Muratafan comments

Japanese Conbini is the standard bearer across the world. Virtually all foreigners find the cleanliness, food quality, food variety and service remarkable. The LAST thing 7-11 needs in an infusion of private equity. The trail of private equity corpses is frightening: Brookstone, Party City, Red Lobster, RJR Nabisco, Sports Authority, True Value Hardware, Pyrex and - amazingly enough - strip mall Veterinarians. I know it's fun to dunk on Japan, Inc. on here, but Japan Inc. is much, much, much better than private equity.

Anything Pete did on the field is far, far more overshadowed by his gambling. Pete thought he was above baseball and could find a way to beat the system. Putting him into the HOF sends a very, very strong message of 'hey, go ahead and bet on baseball, we'll just forgive you in the end.' When you watch MLB, you assume that the games are not fixed. Putting Rose in the HOF would make that assumption questionable.

Of all the major team sports to bet on, baseball is the easiest one to do so since there are so many games and many times the games are meaningless, yet they still have betting lines on them.

Despite changes to base size and stolen base rules, Ohtani has a much higher success rate for stolen bases than Acuna Jr.

In terms of success rate, no one in the major leagues has a higher success rate than Ohtani.

The numbers would likely not change much even under the previous rules.

Ohtani has stolen over 25 consecutive bases without being caught. His stolen base success percentage is third best in the majors after Maikel Garcia who is 37 out of 39 attempts and Victor Robles who is 30 out of 32. Ohtani is 52 out of 56, so that is well above 90 percent success rate, which is much higher than the league average of 78 percent. Plus, Ohtani is second in the majors in terms of the total # of steals.

Seems the 'boycott' had a workaround and the Japanese seafood industry didn't suffer much, if at all. This 'announcement' makes for a nice face-saving gesture on behalf of China. The last thing the CCP wanted was to have their pollution levels broadcast to the rank-and-file Chinese. This way, the CCP looks like they 'extracted concessions' from Japan, when this 'third party monitor' is merely a dog-and-pony show.

Since the discharge began, no abnormalities have been detected in the monitoring of seawater around the plant, including the concentration levels of tritium, according to the Japanese government.

And because Japanese seafood products have never had high levels of tritium, the Japanese seafood industry has nothing to fear from this 'third party monitor'.

Murodjon Akhmadaliev lost to Marlon Tapales via split decision and Tapales got knocked out by Inoue 8 months later.

Murodjon is 29, not exactly 'young', he's 18 months younger than Inoue.

Haters gonna hate.

I didn't think it could be possible to be more incorrect, but b4f, you take the cake. A quick Google search reveals that immigrants to America commit crimes at a rate lower than the general American population.

https://siepr.stanford.edu/news/mythical-tie-between-immigration-and-crime

And, yes, I have a Phd and yes I have read the study. It was more than competently performed from a research design perspective. Are you going to tell us how 'wrong' those 'liberal' professors from Stanford are? And, if so, could you kindly indicate HOW the Stanford professors make research design errors so as to render their study useless and/or not generalizable?

It will change if you employ legal immigrants, with the Southern border out of control and Biden allowing millions to come in estimations from last year are about 10 million, there is no way on God's green earth that employment, food or housing will be guaranteed for the vast majority of these people, there aren't enough service industry jobs to give to the majority of people that really have very little to almost no employable skills, these people will either engage in crime and fraud or become homeless or a combination of the two. States such as California and NYC have become unlivable and people are tired of living with the crime, stench, and lawlessness that has overtaken our cities, people are leaving and going to states where the rule of law persists and they don't have to be overwhelmed by illegals and crime.

Korea and Japan remind me of Mississippi and Arkansas in the U.S. Whenever there's a bad statistic, people in Arkansas could always say 'hey, at least we're not Mississippi!'

Japan's birthrate is still almost 60% higher than Korea. Amazing

Instead of $500 million, he'll get $300 million. There are far worse things in life.

To me, the biggest drawback of all this is that now many potential Ohtani's will be told 'hey kid, don't try it. Ohtani did it, but blew out his pitching arm in doing so. You can try it, but you're risking too much - not worth it.'

Just for the sake of the above, I hope Ohtani can make a pitching comeback in the 2025 season.

He's done a lot for the game of baseball and having a true unicorn was really fun.

Just don't sign with the Mets. They are snakebit and virtually always dysfunctional and their history with Japanese players has not been good. I see 3/4 teams in the running: Dodgers, Yankees, Mets and maybe the Red Sox.

What a laughable article. So, Hong Kong buys literally tons of farm-raised shrimp from China and Southeast Asia - which is loaded with chemicals, pesticides, etc.. The list includes land-locked prefectures in Japan. And, the amount of radioactive waste being dumped is a literal fraction of what is considered dangerous. So, someone from Hong Kong is eating pesticide-laden, farm-raised shrimp and is oblivious to it, but is boycotting Japanese seafood. Makes no sense.

So today even if China is sanctioned, China with Russian and Iran can absorb sanctions and destroy the West entirely. Look at Europe now.

I am certain Europe would be crushed to a pulp economically and UK would be ruined. US may survive (the wealthy) but in a badly weakened state. The middle class and JD Vance blue collar families will be devastated. China and Russia and Iran will emerge stronger than ever.

They have a working economy of 800 million middle class. It can take a big hit. The U.S. portion of their GDP is only 3%. Sanctions would be incredibly suicidal.

China is an incredible country. China says it is ready broker peace talks between Israel and Palestine. They might be able to score another peace deal; this time Israel and Palestine.

Here's your 50 cents, Wumao. Comrade Xi would be so proud of you.

All hail the new leader of the entire world, the Middle Kingdom!

Great news for Sapporo, Hoikkado and Japan. Any Olympics is simply not worth it. Pre-internet days, maybe. Post-internet days, no. If I want to watch international competitions anywhere in the world, I can get the highlights for free and don't have to sit through nationalistic biases all day or some fluff.

Rather than focusing solely on numbers, the revision will also incorporate strategies to address "tourism pollution" through measures such as attracting high-end tourists and encouraging them to venture outside the main cities.

Translation: Chinese tourists are loud and cause noise pollution and regular pollution and are not 'high-end'.

Most beneficial scandal in quite some time. The IOC grifters have outlived their usefulness. With the internet, international travel, etc. the Olympics has lost quite a bit of their luster, especially the Winter games that are dominated by the Nordic European countries. The 'bids' are pretty half-hearted from the two 'finalists' of Salt Lake City and Sapporo. With less bids, less payola for the IOC.

Lots of trolls out today. My gosh, why shouldn't you be excited for Japan? I see the usual suspects who felt the urge to denigrate Roki Sasaki after his perfect game are the same ones here downvoting enthusiastic fans of Samurai Blue after a thrilling win.

It's actually worse in the U.S. than before. After Florida passed the 'Castle Doctrine' any gun-toting yokel has the authority to 'shoot first, ask later' if he believes he is threatened on 'his property'. And, yes, the Castle Doctrine and 'Stand Your Ground' (every post-50, out-of-shape white conservative's dream of a Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry re-enactment) is applicable in Louisiana. With Stand Your Ground and the Castle Doctrine, the Louisiana Shooter wouldn't even go to trial, let alone get arrested.

And...Mexican immigrants actually have a minimal, if not slightly beneficial, impact on crime.

Do Mexican Immigrants "Cause" Crime? | Department of Criminology (upenn.edu)

So...I am sure Bass will try to scour the internet for another 'source'. Here's the problem Bass, I will humble brag right now and say that I have a Phd in social sciences and the above paper/research was published after peer review to ensure that there wasn't omitted correlated variable bias, sample selection bias, endogeneity, self-selection issues, etc.

I own guns for hunting. I am totally in favor of gun control.

The Cold War lasted for 44 years (1947-1991). America has plenty of experience in a multi-polar world and I think Blair doesn't quite understand the degree to which the Cold War impacted American politics. I grew up during the later part of the Cold War (literally born at the halfway point of it). Russia was part of quite a few everyday conversations.

Russia seems to want to return to the Cold War era, but this time it will be teamed up with China.

Communism vs. Capitalism part II. Nothing more, nothing less.

The only difference between this Cold War and the prior Cold War is that America has a ton of investment in China. Russia's manufacturing base, etc.. is still awful and their only export of note is oil.

What's amazing to me is that Russia's economy is still very, very undiversified and very reliant on fossil fuel and that in the 30 years post 1991, there has been very little to improve Russia's economy for those other than the Russian Oligarchs.

I can only imagine how good Ohtani's numbers would be with a better bullpen behind him (Iglesias is really struggling this season) and some more protection behind him (Trout is once again on the mend and he's the only real threat besides Ohtani). If Ohtani replicates this type of season next year, he's looking at at $50million a year contract. Don't believe me? The Mets shelled out $130 million for 3 seasons of Max Scherzer. Ohtani will be valued higher provided he doesn't get injured.

Surprised Jake Paul hasn't signed a contract with Mayweather. I'm sure it would be a huge Youtube type of spectacle....for idiots who still like Jake Paul and Mayweather. There's a market for everything, I guess.

Japan's aging population, combined with its pension system, requires some sort of influx of tax revenues for the government to sustain its pension system. Those tourism dollars and associated sales taxes and hotel taxes were probably doing a solid job of ensuring the pension system doesn't go totally bankrupt.

If you're Western tourist who wants a bit of culture shock, but not worry about someone stealing your wallet or getting some sort of gastrointestinal issue, then Japan's a solid place to go.

It's safe, clean, trains are incredible. The issue is overcrowding and lack of English.

I went to Japan the first time in 1997. The lack of credit card acceptance and poor ATMs was demoralizing. Japan made a lot of necessary progress from 1997 - 2015 or so.

Gotta love China. They manage to tick off 3 countries simultaneously. Han supremacy at its very finest.

So China hasn't invaded anyone in a long time. Well, it's because they weren't able to.

Don't conflate unwillingness to invade with the inability to invade.

Now that China has the second largest military on Earth AND has increased in 15% in two years AND throw in the fact that China didn't 'invade' Tibet, Mongolia, Hong Kong and didn't have regional skirmishes with India. Combined that with a pretty aggressive stance towards the Indo-Pacific and you have a global need to make sure that China doesn't try to unilaterally 'enforce' its 'vision of a greater China' (see the South China Sea). Just ask the Philippines.

Oh and let's not forget that China DID try to invade Japan at least twice and they lost both times. In terms of 'containment', let's also talk about China's overfishing of pretty much everyway they claim as 'theirs'.

There's some performative drama here all for the sake of the CCP. CCP conveniently allows the Western media images about how stringent they are in addressing COVID so that the CCP can say 'we've always been hyper-vigilant about this, it's because you Westerners caused COVID in the first place is the reason why it became a pandemic'.

Kind of like how the CCP trumpeted how awesome they built those hospitals in a few weeks due to the great engineering of the CCP and the great work ethic of the CCP-inspired people. It backfired since the immediate question became 'if you have COVID under control, why do you need to build the hospital so fast?'.

China and the islands make a pact and all of a sudden the colonial powers get their knickers in a twist. Meanwhile China has to put up with American military in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, SE Asia and Pakistan? 

So...China does NOT have a colonial past or present? So, what do you call Mongolia, Tibet and Hong Kong? Just part of the 'larger Sinosphere'? And all 3 just magically wanted to 'join' in the CCP fun?

The selective, self-serving moral outrage (almost always coming from a Western European or someone from the non-US Anglosphere) and the blame America first attitude makes me nauseous.

The U.S. is the world's police and everyone loves to hate the police until they need the police.

My gosh, the J-haters are out in full force today. Sasaki is 20 years-old and possesses a 100 mph fastball, which is quite rare even in the States. Just enjoy the moment people, sheesh.

For a good, extra sharp cheddar cheese, it takes one year of aging - which is perfect for using excess milk and it gives plenty of time for the marketing arms of cheese producers to get the word out. Getting cheddar cheese in Japan is difficult enough, sharp and extra sharp cheddar is like finding hen's teeth.

Otherwise, Japan's cheese 'selection' consists of rubbery slices of Velveeta like quality, 'pizza' cheese with some concoction of something like mozzarella that is shredded and overpackaged wasabi cheese. Wasabi cheese is good, the rest of the cheese in Japan is severely lacking.

I have a sneaky suspicion that what will be reported by the Chinese authorities will be something along the lines of 'the sole cause of this tragedy was poorly made American aircraft.'

I streamed the whole game. Truthfully, the score is not that indicative of how dominant Japan was. If not for a couple of Minamino shots that hit the woodwork, the score could've been much worse.

In the last 10 matches with Australia, Japan has 6 wins, 3 draws and 1 loss.

That's a very dominant run

Hopefully, Japan can advance past the round of 16 this time

Sake sales are gaining steam in the U.S. and the Americans who drink sake actually appreciate the process and are - for Americans - a pretty particular group of people. If these sake producers (and their marketing teams) do it right, there's plenty of demand in America for premium sake...so hopefully this 'growth mindset' holds and sake culture spreads. These smaller sake producers truly need to band together a bit to help promote their brands overseas like a manufacturer's co-op.

'Kobe beef' on the other hand, in America....is a lost cause.

The headline alone is progress. At least Yoon publicly admitted he wanted better ties and said 'future oriented'. This is light years better than his predecessor, who had no reservations when stating virtually everything in terms of conditional terms like 'when Japan fully realizes its past mistakes will the relationship prosper' or something along those lines.

However, this was not the defining issue of Yoon's platform, so he might just reverse course when things get tough since Japan-bashing almost always guarantees a bump in approval polling.

Interestingly, China seems to be helping unite Japan and Korea. Funny how that works.