imagawa comments

Helter-Skelter

And what do you think such a wonderful idea would do to the rest of the world? If that were the answer to Chavez it was a bit over the top.

Granted for quite different reasons it really would be a good thing.

No, we have had a little help from the "gods".Yes, rain in July, very odd, but really quite nice too.

I'm told Sapporo isn't in need of any human watering either

A bit late to add to this, but, has anybody thought that this "mist" might just be the bi-product of the banks air-con & a way for the bank to hide that fact?

Bibric

Sorry, I have had work to do & couldn't get back to you.

My reply is much the same as OssanULTA's & it fits perfectly with your own stated reasoning. If as you say you (the Korea people) are basing what you believe on nothong other than pure facts then you have no reason not to get a third party involved to validate what you are saying on an international stage & in so doing you would be making it impossible for Japan or anybody else to argue against you. By not going before the IJC you are leaving yourself open to the claim that you fear you might lose & if that is the truth then you are undermining your own arguement that you are only acting on a pure fact. Because if YOU doubt yourself you cannot expect others to not also doubt your claim to the islands. If you really believe what you are saying you can only expect to get credibilty by proving what you say & that can only be done on a public stage before an univolved third party. If anything it is what you should want, saying no to this is what creates the doubts in others.

Sorry, that should be "blinkered view"

Chavez is the toad in Toad Hall & gradually the people of Venezuela are seeing this. He did have the people behind him once, but as with all crazy people he is going too far. In Latin America however the people are always ready to get a bit more crazy. Well there is nothing on TV worth watching & nothing much else to do. Chavez is pushing the people that matter in Venezuela to the point that they will do something about him, with or without US help. The people in the street will have to face the army in the street again & next time Chavez will not come back from the dead, it is only a matter of time.

The most important thing is that the US stay out of this. If the US makes any move that is seen as going against Chavez all it will do is unify the country & that is really not at all helpful.

Molenir. "Bush & American haters"?

Can you not take a step back & see that the US has earned all that it gets? There are some very, very good things about the US & American people, but this side of the US tends to get lost behind a lot that is really very, very wrong about the US. You need to step outside the blickered view of being an American & try to see your country as we see it. Sometimes yes, there is an element of hate from some, but for most inteligent people there is a disapointment & sadness that what could be is being wasted. THAT is what you are seeing as "hate".

Bibric

I gave up on you yesterday because you seemed to be going around & around in circles, as you still seem to be.

Answer this; do you believe 100% that these islands belong to Skorea?

If you have just answered “yes” as I am sure you have

Can you prove this?

If you have again answered “yes” as I am sure you have.

Why do YOU personally believe your government will not take this issue to ICJ?

Hikikomori08

I read the same thing, she didn't at the time see it or know it was a bear & just felt something pushing her through the ten, so hit it & then kicked it. Or could this a totally different story, it sounds like one. Or did someone feel like adding a little colour

Just look at the wonder & excitment on the little girls face. That alone makes this picture special.

Bibric

Respect is earned, not given & not demanded. Can you show in what way Korea has earned respect, not just from Japan but from any nation?

Nipponlove. “Will Japan ever grow out of their self proclaimed highness that no one else gives a damn about?”

From what I & the rest of the world are seeing at the moment might we not just change the word “Japan” in your sentence to “Korea” & have that very question far more meaningfully ask of you?

What is happening in Korea at the moment is totally stage managed by an insecure government & the Korean people are being blindly lead like sheep. Why? They are not a stupid people, & as a general principle I like & respect the Korean people, but not the people we are seeing behaving like lunatics.

Put the issue of the islands to one side & ask yourself why is Korea over-reacting to this degree at this time? Stop being a patriot & use your brian to look at this.

PS I am not Japanese.

To say that there is no creativity in a translating is very wrong, granted the original may not be yours, but what you make of it is. Yes, the object is to say in a second language what has been said in a first language, but to do so with some style. Creating a sentence to say exactly what has been said takes creativity, it’s your job to make the best of it. I will not be translating from Japanese for a very long time, but I have translated from Spanish to English & English to Spanish & there is such scope for saying exactly what is needed but doing so as beautifully as you can. There are nightmare jobs though & advertising is the one that I hate above all others, so little is said yet needs to impart so much. Added to which you have to work with such pedantic flakes who don’t know what you are doing but know that they could do it better. Cleo. To do this for a full time job? No way! A very, very small percentage of the translations I have done were interesting, the bulk of the rest tedious & a very few so horrendous that I felt I would never speak or understand any language ever again. I wish you well, but rest assured I will never be in competition with you for work.

BTW I thought it was “eat a tacky mess”? Might explain some of the funny looks I get.

Are you sure, did you have some way of knowing what/who was behind all those masks?

The real question for me in relation to all this is when will this film finally go away? They keep making new ones out of sequence & that is so confusing. Now I’m waiting for something like the gay version or the women’s version, perhaps the Islamic version.

Firstly, Hermitage, you are wrong, if Japan wished to use military force to retake takeshima they could do so legally, it would fall under the umbrella of being an internal issue, not an international one since Japan sees these islands as being Japanese. Such an idea is of course lunatic & would never happen. But from a Japanese perspective the islands are Japanese.

Something I would ask of anyone that knows better is just how free are the Korean media? Japan made one little comment about these islands in an educational guidance document about the ownership of the islands being in dispute & South Korea has gone totally crazy. The level of over reaction is insane, yet the Korean media seem to be going along with it.

Are the South Koreans so incredible sheep like that they are allowing themselves to be lead this way? Everyday this issue is getting bigger & bigger, but only is SK. Anybody looking at this issue from the outside is bewildered SKs reaction, it is totally out of proportion to anything that is happening in Japan, in fact next to nothing is happening in Japan.

Korea cannot & will not go before the international courts with their claim because they have nothing to support any claim & they know it. By staying away from the courts they can keep this insanity going as long as they wish, the courts would give a final settlement & that is something SK cannot afford to have happen, after all the false propaganda they have fed their own people about these island they would be seen by their own people to have “lost”. Tacky little politicians backed into a corner by their own lies.

It will be interesting to see who gets to build this hotel, which politician’s cousin, brother, uncle will get the contract? Business as usual in Korea.

How can it be called an Internacional court if it can’t prosecute internationally? Nobdy should be above the law. From the little guy the pulls the trgger to the big guy that sets the policy. NO MATTER which country they come from.

I think the simple answer to this one has been missed time & time again. If this boy was a combatant in a war then he should have been taken prisoner as a prisoner of war. But, if as the Americans say, he was not a combatant & his actions are to be seen as murder then he can, with a lot of witnesses to back him up, claim self-defence. A lot of men in American uniforms have just spent a long time trying to kill him & now one of them is walking towards him. I would call that self-defence. However, all that said, his age has nothing to do with it, his father took him to a war zone to fight & he fought, that makes him a combatant & as such he should have been put in a POW camp. What the hell is he doing in Guantanamo? Any useful information he might once have had in his head is long passed it’s use by date & judging even from the little we can read here I would say that he of no use to anybody now. He sounds like he has gone a little crazy & with his loss of sight added to that where is the point of keeping him? All the US has to do is take him to the states put him on a plane to Canada & let the Canadeans deal with his surprise arrival.

It’s a little dangerous today to talk about the American economy as though it were a thing isolated from the other economies of the world. The mortgage sitution in Europe is in ruins & part of the reason for this is that many of the banks off-set their loans with US banks & finance houses. But that ripple effect will go both ways, getting the US back on it’s feet will mean having to also get Europe back on it’s feet & that isn’t one country with one way of doing things. Even under the EU there are differing ways of dealing with the current problem & which will or not work out? I think that it will take a minimum of five years before we even see which way the wind is going to blow, & that is going to be a long time for the little people that are trying to pay a mortgage.

In essence Moonbean is right most mentally unbalanced people are not a danger to anybody except perhaps themselves & it really is out of order to class them all as being the same. Equally it is just as wrong to use today’s news as an excuse for having a dig at Japan. Japan is little different than most other countries when it comes to looking after the mentally ill members of their population. That does not however say that I need take up the slack & take any kind of risk. If they behave like crazies I avoid them because of the potential dangers, if this makes me a bad person then I will live with that. This father & daughter attacked today will live, but they will never regain the confidence they had before the attack. I hope they recover as much as they can.

This whole thing smells like a set up.

"the university’s visiting rector, Yukitoshi Matsuda."

How did that come to happen just at the "right" time?

Fat Fredy's cat

So the police can understand incomprehensiblity?

Just another nutter out doing what they do best.

BTW More importantly, did they check if the bike was stolen?

There is a certain logic that when a criminal is caught for a crime that crime tends to be about 1% of the crimes he or she has ever committed, 99% remains unknown. Apply that logic to Bush’s white house & I think the American people should be very, very nervous about what they don’t (yet) know

I always had the naïve idea that a civilisation grew intellectually as time passed. Now I realise that is very, very wrong, the world is going backwards not forwards. The internet really did create the global village & now we really do have the village gossip in all it’s small minded nastiness. If the medium is the message then imagine what the next ten/tweny years are going to bring us. OK magazine, the Pol Pot of publishing.

My culture is different to your culture & they are both different to the Japanese culture. The Japanese bow, my country they kiss on the cheeks, some countries hug. And so on & so on. Now is somebody going to be arrogant enough to say that their culture is better than the rest? I said different, not better.

frontandcentre By eck lad there ait nowt better than a cupa real Yorkshire tea.

Tea should be hot or cold & never should it have anything added. Adding milk &/or sugar should be classed as criminal acts. But then the substance they sell in England under the name “tea” probably needs something adding to it to stop it being toxic.

For hot & humid days? Strong coffee on ice (no milk or sugar please).

I don’t think anybody should be going to these games, they should never have been given to China in the first place. And for those that believe sports & politics should be separate just keep in mind the games were given to China for political reasons, so they were never separate to begin with.

Zurg, free ticket? No problem, a one way ticket though.