salarymanblues comments

Most readers here miss the point.

What the crowd said is completely irrelevant, the point is that a professional has to ignore it no matter what it is being said, simple as that. Of course what the crowd said is despicable, but it is a waste of breath to even make that point.

Kawashima needs to go and restudy his 'professional sportsmanship 101', where you learn never to respond to the crowd.

I have to say his response sounds completely pathetic. People here are defending him saying the crowd are wrong etc, but this is besides the point. The crowd can say what they want, players have to ignore it, thats the way it goes. If the crowd does something illegal or against the rules of the stadium, then they will get done in due course.

Saying 'lets make Japan nuclear free' is like saying 'lets not build any buildings in Japan in case they get knocked down by an earthquake'. No - let's focus on the hard job of getting the right safety standards in place, rather than knee jerk reactions that appease voters. The leaders in this country are so weak and selfish it is truely despicable, when will a real leader come through?

"We will Never give up, it is the fighting Japanese spirit!"

Apt words on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, if you know your history (ie. Japanese were given plenty of warning about the bomb but still wouldn't give up, at severe cost to their people)

congrats blue witch!!!

Japan need to stand firm this time and not humiliate themselves by bowing the China despite being in the right, as they did last time. Is this going to be an ongoing 'jab attack' from China to test how far they can go?

Do anti-whaling campaigns backfire in Japan?

No, because they raise awareness of it. Without those campaigns the average joe would not think twice about the issue. (whether it is really an issue or not is another discussion)

I think some praise should be given to Mr Hawker for his handling of the situation. Always extremely respectful and full of praise for the Japanese police in press appearances. No overt shows of anger, finger pointing etc and God only knows how strong the urge must have been to vent it out. By playing the game this way he got the police/government support needed to catch the killer and get the exact sentence they were looking for. Well done sir.

I looked into Japanese life insurance and learnt that my family could claim on it even in the case of my suicide (provided I had been on the policy for 6 months). I thought that this made it bad value for money for me, as I judge the probability of me wanting to suicide as extremely low, and I do not want to pay high premiums caused by payouts to suiciders. Thus, I agree with the arguments above to change Japanese law so that insurance cannot be claimed for suicide by people with debts and families choosing to take a 'noble death'.

I think the result of this case is already wrapped up and agreed among the lawyers/judge/government.

He will get a "life sentence", only to be released 15 years or so down the line when things die down. That's going to be the most 'harmonious' outcome.

But let's see, maybe Japan will surprise me...

I wonder how much energy this supercomputer uses!

It is not really the governments fault as they OK'd this some time ago, but they must be kicking themselves at the timing of this.

1) Too many links on frontpage (duplicate links)

2) Too many banners and images on frontpage

which of the 30 screaming banners do you want me to click first? how about at least making it 2-column and tidying up all the promotions? how about letting us click an [X] button to remove sections we don't want such as weather?

3) Basically just too much small text everywhere, like trying to watch an ant as he walks among his 100,000 brothers.

I don't like the font (Times New Roman?) you are using on your main news copy. These days it is weird to see that font on the web, so I thought the CSS stylesheet hadn't loaded properly or something.

Strange because you are using some really cool fonts in other places such as the footer.

I think the higher problem here is Japans justice system, or lack of it.

One wonders why there is a court at all, when the result is typically the same in every case. I forget the exact number, but there is the famous statistic of 99% (or whatever) of prosecutions being approved by the court. And this one, of almost all divorce cases ended up with the children in the mothers custody.

If the cause (justice system) gets fixed, then symptoms (e.g. this type of case) will follow.

The other day someone went for a smoke in the toilet and it stunk out the whole carriage. That was really incredible, I was tempted to pull the emergency cord and claim I smelt a fire.

I hate when people do not stand aside to let people off the train, instead barging through them to get on. (old women seem worst offenders of this).

Methinks 9AM is a typo and it should be 9PM.

Hopefully with the cash from LOST he can buy a shirt with buttons.

She is 2 or 3 sizes beyond my tastes.

WHAT A GREAT IDEA!!!

I am going to buy one and carry it around with me all the time, so I never have to count coins again.

My wallet just got 50x bigger - yee ha!

These guys are going to get so rich from this idea. And you will be able to spot them easily in the streets because they will have an army of 50 porters to carry around their personalised truck-sized one containing their new found wealth.

dano2002 thanks for this tip, i am also looking for an int. school right now.

my son is in japanese youichien now (he is 3yr 9m), but he is rapidly becoming fluent in japanese and it is becoming dominant. I teach him english every evening for 15-30 mins and he is starting to spell basic words, knows his letter sounds etc. but he cannot output many english sentences verbally. anyway, we are probably going to put him in an int. school from next sept, however it is a pain to throw so much money on it when i could get the same thing or better for free back home.

one other thing to consider...university costs in japan are extremely high. this is a huge factor pushing us to just go back to uk instead of staying here.

I know a pure Japanese lady who went to international school in Japan.

I would rate her language skills as follows: Japanese: 100% English: 85%

(for context, I'd rate JLPT 1-kyu as 70%)

This shows that international school doesn't negatively affect native language skill development.

It is disingenuous to run this campaign and at the same time do nothing about the mountain of train-grope porn movies/manga that exists here.

I feel they could have made this a 'tokyo-only' thing, as here in kansai the available schools are quite limited and it is not so hard to find out potential schools nearby then go visit them.

Also, I imagine a high % of people who use international school have it arranged by their company and just get to choose between 2-3 options presented to them.

If it becomes a bestseller, I will gladly put it in my pipe and smoke it however.

saru_an you forgot something:

When driving in town, never, under any circumstances, yield and allow a car to enter the road from a shop/parking lot/side road. They must wait until there are no cars around (even if it means waiting until 10pm). Doesn't matter if the light ahead is red and you are slowing down anyway, NO-ONE GETS IN FRONT OF ME!

Haven't seen the footage, but I can imagine the only reason the car in front slammed on the brakes was in a beginners irrational panic at seeing the car stopped in the hard shoulder.

It is not clear whether they mean Parking Area as in a "PA" with toilets and vending machines, or just the layby by the side of the highway for emergencies.

If the former, this is an extremely inprobable accident.

As long they dont touch my airmiles I will be happy.

If global economy is about to pick up, this would be a very smart move by delta to get a foothold on haneda for a relatively small investment. But if things continue to stagnate for another few years, perhaps stirfry's comment applies.

I like JAL, they have a great mileage program and they looked after us when we flew with kids.

All airlines are struggling now and I think it would make sense to merge with ANA if things continue and 2 national airlines can not be justified.

Tragic story, shame on the parents if it turns out to be murder of the son.