long winded explanation of Aussie laws, and how complicated they are?

Because I know of people whose lives have been ruined and who even committed suicide for being labeled as 'pedophiles' when they were nothing of the kind - even two 17-year-old teenagers in a relationship who ended up being convicted for sending private sexts to each other. It might suit your faux sense of "moral outrage" to rail against anyone and everyone the police target with this kind of charge, but personally I'm more interested in actually dispensing justice - not to mention actually targeting REAL pedophiles.

And in case you missed it, I specifically stated that I was not commenting on this specific case - perhaps English is your second language?

He wasn't arrested for a 20 year old dressing up blah,blah blah as you said,but for more yucky stuff.

And you know this how exactly? Were you there? Did you have access to his phone?

Only people that way inclined could defend that.

And here we have the predictable knee-jerk response to anyone who tries to introduce some sense into this debate - an attempt to smear me as a pedophile - proving conclusively that the only response someone like you can manage in a debate of this kind is an attempt to shut down any opposition. Thank you for proving my point so very well - and we can all rest more easily tonight knowing that YOU are not in law-enforcement.

Even mainstream news wouldn't mention it here.

Strangely, I can't find any mention of it on mainstream Australian news either. It may be that the material was on the lower end of the scale for that stuff in Australia.

As I said in my earlier post, even pictures of legal-age models who look under-age (18) or where attempts have been made to make them look younger are illegal in Australia, but the courts will sometimes give lighter sentences for that kind of material.

I understand everyone's outrage - the sexual abuse of children is always unacceptable - but it's important to remember that Australia's anti-child pornography laws are among the most peculiar and poorly written in the World.

I don't know the details of this case so I can't comment on it directly, but I do know that the laws in Australia are so broad that you can technically be charged with possession of "child pornography" for having a picture of a 20 year-old woman dressed as a school girl – even if it is just a drawing. Manga that are completely legal in Japan would get you convicted in Australia.

Furthermore, the State laws of consent vary over there (16 in some States; 18 in others), but anti-child pornography laws are Federal (18) and apply all over the country. In Victoria where I lived I could legally have sex with a 17 year old, but if I filmed the act, took photographs of it, did drawings of it, or even described it in my diary, I would be guilty of producing “child pornography” and could wind up in prison! Pedophilia is abhorrent, but no one is going to convince me that a 17-year-old and a 7-year-old are in the same category when it comes to sexual consent.

Protection of children from sexual abuse is vitally important, but in Australia they seem to have gone overboard in the writing of these laws. As I said I don’t know about this case, but I know of others where people’s lives were utterly destroyed – sometimes literally – for doing things that do not amount to genuine child abuse.

"We are looking to get it by the end of the year if we can, maybe before,"

"We think we are going to have some very good results coming out very quickly,"

Maybe by the end of the year; maybe before; maybe after; maybe never; some very good results very quickly; some maybe not so bad results pretty soon; some OK results in a while; some results eventually.

All the usual Trump waffle with even less factual evidence to back it up. Trump has take the art of saying nothing of consequence to new heights - largely because he is a man of no consequence; an ignorant, self-serving buffoon who nevertheless was elevated to one of the most powerful positions on the planet and is catastrophically incapable of handling it.

I weep for the US.

The elephant in the room here is the fact that these companies are so financially fragile that they cannot weather a storm like this without government help and immediate layoffs.

So is the Economy - in fact the Economies of most so-called "developed" nations. They started collapsing within weeks of the beginning of this crisis. That is NOT the sign of a strong economy - it's a glaring indication that those economies - and the companies and banks that profit so handsomely off them - were living hand-to-mouth with no fall-back capacity should things go wrong.

Why is it that ordinary workers are expected to have enough savings to get through weeks or months of unemployment (or to be able to survive on one single payment of ¥100,000), yet multi-billion dollar, multi-national companies start begging for government handouts and engaging in massive staff layoffs in many cases within a week or two of the start of the pandemic?

Something is seriously wrong with the World's financial systems if a crisis like this can break them so easily.

As long as the Diet is full of Conservative geriatrics, nothing will change. Their antipathy towards same-sex marriage is just a symptom of a much deeper and very serious problem.

Japan is well behind most other advanced Western Democracies on a whole host of issues, as the coronavirus pandemic has shown; the whole issue of working online, for example and businesses still using faxes and hanko!! It's absurd!

If those dinosaurs in the Diet won't move their well-padded backsides (and by the way - I'm 63 myself, so I am in that demographic), then they need to be booted out and replaced with younger, more progressive and imaginative legislators.

Education funding in Japan is extremely underfunded by the government-where does the tax money go to?

The same is true in Australia; Educational funding, especially to Universities, has been slashed beyond the bone. My University in Melbourne - one of the biggest in the country with one of the top Faculties of Education in the World - had its funding cut by almost $4 million the year I graduated.

Universities are supposed to make up the short-fall with fee-paying students, most of whom come from China. With the pandemic now in full swing and students from all over the World blocked from entering the country, most Universities in Australia are facing significant drops in their cash-flow.

... all in Japanese, so far. Hopefully they will provide the information in other languages as well.