Japan Today

oyatoi comments

Posted in: Cyclists in Japan risk jail for using mobile phone, riding while drunk See in context

The prison population here is a tiny fraction of the number incarcerated in the USA (40K vs 2000K). One should not assume from this stat, however, that the locals are way less predisposed to criminality. Japanese tolerance for ambiguity means that too often, a blind eye is turned to infractions that elsewhere would automatically attract a custodial sentence. Suspended sentences are another way of pretending things are what they’re not.

It’s well and good to have laws on the books. But their success is by no means assured without a corresponding change in the justice system’s predilection for massaging the stats in the interests of making Japan seem more law-abiding than it actually is.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Posted in: German CEO of Olympus resigns over alleged illegal drugs purchase See in context

Whatever gets you through the night.

You wonder how long he’s been here, not to appreciate the tremendous risks in going off the reservation. Gaijin are always held to a higher standard than locals because 1) they can usually be trusted to behave accordingly, and 2) because when they do fall, the unedifying spectacle allows the locals to indulge in a little schadenfreude that makes them feel better about their own lives.

-9 ( +9 / -18 )

Posted in: 42-year-old woman arrested for kidnapping teenage boy after taking him to hotel See in context

the question becomes, did she detain him there, or could he leave any time?

She perhaps put the strong word on him; you can check out any time you like , but you can never leave.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

Posted in: Campaigning kicks off in Japan for Oct 27 general election See in context

Sanjinosebleed

So the sokaiya gakkai cult aka New Komeito…how’s that going? Not the unification church but the one controlling the LDP

……Soka Gakkai…

You got it right the first time. They’re extortionists on a par with those in the business world.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C5%8Dkaiya

-3 ( +2 / -5 )

Posted in: Haitian gang slaughters at least 70 people as thousands flee See in context

Moonraker

Haiti seems to represent a likely future for the majority of us.

It’s a template that’s increasingly being foisted upon every nation too weak (or woke) to resist. And while it’s tempting for those hiding from (or overseeing and fomenting) dystopia to believe that they’re safe and secure in their gated aeries, they’re likely to be proven wrong as the destructive forces unleashed come looking for them too.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Posted in: Cabinet ministers say they are not pursuing Ishiba's 'Asian NATO' proposal See in context

I asked a family member, a political LDP volunteer if he could arrange if I could tag along at a LDP champagning event.

Looking forward to Part 2, where you regale us with anecdotes about the merry time that was had by all quaffing Veuve Clicquot to your hearts’ content.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Posted in: China warns citizens traveling to Japan after fatal stabbing of boy See in context

You get the feeling they almost want something like that to happen here. Anything to keep a lid on what’s rapidly developing into a stampede out of the place.

“……hordes of people have been leaving the country. Some are fed up with the political repression, which has spread far and wide under the current regime. Others feel hopeless about the economy……..For many, the bargain between the party and the people, that living standards will continue to improve so long as you keep your head down, no longer holds water. So scores of people are finding ways out through the cracks.

Some are using student or work visas to relocate to places where they can live and talk more freely, with new diaspora communities emerging in cities such as Bangkok, Tokyo, and Amsterdam…..The phenomenon has become so widely discussed online that it has it’s own buzzword: runxue, or run philosophy, a coded term for emigration.…In 2023, there were 137,143 asylum seekers from China, according to the UN’s refugee agency. That is more than five times the number registered a decade earlier.

One potential pathway is the deadly Darién Gap, part of the migrant corridor that connects south and Central America with the southern border of the United States. Better known for attracting desperate Latin Americans, in recent years the number of Chinese people making that journey has surged. In the six months to April 2024, 24,367 Chinese nationals were apprehended by the US border police at the border with Mexico. That is more than the number of Chinese people who were apprehended in the whole of the previous financial year. In March alone, the number of times that the US border police encountered Chinese nationals increased by 8,500% compared with March 2021.

7 ( +8 / -1 )

Posted in: Man arrested after telling convenience store worker that he assaulted, robbed woman in hotel See in context

This should count as 2 crimes: his, and prostitution; her and her ‘adult services’ employer. The latter will be hoping that they’re up to date with payments to the right people to make it all go away.

-3 ( +1 / -4 )

Posted in: Foreigner climbs onto FamilyMart roof in Shibuya; yells 'I did it!' before police step in See in context

Young, dumb, and full of cunning.

-4 ( +3 / -7 )

Posted in: Japan lifts megaquake warning See in context

Brilliant. Right after I bought 3,000 toilet rolls, a truck load of drinking water, 100 gas bombes and 500 tins of tuna.

Kudos; you’ve taken care of not just your immediate disaster preparedness needs, but for the next 10 years. My only advice would be to pace yourself with the ‘sea chicken’.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

Posted in: Japanese people budget less for summer break amid inflation, weak yen: poll See in context

Japanese politics is dead, in a functioning democracy, there would be a credible opposition party with a counter policy to address this situation. All Japanese people can do is either vote for or demand change, or wear it. It’s that simple.

Japan functions according to its own rules, it gets away with subjecting its people to things that elsewhere would provoke fury and indignation precisely because its reservoir of endurance and capacity for suffering is so deep. 我慢 is constantly extolled, ably assisted by expressions such as 仕方がない and its many permutations. 我々日本人 and analogous groupthink formulations, are complicit in forging the ties that bind.

But even the Japanese have their breaking point. After dissembling for years, the finely calibrated machine, at last cognizant of the limits of gaman, through its central bank has unleashed one humdinger of a financial correction on the world.

2 ( +4 / -2 )

Posted in: Potential Harris running mate opposes Nippon Steel takeover deal See in context

Having sold American workers out with its embrace of globalism and ongoing efforts to squelch Trumpian nativism, we’re expected to believe they’ve had a conversion on the way to Damascus, or Lebanon, and are now gunning for them

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Posted in: Yen hits 2-month high of 154 against dollar on BOJ rate hike speculation See in context

It tells us how undervalued the yen must be when the merest hint of a possible rate hike is enough to light a rocket under the currency. Yen weakness has been a boon to inbound tourism, exporters, J companies repatriating profits back here, and not least the Government cashing in some of its massively appreciated foreign holdings.

7 ( +17 / -10 )

Posted in: Bodies of man, 5-year-old daughter found at dam in suspected murder-suicide in Nara Prefecture See in context

The couple should never have been together in the first place. The child was collateral damage, the universe saying actions have consequences.

-3 ( +1 / -4 )

Posted in: Top execs resign at Japanese supplement firm linked to dozens of deaths See in context

As a direct result of their criminal negligence, many people are now dead. And yet all these corporate clowns have got to say for themselves is how extremely regrettable. Their only real regret is that they were caught and that it may, although even that’s unlikely, affect their retirement plans. Extremely irresponsible or blameworthy would’ve been closer to the mark, but nah, not for them the gold standard of contrition.

12 ( +17 / -5 )

Posted in: Japan women's gymnastics captain Miyata out of Olympics for smoking, drinking See in context

Monaco is not France, so is not coming back from France...LOL

The closest airport to Monaco is in France, in Nice. When you arrive by plane at Nice Côte d´Azur airport.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

Posted in: Statue of young Hiroshima A-bomb victim Sadako Sasaki stolen from Seattle park See in context

We can only hope that if and when whoever did this is caught, they’ll be named and shamed. A good flogging wouldn’t go astray either.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Posted in: 7 injured in explosion on anchored vessel in southwestern Japan See in context

between Kitakyushu City and Beppu.

It’s just outside Kitakyushu; here.

https://map.yahoo.co.jp/address?ac=40621&az=Mjg&lat=33.79196&lon=130.98533&zoom=13&maptype=basic

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Posted in: Nikkei stock index tops 42,000 for 1st time on tech gains See in context

The tanking yen has everything to do with it. After Japan repatriated many tens of billions of its US holdings recently, using it to improve the lives of people here would be the last thing they would’ve thought of using it for. Instead, throwing caution to the wind, and with nary a thought for the moral hazard of being both the regulator as well as the beneficiary of lax enforcement of rules, they’ve probably added to their already ginormous stock holdings. Sniffing the wind, the smart money on Wall Street knows it’s only a matter of time before the yen-dollar rate heads in the opposite direction and that there might never be a better time to increase the J stock weighting in their portfolios.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Posted in: MUFG Bank probed on employee's alleged involvement in insider trading See in context

The song remains the same. Rake offs, insider trading, and all manner of financial shenanigans are par for the course here. Whatever punishments are meted out will be purely cosmetic and largely ineffectual. Despite all the pious blather and promises of remedial action to prevent a recurrence, we know better. Soon enough, the same JT bat channel will be regaling us with news of yet another case, complete with stock photos of corporate clowns inclining to the requisite degree and mouthing the same tired cliches about how regrettable it all is and making promises they’re not capable of delivering, not by a long shot. Gotta preserve that Wa.

-2 ( +3 / -5 )

Posted in: Tokyo Gov Koike reelected, beating opposition Renho, rising ex-mayor See in context

The big loser was Renho……..

Her nationality drama a few years ago surely didn’t help. Even though she’s supposed to have renounced her Taiwanese passport, in the public mind she’s forever tainted by the perception that she has divided allegiances. It matters not one jot that both Koike and Ishimaru are ‘out of towners’; they’re qualified and she’s not in the way that really counts.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

Posted in: Elementary school boy drowns during swimming class in western Japan See in context

How are (kids) supposed to practice swimming when they (on average) only have access to a pool for 6 weeks out of 52? It’s crazy.

Sheet home the blame to a lopsided sense of top down priorities which relies heavily on the long suffering, stoically enduring public’s capacity to defer gratification of elementary needs to the Afterlife. The promotion of improved water safety awareness and skills, one example among many, trails a distant last to other far more pressing claims on the public purse; another road to nowhere in deepest, darkest Akita, or ensuring an endless supply of ‘free’ money to underpin yet another predatory takeover abroad. Japan’s ‘ketchyness’ is completely explicable as soon as you realize the ‘country is everything, individuals are nothing’ predatory, mercantilist mindset that permeates and underpins so much of what goes on here.

-5 ( +1 / -6 )

Posted in: Japan confirms China set up buoy over its southern continental shelf See in context

The resident foreign community surely views such incidents with a growing sense of unease and trepidation. As China continues to ratchet up tensions in its efforts to supplant the US as the dominant power in East Asia, they may well come to a decision that they’re not prepared to chance the increasingly Sinophilic vassal state Japan’s likely to resemble and decide to hightail it out of here instead.

4 ( +5 / -1 )

Posted in: Rap mogul Sean Combs sued for sex trafficking, sex assault See in context

Yet another poor ‘adult film star’, innocence lost after entering the lion’s den.

-6 ( +4 / -10 )

Posted in: Nippon Steel fight points to industry's uncertain future in Pennsylvania See in context

Japan can modernize the industry, make it competitive and boost the number of employees

If the situation was reversed and it was US Steel seeking to take over a Japanese steel maker, the song and dance from all sides here would be deafening. Black Ships would be invoked, rightist sound trucks would be doing the rounds, and all manner of dire predictions about Japan’s imminent demise would be fodder for the wide shows. In addition to blocking the acquisition on national security grounds, it should also be blocked out of solidarity with workers here until such time as they’re treated with more compassion and humanity and not as expendable fodder to be thrown into the maw of J Inc.

-9 ( +2 / -11 )

Posted in: Kobayashi Pharma probing 76 more deaths linked to supplement See in context

Top government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi said Friday that … it is extremely regrettable,"

They’re like a stuck record with these crocodile tear insincere regrets they trot out each and every time the country suffers a loss of face and reputation for probity as a result of somebody, somewhere, somehow, stuffing up.

-2 ( +2 / -4 )

Posted in: Ex-chief public prosecutor in Osaka arrested for allegedly raping colleague See in context

One benefit of teleworking is that sexual harassment of a physical nature becomes impossible.

Virtual harassment, the next big thing. Choose your avatar wisely!

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Posted in: Poster pranks cause chaos in Tokyo gubernatorial election campaign See in context

And very little actual discussion is seen in the media of pressing political issues.

Ahh, gubernatorial silly season rolls around and the farce that is democracy here is center stage once more. Those who make the rules evince no desire to rock the boat and the masses are complicit in allowing them to get away with that. Soon enough, the party hats and props will all be put away, the music will die down, and things will go on just as they did before.

3 ( +5 / -2 )

Posted in: 23-year-old man gets 18 years in prison for murder of ex-girlfriend in Yokohama See in context

18 years in a hell hole of a Japanese prison won’t exactly be a holiday. Compared with incarceration in a Western jail, convicted felons here are subject to far more intrusive and restrictive micromanagement of their every waking hour. And every moment of that will, hopefully, be one of self reproach and regret. Some people only learn the hard way.

-4 ( +2 / -6 )

Posted in: The big heat See in context

Where I live in Australia, we get 40C +. Highest recorded is 47.3C.

An Oz summer is way preferable to the unrelenting heat and humidity of high summer in Japan. Apart from the occasional and very welcome typhoon, weeks go by here where the procession of days hardly varies an iota in their constant oppressiveness. Life without an aircon, an endurance trial if ever there was one. North of Kanto isn’t as bad, or as bad for as long, but the bulk of the population live in the torrid zone south of there. In Australia, even on the hottest day, in the shade of a tree one feels instant relief. Not so here, where the oppressive, clammy heat envelopes one from all directions and there’s little respite offered by shade.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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