John Kennedy comments

I love Ringo! 84 and still making music. Peace and love!

What business is it of the UN?

One card to rule them all. One card to find them. One card to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

I hope I can make it there one day. Mongolia is such a fascinating country.

Of course no one wants to see massive death and destruction and it is always heartbreaking when earthquakes or other disasters take human life. The video of the tsunami on 3/11 is something none of us will ever forget. But even in the event of a mega quake, the chances of being a victim is extremely low. It is certainly nothing to waste energy worrying about. We should make some preparations and continue living our lives.

@Wallace I am using the IPhone XR as I said. It’s older than your IPhone 12. I don’t upgrade every year.

And yes I can have all kinds of toggles and things but I prefer not to if necessary. My point is the lowest end configuration hasn’t changed in years. How long are we going to have to wait until at least 512GB is standard or 16Gb RAM?

As I said in my original post, Apple has just become too greedy and that is why their sales are decreasing in my opinion.

The biggest problem for Apple is that the cost of upgrading keeps going up. I am currently using an XR, because newl models are more than I can afford.

The MacBook Air, the base model still only starts with 8GB RAM and a 256 GB. Once you buy it you can’t change it so you are stuck with that configuration. The M1 MacBook Air released 4 years ago had the same starting configuration.

The truth is Apple customers are tired of Apple’s greed. They are always trying to squeeze their customers for the most they can and people are beginning to look elsewhere.

Joe Biden making friends all over the world.

This makes absolutely no sense. He’s saying that since inflation is increasing, he needs to keep easing monetarily. Inflation is definitely running above the 2% target.

This is so sad. Only 24 years old and this guy has ruined his life for ¥150,000.

Japan is a nation of savers. These super low rates are actually just allowing the banks to have free money to lend since they pay just about nothing to their depositors.

These interventions in the foreign exchange market won’t stop the fall of the yen. The basis of the fall is the difference of interest rates. Until that changes any respite in the yen’s fall from intervention will be temporary.

until the Bank of Japan raises interest rates, the yen will continue to fall. Selling dollars or buying yen do nothing to address the fundamental cause of the yen’s decline against the dollar. Interest rates in the US are rising and those in Japan remain extremely low.

The governor of the BOJ may say that he is maintaining the low rates to support the economy, but what he is actually doing is allowing inflation to continue and accelerate as the cheap yen causes the cost of imported energy to go higher and higher. This will hurt the economy as energy costs affect the price of everything. This inflation weakens demand as consumers have less and less money to spend. Maintaining low rates will not stimulate the economy. It will drive it into recession.

Yes, there are many things that we can be critical of, but why can’t we just take a moment and celebrate this man, Sugihara for his brave defiance of his superiors that saved thousands of lives and this town which welcomed these persecuted people. You can celebrate their goodness and humanity without focusing on the wrongs of some of their countrymen.

Intervening in the market by selling dollars or buying yen simply will not work.

The root cause of the low yen is the divergence between ultra low interest rate policy of the BOJ and the Fed’s policy to keep tightening until inflation is under control.

This is my prediction. The BOJ will waste a large amount of its foreign currency reserves in a futile effort to prop up the yen. In the end it will be forced to raise interest rates, but it will have to raise them even more because of their stubborn refusal to do so now.

Intervention will do little as the Fed keeps raising and the BOJ keeps rates unchanged. The downward pressure on the yen is only going to increase as the Fed continues to tighten and the rate divergence increases more and more.

This is heartbreaking. I can imagine the bird flipping out and flapping around the cage and the woman getting distracted with such tragic results.

This is a tragedy for everyone involved and their families.

With the pandemic and relations with South Korea and China near all time lows, is this really the time to be visiting the shrine?

This is a tough situation. Imagine a restaurant owner that is ordered to continue to serve food to those who can’t pay. It’s unfair to put the burden on the landlords who also have bills to pay.

Supposedly there was billions set aside for rent relief for those who need it, which has never been made available.

I think there has to be a better solution than either putting the burden solely on the landlords or throwing people into the streets.

Perhaps assistance can be provided to those who can show proof they are actively seeking work or some such thing. The problem is that they knew the deadline was looming for months and did nothing. Government often works this way. Inactivity until absolutely necessary and then sometimes it is too late.

Just to qualify what I am saying. Japan is in a difficult place because it has millions of doses of Astrazenaca and Japan has a high level of vaccine hesitancy. After deciding initially not to use Astrazenaca after approval, it’s going to be a hard sell. So what are they going to do? They don’t want to be seen wasting millions of doses. So at least part of their solution is to give them away.

As to is Astrazenaca inferior, I will put it this way, which is superior 80% effective or 60% effective?

Japan has given millions of doses to other countries, but hasn’t given any Pfizer or Moderna. ALL Astrazenaca.

Nobody wants to say it, but the truth is the Astrazenaca vaccine is inferior to the ones made by Moderna or Pfizer. How can I say that? Pfizer and Moderna have proven to be highly effective against every variant so far.

Astrazenaca was found to be ineffective against the South African variant. It is effective against the Delta variant (60%), but Pfizer and Moderna are far more effective against Delta (80+%).

I certainly would choose Pfizer or Moderna over Astrazenaca. This is Japan’s problem. They have millions of doses that are going to expire, but most people don’t want Astrazenaca. They should have given all their Astrazenaca away. They are caught between letting vaccine be wasted or trying to vaccinate people in Japan with it who don’t want it.

I am 60 years old and I have read that Japan is planning to approve Astrazenaca for people 60+. The reason is your body tends to have a weaker response to the vaccine and therefore less likely for side effects.

But to be honest I don’t want the Astrazenaca vaccine. Why? I am not worried about the side effects that are extremely rare. My issue is that Astrazenaca was ineffective against the South African variant and about 60% effective against the Delta variant. Moderna and Pfizer are like 80% effective against the Delta variant and have been effective against all variants to date. They are also believed to have a very long lasting immunity.

The truth is Pfizer and Moderna are superior to Astrazenaca. Also Astrazenaca isn’t approved in the USA, so your Astrazenaca vaccine card doesn’t count when you try to enter somewhere that requires proof of vaccination.

All I know is that Princess Mako and Mr. Komuro should be allowed to get married. As far as the succession issues. Empress Masako was a commoner and suffered greatly because she didn’t produce a male heir. And I wonder how Princess Aiko feels. I imagine it’s not pleasant for her to think that she is viewed as unworthy simply because she is not male. A change allowing female monarchs would surely remove these unfair stresses on members of the Imperial Family. I also just have to say Princess Mako looks very royal and if that look on her face isn’t love, I don’t know what is.

What this article fails to mention is that the Astrazenaca vaccine is not effective against the South African strain of the virus. And as the article states clearly the Pfizer vaccine is far more effective against the Delta variant. Japan has tens of millions of doses of the Astrazenaca vaccine that will expire in September so first they announced that they are going to approve it for use for those 60 and older. Apparently they figured out thy would still have vaccine left over so now they are going to approve it for people 18 and over. They have secured enough Pfizer and Moderna vaccine to vaccinate everyone in Japan, but because they didn’t act soon enough they are stuck with these Astrazenaca doses they need to avoid wasting. And so people like me who are 60 years old and haven’t received their coupon yet will receive the inferior Astrazenaca vaccine.

The truth of the matter is the slow rollout of the vaccine has cost the Japanese economy far far more than what the cost of canceling the Olympics would have been.

The government focused its energy on holding the Olympics rather than rolling out the vaccine. That decision has resulted in lost jobs, bankrupt companies, decreased income for many Japanese and foreigners living here, prolonged suffering and inconvenience and most importantly the loss of human lives.

Even if the Olympics are deemed a success, the price paid for them is way too high.

You are the last person on earth to figure this out.

Probably one of the reasons they aren’t filling the slots is they aren’t doing a good job of publicizing them. Have you noticed how there are all these articles about these centers and they never give a link or a phone number. And then they scratch their heads and wonder why they have empty slots.

I am glad Japan is trying to make it easier for us foreigners because currently my local government has zero influence in English at least as far as I can find.

So the Japanese government hires them to go to Lebanon and kidnap Ghosn and bring him back.

if the so called mass vaccination sites are already running at full capacity and completely unable to handle even the demand from the local people, why in the world would you want to open them to others. The sites are only supposed to be open for a few months anyway. (Why they would shut them down before everyone is vaccinated is beyond me. But then again I have been flabbergasted for months at the way this vaccine rollout has been run.)

Why are all these so called mass vaccination sites only staying open for a couple months. It’s like okay the Olympics are over or we’ve finished vaccinating the old folks, we can go back to a crawl now.