Nihon Tora comments

They might have some success in attracting a few ultra-wealthy tourists here, but I have my doubts that will be enough to make a big difference in an economy the size of Japan.

There have always been incorrect decisions made in football matches. It really shouldn’t have happened with the VAR but it did and at the end of the day, you just have to accept it in the same way you would any other bad decision. Over the season I’m sure Liverpool will have a few bad decisions go their way. They’ll just have to suck it up and move on to the next game.

Don’t walk on escalators, don’t walk while texting, don’t walk while smoking…. Honestly, haven’t these people got more important things to worry about?

Personally, I hate standing on escalators and it annoys me when people in front of my are standing and blocking me from walking. It’s a waste of my time and a wasted opportunity to get a little exercise!

”Safety” zealots and jobsworths, thanks but no thanks, you take care of yourselves and I’ll worry about me!

You are useless at making a deal with someone if you give them something and simply hope that they might give something back in return. The normal way to do it is to say “We’ll give you this if, and only if, you give us that.” Any tax breaks given to companies should only be given if they increase salaries at the bottom end and middle by a certain amount. No salary increases, no tax breaks.

What happened at Minamata was unbelievable. They knew that the mercury from their factory was killing people and then they installed a filtration system that they knew would do nothing to filter mercury and then just continued to release the mercury into a different river. It wasn’t an accident, and it is no exaggeration to say that the people responsible were mass murderers.

A 30000 yen handout here, a bunch of coupons there - it won’t make the slightest difference. Governments across the world have to find ways to completely reverse, not just slow down or stop, the massive transfers of wealth from the lower and middle classes to the top 0.1% that have occurred over the last 20 years or so.

Well, when a small group of people at the top are deciding how the company's salaries and stock options should be split across the workforce, what do you think will happen? Precisely what does happen - they give the vast majority of it all to themselves and to hell with everyone else! It would be better if they took significantly less and paid the rest of their employees a better salary. It would surely be better for the company because well compensated workers will be more motivated, and better for society as a whole as it would help reduce wealth inequality.

7.4% green space compared to 27.0 percent New York, 27.9% Seoul and 33% London. What an absolute disgrace - this from a nation whose people pride themselves on being lovers of nature - just proves how brainwashed and ignorant people are here. Wareware nihonjin love nature, not like foreign savages - yet they just go and pour concrete over it all, build all sorts of unsightly buildings, and plonk a plastic statue of liberty in the middle of it all for good measure.

What happened to all of the money that the now old people have contributed to the pensions system over the years? Surely if that money had been invested properly, then it should all still be there to pay their pensions?

I guess the government has just squandered it all by pouring concrete everywhere....

So, what to do about it?

Well, some countries have decided to go the mass immigration route - obviously that brings with it problems of its own and as others mentioned, just seems to be kicking the can down the road. There is also an ethical argument against that - wealthy countries hoovering up all of the best talent and working age people from poorer countries is disastrous for the economic development of those countries. Japan, being a rather insular and conservative country seems rather averse to the mass immigration route anyway, so while I expect some opening up over the coming years, I don't think they will open the floodgates like we have seen in the UK and others for example.

One of the main drivers of population decline in advanced economies is the flow of people from the countryside into urban centres - I think that is especially true in Japan. The government should look at initiatives to get companies to locate their premises and a significant number of their staff away from the main urban areas of Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, into smaller regional towns and cities. Japan has excellent delivery services, very good internet connectivity - many companies don't need to be located in Tokyo in this day and age!

I also think that the retirement age will have to be increased up to 70. People are living much longer and healthier lives these days and many jobs are not physically demanding. Perhaps a staged retirement system could be introduced? A lower age of retirement for those in physically demanding jobs. For office, managerial etc. maybe reduced reduced working hours between 60 and 70 with corresponding salary decrease before retirement at 70?

I imagine it must have been pretty bad for a relative to go to the police about it.

There does need to be a bit of perspective though - does the parent just need some education and training on how to discipline the child without hitting her, rather than criminal charges being brought?

What do you do when your child will not stop their bad behaviour no matter how much you tell them to stop - I have this experience with one of my children - they know full well that they are doing wrong, but they continue to do it anyway no matter how much you try to reason with or admonish them. Deliberately testing the limits. It can be incredibly infuriating trying to deal with a badly behaving child, even worse when there is more than one, parents are often tired and stressed and in this country, out in public there is also a strong social pressure to deal with bad behaviour quickly. All of this has to be taken into account when considering how to deal with an incident like this - was there a pattern of abusive behaviour, or had the person just been pushed beyond his limit on this occasion?

Don't forget to pay your pension to make those older people happy and live well. Even when you won't spent your pension age in Japan.

If you leave Japan and declare that you are not coming back, you can claim back your pension contributions.

In flight entertainment is better, but pretty much everything else is much worse - prices have gone through the roof - especially the past couple of years. Everything is so much stricter - you are treated like a potentially unruly schoolchild throughout - despite online check-in becoming a thing, it now takes far longer to get your bags checked in, get through customs and security. They restrict your alcohol consumption on the flight - only offering you one alcoholic drink with your meal. You used to be able to buy a bottle of spirits in the duty free and drink it on the flight if you wanted to. Now, they wrap it all up in a sealed bag and warn you not to open it before you get to your destination. 20 years ago, there was a good chance there would be a free seat or two next to you - no chance of that now - they make sure to fill every single seat on every flight. Having to pay extra for check in luggage on a long haul flight?! What kind of joke is that? Having to pay extra to choose seats - again, ridiculous, especially if you are travelling with children - you are forced to pay it just in case you end up getting separated from your child if you don't! It's just all pure corporate greed - none of it is an enjoyable experience, just an absolute pain that we have to endure whenever we want to go anywhere.

Still rocking an iphone 8 here - I bought it second hand a few years back for 20K. All I use it for is a bit of web surfing on the train, mail, Whatsapp, the odd facetime chat and that's about it - it does all of that stuff perfectly fine. The only thing that might entice me to a newer model would be the better camera. But I already have a DSLR and the iphone8 is OK for holiday snaps and so on. I'll get a newer one when my current one breaks or I lose it or it gets stolen.

So, over a million people can gather for the fireworks around Asakusa station and that’s no problem, but a much smaller gathering in Shibuya is going to end in disaster? I saw a news article on TV last night about this - it was all gaijin this and gaijin that with interviews with foreigners with their faces blurred out. In the west, the media go hugely out of their way to avoid the perception that foreigners or minorities have been responding for something bad happening - even when they blatantly have, but in Japan they do the exact opposite - they deliberately put emphasis on any foreign participation just to appeal to and amplify the xenophobic attitudes that still prevail here. The vast majority of the Shibuya Halloween lot are Japanese! Instead of trying to ban it, how about embracing it and trying to make it a safe and crime-free event for young people to enjoy?

Nursery should followup when a child doesnt show up.

Yes, they should. Why didnt this happen?

There's no standard system here, no rules or recommendations, so each nursery just does applies its own rules. Some nurseries will follow-up if a child that usually attends is absent without any explanation, some won't.

I think the J-gov should recommend that all nurseries or anywhere taking care of young children should have some system in place for checking up on absent children. As I mentioned, it is not difficult to set up some online registration system for which parents, each weekend, can just tick a few boxes to to say which children will attend and which won't on which days. That is much less hassle and much more useful than some of the nonsense information that nurseries sometimes ask you to provide them with here, such as how many poos the child did in the last 24 hours, and were they soft, medium or hard. (seriously, our previous day-care asked that!)

She needs to be punished for this awful incident. 

I don't agree that she needs to be punished for this - it was obviously a terrible mistake, very different to some of those other incidents where people have deliberately left children in vehicles to go and play pachinko or engage in prostitution - both of which have happened in the last few years. There should definitely be punishments for people how knowingly leave their small children unattended in vehicles, but this lady has just forgotten - it's easy to do when you are busy rushing around. Most likely the child just fell asleep in the child seat as they often do.

Every single summer without fail, there is at least one case where a child dies after being left in a car on a hot day in Japan. In some circumstances it is possible to change legislation - for example, there was a child left on a bus taking kids to the nursery last year - I think they changed the rule requiring that all children are counted on and off the bus every time, something like that. I doubt legislating against leaving kids unattended in vehicles would have helped in this case, because she didn't deliberately do it. What could have helped is if the nursery was informed of the child's planned attendance - surely this is not a difficult to do - it could be done online at the beginning of each week - just click which children you plan to bring each day. Then, if the child doesn't turn up, the nursery can call the parents to check where they are. This very simple measure, not difficult to implement and not a big burden on the parents or nursery, would have saved this child's life and it would have saved the life of the child that was left on the bus last year.

To those suggesting that people check parked cars as they are walking by for forgotten babies - actually most cars these days have tinted windows, especially at the back and it is quite hard to see inside without actually pressing your face against the glass - I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to do that just on the, what? 1-in-100 million chance that there is a baby left inside!

I can't stand the self-service check-outs! There is a Natural Lawson close to my work that I sometimes used to use, but most of the registers are now self-service and the staff responsible for the one regular checkout is always busy doing something else, meaning you have to use the self-service checkout - I stopped going there as a result! If you buy fuel from a self-serve petrol station, it is cheaper than if you go to a served petrol station, but there is no discount if you use the self-serve checkout! eat as they can gorge themselves on!

The big issue facing Japan right now is the declining population. Tokyo has the lowest birth-rate in the whole of Japan - not surprising - life in the big city is just not conducive to raising larger families. As Japan's population declines, Tokyo's has increased because jobs and public services in smaller places are disappearing, so the people remaining in those smaller places have little choice but to move to Tokyo. They move here and then either have no children or just one, whereas if the lived in a smaller, cheaper town with more space, they might have had two or three. So, it's a vicious circle.

With that in mind, how does a huge development like this make any sense? Presumably, those two massive towers are going to be residential - that's another 2000 condos in the middle of Tokyo, making the city even more crowded and with even less green space - two big reasons why people in Tokyo don't want to have many children in the first place. If the towers are going to be offices, then again, more jobs in the center of Tokyo meaning more people move here and have fewer children. This country should be encouraging developments such as this in smaller, regional cities well away from Tokyo/Osaka/Nagoya.

*Ogura’s mother, not Ogawa.

That’s a story I wish I could unread and forget about forever. Also says so much about the Japanese judicial system.

To think most of those animals responsible only received 5 to 7 years imprisonment and all of them are now out and free continuing with their lives of crime. Not one of them should ever have been allowed to see the light of day again. Ogawa’s mother who vandalized Junko’s grave for “ruining he son’s life” should have spent 5-7 years in prison for that alone.

This case doesn’t sound anything like that - it’s nowhere near as bad, but it still sounds to me like a stiff prison sentence is warranted. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they receive a suspended sentence though - Japan only gives out stiff sentences if the crime affects the wealthy or powerful or big business interests, or if it involves a non-government approved drug.

It doesn’t matter how much money they throw at it, even if they introduce radical changes across the board ( not going to happen), the most they will do is slow the decline slightly. No way will they reverse it. Best thing to do is to start planning how to cope with the declining and aging population. The whole civilized world is faced with the same problem - Japan could be among those leading the way.

That's just over £1 per litre - here in the UK petrol at my local supermarket is around £1.45 per litre - around ¥268 per litre... I think ¥185.60 is a bargain

The savings in fuel costs compared to the UK are immediately wiped out the second you go onto a motorway here - the tolls are ridiculously expensive, for motorways that are often nothing more than a dual carriageway. You have no choice but to use them when trying to cover any distance because all other roads have traffic lights every 100 meters.

Get a job in finance and you can make waaaay more than that.

Sure, but it's not really relevant because there are only very few finance jobs relative to the number of workers overall. You can triple the number of high-paying finance jobs and they still won't be making enough babies to maintain the population.

There is not a cat in hells chance that the birth rate is going to go back up to anywhere near the level needed to maintain the population any time soon. With the population declining everywhere, except Tokyo - the place with the lowest birth rate of all, the problem is only going to get worse over the next 20-30 years.

The government will just have to increase the retirement age if the pension system is to remain viable - 70, 75... it's no big deal - this isn't France, nobody will really complain about it.

The Japanese seem to pride themselves on their appreciation of nature, the four seasons and all that, but it strikes me that they are among the worst environmental vandals anywhere! Everywhere you go in Japan, they just dump concrete all over the place - along coastlines, rivers, hillsides. The complete eyesore buildings that went up all over the Japanese countryside during the bubble era, never renovated since, just slowly decaying away - towns in the what should be some of the most beautiful places in the country, just complete horrible dumps! I haven't seen the plans for this development, but a pair of 200 m skyscrapers in that area sounds like more of the same. Of course, the protesters efforts will come to nothing - the money will win, as it always does, and to hell with the environment and the concerns of the little people. When it comes to urban planning, I wish Japan would take more influence from European nations such as the Netherlands and Belgium, rather than North America from where they've copied everything since WWII.

Buy a diesel car and get Costco membership. Your fuel bills will drop massively. Diesel is already about 30 yen per liter cheaper, save another 15 or 20 yen per liter buying it from Costco and you get way more miles per liter with diesel than you do petrol for most cars

So, was my friend (or even a stranger) grabbing my belly sexual assault because I didn't consent to it?

Did you feel it was sexual assault? Did it feel like a violation?

how the person on the receiving end feels about it is what actually matters - 

.DJ Soda is the only one who can say whether she feels that way or not.

 DJ Soda gets to decide how seriously the matter should be taken, since she is the one who was touched. 

It's all a very one-sided way of looking at it. Even if I did feel it was a sexual assault when my friend grabbed my belly, it would not automatically make it so. You have to take into account the intent of the perpetrator. In any legal case involving any kind of assault, attack, sexual assault, whatever, determining the intent of the perpetrator is a key part of determining their level of guilt and responsibility and severity of any punishment.

No. All you have to ask whether there was consent.

So, was my friend (or even a stranger) grabbing my belly sexual assault because I didn't consent to it? Of course it wasn't because there was no sexual motivation behind it. It doesn't matter if it is a breast, a belly, a bottom, a leg, an arm, if there is a sexual motivation behind it plus no consent, then it is sexual assault, but if there is no sexual motivation and no consent - then it is just well, very rude, as you said.

So Japanese women walk up to women whom they don't know, and just GRAB their breasts without consent? I don't think so - because that would be sexual assault.

Not women they don't know, it would be among friends of course. I've seen it happen - certainly brought some raised eyebrows.

Again, this is not what happened to DJ Soda. She was groped by strangers.

Not really - they were strangers to her, but they were also her fans at a concert whom she'd gone to greet - high fives, pats on the back, hand shakes, hugs etc, so consent to some degree of touching could reasonably be assumed, its just that some took it too far obviously. It's completely different to some random person on a train coming up to you and touching you.

I agree that what happened was wrong, that they crossed a line and went a bit too far. But sorry, I think it is you that is exaggerating the seriousness of what happened here.

If you want to characterize this as a sexual assault, you have to ask if the people were really getting some kind of sexual thrill out of doing this or were they doing it to try to exert some kind of sexual dominance over that person, or was that their intent? For the gropers on the trains, I think the answer to that is, yes. Those people should absolutely be prosecuted for sexual assault.

But I'm not convinced that is what happened in this case. The girl grabbed her breast, but as others have pointed out - Japanese women sometimes grab each others breasts - especially if they happen to be on the larger side! That would certainly raise some eyebrows among westerners, but it is just horseplay, there's nothing sexual in it. It's not impossible that the girl got some sexual thrill out of doing it, but I doubt it. With the guys, again, I think it was something more along the lines of silly schoolboy behaviour - people living in Japan will tell you is pretty common even among adults here - I don't think they were getting a sexual thrill out of it, maybe some silly, teenage boy bragging right "I touched DJ Soda's breast!" kind of thing. The guys said something along those lines in their apology, I believe - they said their actions were "light-hearted" - in other words, there was no malice intended.

I remember I used to have a bit of a beer belly, and there was this girl that every time she saw me, would come and grab my belly. I didn't consent to that, and I really didn't like her doing it. I eventually got sick of it and told her to stop doing it because I wasn't cool with it. She apologized and that was that.

I think that's probably what should happen here - it should be explained to the people involved that they'd gone too far, why that kind of behaviour isn't appropriate and they should give a genuine apology. Talk of criminal prosecutions and sexual assaults; gropers on the train - absolutely, but I don't think this was the same thing. There are all sorts of things that happen in Japan that wouldn't fly in the west these days - racial and xenophobic microaggressions and so on, most of which would be better dealt with through better education and understanding - I think that's where we are with this particular case.

Given the choice between eating fish caught off the coast of Fukushima or food fried in oil fished directly out of the sewer that you are likely to find in many restaurants in China, I’d take the former every time.