stereoman comments

Wow, a little bit of competitiveness from JAL. Perhaps if they had started thinking competitively years ago they wouldn't be in the financial situation they find themselves in now.

I spent the last couple years working my butt off seven days a week. I would wake up and work until I went to sleep at night. This was at a Japanese company so this meant no meaningful relationships with my co-workers and lots of time spent (wasted?) on form over substance, i.e., making sure all the 'i's and 't's were dotted and crossed.

At the end of it I could totally see how and why so many people commit suicide in this environment. I was lucky as things changed for the better for me.

Surprise, surprise, if you put all your time and energy into work instead of friends or family you will have nothing when you are unemployed at age 65.

The electronic dictionary market seems to be happily stuck in the 1990's, alongside CD-burners and laser discs.

Side note: amazing how many times I have seen 'TOEIC' improperly spelled. Even in presentations by TOEIC authors.

I know many many people, my wife knows many people, my co workers know many people, the point is NO ONE HAS ever mentioned OH I KNOW THIS PERSON WHO WON THE JUMBO!!! It's 74 top prizes out of 128 million people. That's one in 1.8 million people. How many people do you know?

There are 450 one million dollar (1億円）prizes this time. They have this lottery 4 times a year. That's roughly 1800 millionaires a year, give or take. Multiply this by 24 years (the number of years the poster has been in Japan) and there rightly should be a few lottery millionaires within this guy's 2, 3 degrees of separation.

Angus Young of AC/DC, another act with an exceptionally lucrative catalog of music, once insisted that AC/DC doesn’t make singles, “we make albums.”

Really? Then stop selling your songs to every movie studio that wants to use 'Back in Black', 'Highway to Hell' or 'Shook Me All Night Long' for their soundtrack or movie trailer.

God, the media love to use photos of the stressed-out trader. I don't think he is the one who is really hurting when the economy is crap.

You get nutcases everywhere that will protest anything and make any cause their life-goal.

Are we talking about the film protesters or the dolphin hunt protesters?

Throughout this whole controversy, Tsutaya and other video rental chains must be licking their lips as this will mean more business when this movie FINALLY lands on video (and will be available to one and all).

This lass has a really big face. Normally I don't notice things like face size- but dang, her mug is big. Look closely at one of her many TV commercials- 1/3 of her entire body is face.

Financial debt; revenge; PTA member irate at public servants and all their time off.

In any event, this should not take long to solve but, this is Japan, and as much as I love this country, the police are not one of its selling points. If this isn't solved within the next week, look for weeks of wild speculation involving jealous lovers and/or chinese hitmen.

great documentary, even if you have never heard of them. See it if you can.

They give absolutely no reason for why these things (foreign pandering) are contributing to Japan's decline. Just good old fashioned fear-mongering.

Funny part is that a majority of the Right Wingers are not Japanese. Most of them have last names like Pak and Kim.

This, I really, really doubt.

Japan really is a country of bullies. This should be interesting to see how this plays out.

Are the right-wingers going to protest Tsutaya too when it comes out on video?

God, give the guy a break. Foreigners get no love from other foreigners in Japan, not unless they are buying them beer.

This guy speaks Japanese just fine. He has a life right now that everyone here would love to experience. Good for him.

The bad guy would have to be Japanese- if for nothing else, just to have back and forth dialogue over the walkie-talkies.

And Japan's ugly side shows itself again.

living in Japan is like having a girlfriend: they love compliments and hearing how special they are, but say anything critical and watch them get all upset and spiteful.

Again, most people here don't seem to have seen the movie. This is not a centuries old tradition. What? Dolphins were sold to Marineland back in 1670? As far as the meat is concerned: you don't ever know you are eating dolphin meat. It is added to whale meat and sold as whale meat. This is the deception.

Yes, Japan's ancient tradition of eating 'whale bacon'.

This 'culture' pretense is so tiring. Japan devotes thousands of hours of TV time to food per week- not one minute is spent on whale.

Come on Japan, join us in the 21st Century.

Definetely great that it will open up Japanese people`s minds to who is Japanese

Hmmm, don't think any Japanese person I know thinks that they are Japanese. They are completely American, barely speak Japanese, have never lived here, and will continue living in America after these olympics. They are purely taking advantage of their unique situation in order to appear in the olympics.

boxofficemojo has the box office for the entire globe. don't know about just japan though. you could try imdb as i know they track that info too.

The news just mentioned that there was a keitai left behind in the car and it appears to belong to a Brazilian- how they can tell the nationality of keitai owners is beyond me.

Yet again, this appears to be Japan passing off a crime by people with Japanese blood as foreign. Like when they show suspects on TV and their Japanese names are in katakana to indicate that they 'aren't quite Japanese'.

How does the white man save the day in Avatar?

SPOILER

The blue chick saves the white guy at the end by shooting bad army guy with arrows. Just before that it was the 'god of nature' that summons all the creatures to help win the fight against bad army guys.

I didn't see any racist element at all in this movie.

“and it is this cultural element that is responsible for the extraordinary beauty of such common things as their bowls, vases, paper doors, room dividers, kimono and yukata.”

how about anything from the last 60 years?

Wow. What a load of crap. Substitute 'Japanese' with any other group and it would be hilarious/offensive. Watch: Why the Canadians are Superior People. Why the Germans are Superior People. Why the Israelites are Superior People.

Japan so often gets used as an example in literature by academics who want an 'other' to compare whatever it is they're slagging off. I have lost track of how many times I will be reading a Western social science book and the author has stuck in the sentence 'The Japanese on the other hand have one word for this complex idea...'.

And to add to what Sharky1 wrote: the basis for this research is about 20 years behind current thinking. Oh well, I don't think this guy is a scientist anyway.

terrible at foreign languages

don't understand this- the French can speak pretty good English if they can be bothered to. Did they not confuse the Japanese with the French here?

Where are the Chinese? Not the best tourists as far as I am concerned.

Why not tattoo our foreheads and be done with it.

This is japan, where tattoos are frowned upon. The next step (there always is a next step) will be a chip inserted under the skin but somewhere unobtrusive as, like in the article above, they will, “ hope to lessen the burden on foreigners as much as possible.”

Best month on US stock markets since 1974, so that is interesting use of the word "plunge" by USNinJapan2. I didn't know things can plunge up.

Ha, things have been catatrophic to say the least lately, yet you have chosen to ignore all that and focus on the last few weeks as if the previous 4 months hadn't happened. Things could hardly have gotten worse. Percentage-wise, perhaps things have been great in the period of time you conveniently chose but overall the stock market is still a shell of its former self.

The air will 28 percent cleaner in japan. Japan need to change its over dependance on motor combustion pollution cars.

For now people are just not buying new cars and sticking with their old cars. the government needs to rethink its extortion policies- sha-kin, expensive highway tolls, and various taxes if it wants to save its golden goose. then again, who cares, eventually having less cars on the road is a good thing.

Then the people are getting what they deserve/ No and's, if's, or but's!!

this comment and the others lack this lack intelligence. They are, however, full of ignorance and hate. Killing hundreds of innocent people is evil, pure and simple.

What about all the rocket and mortar attacks that have traumatized southern Israel?

Most of these rockets fell in the desert. Not one person was killed because of these rocket attacks- these attacks which were a response to Gaza being closed off again by Israel.

Israel is getting what it wants. It controls Gaza completely and these little attacks by Hamas give it reason to tighten the stranglehold further on these poor people.

Hamas on the other hand are also feeding off of these Israeli attacks as now they have further reason for existing. They are feeding off of each other with no end in sight.

I say bravo activists. There are no scientific studies going on by Japan here and it takes the International Community ages to get round to doing anything profound to stop Japan, so if these guys disrupt the Japanese, good on them. Those shouting 'piracy' here need to go and look the word up.