ReaperInc comments

Megosaa: In case you have not noticed, international comedy and even everyday life knows it fair share of 9/11 jokes. Black humor it is called, and I find it to be damn funny. If a joke like this is enough to prompt the national government to wrote a letter of protest, then clearly the Japanese government has nothing important to do, and everything must be running butterly smooth.

No reason for Japan to react so strongly to this. Just a simple joke... Just like comedians and people crack jokes about abuse in the church, Muslims, Nazi's. Humor often comes with a little offensive twist. Nothing to get worked up about. I myself have heard countless jokes about me glowing in the dark or seeing green since I went to Japan in the summer of 2011... It happens with everything, but nowadays because of the internet everybody knows instantly and many things get blown completely out of proportion because someone is offended/annoyed.

Couple of things I would like to add:

Women don't always choose to stay at home. There still is a lot of social pressure to do so.

It is usually more profitable for a Japanese family to have the woman stay at home because:

1 Men whose wife is a fulltime housewife tend to get higher wages than men with wives that work.

2 Some companies pay extra money and train wives to stay at home and make sure that the employee is cared for properly so that he can work harder (this practice is becoming less common though).

Women that do work, usually work part-time because the wages for fulltime jobs are not double the amount given for part-time jobs, but fulltime jobs do require double the effort.

In general women get paid a lot less than men (this however is the case in every country, but the difference is a bit bigger in Japan).

There are many more reasons, and there is no country in the world where women are truly treated equally to men. It is also a debate within sociology that is never ending because of reasons mentioned by other commentors (such as the contribution of housewives to the economy). In sum everything is gendered and striving for equality is a good thing, yet the how and when (and sometimes even the why) are always heavily debated. I do think Japan can win a pot by having more women work and upping the social security and welfare systems. I think Japan in a way underappreciates and underestimates women in the labor force, and Lagarde is, I think, correct in making sure the issue is on the radar.

I get that there are unspoken rules in the train and that you should respect these rules, but sometimes a little unexpected entertainment can be fun right. Why is there the need to start critizing this man and call him inconsiderate, why such a denounceful atitude towards the unexpected and slightly out of place? What is so horrifying about this, they do this in other places all the time, it makes life a little bit more eventful.

I get that you would be annoyed if someone's musicplayer is very loud or when someone is talking on the phone in a normal situation, but come on you're all stuck in a trian for a longer period of time why not have a little fun, why such a compelling need to condemn this and behave like soulless robots... you can always move somewhere else if you can't stand it....

until her mother took custody of her again

This implies that the mother can decide when she wants back custody of the child. That seems odd to me... to me it would make a lot more sense when the child welfare decides on that.

Though in my criminology classes I did pick up that parents can just pick up their kids whenever they like, but I don't know until when this was the case... I certainly hope not anymore at present times.

To stay on topic: the governments of several countries are way too easily influenced by the entertainment lobby. In my country it is illegal to download software (songs are fine usually) but the government and its friends go after the website and not the downloaders themselves... which means unlimited downloading and a very ineffective anti-download policy. Makes much more sense than these crazy fines and jail time penalties.

How about the Tor-Network? I'm not in Japan so no risks for me, but I have used the Tor-Network for some time and that seemed to be doing just fine when it came to masking my IP. Downside was that it slowed down my computer a lot.

Noda's face on pictures has usually the same expression: derp...

Poor Yoshida was confused to find that he still had to listen to someone else when shit hit the fan.

Japan as a nation really has to get over the stigma put on mental health issues. Most of these cases can be prevented by monitoring by professionals and the right medication. Unless awareness and openness about mental health issues are raised, and with this ofcourse more psychiatry clinics and so on (because the number of mental health specialists is ridiculously low) are established, these kind of things are going to keep happening.

He has to go, for the simple reason that a big portion of the Syrian people will no longer accept him. The problem is how to get this done without destabalizing the region and nation itself. Doing nothing will mean a lengthy civil war which will most likely be won by Assad. While sending troops or any other kind of military intervention could piss off Russia, China and Iran. Even sending in mercenaries or small special task forces to take out Assad might backfire since a power struggle will follow after the removal of Assad.

Also as mentioned by many other posters, previous interventions were no succes. In my opinion this is mostly because the West intervenes and then when support drops because of deaths among Western soldiers the West pulls out its troops in order to win the next elections and so on, whilst the country itself is not yet capable of handling everything by themselves. Western troops basically leave behind baby 'democracy nations to fend for themselves.

The West has put itself in the miserable position by first supporting Assad (as with many dictators in the Middle East) and now screaming for his removal. Considering the nasty stuff Assad has done and the pressure put on him by the West, it is no longer possible for the West to let Assad crush the rebellion and get back in full control for it will then lose most of its credibility. There will be no solution anytime soon for Syria.

@ kurisupisu: Thankfully there are no straight couples who are known to practice that... >.< Please tell you were joking, because the thing you described is nothing out of the ordinary in the world of erotics.

Also, whether or not Takeshi meant it as a joke, it is still a terrible thing to say and is high on the list-of-most-idiotic-arguments-against-gay-marriage. I am proud to live in the country that was first to legalize gay marriage :) In my opinion there are no valid arguments against it.

Here in the Netherlands I always drink my beer right from the bottle (unless is some real special beer) since then there is no foam. In bars the give too much head on the beer in my opinion. Luckily the English do not follow this practice with their pints, lots of foam on it, but they just keep on filling the glass up with the real stuff until almost no foam is left. That's the good way.

Seems like the American sue-everything-and-everybody-you-can-for-ridiculous-amounts-of-money-way has gotten a foothold in Japan.

@ YuriOtani:

I am often too harsh on the Americans and stories like this remind me of the true American spirit.

Calling this the true American Spirit is complete bull. This is just smart marketing, it puts Harley D. on the map as a company of nice caring people, just simple positive image building. I agree that it is very nice to do this, and Harley D. deserves credit for it, but you underestimate the marketing value of a stunt like this.

I seriously doubt many people will buy one because of this action.

If that were true no company would show commercials on television either. As said this puts Harley D. on the map as a company that cares for its customers, so a lot of floating buyers who are unsure of what brand to buy might go for a Harley because of this. That's how commercials work and a lot of people tend to fall for them.

Most surprising thing here is that the driver survived and is able to answer questions. The entire front of the bus has been reduced to dust, miracle that the guy survived and is capable to shed light on what happened.

The man has a tophat, this boosts his awesomeness level even higher! (^3^)/

Seems that everytime an old person dies and is not discovered immediatly, blame falls on the relatives. I do not think that not having contact with relatives for three months shows that no-one cares about the old person in question. All sorts of reasons can explain this, no need to jump to any conclusions about the amount of love relatives hold for their elders.

plane in -__-'

Funny how the focus lies on the fact that it was a European build plan. You still need to their maintenance done and a proper pilot to fly the thing. However, despite the fact of this happening and Russia and everyone jumping to conclusions, the possibility of this being a design flaw is also there.

Is there even a difference between Noda and the previous 4-5 prime ministers? None of those dinosaurs is fit to govern Japan any longer, they just need to get out and let the less conservative young people take over. Only then they might actually get something done.

Get those dinosaurs out of there asap and let young folk take overto get stuff done! All this shoving stuff around, postponing and having mixed interests is going to get Japan either blown or contaminated into oblivion... >.<

After most other developed countries, we are now in a period in which corporate Japan's dirty laundry is revealed. Greed one of men's most stubborn flaws.

Smart move, give men what it want most and it shall provide what you need.

Funny to see how case that rocked my country makes it onto JT. However they did not mention the other hacks here, only the one involving KPN, odd...

"The purpose of the alleged hacking was unclear."

I'm guessing it was done for the lulz, usually is.

Well at least the police tech-divisions can now say they actually arrest (teenage) hackers. I find it rather concerning to see how big companies and institutions fail to protect their networks against bored teenagers. Then again there are always loopholes.

kudos to Medvedev, nicely formulated

Expand evac zone to 50 km just in case. Then build a launch pad nearby the facility. Build a rocket. Build robots to tear the buildings down and get the cores out. Have the robots put the cores in the rocket and shoot that thing straight into the sun. The sun will not even notice it.

Though this might not be very practical and probably way above the budget that the government and TEPCO are willing to spend. Having those cores of the planet and destroyed seems like a good idea to me.

My passport contains my fingerprints on a little chip. When I got that I figured immigration services in other countries would simply read my passport for the prints and be done with it. However when I came to Japan last summer they needed my prints and photo, and I highly doubt, that the next time, they will simply check their database against my passport... >_>

We need some sort of global immigration service with branches per country, who all have access to the system and thus can quickly check our prints and such... but that's just a hopefull dream. Co-operation between countries never seems to work all that well.

So until that fatefull day, deal with the rules, they (will) track you all over the globe anyway.