J @Tokyo comments

@carpslidy please post a link because JT here is just not doing their job if that's true.

Ridiculous. This will get abused immiedately. I anticipate a lot of totally unnecessary "business trips" are suddenly going to be cooked up by people from all over Asia, Europe, US or wherever. Next, their family and friends will all become "coworkers" (not hard to do if you own a business). The reality is these "business people" will use this as a backdoor to enjoy Japan meanwhile Japansese citizens and permanent residents (read: second class citizens) get shafted AGAIN by the Japanese govt with never ending 10/14 day quarantine to return there. Getting PR in Japan is about as desirable as getting covid itself.

And humor me, what scientific evidence does a 3 day self quarantine in a hotel provide? What is less risky about a business person eating in packed izakaya on Day 4 vs. a vaccinated resident or citizen?

How is this anything other than an arbitrary BS to keep the business association happy while making it look to the public like they are still being vigilant. It's total bs at this point and never has been about science. Another reactive, never proactive policy from the Japanese govt which is clearly just reacting as other countries start to reopen. Shame on these people to put citizens and PRs behind business folks looking to come enjoy Japan on the company dime.

How all of these gov'ts could allow their entire supply chains to be controlled by one country that has capability to dominate them is beyond me. Perfect example of placing short term profits over long term protection of their own people.

Japan may have the highest spread on Earth between what the average salary man pays and what the average Ultra High Net Worth Japanese "business owner" pays. I know because I've been on both sides of it. As a salaryman trodding through station everyday in a black suit, I worked my butt off to eventually have the privilege to pay 55% (!!) income tax + another 6% in healthcare and pension, leaving me with less than 40% of my earnings to actually spend! And there are no longer any legal ways to meaningfully reduce this rate. This is absurdly high and needs to be reduced.

Most people won't admit this, but last year, I became a business owner and I was able to earn a similar amount of money and was allowed to deduct so many expenses it brought me down to ~20%. Use offshore accounts and I could have reduced it to nearly 5-10%... in some cases 0! This is absurdly low and deduction loopholes need to be closed in Japan.

So reality is business owners in Japan are scamming the tax system (legally) while salarymen are getting crushed. Think again when you hear rich business owners complaining about taxes. Sure, the gross amount may be high, but they aren't paying the % they want the public to think they are. THEY PAY MUCH MUCH LOWER % than you think.

Went to Greece and Cyprus all of last month. Great to travel again, but it's miserably hot there.

"Zero covid" was a good plan in 2020. Now it's clear that we need to live with Covid and get on with our lives. Covid cases will happen, some will die, while the vast majority will be OK. Calm down and get back to normal, folks.

If I was Australian, I'd be seething. "One rule for you, none for me"

The woke-lympics strike again! This event is a money grabbing corrupt, virtue signaling circus. I LOVED the Olympics as a kid, but this has been hijacked by the globalist woke crowd. Cancel it.

Humans doing what humans do when a society starts to break down. So much for the so called "Rainbow Nation", this is pure tribalism.

Best prepared city except for the failure to vaccinate the vast majority of the population in the host city despite countries of similar wealth accomplishing this months ago.

How does the cocaine use of a couple sparkies working for a 3rd party vendor lead to a "stain on the entire Olympic games"? Athletes who have trained for years for this moment have nothing to do with this. Don't drag them into this.

The pandemic has done to Japan what it has everywhere else, it exposed weaknesses and exacerbated & amplified already in place trends. The weakness here in Japan was an incompetent pool of leaders, completely inept for an international crisis of any sort. If the Japanese don't take this as a wake up call to change your leaders from a group of navel gazing, xenophobic old men, what will do it for you Japan?

I've spent this year in Japan, SG, USA and Europe and can verify 100% that Asia is struggling most in Year 2 of Covid-19 while Europe and USA are well on their way toward normalcy. It is now abundantly clear that further lockdowns just delay the next wave; the ONLY way out of this mess is to vaccinate 70%+ of your entire population, issue some form of vaccine certificates and move on with life. Australia and Japan, as the richest APAC countries have no excuse for their current predicament. Even middle income countries such as Thailand should focus on vaccinating their populations rather than opening "tourist islands" like Phuket to bring a few bucks in until the next variant hits.

Climates change on this and all planets. The one we live on had ice ages. We’ve had desert ages. We aren’t helping things get better, but we are also unable to change the course of this change. Adapt or perish.

Just sold all my shares in the JP indices today. Why would anyone support such a blatantly corrupt system that is so anti-foreign investor. Corporate governance will only change when starved of financial resources.

In the absence of a competent leadership across much of the world, people have rightfully decided that they will have to judge the risks of living with Covid-19 for themselves. The reality is this virus is here to stay and we cannot hide in our homes for multiple years just to avoid the small chance of sickness and even smaller chance of death. Every day of your life is a calculated risk and Covid-19 is no different in that regard, it has just raised the risk level that we now have to accept as a baseline, but humans have dealt with this many times throughout our existence in the form of wars, plagues and natural disasters. Life will go on and so will your life if you accept this new reality.

Some readers may be wondering how a rich country like Japan has a healthcare system that is at "full capacity" despite Covid cases being relatively low vs other rich countries. The reason is that Japan's healthcare system is actually 90% private hospitals and 10% public and only the public hospitals are accepting Covid patients. This means 90% of the capacity is not available and cannot be forced to help even in the face of a global pandemic. The real problem are these 90% of private hospitals and the outsized control that the Japan Doctors Association has in this country. They are simply putting the profits of their own hospitals before the broader good of society. If these hospitals were fully open to Covid patients, you would be hearing very different statistics (i.e. less than 8% of hospital beds are occupied by Covid patients). Instead we hear that the medical system is "buckling" and hospitals are over capacity... well, that's because only 1 in 10 are being used to help fight this pandemic, while the private hospitals are more than happy to give you a JPY 40,000 covid test or a government handout when it comes to administration of vaccines. Dig deeper into the Japan Doctors Association and you will find this is a hugely flawed system and much of the blame should fall on these private hospitals for not stepping up in this time of extreme circumstances.

Agree with Kipling and Tobia. What foreign national is dying to get in Saudi right now... does this announcement impact anyone? And why is Japan Today bothering to report this? Seems very out of place.

This place was so overrated. They totally went for the shock value + sensory overload and many tourists felt they had to experience it. Waste of time, money and tastebuds (the food was barely edible). Tokyo and Japan overall should see this business as a hallmark of the type of tourism to avoid, not attract. Unless you want to become a backpacker trail like Thailand or the rest of SE Asia catering to the lowest of the low.

It won't be missed.

Further solidifying the already widespread belief that political appointee ambassadorships are nothing but payment in arrears for one's dirty work done for the Party. This guy has zero knowledge about Asia or Japan and will make a fool of USA (again). The State Dept has real career diplomats that would be far better suited for the role.

Oh my, the irony of a Japanese news outlet doing a hit piece on "systemic racism in America" is just amazing.

Is this a satire column I didn't know about?

I’m not sure why everyone is trying to keep an exact tally on the government figure for reported cases? They are irrelevant vs. reality.

Japan has stated they are only testing 900 people a day currently while it’s neighboring countries in the region Are testing up to 10,000 per day. Naturally this is going to have an upper limit on the number of cases reported per day. Walk into any medical clinic in Tokyo and ask for a coronavirus test and you won’t be able to get one. I did this at Tokyo midtown clinic for example. That tells you all you need to know.