Suginamiguy comments

If you look at some of the things Japanese pilots have done that appeared in the news in recent years, I'm not surprised.

I saw him at the opening ceremony for the Tokyo Motor Show last year and he looked in quite good health. It`s rather devastating to know that illness can so quickly take a person.

The good part is his father. Must be pretty hard to turn your own child over to the police. I think he did the right thing.

I have no idea why this page suddenly attracted people’s attention, but we would have deleted it earlier had we known about this page,” said Yusuke Uehara, a spokesman for the government-affiliated agency which conducts nuclear research, including work on safety. This discriminates against women, which is inappropriate.

Wouldnt like this guy to be doing my PR work. First he says he has no idea why the page attracted peoples attention, then he goes on to say that it discriminates women which is appropriate ... which one is it?

Absolutely no surprise that this happens commonly in Japan.

I saw this at the Tokyo International Animation Fair a couple of months ago and it looked pretty cool. And that 255kg listed in the article must be wrong ....

I think the photo was cropped a bit too close at the top unfortunately, but other than that she looks great.

Masaki Kanda was a smart guy and dodged that disaster.

So when you get old and wrinkly can you just whip out the iron and straighten them out?

Ishihara said that the lukewarm support indicated that Japanese people have become “selfish and extremely narrow-minded,” Sports Nippon reported.

Quite the opposite I think. People are waking up to the fact that local and national government have been wasting for years. And after seeing people dying alone and hungry, it's obvious no one is helping the citizens of Japan. I wouldn' t call this lukewarm support, I would prefer to call it just being practical. Ishihara would just prefer blind nationalism over helping his fellow man in a productive way.

So the guy has been on death row for 40 years. Every day for those 40 years his life could have ended at any minute. Imagine the psychological effect on the man. I`ve got no idea if he is guilty or innocent but I do think it is extremely inhumane to hold him like that for so long.

Personally, I hate tattoos nothing pleasant about them at all, but having one or not having one surely is a personal choice. If a person in front of me has a tattoo, I just say nothing,but if they ask me I will tell them what I think.

I think Hashimoto is going way too far with his. As long as the tattoos aren`t visible, why is there a problem?

I thought the ad was quite humorous.

I think the Japanese voice actors do a great job of voice overs. The producers take some time and try to match the voice actor to the actor they are voicing. I have watched some dubbed movies from other countries that the voice actor was so poor that Stallone sounded like Mickey Mouse.

I seriously hope you`re joking. I hate listening to anything dubbed in Japan, as it usually sounds ridiculous. Give me subtitles over dubbing any day in Japan.

I was there today (Sunday) and when the mikoshi were out front of Kaminarimon, it was really crazy, so crowded. Some of the leaders really knew how to work up a crowd.

You'd be surprised by the unwillingness of a couple of lawyers I contacted about our previous landlord, himself the president of the Real Estate Agency - who would do NOTHING about the leaking bathroom, the leaking ceilings, the rat infestation and the vermin the rats brought with them... Legal help is apparently not very helpful where "Real Estate" is concerned - at least, not for the "renters"...

Good point. The Japanese legal system is hardly the fairest in the world, ask anyone who has had the unfortunate experience of dealing with it. No excuse to chop someone`s arm off, but I think I can understand the events might have led up to this incident.

I think that everyone agrees that no one can agree whether there will be power shortages or not this summer.

Foreigners tend to all say the same thing about Japan because, well, everybody else says the same thing, so it must be true.

Falling back on the same old dogma as usual. One err ... "foreigner" says so, so all say the same thing? Already we are off to a bad start.

I think the main reason why Japanese are often bad at English is mixture of factors. One is majority of them dont seem to realise they have to sit down and study at home. So many times Ive seen students come in once a week (or less) and expect to progress. It just isn`t going to happen.

Another is management at schools. Ive seen so many that are just out for the money. They put no money into teacher training, nothing into developing their school as a business. They only worry about it when things go wrong. And many of the schools have management that dont exactly excel in English in the first place. They never formally studied the language, nor lived overseas for any length of time. How can these people give solid advice in the first place?

So many schools I know have the attitude that, "Well little Johnny is 12 years old, so we`ll put him in with all the other 12 year olds". They completely fail to understand that not everyone is the same level, plus with the psychology of some students, putting everyone in the same level based just on age can be a recipe for disaster.

The teachers ... so many times Ive seen people ask, "Do you understand?". If the students come to school to improve, obviously they have less than perfect understanding in the first place. Quite often students think they understand when in reality they dont. But they`ll say they understand and walk away ....

And lastly, many of them dont need English at all. They never have and never will. Someone do a questionnaire and actually ask the students if they have used English,and it will be an overwhelming no. Ugh ... Im going to quit while I`m ahead ...

What`s the big deal? With the people who are complaining, are their manners so perfect in their own houses when they are alone? I would seriously doubt it.

Some of the stuff Ive seen in public (concerning manners) annoys me a lot, but its not worth getting all worked up about it. Maybe I should though ... I see lots of people here eating with their mouth wide open, lots of people cant use a knife and fork properly (I`ve been forced to duck on occasion to avoid injury), girls doing their makeup on the train, people sneezing/coughing without covering their mouths. The list is almost endless.

Pardon the pun, but this really is the pot calling the kettle black.

we can just be glad that the chinese auto industry is still as horrible as it is. Toyota, Honda, Nissan, etc are the only thing keeping this country sinking as slowly as it is

But Sunhawk, people might say the Chinese auto industry is horrible. But it seems that no one remembers they (i.e. the cars China produces now) were what Japan used to produce in the 1960s and 1970s. They were just small and cheap, with the bonus of being more fuel efficient. Japanese products at that time were nothing special. 1960`s Japan was pretty much the China of today, cheap, plastic toys and the souvenirs we bought when we went on holiday.

These engineers should be praised for helping to bring China up to 21st century standards more quickly.

They also claim that this is the first reported case of Fukushima goods being relabeled and sold in the capital

Emphasis should be on that, "claim", word. I wonder how many other cases have slipped through the cracks. Plus Japan doesn`t really have a, "whistleblower", culture, so I would expect the real incidence of these cases to be much higher.

Sorry, but a probably macabre comment from me ... but death by chlorine gas would be rather painful wouldn`t it?

Rie Hasegawa pregnant by boyfriend

Yep, thats usually how its done :)

Dead bodies used be buried after death many years ago. After around 1960s or 1970s burying bodies are prohibited. If you ask it at local government office, you will never get a permission of it.

Some not all. Maybe where you live kwatt, but definitely not everywhere in Japan.

But if the Emperor and Empress wish to be buried together, they should be allowed to just like other regular people. I don't even understand why they permission to do this.

I think another point needs to be raised. Many Japanese I know tend to think that if they apologize the offended party will forgive them. While this is well-meant, they sometimes forget that not everyone will agree with them, and this includes other Japanese. In this case, lives have been lost and an apology and understandably the victim's family is very upset. No amount of apologizing will ever make them feel better.

...found themselves hesitating to wear their favorite blouse or low cut top outside for fear of exposing a little too much cleavage

Then what was the point of buying that favourite blouse or low cut top if they then buy one of these?

Just amazing how they can claim they had more urgent cases, then go off on a 3 day, "leisure", trip. As her father said, not fit to call themselves police.

Please check your western homophobia at the door

Please check your eastern stereotypes at the door YuriOtani. Youre just as bad with that statement, on several different levels. I know plenty of Japanese who Ive had conversations with over the years. They have made it extremely clear that they want nothing to do with homosexuals and would move away from anyone they knew to be homosexual.

How about examining cultural similarities Makoto? Too often this comes back to the 'We Japanese are unique' thing.

I have to agree with you Akula. In my 20 years in Japan, the Japanese only seem to be able to look at the differences. I`ve never ever heard of any Japanese talk about the similarities.

I think sexuality is not the issue here. Being a warm-blooded male I'm quite happy to see this ad! But, I don't agree with "sexual activity" like this being shown in the afternoons on TV in front of your children. Whether its boy-girl boy-boy or girl-girl makes no difference.

I agree with you Dale! Ive got absolutely no problem with people if they are homosexual, its 2012 not the Dark Ages. It just disgusts me when I see young girls overly sexualised like this. The focus is not the product, but the girls getting close to each other in a sexual way (contrary to belief in some groups ... no, we don`t usually pass food or gum from person to person with our mouths).

As the old saying goes, "Sex sells" and that is what this product is all about, but this takes it to a level that clearly crosses a line.