Saine comments

I don’t mind the slurping of noodles at all as it’s the custom here. However there’s a certain subset of people that slurp EVERYTHING which is irritating. They will be eating a bowl of rice or anything for that matter and loudly suck each bite into their mouth no matter the food.

This is a situation of "everyone sucks here."

But one does notice that Japanese society seems to put pressure on the woman to take the fall in these types of cases. In my company I have seen several cases where women employees were pressured into quietly resigning due to affair situations while the male employees actually cheating on their spouses were pretty much allowed to carry on free of any criticism.

Somewhere along the line True Detective became Pretentious Detective.

Alan Harrison Today  04:48 am JST

BBC coverage of this incident is, at the moment, focused on the professionalism of the pilot, crew and firefighters, along with sympathy for the five killed. (BBC news has described it as a miracle that all passengers were evacuated). 

Sad that people are speculating who is to blame at this time.

While the above is important, it’s not unreasonable for people to want answers and know who or what was at fault for the loss of the crew’s life and endangerment of 379 passengers.

…saying he has been arrested on a trumped to charge.

The correct expression is “trumped up.”

Moderator: Thanks for spotting that. It has been corrected.

A nice stint in a Japanese prison followed by a unceremonious deportation and lifetime ban from entering Japan would the minimum I would hope for these scumbags.

Ok for the domestic audience I suppose, but I would not try to market "Trauma Curry" to an English speaking audience any time soon. Overall this is just an example of poorly thought out branding combined with a throwaway design that's typical of most mediocre agencies in Japan.

This is one of the consequences of having large cities. However noble the cause, removing outdoor lighting could have unintended consequences.

Basically he needed some excuse for an otherwise meaningless visit to the UN.

No doubt his staff came up with this one in the eleventh hour.

zulanderJuly 20  12:43 pm JST

I've never found UCC beans that are even remotely fresh.

As I like to say Ueshima Commodity Coffee.

Maybe they should create an Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization or IPTO as a new entity. Charter members could include India, Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Singapore, USA to name a few.

Oshima's Koshikei (Death by Hanging) is an excellent film that examines the death penalty as well as guilt and justice. Truly a masterpiece of Japanese film. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in this topic.

A disgrace to be sure. Unfortunately, these types still pervade many corporate and governmental organizations. I had to report one such person for making racist remarks in our US office but they just covered the repeated incidents up and quietly transferred him back to a management position in Japan.

I worked at chain restaurants in Japan for a couple of years when I was younger and plenty of Japanese customers would point their finger at menu pictures and say "kore" when ordering (this would happen to both me and my Japanese co-workers) - so I'm kind of surprised to see combini staff get flustered by that kind of behavior. Also, they probably have a customer service manual that instructs them to confirm the item before taking the nikuman and packaging it (like how they are trained at McDonalds to point at the counter menu to confirm foreigners' orders)...

Hmmm...the product seems ok but the product photography is quite unnatural and feels kind of gross.

This is actually an excellent feature.

I would easily say that Sushiro is the top in quality of the major inexpensive kaitenzushi chains followed by Hamazushi. Kura strikes me as gimmicky and low-quality. Kappa is also quite mediocre - and it also turned out their CEO Tanabe-san was arrested....

Now their CEO was arrested. This guy was actually in the US for a while when he worked at his old company. I have heard stories that he was arrogant, entitled, and regularly mistreated restaurant waitstaff and service workers wherever he went.

Among the Waltons, Walton Simons was always the most influential.

In 2022 Yamano music gave us the Takoyaki Guitar- and we gave it back, almost immediately.

How very regrettable.

I think I came here a couple of times and I suppose the familiar sight will be missed. I wonder what they will replace the Wing complex with.

This is what happens when a design is decided by a committee of out-of-touch autocratic oyaji.

I work at a Japanese company in the same type of industry and I'm sad to say that kind of attitude is the norm. The smart ones know better than to expose their vile opinions openly, but behind closed doors I've heard some truly appalling statements over the years:

"Jews, Indians, Koreans, and Chinese - these are races you cannot trust"

"You cannot promote women to managerial positions because they are hysterics"

"People in developing countries have low IQs so we have to make our advertisements simple and easy to understand"

That's just a couple of the choice zingers I have heard over the years from people who were high up in management. The last one came from our director of international business....

I think calling it cronyism is too complimentary. The headline should call it what it is: corruption.

The refugees are not living in third-world conditions. They have access to government services and there has been an outpouring of support from the public in Poland. Also although Ukrainian and Polish are different there is a very significant level of mutual intelligibility that facilitates communication and refugees being able to pick up Polish faster than they would other languages hence the already sizable Ukrainian immigrant population in Poland. While I am certain more than 20 people are interested in moving to Japan, I don't think the teeming masses are exactly lining up either.

Japan definitely has some investments that could be viewed as attractive for their stability, but that's about it.

Unfortunately, companies and regulators have acted against the interests of foreign investors on numerous occasions. We've had situations where companies have colluded with the JFTC to prevent overseas investors from gaining a controlling stake just because they don't want foreigners controlling a Japanese company. (Bear in mind that Japanese companies have no compunctions about acquiring foreign firms.) This and the numerous incidents of coverups and false reporting (Kobe Steel, Takata, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Suzuki etc..) make for a very unattractive investment market. Investors might be willing to take on the risk if there was potential for high growth like in other markets, but it's simply not to be found in Japan.

Another example of a questionable product for the sake of newsworthiness. Although I admire the creativity of product development chefs in Japan, one can tell that the constant need for new and exciting products has pushed the people at Dom Dom to desperation.

Kappa-sushi has been trying to make a comeback but they have been mired with difficulties. Their new CEO, Kouki Tanabe is under investigation for allegedly illegally stealing information from his previous employer.

Other countries should save Japan the trouble and just abstain from participation.

Really good comments across the board. I would definitely agree that Australia has excellent grass fed beef and is probably better for you than factory farmed US beef. British beef can also be quite good as well - the UK has been working hard at raising livestock standards.

I'm actually heavily involved in the export of US beef to Japan. The US has cattle stocks of about 80 million or so depending on the year (roughly 9% of world stocks). This means that US beef production is actually quite diverse, There are many small scale producers that make premium grass fed beef from heritage breeds of cattle. However, the market is dominated by 2 major producers, or "packers" as we call them, that crank out factory farmed beef that's definitely not raised in the best of conditions. However, antibiotics and hormones are used less than you would think. Under industry guidelines, antibiotics are given to few cattle as possible (this also cuts down on production costs) and there is a mandatory withdrawal time for the antibiotic to be fully metabolized before the sick cow can be sent to slaughter.

All that being said, the importers in Japan are not really seeking out US beef for the quality - they are looking for cheap meat with a certain flavor profile. Most of the imported beef is actually going to use in cheap chain restaurants (think gyudon) rather than supermarkets. So what you see in the supermarket is probably going to cheaper cuts of ungraded beef that are best passed over. Based on all of that, I would say go for either Aussie beef of Japanese beef if you're looking for a good steak in Japan.

TL;DR: I'm involved in US beef export business. There's definitely good beef in US, but most of the stuff shipped to Japan is mass produced and cheap for foodservice use. If you want to get a good steak at the supermarket, I recommend you stick to the Aussie or Japanese beef.