wolfshine comments

Honestly, she should just open a "Ukrainian" shop and sell the same products, seeing as how the bulk of all Ukrainian culture derives from Russian culture, until a little over thirty years ago, that is. I guarantee you the average Japanese person would not notice a difference either.

Koike has been a total disaster for the people of Tokyo. We've seen her full body of work and it's clear her interests lie in benefiting the cronies. She's like the Japan equivalent of Richard Daley.

Go Renho! I may not fully agree with all of her positions, but she is the direction the country should be heading in.

Look, I am absolutely not afraid of giving Japan fair criticism where criticism is due. This country has a lot of problems that it will need to address in the coming years and I certainly don't think we should shy away from calling them out when needed.

However, the World Economic Forum, perhaps once perceived as a reputable institution long ago, has lost its credibility in recent years and has rightfully come under fire for its rather dubious intentions and also the extent of their political influence.

I looked at the report. I immediately noticed that ranked above Japan there are several countries notorious for having serious problems with sexual violence. In theory, analyzing discrepancies related to partcipation in business or politics makes sense, but in practice it ends up being this mess of obviously cherry picked data intended to produce a specific type of outcome.

You cannot convince me Kazakhstan, Romania, Zimbabwe, and Serbia are treating women better than Japan is. Maybe among urban elites they have more political and economic participation rates, but how do you even measure what is going on outside of what those country's governments are willing to show you? I imagine in the rural parts of those countries equality has not advanced very much since their ages of industrialization, if at all.

Reports like this are counter productive and actually do more to cover for gender inequality than anything else. WEF is trash and no one should trust or support them.

Single murders like this rarely get reported in super-dangerous places like America.

You are wrong and it would be better if you stopped opining on matters you have no actual knowledge or experience in.

Single murders absolutely get reported on in the United States. They get reported on in the local news, just not national news, because the national news not only covers major nationwide stories and big events but also international affairs. Moreover the US is three times the population of and several times the size of Japan, also with several ethnic demographics. If someone gets murdered in Chicago, that may not exactly be relevant information for someone in suburban Florida which geographically may as well be a separate country. However, in Japan, somebody getting murdered in the second biggest city in the biggest metropolitan area in front of the fourth or fifth busiest train station in the world, yeh, that actually is relevant news for them.

Let's stop acting like Japanese people are so high and mighty and better than everyone else. It is so tiresome and cliche.

It's just funny to me the way this is being treated.

Well akchyhually, the Japanese economy only shrank 1.8% as opposed to 2%.

Like, hello? Japan should be absolutely BOOMING post-Covid and with tourism pumping a lot of fresh money into the economy.

It's true that most countries in general are not exactly experiencing economic miracles right.

But for Japan this is just sad and pathetic. You basically have stagflation. Low wages, zero innovation, recession, and inflation. Disastrous. The government needs to deregulate the economy asap. Nobody can come here to do business due to insane barriers to entry, high taxes, ineffecient regulatory framework/nanny state, as well as corporate welfare for domestic entities.

Japan is going to collapse if the oyajis are not kicked out of power. Deal with the problem now before it gets worse.

It makes sense that Japanese feel lonely in countries where they are not in the majority. All throughout life they are brought up being led to believe that the most important thing in this world is cooperating with others and that individualism is generally selfish. It explains a big part of the reason why so many Japanese people end up frustrated with foreigners in Japan. So when they become the foreigners, they probably have to reconcile with the fact that a lot of their belief systems since childhood don't really mean much in the real world.

I know people like to endlessly regurgitate "When in Rome do as the Romans do" but life isn't that simple. I as an expat in Japan have fully accepted than I will never be able to fully assimilate. No one can. And that's fine. People should value themselves first as individuals, not as a cog in some collective.

Naka ku isn't like that.

Yes it is. Especially in the areas near Ishikawacho station, in Isezaki, ect.

Tightly nestled between Yokohama's high rises sit many small pockets of very old single family homes.

Sadly for the families that occupy these units, this event along with the continued gentrification of the city have dealt yet another death blow to these longstanding communities. Eventually central Yokohama is going to end up looking like Roppongi - an area with lots of visitors but one where only the wealthiest of earners can actually become residents.

I don't even feel disappointed because I have learned to expect nothing from Japanese authority figures at this point. They heavily suppress young people while also employing endless propaganda designed to drum up paranoia around foreigners. Only thing to do now is wait until economic conditions get desperate enough and the young Japanese get to have their "Bombard the Headquarters" moment. I for one am gleefully looking forward to the upcoming humiliation rituals this societies' leaders will soon have to endure.

Hilarious and terrible idea. This will end up wasting a lot of tax money. Tinder and Bumble are already out there. Dating apps are actually part of the problem, not the solution.

The demographic change is coming and it CANNOT be stopped. The good news is, it is going to affect all modern developed countries and Japan can get a head start on it before China, Russia, Italy, and the others! What they need to be doing is not hosing money at trying to avoid the demographic collapse, but invest the funds in things that will be beneficial after the collapse. Maybe Japan will have to allow very limited amounts of immigration to soften the blow whilst also investing in more automation.

I actually am of the opinion that Japan's resilient survivalist mentality will once again manifest itself at the right time and they will get through it. Sadly right now the Oyajis are in the way and will make the process more difficult/expensive. They need to get young people running the show both in business and politics. Stop all the endless cultural welfare for the elderly and start prepping for the future.

Unfortunately, I don't forsee this changing anytime soon.

Chopping down cedar trees might be feasible... But bio-retrofitting entire forests as well? Seems unrealistic. Don't get me wrong it sounds wonderful in theory but like many grandiose past suggestions the real challenge is whether such a project can be undertaken in reality.

Do we really need media coverage every time some high ranking person gets Covid? It was never like this with the flu.

European friend a research medical doctor with ok Japanese refused to play the out-of-hours social games ie nomikai, weekend trips, golf days etc. Initially he did, but then thought he'd rather spend his free time with his wife who was home alone. Resulted in a severe dressing down and semi-ostracism by his superiors. Not a team man.

My close friend of a few years back - Chinese national very competent in Japanese, working for a medium size housing construction company in the office. He was computer savvy light years ahead of his co-workers. Developed a program to manage, coordinate all accounting procedures in the office to simplify and regulate daily procedures. Almost lost his job over that because a) who gave you permission to do that in work time (he could finish his daily work in a few hours); b) you are a junior in our company (altho holding a MEc and being IT smart); c) we work as a team together, not for ourselves (altho he created the software for the benefit of the team).

Tons of other stories and many involve Japanese - Japanese conflicts. My own wife - Japanese - has unfortunately experienced first hand some of the same "problems" as in the article - difficulty in communication. misunderstandings, mistakes etc.

Reading those stories made me feel really depressed. The sad truth is, and I myself have experienced this, if the Japanese person "in charge of" dealing with the foreign workers doesn't put pressure on them, then that Japanese worker ends up getting bullied or reprimanded by their superiors and other people at the job.

The Japanese economy needs a reset, like I think a lot of people in this country, particularly high ranking people, just need to spend six-nine months being unemployed.

It depends on what this means.

If it means, "Can the Western world and the Islamic world coexist peacefully as economic partners, and conduct cultural exchange by means of trade and tourism?", then I say yes.

If it means, "Can people in Western countries coexist peacefully with millions of migrants from the Islamic world in said Western countries?", then NO, absolutely not. We are witnessing the natural limits of allowable mass migration even when the people coming are not from the culture of Islam.

Mixed feelings, because while part of me wants to say it is due to xenophobia, honestly, I can understand what kind of difficulties could arise from the Japanese perspective. It is their country, after all.

All I can really say is, it would be better if, instead of trying to hire some big shot from overseas that doesn't really speak the language, companies here should make a greater effort to hire foreigners already living in Japan that have greater experience with the language. There are plenty of foreigners already living in Japan that would jump at the opportunity to leave their low paying English teaching job if they got the chance. And most likely, their Japanese language proficiency will be higher than someone that hasn't been living inside the country.

Hard to imagine a part of Japan like Shikoku really being able to support many people in the coming decades.

It's not a popular suggestion, but I think some parts of Japan need to be deindustrialized. As villages and small cities start to empty out, bulldoze everything except for historical monuments and return them to nature. Parts of Japan like this don't need service economy jobs or manufacturing anyway. What Japan needs is more farming. Since the 1960s Japan has gone from producing over 60% of its food to under 40%.

And Bravo wolfshine. I am in total agreement with your post. It seems like another way of “hammering down the nail that sticks up.” I don’t blame the youth for wanting something better than work, work, kids, work and death.

This is exactly what I have been saying. It is exactly that older Japanese people basically dehumanize younger Japanese and see them as more of a resource than actual people.

A similar phenomenon to the Shibuya public drinking thing is the moral crisis over cannabinoids. Marijuana is obviously very illegal in Japan, but last year there was a very popular legal alternative called HHCH, another cannabinoid with similar effects. They immediately moved to make it illegal because a few individuals got dizzy from consuming large amounts of it. It wasn't like this thing caused people to have seizures or go into cardiac arrest. It was just a loophole. But rather than let bygones be bygones, they had to put a stop to it. Even though they did literally no research, no clinical trials, or even advance some sort of legislation in the Diet. Is that really democratic?

I think young people in Japan should be incredibly angry and in the streets right now given how they are treated. It may take some time for those sentiments to fully manifest - but at least some more dynamic alternatives are starting to emerge in the political scene, such as Renho and Taro Yamamoto.

I said last year they were going to do this, and I got called a conspiracy theorist. All of that talk about trying reduce risks in Shibuya during Halloween and prevent a stampede like in Itaewon - it was all a lie. A big, fat LIE. They have been totally dishonest about their intentions from the start, and this is the confirmation. Their true intention is to clamp down on young people and foreigners because Shibuya is pretty much the only place in Tokyo where people actually let loose.

During Covid, when all of the bars were closed and dining hours were limited to 8PM, young people and foreign residents fatigued with all the mindless curfews assembled in Shibuya and were able to socialize and continue living their lives to some extent. Elderly curmudgeons noticed this and got angry. They couldn't stand the fact that some young people didn't want to gaman and burn away precious years of their young life to put on this facade that they cared about stopping the spread of the virus.

So then it came to, "Okay, well, you don't know your place, so we'll pluck away your precious Halloween ceremony". They've used a multitude of excuses for telling people not to come - first, it will spread the virus they said, then after that they used the Itaewon excuse (even though Itaewon is much smaller and cramped than Shibuya), and now I guess they are using the excuse of trash and unruliness, even though the Shibuya locals, much like the Kyoto locals, would rather point fingers than tell their representatives to install more trashbins.

Even though they told people not to come to Shibuya and used thinly-veiled threats on Halloween... people still came last year. The young people are not buying into the lies. Maybe at school and at their jobs they have to put on a front (tatemae), but when they're in costume, amongst a sea of other partygoers, honne comes out.

So now the new punishment to inflict upon them is to try to change Shibuya and end the public drinking.

Here's what working and middle-aged Japanese people need to understand: the more you go out of your way to avoid confronting your country's problems like its work culture and strict conformism, the more you are kicking the can down the road. All of the rules and anti-foreign tourist stuff is just a distraction. Japan has been able to coast thanks to the wealth accumulated during the bubble era, but it will run out eventually. If young people see no opportunity to find happiness in life due to economic conditions, you are setting up your society for eventual unrest or potentially an uprising. There needs to be reform. I think people leaving trash in Shibuya or Kyoto should be the LEAST of peoples worries. People want to party on Halloween and New Years because it is an escape from the mundanity of daily life. But it may be that in the future young people come to Shibuya to protest in large numbers. So count your blessings now.

All this is to say: let people buy their FamilyMart beers and drink on Center-Gai. It's not that big of a deal. Just set up some trashcans, instead of trying to create this moral crisis and assign blame.

Wolfshine,

It appears the guide was running a scan and a generally bad person

It's idiots like him that make it more difficult for everyone

According to whom? Bloodthirsty netto uyoku, foaming at the mouth?

They claim to understand the rules on tourism regulations but its all just gotcha moments and soundbytes. They are not a credible source of information. Not to mention a lot of these people likely played a part in the whole q/anon phenomenon that got really big in the states a few years ago.

That British tour guide was doxed, harassed, threatened, and basically had his life ruined because he had the audacity to stand up for himself while being a foreigner. It is basically impossible to live in Japan as a non-Japanese person while setting boundaries with Japanese people. Everyone who lives here knows this.

Perhaps foreign visitors have moved on to Yasaka Shrine.

https://soranews24.com/2024/05/27/1300-year-old-kyoto-shrine-changes-bell-policy-following-altercation-with-foreign-tourists

I can understand the local point of view, but a harassing Japanese woman emulating a “Karen” is never a good look.

You should have been on X while this whole thing was unfolding. The woman who filmed that video was encouraging her followers to dox the foreign tour guide while also having them go after anyone who disagreed with her.

I always assumed the Japanese netizens were pretty crazy, but to have a situation where she is clearly harassing people and in the wrong, but hordes of Japanese people online will still behave that way knowing fully well what they are doing is wrong just so they can stick it to the gaijin... wow. I mean I have to say it has brought my collective respect for Japanese people down a few points.

I think an anti-foreigner movement is brewing in Japan. When Japan started facing more criticism for their Covid travel ban in late 2021, I think a lot of Japanese people got defensive over the policy, which caused this ideology to pick up momentum, and then it exploded in 2023 with the whole Johnny Somali debacle. Since then, every month there is some new controversy over young Japanese people or foreigners.

The whole anti-tourist rhetoric has become totally out of control and is a sign of problems ahead for this country. We were falsely lead to believe that Japan was this maverick of the modern world, preserving traditions while also standing up to woke culture and political correctness. The reality is that Japan's far-right are the woke, politically correct monstrosity we were always warned about.

China and Japan have agreed to resume regular talks between their ruling parties

LOL, "ruling parties" is an interesting way of saying, "Without extensive American influence, Japan would be not be all that different from China politically". I've always felt that these two cultures share more in common than a lot of people are comfortable admitting. Japan likes to larp as though they greatly take after the West when in reality they basically reject individualism in favor of half-baked nationalist collectivism. They love the material culture of the West but don't really embrace Western values beyond what we have forced upon them.

Nonetheless, China isn't going anywhere, so even if Japanese people loathe them, it is still worth trying to have some kind of dialogue. They are a major trading partner after all.

Hilarious fail on the part of the local government there. Very cringeworthy honestly.

It definitely feels like Japan has recently been taking lots of Ls and coping over the fact that they are declining economically. Fell behind Germany in GDP and about to fall behind India, GDP per capita is REALLY low given non-per capita, printed/wasted a lot of money during Covid, the joke I see going around is a picture of the Zimbabwe currency with the caption "The yen in 2024", getting bullied by China on trade but also having to do these summits with them in order to try and woo them for economic purposes, ect.

If they stopped focusing so much on "unruly foreigners" and instead harnessed that energy to vote for change in the upcoming elections, Japan could actually bounce back and rebrand into something of a leader. But sadly that probably won't happen.

GO RENHO! Yuriko Koike was an absolute disaster during Covid.

We need more leaders in Japan that are pro-women, pro-foreigner, pro-worker, and not pro-LDP, not pro-corporate collectivist, not pro-oligarch.

I hope every young woman in Tokyo gets out and votes for her. I certainly would if I could.

Honestly, if bear attacks continue to be a problem in the mountainous regions and it is affecting residents, it may be time for them to consider legalizing rifles. They can keep them banned in the cities, I think that's a fair compromise, but otherwise no more J-Nanny state.

The modern university system is inherently predatory. Those that behave dishonestly should expect dishonesty.

I think it's funny that the occurrence of this coincides with the whole "alone in the woods with a man or a bear" debate recently.

Nonetheless, a big part of the reason I choose the urban lifestyle over the wilderness adventure are reasons like this. Nature is scary.

They are the polar opposite to Japanese values.

You're right. "They" are thinking big. They are being ambitious. They are thinking ahead and thinking of the future.

The Japanese are still endlessly trying to solve yesterday's problems.

We criticize Japan for its toxic overworked culture, but they don't sit on top of land with an autogenerate-money feature, can't just sit around in the sun getting free lunches. Without a disciplined work culture, Japan would be nothing.

Their work culture is a big part of the reason why they are on the decline. People are working absurdly long hours and have no work-life balance, which is causing social problems ie men and women not interacting or forming meaningful relationships, which means people aren't having kids, which is helping the population slide downwards, meaning lower tax revenue, meaning all of the great social programs and government programs Japanese people like will eventually wither away because they can't fund them. All those great trains? Many of the stations are closing outside of a handful of regions. Small towns are disappearing, some even in Kanto.

Moreover since the 1960s they basically abandoned agriculture in favor of a service based economy, and now Japan imports over 60% of its food, meanwhile the service economy isn't actually producing anything worthwhile. All they can really do is try to copy things the west has done in hopes they can catch up.

Mass immigration is not the answer. But we don't need the oyajis anymore, either. Send them to retirement, I don't even mind if they get a nice goodbye package in the process. But they have failed at running things. Bring in the foreign consultants to run the companies and assist the government and I guarantee you there will be more investment into Japan and the economic situation could stabilize.

The first part of the process is accepting that there is a big problem. So I for one welcome our new Saudi overlords.

Campaigners say Saudi's quest for soft power belies a dire rights record, and Human Rights Watch this week called on Kishida to press Prince Mohammed on the issue.

And this will accomplish literally nothing. Biden criticizing Japan's attitudes on immigrants accomplished NOTHING, aside from upsetting the netto uyoku as well as many "Pick me!" foreigners (which was quite entertaining I suppose).

Kishida, take the deal. Your society is becoming an irrelevant joke. Most of your industries are doing nothing noteworthy and many companies here are receiving corporate welfare to prevent millions of people from becoming unemployed. Since your yen is tumbling so hard you might as well just put everything up for sale anyway. I would LOVE to watch all of these useless oyajis get evicted and replaced with young and dynamic foreigners that will make the workplaces more open and productive.

Strategically, it makes sense. Although I don't really think China poses much of a direct national security threat to the US, they certainly do engage in some rather dubious things over here in the land of the rising sun. As we are bound by duty to provide for Japan's national defense, this surely falls under that umbrella of commitment, so as an American I deem this acceptable.

Diplomats carrying out these specialized duties are known as regional China officers, a category launched during the previous administration under Donald Trump.

Sweet!

Hmmm, this is rather odd. I was under the impression they had already finished this process. So how many more tons of water do they need to release? I originally backed Japan up on this issue, but I'm not a fan of the extent to which they seemingly misled us on how long this would take.