MagnusGarstin comments

@Hashimoto-san (THE Hashimoto-san, perhaps?), If Nanking is pure fabrication, please illuminate me as to why John Rabe, a member of the nazi party and one of Japan's own ALLIES, felt morally compelled to protect the Chinese people from the depredations of the Imperial Japanese Army?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe

so when do they start beating a confession out of him?

They won't. He's too high profile and, if he appears in court or on TV with even one tiny bruise, there'll be all hell to pay with the J-cops being criticised all over again - this time for police brutality.

Well said! "thedeath"

He looks a bit like Michael Jackson in that photo.

eigonosensei (the "no sensei" part is right at least) said:

So, believing everyone in the World is born equal is bad?

Which country are you talking about exactly?

Can't be America where 10% of the population owns 71% of the nation's wealth, the top 1% controls 38% and the bottom 40% owns less than 1%.

He was simply being polite for goodness sake - or is that so very out of fashion in the States nowadays?

I'm pretty sure he'd also bow if he met the Queen of England - it's just protocol.

On a more personal note, I am always bemused by the fact that, although being a fairly-respectable, besuited, middle-aged English businessman, I can nearly always expect the myriad Japanese passengers on any train in which I travel to categorically avoid the empty seat next to me - no matter how painfully crowded the train may be.

However, despite my constantly being treated like a plague-carrying social pariah by my Japanese peers, it is invariably only I who, time after time, gets up and offers my seat to their elderly, disabled or heavily-pregnant citizens.

Indeed, whenever a 99 year old Nihonjin gentleman who can barely stand stumbles onto my carriage, I always appear to be the only passenger who does not instantly fall into an obviously fake coma (some of these people should get an Oscar!) or who suddenly finds their book/mobile/PSP/iPod so totally engrossing that they cannot even bring themselves to raise their eyes and risk acknowledging the old chap and his alarming state of infirmity (especially if they happen to be occupying one of the -ha ha - "courtesy" seats).

Do you think that it is my uncivilized, uncouth and barbaric gaijin concept of politeness which sometimes causes Japanese commuters to avoid sitting near me?

Perhaps they feel that, if an extremely elderly couple board the train together, anyone sitting next to me will be humiliated and forced to give up their own seat to the husband if I have the scandalously inappropriate and alien manners to get up for the wife?

I can assure them that this is definitely NOT the case - I fully appreciate that perusing the latest issue of "Big-Breasted Manga Maids in Bondage" is obviously far more pressing than giving up a seat to someone who desperately needs one!

As others have pointed out, chivalry on Tokyo trains isn't dead - it has never existed.

I own a fascinating book called "Japan, Aspects and Destinies" written by an English gentleman named W. Petrie Watson which is 105 years old - having been published in 1904.

Among the many wonderful observations made by Watson about a Meiji-Period Japan in mid-transition from feudal society to western facade is the following:

“Enter a second-class car on a Japanese railway after night has fallen and you find the Japanese race unmasked. From a race of pleasant, polite, depreciating folk they are changed to unmitigated boors.”

Amazing how nothing really changes, eh?

Lindsey - please rest in peace.

An officer noticed a foul smell

Probably just the sergeant dropping his guts in the koban and, too ashamed to admit that he'd cut the cheese, he blamed it on some guy dropping off his undrinkable green tea.

oh come on there are a lot of other wackos who believe that too. it's not just those two

Bravo, spoken like a (presumably) true republican.

I would rather believe such "wackos" than the truly incredible vegetable that is George W. Bush.

And surely it's far better for the American people to accept the conspiracy theories of said "wackos" than to have to admit that they actually voted such a pathetic cretin into office?

America doesn't rig its votes

Yeah right - tell that to Al Gore or Michael Moore.

Well, this is based on the 1967 spoof horror movie "Dance of the Vampires" - written by, and starring alleged kiddie-fiddler Roman Polanski along with his wife Sharon Tate (shortly before she was butchered, whilst pregnant, by Charles Manson and his psycho "family").

So - it should have everything your average Japanese sadist or sociopath would ever want from a musical, eh?

BTW: The wiki page describing this musical's broadway run says:

Dance of the Vampires is one of the biggest financial flops in Broadway history, losing roughly $12 million, easily eclipsing the infamous musical Carrie

Hardly a glowing recommendation to bother going and seeing it sung in Japanese.

I think nasty anti-US rants would be a sad fact of life even if all US forces left

And I wonder why that is - anything to do with American arrogance in general?

(I was going to write "American culture" but then that would be an oxymoron)

Lindsay Ann Hawker didn't throw any bicycles as far as I'm aware - but she still ended up tortured, murdered and buried in a bath full of sand. Japan's safer than the US or UK I agree, but it's certainly no Shangri-La.

Damn those illegal Asian immigrants! They'll do anything to get into Japan - even float themselves over in construction kit form! (Don't laugh - there's probably a Japanese government department being set up to investigate this possibility even as I type.)

Hamiltontruther asked:

your lawyer friend wouldn't happen to be a member of the japanese communist party now would he/she?

Nope - your grandfather wouldn't happen to be Senator Joseph McCarthy would he?

(Any time anyone makes an anti-American comment, let's blame it on those pesky commies, eh? Sure makes it a lot easier than facing up to the fact that many Japanese and Europeans just don't like the dear old US of A and trust it about as much as they'd trust George W. Bush to pass a first grade spelling test).

A Japanese attorney I know claims that the US is actually funding North Korea to act up so that Japan, who is growing increasingly independent of it's long-term American masters, will revert to type and start pleading "Please keep your essential armed forces on our islands Uncle Sam - you're the only country who can save us from the evil Kim Jong Il!!!" Fact or fiction?

"Gang-rape incident a by-product of Kyoto's lenient academic culture"? Utter rot - it's nothing whatsoever to do with a lenient academic culture - it's their society as a whole. Go into the adult section of any DVD rental store or look at the openly accessable shelves of any BookOff and you'll see countless examples of the seemingly national obsession with gang-rape, train molestation and incest. In a culture where most expressions of extreme emotion are taboo, they seem to find some sick release in deviant fantasies and behavior. No wonder these jocks thought gang-rape was OK - it's as natural to them as "Playboy" was to my culture and generation.

Hi Ivan, most of the foul characters I've been unfortunate enough to witness plumbing the depths of their nasal cavities on a train have at least had the decency to eat it after rolling it around for a while. In this way, I suppose that they are actively stopping the spread of germs by bravely ingesting their own grey and khaki "flubber-lumps". I offered one a tissue once but he got most offended as I had obviously negated his supreme goodwill gesture toward world hygiene. Stupid me.

r all the critics just jealous??? hmm yes I think so.

Mmmmm - jealous of something so far down the evolutionary scale that he probably counts as "The Missing Link's Missing Link" leering at a so-so young Japanese woman? Nah - don't really think so.

MagnusGarstin, absolutely towering contributions. Keep up the good work sir.

I'm honoured and flattered by your kind words Patrick.

Thanks again, Magnus.

Gees! I wonder how the virus got to Tokyo?

If this was pre-Meiji period they'd be blaming either the gaijin or burakumin. Nowadays, it's probably the gaijin who get blamed for spreading it and ...who cares if the burakumin catch it?

(Yes, I know they they don't officially exist any more - so why do Japanese companies still screen applicants to determine if they come from burakumin stock?)

Absolutely Ivan - but it's 50,000 yen per month well spent. I only hope that it goes straight into the pocket of our most beloved and esteemed benefactor Mr Aso. He comes from such an underprivileged background that I'm sure he could use the extra cash (if only he could actually spell the word "cash" - bless his little cotton tabi).

I think that these new micro-chipped cards and regulations are absolutely necessary - after all, only wrong-thinking foreigners would ever commit crimes in beautiful, law-abiding Japan. Indeed, in a land where the native people would never even dream of crossing a road before the green "walk" signal merrily flashes them onward (even though it is 3am and the nearest moving vehicle is in the next prefecture), all crimes must, therefore, be perpetrated by the evil, alien hoards of English teachers and their despicable ilk. On the very rare, isolated occasions when a native Japanese may possibly be suspected of having done something ever so slightly wrong (such as murder a young English Nova teacher and bury the body in a bath full of sand) then the local police will always take into account the inate racial inability of Japanese people to wittingly participate in any unlawful act and so, after solemnly promising never to try to catch the mistakenly-accused Nihonjin scallywag, the astute officers will allow them to run away before turning their truly Holmsian detective skills to finding the true villain - obviously a gaijin riding a bicycle without a light! How much easier it will be for them to locate the foul-smelling foreigner with this excellent new system - I am behind it 100% and say "Hooray" to the hard-working, incorruptible and highly efficient bureaucrats of Japan for thinking it all up!

Japanese women without bras? - well whoopee do. It's like saying "Aso decides against taking a Mensa entrance exam" - both are ridiculously unnecessary in the first place.

One wealthy Japanese woman I know is desperately trying to get her son shipped abroad to a university the UK where she feels it's "safer" because of the rising numbers of flu-infected Japanese. Apparently, her fears were exacerbated by a "doctor friend of the family who is a virus expert" (every home should have one) who predicts that the H1N1 strain will mutate beyond recognition over summer and then triumphantly re-emerge in autumn, immune to all vaccines, to kill thousands in Japan.

Sorry, reading back I obviously meant to type "myriad" rather than "myrial".

"Passionate" and "Japanese" - surely these two words form an oxymoron? (Rather like "Japanese comedy")

When a Western man first comes to Japan he probably feels that he is in some kind of sexual heaven - surrounded by slim, often-stunning women who willingly show off their figures in amazingly provocative clothes. However, this delusion is usually very short lived. In reality, these sensual butterflies are about as passionate as a ward full of coma victims and their libido generally manifests itself during intercourse as a series of hamster-like "ee-ee-ee" noises and facial expressions which seem to plead "don't hurt me, oh lord and master" - both traits that have, presumably, been drummed into them by their rather pathetic male equivalents.

This last observation seems bourne out by the story of one of my friends, an Englishman married to a Japanese woman. On the first night they actually got "intimate" with each other the girl started squealing "No,no - you're hurting me!" so the Englishman immediately stopped whatever he was doing and, totally ashamed, apologised profusely - to which the girl replied "Not really, but men like that kind of thing!". Yeah right, - maybe rape-fantasy obsessed Japanese men perhaps.

As to Aya Sugimoto, I think that she's a stunning woman - but passionate...? Even in her most explicit movies such as "Flower and Snake" she plays an unwilling victim forced to submit to the myrial weird desires of freaky Japanese men and so she simply reinforces the submissive stereotype of all Japanese women. I actually know someone who goes to the same beauty salon as Ms Sugimoto and, despite all her bravado about "tango-fuelled sexual liberation", she's apparently a timid mouse in real life - just like all the other "desperate to find a husband and breed before 30" Japanese women she criticises.