MiuraAnjin comments

Oh my. Just yesterday I was taking the piss out of a mate who works for Tata Support Services - looking after Marks and Spencer's servers.

Before he started at TSS he serviced GEnx engines on Dreamliners at intervals 4 times shorter than initially recommended by the manufacturer.

He declared long ago that he'd never fly a 787 fitted with General Electric jets.

Japan tax laws cause Japanese buyer to get a new vehicle every 3 or 4 years

This is an old trope not established in fact.

Japanese consumers of old used to be happy to entrust annual servicing and shaken inspections to the dealer they purchased their new car from. At the first shaken, at 3 years, said dealer would present an invoice of ¥300k to ¥500k inc. unnecessary jobs "in order to pass the inspection".

Now they are more savvy and either do a "user shaken" themselves or get their local garage to do it for them for a minimal fee plus the test fee, taxes and compulsory third party insurance for two years for a mere 40k to 120k, depending on the weight and engine capacity of their car.

The basic insurance alone makes this a bargain so, as Peter commented, folks no longer see sense in replacing their cars at 3 or 5 years old.

Simplest solution here is to import a few US Toyotas, such as Tundras.

The Tundra is a full sized pick up - way too big for Japan.

Mitsubishi have started selling a smaller pickup called the Triton, which I presume is US made.

That's a a great truck, far more appropriate size and aka the Dodge RAM 50 in the US, the Chrysler 50 down under and the L200 elsewhere. Made in Thailand though.

In 2005 Toyota tried selling rebadged GM Cavaliers over here for exactly the same reason.

That went... predictably.

Scratch that.

It's 200,000,000kg/120,000,000日本人

So a meagre 1.67kg each.

My bad.

200mkg/1.2m = 167kg of rice each. 

Annual rice consumption per capita in Japan = 74kg.

A pound and a half of Charlie?

That's not to be sniffed at.

Jessica Ramos de Souza, looked unusually tense while she was going through the standard customs process

That's me every time despite the worst contraband I've ever imported being 12 rashers of bacon from Tesco.

your guy has returned to your team

When will Americans realise that politics is not a team sport?

Sashimi from this ship is already on the menus in Noge, Yokohama.

The racist JSA oyajis who stigmatised Konishiki and Akebono are still not dead then.

Anybody else remember when Netscape claimed it was unfair for Microsoft to bundle Internet Explorer with Windows 95 for free?

That went well for them...

Ghosn made an immediate profit by selling off Nissan owned land (lots of it in Kanagawa) and profitable subsidiaries. He also reduced investment in future product to bolster the bottom line short term.

Time to make it a hat trick Taku.

No attack; no chance.

Break up JA

THIS

Reduce tax on gasoline? No problemo!

Cut the tax on rice? Shhhhhh...muzukashiiii

What I'd really like to know is how old the aircraft is, where it was based, how many T4s the ASDF has and if they have been grounded for the time being.

Is this the same plane that Blue Impulse aerobatic team uses?

Anyone got any intel on if/when this will be released in Japan?

Google is failing me.

Ford's share of the US market has dropped from 25% to less than 1/8th since the turn of the millennium. Tariffs might help them out in their home market in the medium term, but do nothing to help reverse their disastrous performance abroad while, as the article states, making US production less competitive in international terms.

I guess they'll become even more dependent on domestic sales of the F-Series.

Peter Neil

The “dealerships” in Japan are company-owned. Not talking about the US.

The company I work for has over 200 Honda, Nissan, Suzuki, BMW, MINI, VW and Audi dealerships nationwide, yet we are not owned by any manufacturer.

Our competitors are similar holding companies that do not belong to manufacturers.

Categorically: The vast majority of dealerships in Japan do not belong to their respective brand manufacturers.

The focus and the explorer would sell well in Japan if they weren’t blocked by import regulations

The Focus and Explorer are not blocked by "import regulations". Both models were officially imported by Ford Japan but did not sell well because Dearborn did not listen to what their Japanese dealers wanted.

Too late now: Ford gave up and actively blocked other companies from importing their cars. And the Focus is out of production anyway.

DT:

Avalon

Designed and built for Americans, by Americans in America,

Your old Ford Transit Connects: designed in Britain, built in Europe, for the world.

Interesting how popular Telsa's become in South Korea

S. Korea gives huge tax breaks to EVs.

Japanese dealers are not independent dealerships like in the US, they’re owned and operated by the carmaker.

This is a common misconception oft repeated by US envoys. The vast majority of dealerships are independent, albeit owned by large dealer groups or holding companies. Many of these groups are multi-franchise, selling various brands, but would be in breach of contract to sell competing brands under one roof.

This is a standard stipulation internationally.

cartier

Japanese independent dealers are illegally controlled by the manufacturers

It is not illegal in Japan, or in most of the world, for a supplier to expect a dealer to sell a single brand's goods.

A Burger King would never be allowed to sell Big Macs.

wallace

4.42 million new cars were sold in 2024.

40% of those were Kei cars, which are ideal for many usage cases in Japan.

When the Japanese spotted that Americans love pick up trucks, they built pick up trucks for Americans. When will Americans start making Keis for Japanese consumers?

After a war that eviscerated much of Vietnam, killing millions of its people as well as 58,000 US servicemen

Two million civilians died in Vietnam, plus another 300,000 civilians in Laos and Cambodia, many of them killed by indiscriminate bombing of towns and villages. That's almost as many as the number of civilians killed by the USAF in Korea 20 years earlier.

Lots of pseudoscience in these comments about pe(a)dophiles, which is irrelevant to the article because the victim is 14 years old. The accused maybe a hebephile, or (like Epstein, Prince Andrew and many many others) an ephebophile.

Who cares? The guy is a rapist. THAT is the point.

on Google Street. An odd junction indeed

I'll say it again. It is much harder to make this kind of error on a roundabout above or below the expressway;

you'd have to round a very pointy hairpin turn. Going the wrong way at a T-junction or crossroad is way easier as evidenced by the much higher occurrence of this type of accident in the US and Japan than in the EU or UK.

demands to lower barriers to U.S. agricultural and automotive imports

Food? Fair enough; we all know that the LDP is beholden to the 1% of Japanese who are farmers.

But tariffs on automotive products are 0% and have been for decades. Does Trump want us to actively subsidise American inefficient behemoths and components that do not meet international safety standards?

Again. Highway on ramps fed by roundabouts, not traffic light controlled crossroads, prevent this.