Inaka Life comments

We’re being told that turning Japan into Disneyland for foreign tourists is a good thing and yet all of the benefits are being funneled into a few companies who have cozied up to the government.

What a nice introduction to the country for visitors who have to wait hours for taxis at the airport because of over regulation.

Not one word about dealing with the root cause (typically Japanese), i.e. the absurdly low interest rates driving down the value of the Yen.

Everyone on the site is constantly clamoring for interest rate raise… 70% of mortgage holders in Japan currently have variable rate mortgages. Only 10 percent of all mortgages are fixed rate for the entire loan period. It would be catastrophic for most home owners if rates suddenly went up.

Thin crowds on a Tuesday night? The real party has always been on the nearest weekend to Halloween.

I'm sorry but there is absolutely no validity to a survey like this. 75% of those surveyed didn't respond! That is going to create incredibly biased results. If I had results like that in my own research, I would have to figure out a different testing method because I wouldn't be able to draw any conclusions. Response rates below 50% are generally not acceptable for analysis and reporting.

To say that 93% of companies raised wages based on the results from this survey? Sorry, it's clickbait and completely misleading. We can just as easily assume that all non-responses are 'no increase'. If that is the case, only about 23% of companies actually increased wages.

There is no way the Bank of Japan ever envisioned the 2% inflation goal as a result of cost-push conditions. This situation is untenable and will result in significant hardships for households that are seeing zero (or even negative) wage increases.

Personally, I don’t have any problem with weed, but the fact that it is currently illegal here shouldn’t be trivialized. From a legal standpoint, being caught with it will ruin your life.

The news last night was saying that illegal stimulants were also found. It seems like the problem is a lot worse than just a little weed

It’s clear from all of the scandals at the university over the years that there is a serious cultural problem. They also have a well-documented history of illegal/quasi-illegal employment practices when it comes to hiring foreign teaching staff.

You don't have to have poor swimming skills to drown in a river. They are incredibly dangerous places if you don't know the hazards.

I feel incredibly sorry for the girls, their families, and their friends. It's such a tragedy that this happened.

I have a feeling she’ll get more time in jail for defrauding the cooperatives than she will for nearly starving her child to death.

Torturing a 3 yr old to death and he gets only 10 yrs. These types of rulings go a long way to showing the value of children. I hope the prosecutors appeal this to get a longer sentence.

Honest question, why are investigators allowed to share this type of information? Shouldn’t this type of information only come out during a trail when everyone is sworn to tell the truth?

I can’t understand the title of this article??? Real wages have fallen for nearly 70% of the workforce in Japan (according to this article and other sources).

If you are proficient enough to pass these language and skills tests, you’re not going into unskilled manual labor with super low salaries and dangerous working conditions. These types of programs simply haven’t been thought out at all, which is why they are abject failures.

Cash handouts? Must be an election coming up soon.

I feel like I’m order to address this situation there are 4 major legislative reforms necessary:

health care reform (why are we paying for childbirth in a country with “universal” healthcare?)

education reform (starting from daycare of course but all the way to tertiary. The cost of education here is ridiculous.)

labor reform (it’s scandalous the number of companies abusing temp / contract workers. The impacts financial security, healthcare and retirement.)

immigration reform (lots to unpack here)

Without any serious attempt at tackling these problems there is no amount of money you can throw at this problem that will make it go away.

Why spend money on helping families in Japan when you can buy weapons from America and put them in warehouses to collect dust for eternity?

If you ask a question in the title of a news article, you should answer that question in the article!

This article doesn’t explain the ‘why’ at all. It only tells us the ‘how’ by explaining the procedure that police and prosecutors use to extend detention for suspects. The ‘why’ would include an investigation of the psychological and social impacts that suspects are subjected to when their detentions are extended indefinitely under this type of hostage justice.

(Also, the literal translation of saitaiho is re-arrest but it would be more appropriately translated as ‘additional charges’…)

As I predicted this morning, it turns out that it was her ex stalking her and she had reported it to the police. This exact story plays out weekly here.

For those who keep spouting Japan is the safest country in the world? Not even close. In fact, it’s not even in the top 10 safest because of the amount of crime committed against women.

Another day, another violent act of male aggression against a female victim in ‘safety’ Japan.

No doubt we’ll find out that this woman was being stalked by her ex, had contacted the police about it, and was left to be murdered without any action being taken.

It was 1 trillion yen more expensive than the initial estimate? That’s $7500000000 USD over the initial cost (7.5 BILLION USD!). That is an extravagant waste of money, even for the LDP. Social programs are going bankrupt, taxes are going up, and the LDP spent a total of nearly 13 billion dollars on the Olympics. Unbelievable!

Both my kids births were covered by Japanese health care. I didn't pay anything.

Sorry, but you are wrong. Childbirth, and all of the incidental checkups, consultations, tests, etc, are not covered by health insurance in Japan. Even a cursory search online shows that it’s not covered by insurance. You have to pay everything out of pocket.

The fact that we have ‘universal’ healthcare that doesn’t cover something as essential as childbirth is absolutely ridiculous. Also, the lump sum doesn’t leave anything leftover at all. Every single doctor visit related to childbirth is paid out of pocket as well, not just that actual procedure.

Margins are already razor thin at a lot of smaller companies. I suspect raising taxes on them will lead to further reductions in salaries. I don’t think many companies will simply absorb the increased taxes without making changes to their operations. I further think this is the opening for the next round of VAT increases.

Child care in Japan: Largely unregulated, unmonitored, and no repercussions for bad actors. Parents have to be hyper-vigilant to make sure that daycares don’t negligently murder their children. It boggles the mind that this system is acceptable to anyone.

we might ask everyone to share the burden broadly

The tax raise seems like a done deal already. 2027 is the target I guess.

What nobody’s talking about… changes to unemployment insurance that have forced people into much lower paying jobs than ones they left or were forced from. In August this year, the system was changed from receiving 50-80% of one’s salary to a maximum of about 20万 a month. Workers used to be able to use unemployment insurance to help them find similar jobs in their sector. This is a system that workers have paid into themselves and which now doesn’t provide enough when they need it. Mismanagement of this public service has completely ruined it’s usefulness.

This story is getting old and tired. When the spotlight is on, Japanese people do the right thing! That’s not news anywhere. As another poster said, have a look at the local park for the truth.

A spokeswoman for the Japanese Football Association said it's supplying 8,000 trash bags to help fans pick up after matches

As I suspected, this is not some spontaneous act on the part of fans/players. It’s organized by the JFA/government of Japan. Like having Abe come out dressed as Mario, it’s all part of a soft power PR image campaign.

When the economy goes into recession next quarter the government isn’t going to have a single method for pushing a recovery. The current policy is guaranteed to create another 10 of stagnation.

It’s very hard to make the argument that this was an attack on democracy when the killer wasn’t motivated by politics at all. In the end, Abe’s death will be used for political gain, but this was certainly not an attack on democracy.

I have long hair and a beard. During the first 12-13 years I lived here I got stopped once every 2-3 months. I then moved closer to the main police station in my town and started getting stopped even more. It got bad enough that I made a complaint to my embassy which then made a human rights complaint to the town I was living in. I actually had to go to the police station with a lawyer to threaten litigation before they stopped harassing me. Obviously I wasn’t ok being treated that way but on my own I can deal with the harassment. What I worried about most was being stopped while I was with my children and having to explain to them why the police were treating me that way. Luckily that hasn’t happened.

Really, you have done so in many occasions.

Actually, the only time he held a press conference to defend himself the judges revoked his bail and put him back in jail for weeks. He definitely could not defend himself in the press, which was being used against him on a daily basis with ‘leaks’ from the prosecutors.

It's very bizarre that the judge in Kelly’s trial felt the need to talk so much about Ghosn when he wasn’t on trail. Surely this means he couldn’t possibly get a fair trail in the future (although we know it was never going to be fair in the first place!)