Upgrayedd comments

Many modern cities women executives are able to achieve some family & work balance. Just look at the women executives in Singapore, Hong Kong, London and New York.

What?

There are very few places in this world where "executives" are able to enjoy real work-life balance. If you want to enter that level of responsibility in a Fortune 500 company, it's 60 hour weeks - minimum. There is no "balance" for executives in HK, London, or New York. Absolutely zero at all. I don't have as much business experience in Singapore but I can't imagine the corporate culture over there being vastly different from the rest of the developed world.

Eh no its not. An unstoppable, unkillable hitman and that with 2 sequels. But be that as it may, Keanu is a good guy, I hope he will make a decent flick again soon.

85% fresh rating on rotten tomatoes.

Reviews Counted: 180 Fresh: 153 Rotten: 27

It's a good movie. Get over it.

"You killed my dog, dude !" Is this film as bad as it sounds ?

LOL, it's actually a surprisingly good action film.

My question is, why aren't any of the Arab countries not trying to take in many of these refugees? They have a lot of resources, money, food. They could relieve a lot of this burden that is overwhelming the Europeans and yet, nothing. Why is that?

Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq are all housing millions of refugees among themselves.

The other rich gulf nations (Saudi, Kuwait, Bahrain, etc) are not taking refugees because racism and tribalism.

This poll should have a middle ground option.

I'm open to the idea of PR getting the right to vote in certain local elections but not for the national diet.

What are the TV shows and movies offered?

http://jp.allflicks.net/

Will they have English subs for the Japanese content

Nope

and Japanese subs for the English content?

Yes, they already have it.

I hope he changes his mind. The Osaka merger plan is a good idea. Get that done and then quit I say.

@makand So you want Japan to copy USA? Sorry. There is no person equivalent to Donald Trump in Japan.

Hiroshi Mikitani

He was actually far more involved in politics than Donald Trump before he decided to run for the Republican nomination.

You may check any historical source. Even Wikipedia says that Japanese garrison fought back and Kurils were seized after significant human losses from both sides in combat. Check Battle of Shumshu, for instance. Japanese soldiers destroyed five Soviet landing crafts and the total amount of Soviet cadualities surpassed Japanese ones.

I'm just armchair general-ing and pointing out that it wasn't a rout. The Japanese were putting up a fight against the Soviets and were dealing out 2x as many casualties as they were taking. The battle didn't end because the Soviets defeated them Kurils but because the Japanese merely finalized their surrender decided on days before the battle began. If the battle continued it's very possible that the Soviets would have been unable to capture the Kurils without greatly extending their schedule and resources.

The question also remains as to what future for present 30,000 Russian communities? 70 years cannot just be brushed aside, under international law and the rights of self determination, just to forcibly evict them would be unthinkable.

They can become citizens of Japan.

This is not true. History says that Soviets seized the Kuril Chain in a battle, taking advantage during wide-scale Manchuria offensive operation. Japanese garrison fought back but was overpowered.

The Soviets invaded the Kuril Islands a full three days AFTER Hirohito announced the Japanese surrender. The Japanese garrison was not overpowered but ceased combat operations under direct orders from Tokyo. Unlike the Manchuria operation, the Japanese inflicted far more casualties on the Soviets in the Kurils as the Soviets did on the Japanese.

The Japanese defenders of the islands would then spend the next 5 years in Siberian slave labor camps.

The trouble is that some Japanese politicians will continue to question whether the women were forced.

What % were forced and what % were volunteers?

The most grotesque justification I've ever heard of the nuclear genocide.

Are you trying to imply that war production was not a legitimate military target?

The atomic bombs were not aiming for children. In Hiroshima they were aiming for the headquarters of the 2nd General Army, 59th Army, 5th Infantry Division, and the 224th Mobile Division. Plus dozens of factories producing war materials.

In Nagasaki, they were aiming for the war production capability. Nagasaki was a major industrial center during WWII and over 90% of the city's industry was directly involved in the war.

Accept the Japanese surrender, which the Japanese government started pursuing in April, 1945.

The pressure was on the Japanese to accept the surrender terms offered by the United Nations, not the other way around.

BTW, the Japanese never had any serious surrender offers until the last days of the war. Even after the first bomb, the war council wasted hours arguing which terms to communicate to the allies (keeping Taiwan, Korea, no occupation of Japan, plus all kinds of other unacceptable actions). It took the decisive intervention of the Emperor himself to tip the consensus towards unconditional surrender.

Ask yourself this; why is it that whenever there is a financial scandal in Japan it is often the foreign press that report on it first.

Do you have any examples of this that are not Olympus?

And BTW, the foreign press got a head start on Olympus only because the CEO whistleblower went directly to the foreign press because he lacked the ability to speak Japanese.

So now we have a situation where the Japanese government says there were no forced labourers, but one Japanese company says there certainly were, under their company's control. What is the Japanese government going to do, continue to deny?

The government does not deny that forced labor happened and there have been extensive apologies given to POWs (and whole nations, with compensation) from the central government.

The Japanese government also sponsors a number of grassroots programs to invite surviving allied veterans and POWs (and their families) to Japan for cultural exchanges and other remembrance events - which include apologies for war crimes, visits to schools, meetings with Japanese veterans, etc.

This guy is pretty impressive. I hope he adds a spark to this cause.

Sooo there won't be roof on a stadium that will likely cost around 4 billion USD!? and people will be sitting in there all day, exposed to direct sunlight at the height of summer in Tokyo.....great work, well thought out lads, I couldn't have planned it any better myself!!!!

Wasn't a problem in 1964

Wow, thank god for this man's kindness and benevolence! It's now only an additional 70 billion on top of the 150 + billion the tax payer needs to pay despite promises that it would be a cheap and compact games!

Considering that new construction will only take up about 30% of total venues for the games, this Olympics may very well be among the cheapest in the last few decades. Even with the inflated price for the new main stadium.

Individual prices

Who cares about that? There is a reason why they measure inflation using a basket of goods instead of individual ones. There is too much fluctuation with individual goods to get an accurate measurement.

Non-Americans schooled in a socialist public education system are not expected to know this, but the War Between the States was fought over the Morrill tariff and states rights; also the constitutional right to secede from the Union which the South lawfully did. Ending slavery was never the issue for the conflict.

LOL

Here is a partial list of Declaration Causes of Seceding States.

Just do a ctrl-f and look for any variation of tax or tariff. The one single mention is in reference of slavery.

Now check out direct references to slavery and come back and try to tell us the civil war wasn't directly about slavery. It was the ONLY issue. All other issues about tariffs and states rights were in support of the rights of the Southern States to maintain slavery. They saw the election of the Republicans as a direct threat on their way of life (based on slavery and racism) and tried to leave the union because of it.

http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/declarationofcauses.html

It represents traditional US southern culture and way of life before it was tarnished.

It represents culture and heritage of racism and slavery, nothing more.

Let's just look at the history of South Carolina. From 1865-1938, the Stars and Bars was not flown anywhere on public grounds and it was not used as a symbol of remembrance at any Confederate veterans events. Only in 1938, after Southern politicians banded together to defeat an anti-lynching (wtf?) bill did they begin to fly the flag in the State House. They put it up in the Senate building right after the Supreme Court struck down Brown v. Board of Education. Finally, they moved it up to it's prominent position on top of the building in 1962 in response to Kennedy's calls to end poll taxes and literacy tests for voting and right after the Supreme Court struck down segregation in public transportation.

The adoption of the Stars and Bars in the South was nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction to the North's anti-racism policies. It has nothing to do with representing grits or sweet tea or hospitality or any of that.

Educate yourself.

I have yet to encounter a hotel or restaurant in Japan that didn't take AMEX, MC or VISA. With the exception of one time in Sapporo, every Taxi I've taken in Japan took credit cards.

They're probably referring specifically to Chinese cards. Union Pay, etc.

What company was it and what country were you located in? That activity is very clearly illegal in Japan and almost unheard of. In the US, however, it's par for the course.

The temporary leave part I can still understand, but no pay? That is disgraceful and unforgivable. Probably illegal too.

No company that I know of pays maternity leave in Japan. Instead, it is covered by employment insurance (雇用保険) at a rate of 2/3 of base salary.

Basically this woman asked for a transfer in order to return to work as soon as possible. The company refused the transfer and told her to utilize maternity and family care leave instead and to return to the company when she could return to being a crew member. This leave is pad at a rate lower than the regular salary and it looks like she simply could not adjust her budget to compensate.

The key legal question here is whether or not the company is required by law to accept her transfer request. I imagine that the company will be arguing that there is no such requirement to transfer her, that she was hired as a flight crew member and not ground staff, and they met all legal requirements by not forcing her to conduct physically demanding flight crew work and allowing her to take extended (paid by the government) maternity and family care leave.

How does Japan rank among the world in terms of corruption?

Let's look at the Corruption Perception Index as compiled by Transparency International.

Japan Ranking: 15 of 175 China Ranking: 100 of 175 US (reference): 17 of 175 Denmark (reference): 1 of 175

Consider this alternative: If Japan not only reversed this idea, but instead upped the overtime rate to 50% instead of the current 25%,

Consider the followup posts to this post, it seems that the readers of Japan Today are not well informed about working conditions in Japan.

Overtime is different in Japan depending on whether or not you work for a large enterprise, or an SME.

Large enterprises have to pay a 50% overtime premium (it's been the law since April 2010).

SME's only have to pay 25%.

However, Abe just recently changed the law and upped the SME overtime premium from 25% --> 50%. It will be fully implemented in 2019.

But in the fiscal year which ended with these figures up March 2015 , the economy actually shrank by 1% over the fiscal year.

Um, no.

Q2 (April-June): 525,479 Q3 (July-September): 522,703 Q4 (October-December): 524,161 Q1 (January-March): 527,283

Those of course are billions of chained 2005 JPY.

That would be a .35% growth. Pretty small but not a drop.

Abe's solution is not to force the companies to pay overtime, as required by law, but to abolish mandatory overtime payments

This plan only applies to people who already make more than 10 million a year.

Another policy Abe has hanged in the last two years is to increase the overtime rate at small and medium sized corporations from 25% to 50%. I believe this will kick in in the next few years.