robert maes comments

Casino’s are not the main problem but the sub culture inevitably linked to them is.

The junkets, in whatever form, the most violent but also other facilitators( other loan sharks, prostitution ( although in Japan as elsewhere already very organised) , pickpockets, laundrymoney…

also a huge IR resort changes, if only because of its size, the social structure of an environment. ( many young people can suddenly get not to hard working well paid jobs, so why go to Univ ?

The Koreans still hate the Japanese. And not only the Koreans. It’s not only because of the crimes committed by the Japanese in WW2 but the believe that the mentality that allowed that to happen has not changed.

besides the Taiwanese the Japanese politics and mentality is mistrusted by other Asian nations.

you only have to be a foreigner, living more than 2 years in Japan, not married to a Japanese, to understand they certainly have part of a point.

Sir Coe is a self serving politician. Mr Payne knows very well his election as IOC President is already assured as part of a deal where Mr Bach and Mr Coates got Brisbane appointed as 2032 host city with Sir Coe’s support.

But he fears a public backlash so he tried to get popular support from athletes and managers with this proposal. In the Olympics, athletics is still the leading sport with swimming second.

Sir Coe, as Mr Payne says, is very much aware that the IOC elected members choose the next President but he has enough of those in his pocket with the support of Mr Bach and Mr Coates. And many of those members are ex athletes.

what he can not afford is scrutiny on the Brisbane deal. So, he needs distractions.

Doctors and dentists in Japan mostly don’t want to treat foreigners. I was in the Hilton hotel where they have a clinic downstairs. I had a sudden very high bloodpressure but the doctor refused to see me. It took hours for the hotel to convince him. I could have been death.

my wife had a shoulder swelling. 4 first doctors refused to see a gajin( to much trouble).

overall doctors and dentist are pretty bad in Japan. The consequence of an education system based on theory mostly

Blablablabla.

nothing the national banks can do. Buying yen signifies weakness, makes global investors loose more faith. Will work for a day, maybe 2. Then the yen will fall deeper.

Raising interest rates is being done finally but it might also have an avert effect on the stock market which will already fall and keep falling.

An anachronistic pork barrel event. Costs way outstrip the benefits

The take over is actually another sign of the total collapse of Japan’s industry.

they dig deep in the governments coffers to buy foreign expertise and avoid steel import tariffs in the USA.

and once again they far overpay with a 33% bonus in the current share value.

Nippon steel does not bring anything but the 14 billion usd to the table. Certainly not management, nor sale, nor tec and no marketing expertise.

Trump will indeed stop this or pull it back. And he would be right to do so. But first the deal stil has to get regulatory approval.

He means” welwillend be optimising our business model to suck more money out of consumers and individuals while trying to avoid costly courtcases “

They are not as much courtcases as they are showcases. As nothing will change after a courts ruling. It is nice for the lawyers most of all. A big of media attention for the accusing individuals and.organisations and then business as usual. Going through the moves while everyone really knows nothing will change

Ma Osaka is a mentally troubled individual and has, regretfully, been unstable for a long time and not received or sought the help she badly needs.

I have been worried for her mental health since she was 16. No, I am neither psychologist nor psychiatrist but one of the worlds most experienced personal managers. Ms Osaka has been insufficiently coached during her teens. Coached in life. Not tennis. She was always insecure and never able to take control of her mental abilities. Her agents and coaches need to take responsibility for that while I know how hard the job of accompanying and mentoring a young talent is.

She tries to defend her weakness by spreading around and showcasing a false self confidence. I worry for her. We, fans, readers, journalists, sport professionals should not make easy jokes on her comments and unpredictable behaviour but urge her to get the help she needs. Or we might regret later we didn’t.

as for her as an athlete, intrinsically she is ( or was) a player who can dominate tennis for the the 5 to 7 years but it will never happen as she does neither have now the mental nor physical condition for it.

She is now playing on 95 % talent and 5 % work. While that should be 60/40.

she is doing a job, not enjoying her talents

As a sign of honor to the great champion Yokozuna Akebono, the sumo federation should retro actively declare Konishiki a Yokozuna.

Akebono would be happy for that as he recognized that he could become , in part, Yokozuna because of Konishiki.

He was only denied the rank because he was a foreign born wrestler

Someone with obsessive behavior can not stop himself and usually does not even admit or recognizes to be obsessive. So any advise could make you end up with a bloody noose

Why should the athletes be the only one’s going unpaid while every IOC board member pockets money as all the NOC board members do ?

why should the tv broadcasters be able to cash in and not the athletes ?

Why should the host country politicians and construction companies enrich themselves and not the athletes ?

TheOlympics ceased to be an amateur event decades ago and to think otherwise is naive

more than anything a promotional gesture from Sir Coe to enhance his IOC President candidacy.

his win already assured in a trade off to hand Brisbane the 2032 Olympics.

sir Coe serves only the interests of Sir Coe

A nice and kind man above all else whom I had the privilege to know and meet through another friend Ken Berger.

with Konishiki, who should have been the 1st foreign born Yokozuna he indeed paved the way for many others and was fighting in a period when the general quality of fighters was very high.

My condolences to his wife

Ebisen

i guess your last visit to Europe was a few decades back ?

you should see the cattle being driven on and off the low cost carriers.

you can not only blame the airlines as the pax do challenge the definition of humans.

Smithinjapan,

Japan was never the victim in world war 2 but the agressor and its war crimes only matched by the nazi’s.

You want vitamin C ? Eat fruits and vegetables.

vitamin D, go outside. Sun, shining or not will give it to you, the rest you can get from vegetables again.

avoid any pill you can if you want to live healthy. Most medicine cures one problem and causes another. Just like taking your car to a cheating garage.

i rarely take any medicine. For cold and flu, nothing helps except to lessen symptoms not the disease. Rest will help.

the only wonderdrugs ever invented are aspirine and antibiotics and the 2nd one we are rendering useless by overuse.

I do not understand the hype around the Oppenheimer movie. It’s not like the man was not documented enough previously and his story unknown.

Plus a good director does not need 3 1/2 hours to tell a story. It’s an average film which will be forgotten in 2 to 3 years.

And what is Japan’s particular problem with it ? Not enough blood and bodies ?

if Japan had finished the atomic bomb before the US it would have used as many as it had. I have no doubt about this comment and will never apologize for it.

I am a snob and I fly business only or not at all. Even on short flights. In the latter case more for fast lane security check and the lounge although they also keep deteriorating.

the Ryan airs and air bnb’s of today have destroyed all fun in travelling for holidays. People cram themselves in tiny seats and then stay with 12 people in a 25m2 air bnb apartment.

travel in style or stay home. Travel once a year and not 3 times if style is hard to afford.

Better enjoy a bit extra luxury at home than travel cheap.

I know, I know, I am old fashioned , elitair, I like women to keep their breast inside their clothes rather than out and skirts a little longer than the slip. If any.

I also think clothes should be changed every day rather than once a week.

They dress ?

World expo is a totally anachronistic event that has lost all reason of existence. It is a pork barrel event for the benefit of politicians and befriended companies in the homeland and nice free holidays for many foreign delegations of politicians.

the taxpayer who pays the bills stil is asked to pay heavy entree fees while the politicians are invited vips, wining and dining for free.

now they are crying for Dentsu’s but if the current PR and advertising companies had gotten the same budgets as Dentsu’s in the past, they would have done a better job. But fact is, nobody is interested in this already failed event. School kids will be dragged in to raise visitor numbers which will be overstated anyway

They seem surprised the rest of the world does not understand that Japanese should be the world’s leading language.

there is the real problem that the dept sight of Japanese people is less good. That causes drivers to break earlier and goalkeepers to misjudge on high balls.

Most Japanese drivers just get a seat because Japanese engine providers push the real managers. Funny none of them mentions it. Of course many other drivers get seats because of rich daddy’s.(Stroll) Or heritage ( Verstappen). in any case a driver can not win the race today, but he can loose it. The race win is determined only by the chassis/engine package and the tyres. The driver is 2 % in the win projection but can with one mistake loose the race

Many reasons. First there are not enough lesson hours in school from elementary to high school.

second, kids are to tired by long travel too and from school to absorb much of the teaching

third , learning 3 Japanese alphabets takes too much unnecessary time.

four, the teachers themselves are mediocre.

the general intellect of Japanese is lower as any comparative study would show.

the general level of knowledge of a high school student when entering university is low and not much higher after the bachelor degree.

and PhD’s are much more difficult to get abroad, so, quite a number of those obtaining them in Japan would fail to do so outside of Japan

Rakuten will fail within 2 years if it does not redraw from the mobile sector which was just an ego tripping decision by Mikitani San. Who had one genius idea with the online sales copy of Amazon early on. For the rest everything is bleeding money unless it can eat of Rakuten online sales platform.

Rakuten must as soon as possible sell its dwindling mobile customers to one of the big 3. KDDI the best choice today.

The shareholders will be tired of loosing money and Mikitani San is lucky the overall strength ( bubble strength) of the market keeps him reasonably covered. But that is very temporary

FE is a complete failed event format with boring cars and unknown drivers with no exposure or personality. The marketing of the racing series is a shame to our industry.

the locations of the street circuits are horribly and visibility for the spectators extremely bad.

of course the basic idea is recommendable but the execution is terrible.

Having spent a life time in event and sportsmarketing I found that all major events ( with the exception of the World Cup football sometimes) undervalue the costs by a factor of 3 and over estimate the economic impact 7 to 8 times. The latter because the agencies estimating the economic impact use zero as a base. But the Osaka region sees tourist and business revenue also on non expo years. Fact is that for over 90 % of events the cost is far higher than the economic returns. The value of PR and Image gain to an organising city is difficult to project or calculate. But the city of Birmingham went bankrupt in part of the organisation of the Commenwealth Games, Peyongchang had a disastrous economic effect of the Winter Olympics, Tokyo 2020/21 was a financial disaster and in Montreal the city paid of loans for 40 years. Paris will see a tremendous loss. I do project gains for 2026 wC football in the US and a breakeven for LA2028. But they are exceptions. Not the rule.

If it ever operates the technology will be outdated.

there is no need for this in a country which will have 10 million people less by the time it is now scheduled to open.

the only reason of existence is to fill the pockets of domestic companies and shareholders with tax payers money whom will be extorted a 2nd time when they buy a ticket

As a Belgian I must react. I am not a nationalist and would switch my passport for most others. But Belgium is nr 1 in the world in just 3 things. And they are Chocolates, beer and Diamond cutting and setting ( and selling).

too much trekking in Nepal seems not good for general knowledge.

for the rest Belgium is a boring, confused retirement home for conservative minds.

Wait till this current bubble burst. Will be much worse and can happen any day