Tristis Quepe comments

I make no claims to be an expert on things related to Afghanistan, but it would be pretty funny (in the sense of "ironic", rather than actually "amusing") if the Taliban actually did this - changed with the times - and won lots of PR victories. Can you imagine the egg on America's face?

"Yeah, we trained the local soldiers for ages and gave them the best gear in the world, then...umm...a bunch of dudes in sandals whipped them, took over the country, and now people are giving them rave reviews. Oops."

I reckon if they gave us a figure of three tomorrow and then eighteen thousand the day after, nobody would even bat an eyelid any more.

"Japan claims definitive proof of ownership, as Fax machine found on island"

The government has given up. No clue, no plan, no idea, nothing except hot air and a meaningless SOE.

A total shambles, beyond disgraceful.

Agree completely. And you know the really scary thing? What you wrote there would have been accurate at any time since the second SOE onwards.

The first one actually had some effect. I'd never seen Tokyo so empty. But each successive SOE was weaker and weaker, and now it amounts to nothing more than an announcement which should really be met not just by indifference, but by jeers.

Who are the 30 per cent here? It's not bar owners, for sure. And it's not anyone who can see the direction in which he's driving the country.

Maybe it's older people who've had their shot and are sitting on a nice pension, and therefore are operating on the Japanese version of "I've got mine, so (bleep) you".

Federer needs 3rd knee surgery

No wonder his court coverage is so good, if he has three knees.

Yes, it's posturing to a degree. Trouble is, not just the shrine visit, but everything else about it is so predictable.

1) Politician goes to Yasukuni.

2) China and Korea go mental and make noises of disapproval.

3) Absolutely nothing of consequence happens.

4) Repeat from 1.

You'd think if this really bothered the Chinese and Koreans, they'd do more than just lodge official statements, which the Japanese government might pretend to take under advisement, while actually ignoring them entirely.

It really is like a play where everyone has their lines and knows what to say before it even happens.

actively ignoring the warnings from the experts

This pretty much sums up the history of Covid. To really make it clear, we could add the words "in the name of good political optics" at the end.

Tristris

Yes, it’s great to see you g people out enjoying themselves. Transmission is negligible outside and the risk to their health minute. People have the right to stay in or go out, I choose to go out everyday. Exercise and sunlight is important

I'll buy the "outside" part to an extent. I understand that indoors is worse than outdoors.

I go out pretty much every day too, with a mask, and I will (hopefully) get my first shot soon.

What I don't do is put myself into situations which drastically increase my risk of being infected, as that means I could then inadvertently infect others - this is possibly where our philosophies differ, as I believe that looking out for people other than oneself, especially if they are at higher risk, is something worth doing.

I have no idea about the effect of sunlight, as I'm not the omnipotent expert on Covid that you apparently are.

Huge beach party by Biwako today - about 150 plus young people crammed under marquees - not a mask in sight.

If I dare have the presumptuousness to quote myself:

Yo, people in your 20s. Think you could manage a month without hedonism?

I am glad to see the number has gone down a bit and not exploded.

Going by the reaction to your post, you seem to be the only one!

I know we're a cynical bunch here, and I include myself in that definition, but the implication is that people actually want higher numbers.

We are a strange species.

Yo, people in your 20s. Think you could manage a month without hedonism?

They are widely available.

Apparently not according to many other posters.

I'm operating on the principle of "one swallow does not make a summer", but when I (finally) managed to book mine yesterday, I saw a very, very slight glimmer of hope.

When you scan the QR code on the paperwork they send you, you are directed to a website for your particular ward - Shinjuku in my case. Initially there were 17 centres listed, and one seems to have been added, as it's now at 18.

Until yesterday, I never saw more than one of those 17 / 18 centres showing as having an available slot, and even then the slot disappeared so fast that you had no chance at all of booking it.

Yesterday there were four or five such centres advertising open slots. Some of them disappeared after refreshing the page, but this was the first time I had seen that much activity, and I had been checking it multiple times every day.

Like I said, I could have just got very lucky with the timing, and barring my slot being given to someone else who has influence with the local politicos, I won't need to check it again, but I hope - for everyone who wants to get a shot - that we'll see progress, however slow it might be.

I see this as part of a wider scene: the disintegration of civilisation.

Terrorism and other such things, foreign and homegrown.

Huge scale attempts to create discord about vaccines.

As much of a cliché as it is, it really does feel like the forces of good and the forces of evil, and it's really not clear who's winning any more.

What a bunch of lies. The national government have zero intentions for vaccinating more people. They continue to restrict access and sabotage distribution. People not in tier 1 companies or wealthy neighborhoods could not make vaccine appointments and likely will not be able to until at least next year. The national government is only interested in vaccinating as few people as possible to preserve market for domestic vaccines next year.

Not defending the bungling, but I just recently - finally - managed to get a booking and I'm in Shinjuku. I looked up the average income by ward in Tokyo and Shinjuku was 9th. Not poor by any means, but certainly not among the wealthiest.

Sorry, make that bureaucrat, not diplomat.

No policies, doesn’t listen to the public, doesn’t want to help normal people by giving some money like Abe did-the guy will definitely keep his job at the election..

Many a true word spoken in jest. Ever read "Straitjacket society"? Written by a US-trained psychologist who returned home to Japan to work as a diplomat and got the ultimate case of reverse culture shock. Upon starting his new post, he was told the three cardinal rules: don't be late, don't take any holiday, and don't change anything.

I'm not drawing any conclusions, but after weeks of failed attempts to book a shot, I suddenly caught a break yesterday and found a local centre. You have to book both shots at once, the second three weeks after the first, which at least implies that they feel that they have enough vaccine to do that.

I'm not counting any chickens until they hatch (i.e. I wouldn't be surprised to get an email saying "sorry, your slot has been given to the friend of a local politician"), but maybe, just maybe, with the white elephant olympics out of the way and the Paraolympics yet to start, the government has had a few moments to get their act together and actually think about their own subjects for a few minutes.

That doesn't mean that I'd go out and vote LDP if I had the right to vote. They're still pretty darn useless.

I have come to the tentative conclusion that there is no number high enough (of cases, severe cases, and deaths) such that certain people will not use that number to declare that there is no problem.

Watch the numbers over the coming weeks…and watch the comments.

Question: Why is only Anti-Vaxxers who refer to the drug companies as 'Big Pharma'? I am genuinely interested. Is it a derogatory term?

At a guess, it's the "Big" that makes the difference. These people see themselves as an outside-the-box-thinking minority of independent-minded radicals, rather than what they are, which is a bunch of bored illiterates who need something to do to pass the time and make themselves feel important. So by affixing "big" to whatever it is - "tech", "government", "pharma" - they're role-playing as rebels. They probably still refer to "the man" when talking about authority; and this probably impresses their girlfriends, so they think it'll work on people who actually have brains.

Steve, just to add to my last post: just for the heck of it I tried calling the English language reservation line (on the logic that it will be far less popular than the Japanese line), and it's still coming up with the "busy, call again" recorded message. This being after the website has displayed the "all today's reservations finished" message. So people are still trying to get through.

The desire to get vaccinated seems to be there; the means, does not.

Ok, I’ll take your word for it. Didn’t say anyone one was lying, just seems a tad strange to me.

It's likely something to do with available vaccine vs population, at a guess. If there's an area of Japan which has enough vaccine, you'd have to work that out against the area's population and then extrapolate that to Tokyo's population. You're going to need a ton more vaccine.

I’m finding it hard to believe so many people unable to get vaccinated. 

Well, we're not lying. I just reported my experience as did Antiquesaving and as several others have done. We don't have anything to gain by embellishing the facts.

I can't speak for every prefecture or area though.

Anyone says that Japanese doctors don't care or work hard haven't met my son's doctors 

I imagine that the doctors and other healthcare staff are just as angry about this situation as the people who can't get a shot.

I'm in a more fortunate position than many, as I can work from home, and I'm not that old (yet!) and in reasonable condition. No doubt some would tell me that I'm wasting my time getting vaccinated, but that's their choice.

This is, I suppose, one of the consequences of having a government which is essentially accountable to nobody. Yeah, there are elections, but you'd have more variety in a one-party dictatorship. It's all but a foregone conclusion every time, so it's not as if the PM, ministers, etc., feel any pressure to actually do anything substantial.

Japan's national government is clearly doing everything in their power to suppress vaccinations and block access for the general population.

I'm more inclined just to go with gross incompetence. Either way, I'm going to keep at it. Even a government as useless as this one will have to be able to sort out something eventually - eventually being the operative word.

Just to update my previous post: the website message is now

大変申し訳ありません。今回は予約満了となりました。

That's approximately 37 minutes after it opened, and at no point did I even get past the busy screen, having had the website open before the reservations even started.

I can only assume that there are people who just keep that screen open 24/7 in order to get in whenever there's a space.

Ah well. Time to go back to the 18 available clinics in Shinjuku, none of which have a single slot open.

When are we going to start seeing some effects of the vaccine rollout?

Well, just to give you a yardstick, I have the Otemachi mass centre website open. I've had it open since before 6PM when it officially opens. I'm stuck on the "very busy" screen. I'm also calling the English-language phone number, as helpfully suggested by someone on here,. every few minutes. No dice yet. "Please call back later".

So, I guess a rough answer to your question is "your guess is as good as mine".

It's just the 20's and 30-somethings. This isn't going to change so why care.

This comment is getting hammered, but I think it might be being misinterpreted.

At a guess, the poster is lamenting the fact that the younger members of society - who are, it must be said, less likely to be seriously affected by Covid - are basically being colossally irresponsible for various reasons (inconsistent government messaging, selfishness, hedonism, whatever) and are unlikely to change their ways unless someone directly related to them, or close to them, gets seriously infected. They're the ones catching it and therefore they're the ones spreading it.

Not an unreasonable hypothesis.

I don't think people realise how shallow this makes them look.

"I was definitely against the games. But then people from My Country won lots of events. So I became definitely for the games".

"So does that mean you weren't really against them in the first place?"

(sucks air through teeth) "Muzukashii...."

Why can't they have done a better job at managing this?

Because, unfortunately, they don't need to. The LDP could manage this so badly that every fifth person dies of Covid and the remaining four fifths would still vote them back in. Sad but true.