Paul England comments

When I ended a 7 year contract I had to pay a 10,000 yen PER DEVICE cancellation fee. When you gouge long-time customers it's not that hard to make money I guess.

hardly speak any foreign language

It could be worse. Taxi's in America only speak foreign languages.

15 years. Stopped about 3 times and they were all towards the end. I'm far more interested in seeing how to handle the "can we search your bag?" instance. I used to just want to get out of there so let them, but I think as a grumpier old man I'd rather sacrifice the time to stand up for my civil liberties.

He wishes they'd stop spending R&D costs on games and spend it on a time machine, so he can go back a couple of decades to when he actually made a half decent film. And this is coming from someone that thinks his 80's era stuff is golden.

"Economic forecasts". Such a joke...

"[Financial Instrument] is scheduled to go up. Unless of course... it goes down." If anyone knew there would be no such thing as hedging.

I played the original Gameboy (B&W) Pokemon for about 10 minutes in 1998. That was enough.

|| Ten gain will not continue,

Nice crystal ball. Where were you 2009-2012 when I needed you.

The value of the yen had been stable at around 80 to the dollar for several years before Abe came in and did everything in his power to reduce its value.

Yeah, stable if you just looked at a few year chart. It had been in the 110 +/- 4 are for what... 20 years before that? Which one of those seems stable?

and thing will eventually get back to business as usual.

Yep... back to the business of cooking the books, price fixing, and faking fuel gauge tests.

As someone who lived in Japan during the economic crisis and got paid in dollars as the yen hit it's highest value on record (75.8/$1) , I can honestly say everyone needs to chill a little bit. If you look back over the last 20 years, 110/$1 +/-3 yen is very standard.

Video on Youtube. Likey.

The 80's were great.

But is that by regular "accounting" or by Toshiba "accounting"? Japanese accounting.

Which one will better withstand the impending dual between Tetsuo & Kaneda?

That would only work if the bathroom is a public one. Generally once you are in some type of private property, whatever they say goes. On the street... in public though, you are fair game, so dress appropriately. (

Worth noting though, in at least the first two articles regarding the US (didn't read them all), the defendant was not jamming a phone up a passer-by's skirt. I'm also not sure what the guy in Japan was doing, but my guess is it was a bit more obviously malicious. As a candid street photographer I see the upside in setting a hard rule about expectations in public - cover your junk if you're in public - by definition, it is not private. If such a law existed, photo journalism and street art would cease to exist. However, once people start circumventing nature (IE, phones/mirrors on the shoes and whatnot) you're entering the assault zone and should be seen as such.

It will be correctly interpreted as vague.

Curious if any of you "hang 'em all" camp members are educated at all about what I can only assume is your home. Anyone read anything or done any research at all about Japan's policy of coerced confessions, or know of anyone who's been caught up in Japan's poor excuse of a judicial system. You'll sing a different tune if you're one of the unlucky ones. Not saying these guys are innocent, but those doing your best Nancy Grace impersonations by looking at this with blinders on is disconcerting to say the least.

Pretty sad seeing such support for an archaic practice employed by a country, that everyone posting here should know, is highly flawed and inaccurate on it's best day.

"filming without consent" is WAY too broad for any country... especially one like Japan where laws are loosely enforced, and abused at the police's discretion. Some prefectures are implementing "nuissance laws" that do just this (on paper anyway) but also go against the theory that a person has zero right to privacy in public, which they don't. I'm all for enforcing laws against hacking, photographing people in private, etc., but Japan has proven too many times their judicial system is a joke.

If you ask first shoot later you ruin the shot. Plain and simple. This guy might have had bad intentions (honestly I don't know), but that's not the argument here. The argument is how much privacy can one expect in public, and the answer is basically none. If you could, you'd walk around with a lot less clothing and not pay attention to anything around you. As per before, there's an entire type of photography devoted to shooting the subject without disturbing it. Generally when I shoot candid street photos anywhere (and I've done it extensively in Tokyo) I shoot from the hip and am almost always unnoticed. Basing the law off of it's name, I'm assuming I would not be breaking it as I'm not being a nuisance to anyone. No camera in face = no problem, right? Well, that's pretty stupid, too. Would you rather have someone w/ a DSLR walking around taking photos or a mobile phone? Get real, people. The world is a canvas, and you are a part of it.

Has anyone actually seen the photo in question? Go to the Flickr group I posted which is devoted specifically to candid street photography in Japan (on Film, nonetheless). Please tell me (with a straight face) that it is "wrong" and this anti-nuisance law isn't yet ANOTHER self-reassuring measure for Japanese cops.

Akiba Angel:

Pervy/weird, right? https://www.flickr.com/groups/2634506@N24/

:-/

The law in Japan is the same as the US & the UK to an extent. Google "shouzouken" which is one's right to image. In a nutshell, candid photography is in no way illegal. Not taking the photo, anyway. Selling/distributing is a different story. If you go on a crusade to say that taking photos without ones consent on the street is illegal/immoral/pervy then you're pissing on an art form. Makes me glad I left the country.