TheInterstat comments

some14some; all investment carries risk. As I explained just above, there is more inherent risk in overseas investment. This does not change the purpose of investment, however, and that is to purchase an asset.

I feel you are arguing for the sake of arguing! Haha.

@Harboe; haha, yeah I think that would work. If you can get everyone to agree to stick to the plan...

The main problem with investing overseas, is that if (when) the tides change, there is very little the government can do to influence the foreign economy, so the risk is relatively higher. Like any decent investor, the key lies in diversification of the portfolio, however, which says to me that either this article is a bit sensationalist, and in fact there has not really been anything like the boosted spree it cites and that things are continuing as usual, or the economic professionals of Japan have lost their minds and ignored everything they have learned about basic economics. My money is on the former.

Pathetic. This guy did nothing wrong. Japan seriously needs to quit with all this being soft rubbish. The two girls getting stressed out by this is exactly the thing that needed to happen, so highlight the savagery and horror of what is happening at the moment with these ISIS goons. Ignoring it won't make it go away, and will only serve to make yet another generation of brain dead Japanese people with no interest or understanding of the world past the end of their train line.

Amazing. Must have taken them ages to come up with this plan.

I think some of the expert commenters here on JT need to realise a very basic economic reality;

'Investing' is the purchase of an 'Asset', not a 'Liability'. Investing abroad, is the purchase of foreign assets, which will yield a return relatively independent of the economic situation in the country purchasing said assets. Meaning, Japan will benefit from the foreign economies, even if their own is not doing so well. This is junior economics 101, and makes perfect sense.

What is more concerning though, is the fact that his is happening enough to notice a trend, meaning that the Japanese businesses are predicting that things are not looking good in the short to mid-term here, and are hedging abroad to prepare for the worst.

whats the point of this photo except to provoke some anti smoking trolls? just a badly taken photo of some dudes....

Holding the entirely modern view that smoking, and especially smoking around food is negative, is not exactly 'trolling', is it?

As a smoker yourself, your angle that smokers have the right to smoke is just the addiction talking. Give up, and do yourself, and everyone else around you a favour.

Not true. The 9/11 hijackers came from well off (i.e. middle class) families and had college degrees and access to money to come to America and go to colleges in Europe. Also, bin-Laden was the son of a very rich man. If you look at the people that are going to Syria from England or France to join, they are not living in abject poverty in England being that they get plenty of government subsidies to get by.

I said Islam, not extremism. Seems like you have jumped from one to the other automatically... Uh oh!

The overriding issue is that Islam flourishes in poor countries, and in poor countries it is easier to raise extremists. The reason for these nations being poor is long and complex, but looking at the other side, radical Islam will fade when the caliphate becomes a caliphate of capitalism and democracy. Nothing stops a fight faster than giving both sides a stack of cash to spend on whatever they want and to improve their immediate surroundings.

The west does not have the direct equivalent of ISIS because it is richer and is not a bleak sand filled zone of nothingness.

While culture and religion are twisted and used to drive the hatred, and are not the root cause. The fact that these people are living in really poor and nasty environments is.

@Yelnats; yeah, because a common feature of high end restaurants is the chefs smoking in the kitchens, right?

This is objectively scummy behaviour.

Very good post, PamiPame. Thanks for coming on here and telling it like it is. I agree with everything you said, and actually have had the very same conversation with many Japanese women over the years I have lived in Japan. It is pretty obvious really, and I can't see how a place like Japan would breed any other kind of women. The only women I know from Japan who don't display these characteristics are the ones who feel disenfranchised by the system, and exist on the outskirts. A lot of these often speak English pretty well, as they have studied it as a means to escape the reality of their nationality.

^yes, indeed, but they will not be destroyed. They are not a completely modular unit, removed from the rest of the world; they are linked directly with the more extreme side of Islam, and are fragmented across the globe, so will, I hate to say, most likely never be eradicated. Not until the idea of religion is eradicated, and to do that we need to wipe out hate, fear, and inequality, and educate people beyond believing in fairies.

Smoking around food preparation. How Japanese (actually, how Asian continent in general)...

SunnyDaze; you obviously got downvoted, but what you said is the truth. I used to hang around in the Eikaiwa teacher circles, and honestly, they were mostly a pretty basic bunch, just out for a good time. The ones who were not, and wanted to better themselves got out of it quickly after arriving in Japan and moved into other professions (or realised there was no future in it for them and went elsewhere).

There were (are) three types doing Eikaiwa work...

The new, young people who are here to party in their mid-20s, live it up, get with girls, boys or whatever, and not worry about making a future for themselves in Japan. There is nothing wrong with this lot, and they are usually more of a laugh than the other types, and in a roundabout way actually do a better job (as per the requirements of the job) as they are the most 'genki'. I had no problem with these guys, despite them getting up to some pretty illegal stuff (drugs and general high jinx). All part of being young. Really just a working holiday, travelling thing for sure.

The people who intend to stay in Japan, and are using it as a stepping stone into the country; it used to be that Nova would sort out flights, visa, initial accomodation, a bank account, etc etc., meaning all you had to do was pass the interview and turn up at the airport on time. Simple and good if you wanted to get into Japan the easy way, then work your way into whatever it is you want to be doing here. Again, no problem with these guys. I met these types too (hell, I kind of WAS one of them!), and I admired their ambition and resourcefulness. The ages of these guys varied a bit more than the working holiday travelling crew, but they were mainly young-ish.

And now we get to the 'problem' group... these guys are generally in their late-30s - early 60s, have been in Japan forever, but have not progressed anywhere past the exact same entry level job that anyone in the first 2 categories I described above. They are often in loveless marriages with Japanese women, are perpetually skint, have drinking problems, spend all their time waxing lyrical and putting the world to rights in The Hub, or wherever, but never actually do anything to better themselves, despite being full of the chat about doing so. It is this group that gives Eikaiwa a bad name.

This is not exactly very encouraging.

I actually had to do a bit of training with the new recruits in my work place. They have been here since late-January 'preparing' to start work with us in April. Fair enough, but I didn't get any such training, when I started...

Anyway, they are a mixed bunch. And by that, I mean one of them is very good and a good guy to boot. The other 8 of them turn up stinking of GyuKaku and last nights alcohol every day, talk amongst themselves when the people training them are trying to speak (ie, they behave like school kids, when they are all at least 22 years old), and get this... two of them actually fell asleep in a meeting we were having. The meeting with me, three Japanese staff who I work with, and 3 of these new trainees. Absolutely ridiculous. The quality is horrifically low. But this is what you get when you favour drilling and conformity over any actual innovation or original design.

For the exact same reason I have not demanded an official apology to my Dad for smacking my ass when I was misbehaving as a child.

Yeah, but you don't get the 'joy' of living in Japan though, do you Ken.

Good lord. I was going to rewatch Breaking Bad, Southcliffe, This Is England, and The Wire, but now I have seen this I put all those inferior works to rest and settle into some real quality.

The article does not say what percentage of mobile users have smartphones, compared to flip-phones.

This slight drop in renewals will be partially due to people going back to a flip-phone as they just don't 'get' smartphones (ie, they are not 'online' people interested in world news, social networking, internet shopping, GPS, translation etc.), and it will also be due to the fact that the smartphone has reached an initial plateau of maturity and quality, meaning that people don't need to upgrade their iPhone5, or their Galaxy S3, because the newer versions are not really a huge leap in functionality and there is nothing wrong with their current version.

This lack of desire to upgrade, which is where most of the renewal business comes from, is also due to the nature of the design; the operating system is not locked to the hardware, with smartphones - you can put Android 4.1 on a variety of phones of varying age, just as you can put iOS on iPhones all the way back to the 4S. Which is great!

I have to say, this predictable vibe that people on here seem to have, stating that they still use an old flip phone, and that they are better than these new fangled smartphones is extremely tiresome and backwards thinking.

@Jalapeno. Very well said and I agree completely.

The interaction and experience these young Japanese people have online far surpasses the 'real life' one they would have if they didn't use them.

@Reckless; if she would have you, of course!

We are going to see a lot of these kind of articles appearing in the Japanese press soon. Basically, they know they have lost, and the kids have all slipped hardcore into the internet, never to return again. The Japanese were always going to fall in harder than other nations, as this is what the kids have been crying out for since this whole society began; it fits them PERFECTLY, and is the antidote to all their problems. I completely understand how this has happened.

But the thing is, as I said, it is never going away, even if we want it to. This is it now, and these young people who are 14-18 years old now were born into the internet, not before it. They are the first generation that this has happened to, and their way of life, completely connected, is the future.

I said in another thread on the matter, that this inevitability should be conceded and embraced. That way, it will end up as a net benefit (excuse the pun). Schools here in Japan should be engaging them a lot more over digital platforms, incorporating smartphones and the internet in general into lesson plans and making things more valuable and worthwhile. They can also introduce the idea that the smartphone is really just a 'palmtop' and an immensely powerful tool; introducing the kids to coding, digital design, business, etc., on these devices, even if they still spend most of their time on LINE during their young years will be extremely beneficial in the years to come.

If I had the internet connected given to me in a lightning fast touch screen device when I was 14, my mind would have exploded with the possibilities.

I think a lot of the issue that people seem to be imagining, is that these young people are using their devices for mindless gossipy stuff, which they probably are. Because they are kids. If they can be redirected a bit, to use them for productivity and learning, we will be on for a very bright future indeed.

Hahaha, I am not a professional economist, but that does not look like anything has crawled out of recession to me!

All these Japanese women going shopping for valentines junk is nothing to do with love, it is merely yet another ritual they enjoy being obliged to do.

Here is an idea...

Smartphones are here to stay. Everyone is online (we are online talking about this), and everyone WANTS to be online, so why dont the teacher start actually using the phones to access the internet in class and incorporate this into the lesson plans?

Imagine an economics lesson where the students have to find out real, up to the second accurate information on the stock price of a certain company, and then report it back to the class, using the economic theories the teacher introduces in the less. I would have LOVED that in school. That would have been AMAZING.

Or in an English class, having the kids access breaking news and try to understand and summarize it from their phones.

Etc.

There is no fighting this, so why dont they try to use them. They are incredible tools.

There is no problem here. I would argue they are more connected with a larger group of people, than if they didn't have these phones, and just sat in their houses speaking to their parents and siblings. With connection to the internet, they learn a hell of a lot more about the world, and have access to all the information out there instantly. This is just a paradigm shift that the old boys can't handle as they have no control over it. It is part of our evolution, and nothing to be criticised.

Softbank are making no money (they are losing money) from the core of their consumer side business; ie, people taking out new contracts and using their phones to make voice calls. With smartphones and Pake-Houdai systems, and people no longer ever really calling eachother, this area of business is pretty much dead. Softbank is the least popular carrier now, for new sign-ups.

They hold a very large share of Alibaba (over 30%) and this where their new business system exists.

If I, a foreigner living in Japan, decided to go to Syria, would they stop me from going?

^djv124 lol, and no.

The thing is, I am having a hard time trying to think what Japan can actually include in the opening ceremony that will not be cringy or lame, or boring. Nothing which is relevant to modern Japanese culture today, and that isn't just lifted from the West really exists. Unique stuff; this AKB paedo stuff... and what?

Sure, they can do a whole history of ancient Japanese Samurai stuff which will be alright, but what are they going to do for modern stuff? Show a large sea of braindead young people staring at Line on their phones shuffling through train stations?

Who funded the trips of these two guys? Kenji, may have funded himself (who was he working for, if he is a journalist? Self-employed?)

Yukawa; selling cat food and being a gun otaku is not going to get the kind of money together to fund an 'adventure' like this, especially when we look at his past. I bet his Dad funded this!

Do they ever have an original idea? (nope). I am Kenji. As other posters have pointed out, this is an adoption of something from the west, which they have got completely wrong. It is the same as when those politicians here started using 'Yes We Can'. Cringe.

As for this situation; those two brought it on themselves, pure and simple. One of them is dead, and if Goto gets free, then the more reasonable of the two will have survived, which is alright with me.