kamonochoumei comments

What a tragedy. All the cousins left the room at once, except the one year old boy? And then they all came back. I wonder if something didn't happen while some cousins were in the room, let's all hold our breath and see how long we can stay under water... and baby can play, too...?

If this guy's a professional comedian, 100% of the 5 year old males in this country could do better. I always cringe when I see foreign actors appear on some of these inane variety programs that are filled with squawking, screeching, vulgar "comedians" and "talents." The foreigners always have a WTF?! look within seconds because somebody will lay on the floor and fart or bare his as* or something and bring the whole house down. Children watch TV and learn that those idiots are supposedly funny. The government, bureaucracy, and Dentsu are only concerned with hiding any hint of dissent and anything else goes.

A toilet stall? What a class act. He sure knows how to treat a girl, doesn't he.

I agree with EUcitizen and IvanCoughalot. Imada and Sanma don't have the cerebral chops to pull off anything resembling satire. Bakushō Mondai (爆笑問題)(Yūji Tanaka and Hikari Ōta) might have a shot. Sanma's just a vulgar a#sh#le. Japanese "comedy" seldom rises above 3rd grade fart jokes.

"called it unfortunate that more Chinese people visit France than the United States" This has nothing to do with visas. France is a much more attractive destination. You can get where you want to go by public transportation, the food's better. Can't say France has low crime, but you won't be shot dead in a restaurant. America's filled with identical chain stores. There are some interesting geographic features to see, but good luck getting there without renting a car and driving hundreds of miles with jet lag. You have to fly to get anywhere and the airline service can't even be called service.

Those poor kids have been through enough already. From the first grade they had to write "Schwarzenegger" how many times a day? All the while wishing mom married a bloke named Smith or Nye.

How about some Fukushima wagyuu for him? And don't forget the spinach. But ringostar, we don't want to kill the poor blokes dealing with the nukes. They're risking their lives as it is.

This is exactly what I tried to explain on another global warming article a few weeks ago. Global warming can cause some places to experience unusually severe winter weather. Some people say, "it snowed today, so global warming is a lie." But global warming can cause snow.

They sound like innocents abroad with a copy of the Lonely Planet they picked up at a hostel somewhere. The CIA is far more discriminating in its hiring practices than that. Unfortunately, they are like that poor young American guy who answered George W. Bush's call to go start businesses in Iraq and lost his head in the bargain. Or those three naïve Japanese who went to make peace there (and then got vilified in the Japanese press for interfering with Koizumi's program of sending Japanese soldiers to the safest district in the country to provide water and paint school buildings.) Don't hike in Iraq, whether on the Iranian border or not. If you do, you're painting a please kidnap me sign on your back.

Royalty is handled with kid gloves in Japan. If you write something about Japan's royal family that right wing fanatics object to, your house and work place will be visited by big black trucks blaring idiotic slogans all day. The police may or may not come and watch, but they will do nothing to protect you, your spouse, your children, your neighbors or colleagues. You will instantly become persona non grata.

Was he cut from the squad in Korea? The news in Japan says he was ostracized by the Korean players and he can't speak Korean so he gave up and came back to Japan. He's not a zainichi anymore. Zainichi properly refers to people with Korean nationality who live in Japan. They are zainichi (in Japan) Kankokujin (Korean nationals). He is ethnically Korean but a Japanese citizen.

The black military "gakuran" uniforms are inappropriate for postwar Japan. But I have no objections to a jacket and tie for boys and skirt below the knee for girls. Slacks and blazers would be fine for girls, too, and would thwart perverts. Rules that don't allow girls to wear tights under their skirts in winter are ridiculous.

Another one? We have PTA patrols in my neighborhood but they go out once a month, 15 women and the vice principal or somebody, all with armbands on. Completely useless. There are several hundred parents, so I suggested passing around a calendar and getting one or two people at a time to sign up one morning or afternoon a month when kids are going or coming from school. That suggestion went nowhere. People always say that crime is so low in Japan because the yakuza keep it down. Well, get cracking guys. These crimes need to be treated more seriously. I remember watching the scene on TV of the cop apprehending that little twit who stabbed everybody in Akihabara because he couldn't find a girlfriend. The cop went after him with a baton. Pull out your gun and shoot him. Show that on TV. Then these incidents will decrease.

Medvedev "appeared eager to assert his power"? He has no power. Putin's in charge.

There are many permutations to this kind of scheme. My wife answered a call a few weeks ago from a guy who claimed that he was from the Shibuya police station and they had a report of me (a foreigner) molesting somebody. Caller ID showed that the call was from a pay phone. My wife just said well he's here, I'll give him the phone and the guy hung up. We reported it to the police.

European transportation networks need to prepare for greater weather fluctuations due to global warming. Heat acts like a fuel in the atmosphere. Heat is why weather changes. If you add more heat, in the closed atmospheric system, yes, eventually you will get more heat everywhere, but in the meantime, the heat causes more drastic fluctuations in weather patterns. That's why it is possible to get colder temperatures in some areas due to global warming. It has nothing to do with politics, just junior high school physics. Europeans need to adapt.

A good week for Obama.

"But one of the few Occidental innovations they neglected to acquire was a proper understanding of economics." Japan might well benefit from a common Asian currency. But this must be a joke, as well. Japan knows enough about "economics" to avoid the 10% unemployment that America's understanding of economics caused. To say nothing of the consequences of constant economic disruption that Americans think are normal: high crime rate, high divorce rate, high illegal drug use rate, high infant mortality rate, high home loan foreclosure rate, high school drop out rate, illiteracy rate, etc.

Nobody will be arrested. Child safety is still a sorely neglected idea. The few people I know who use child seats in cars say they do so because the police will annoy them if they don't "警察がうるさい”。But I've never heard of anyone being stopped for that and have seen police roll by cars with kids crawling on the dashboard and the cops not bat an eye.

And Japan's finest leap into action, not a moment too soon.

If people paid a little more attention to their own children instead of someone else's, Japanese society might improve. Look at the number of times children are hurt in fires (see the news on Kyoto early this morning) when no adult is home. I doubt mom was waiting for Yon sama in that case but the incident is indicative of a widespread attitude. Men are just as guilty of it, prioritizing the workplace to the detriment of the family.

Actually vomiting may have been what killed her. One way alcohol kills is when the person vomits while unconscious and the stomach's contents go into the lungs.

I'm glad they got out of there. That teacher deserves a raise. The murder rate in the U.S. by hand guns alone each year looks like the fatalities of a civil war. America experiences a civil war of violence every year and nobody bats an eye. And so many of these are happening now in schools and churches and work places. Will letting everyone have a gun reduce gun violence? Sure, just like giving everybody a car will reduce traffic accidents. Cops who train to use handguns miss their targets well over half the time they shoot in real life. The average person on the street is a better shot just like he's a better driver, only in his dreams.

If you think freedom to own guns will make society safe, I invite you to live in Somalia. You'll love it. It's NRA heaven. The government stays off people's backs there. No authority interferes with your right to own guns. They only take your guns out of your cold dead hands, just as the NRA requests.

What a tragedy. The U.S. should have gotten in, gotten Bin Laden, and gotten out.

Did the Secret Service take Decerega down? The guy didn't even apologize.

I second the motion to thank President Obama. There are many people still struggling, but things could have been much, much worse. And they could still get worse if the Republicans don't cooperate.

Badsey, George W. Bush invented the TSA. He failed to protect America because he preferred taking vacations to working. He stayed on vacation and didn't read the memo that said Al Qaeda was getting ready to hijack American planes. He immediately responded to the disaster he allowed to happen by reading a book to school children and then creating the TSA. The TSA has nothing to do with Obama or healthcare or socialism. It was created by the Republican regime.

If the TSA is "fascist" that's no fault of Obama. It was created by George W. Bush. We could have avoided it completely if George W. Bush had read the memo telling him Al Qaeda was going to attack America by hijacking planes. Rush Limpbaugh and other right wing fanatics support it and I quote: "You have no civil liberties if you are dead." -- Senator Pat Roberts, R-KS, "None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead." -- Senator John Cornyn, R-TX, "Our civil liberties are worthless if we are dead! If you are dead and pushing up daisies, if you're sucking dirt inside a casket, do you know what your civil liberties are worth? Zilch, zero, nada." -- Rush Limbaugh

Thank them and George W. Bush if you enjoy TSA screenings and blame them if you don't. They created it and support it as do 81% of Americans. If Obama tells the TSA to stand down and somebody threatens a flight attendant with a paper clip, the lunatics who call him a fascist would whine about that, too. It's not only the U.S., I was groped at Frankfurt recently.

I agree with some14some. Uniformed personnel disobeying lawful orders of the civilian government because they disagree with them is criminal and dangerous. The Coast Guard is a quasi military entity so it amounts to military sabotage on its own civilian government for political reasons. Start reading Japanese history from about 1928 on. When you get to mid August, 1945, tell me whether the military people who disobeyed the civilian government were heroes.

I think the video should have been public from the start. However, anyone in the Japanese coast guard who can't follow lawful orders needs to resign or be dismissed immediately. To have uniformed service personnel contradict a cabinet decision for political reasons is very dangerous. The people elected a party to form a cabinet. The cabinet made a decision. If the people don't like that decision they can vote this government out of office. A coast guard petty officer has no right to violate cabinet policy. This has happened before in Japan. Servicemen violated orders and policies of elected governments. Many Japanese considered them heroes and praised them for doing the right thing. The result was a war with China, U.S., Britain, Holland, etc. that did not end well for Japan.