smithinjapan comments

Just another family day here. Lock the man up and never let him see the child again.

"The change in plans comes as the company's prospects for gaining local consent to resume operation of the plant on the Sea of Japan coast remain uncertain, according to the sources."

As usual, start operation now, meet the safety standards to do so later. Then we'll get the "How could we have known??" when a disaster/attack occurs. TEPCO never learns. Worse still, WE don't ever learn. At least TEPCO's motives are obvious. Our willingness to walk into said disasters is far worse.

As for "seeking permission" from the local government and the people, we all know they'll start it up anyway, saying, if need be, "We don't need local permission" when the time comes.

"We take this case seriously and will work to prevent it from happening again."

Well, OBVIOUSLY they take it seriously! The first two times they let the sexual assault slide -- I mean, as we all do, right? -- and now instead of the prison time he should automatically be getting for committing yet another crime despite having his previous sentence suspended, he just gets begrudgingly let go. They could have prevented it from happening again twice so far, but hey -- they are taking it seriously!

Nothing beats Indian curry, but I do like CoCo Ichiban once in a while. Here is the biggest problem with Japan's "rice crisis"... the government announced that foreign rice imports are increasing and will increase further "to address the ricing prices of rice and lack of it". Now, they also announced they will double tariffs on said imports from what they were April of LAST fiscal year, so they are saying about ¥5000 / 5kg. This, they add, will push customers to buy domestic rice as it will be cheaper.

THAT is their answer to increased costs! Increasing costs further so you just buy the cheaper of the jacked up prices. Only in Japan.

You can start by dropping the "internship" program, which everyone knows, and the Abe-government admitted, is simply human trafficking, and start allowing things like dual-citizenship, easing immigration policies, and ensuring workers are not abused (and by that I don't just mean lip-service). Stop saying, "Well, golly! We have no way of knowing what the sub-sub-sub contractors are doing!"

And yet, the sumo stable where a young wrestler was LITERALLY beaten to death with bottles remains open, and I don't believe anyone was ever charged after police allowed the JSA to do their own independent investigation. Hmmmm... If every stable were closed due to the abuse going on, sumo would have rightly ceased to exist long ago as a sport.

These guys should know better. When it comes to poaching you stick to creatures in the sea, like cutting off shark fins for soup.

"Needless to say, Japan does not play at all when it comes to drinking and bicycling."

Hogwash! Go to any izakaya after a sports day finishes, a graduation, a PTA meeting, or any other such event that involved a bunch of women on mama-chari and you can see DOZENS of bikes, many with "on patrol" signs pasted to baskets, parked outside of them, with the mothers (and some fathers) getting absolutely wasted inside. And most, if not all, attempt to bike home after. I helped pull one out of a rice field at the end of March after she fell in while riding home drunk. Another old guy I had to call the police on because he was so drunk he cracked his skull on the pavement and was bleeding, and while he insisted on still trying to ride home another guy who heard the crash and saw him agreed with me that for his own safety, we should. But, he took off before the police came (and they proceeded to ask us a bunch of questions and why we didn't keep him there, etc., treating it like a big pain in the butt that we bothered to call at all).

So, if "they don't play" it's simply because they've turned their back on the game and refuse to acknowledge it's being played without them. And played A LOT.

Don't buy any rice from places that sell from third-parties, like Amazon. Those places always simply take the money and mostly never deliver, with emails coming every time the stated delivery date is about to hit, saying "The product will be delayed another month (or more)" until you finally cancel, with no money back. IF you get the rice, it is rice that passed the best-before date some years ago.

If you insist on buying from such a place, at least check the reviews and vet the source, first, as much as possible.

It doesn't matter the nationality, it is plain old wrong, and the man should be punished to the full extent of the law for such crimes. I will say, though, that if police have noticed an uptick of such videos on YouTube, I sure hope they are finding the people posting them easily enough and there is also an uptick in arrests until the uptick in videos becomes a downtick or they disappear altogether.

Let me guess... the revised system will require that everyone enroll in domestic driving schools for ¥300,000 a pop -- schools which are seeing less enrollment as fewer kids are born, and are asking the government for help, right?

OssanAmerica: "If "apologies are just words" then how else can one atone and express remorse?"

They can actually MEAN what they say instead of mumbling what they think is required in the passive voice and then trying to defend if not outright lie about what was done. I also happen to agree that Japan should not apologize forever (I mean... they actually haven't really done it at all with any seriousness, and even then any apology was never formally recognized by the government), they should just do it GENUINELY and admit what actually happened in the past, put it back into the textbooks revisionists have removed it from, and then everyone can agree to honestly move forward.

I mean, I doubt you would disagree that former Korean governments' promises that the issue was resolved and moved on were just words, right? If Japan MEANT it in an apology and did not then try to bury the truth and then deny it, then I think Korea (and others) would genuinely mean it when they said it's time to move on. That is how THEY can say things that are not just words, and mean it, too.

It's cute how they think selling it directly to people who will then sell it again will lower prices. Retailers have been selling it online at ¥5500 + for 5K for years now, and that is also often rice that is past its best-before date at the very least.

I've quite liked it so far.

Funny how you never see her "fans" on here anymore. Oh how quickly the bandwagon rolls away.

Japan was also just passed by India and became the world's 5th economy. Told ya! Won't be in the top ten by the end of the decade if they don't start shaping up.

"The organizing committee said it made the decision after staff who smoke complained about the inconvenience of walking across the large venue to reach the smoking areas."

Wonder how they'll respond to family members dying from a methane explosion (well, aside from immediately saying that it "could not have been predicted!").

"Health experts, meanwhile, have pointed out the issue of secondhand smoke, saying that allowing smoking, even in designated areas, runs counter to the Osaka expo's theme of building a sustainable society and improving lives."

Yeah, but it's not like it'll get canceled. They started breaking promises the second after it was rewarded to Osaka.

So, the oyaji and obahan can't understand and get confused, so you have to keep naming your kids "~taro" or "~ko" so the elderly don't get so confused.

I think they will fall, actually -- 100 yen per 10 kg.

"“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY!”

Uh-oh! Lovers spat? The thing is, all Putin needs to do is stroke Donald's ego, then he can go back to killing needlessly and it being "sane".

Wouldn’t be a day in Japan if there weren’t a news story of family murder.

“Koizumi said the ministry plans to outline a basic framework for how the new process would work next week.”

I was joking when I hinted at that earlier but, surprise surprise. I guess he thinks the Trump 2016 playbook still works here. Next he’ll have a new health plan next week, too. Okay, to be fair, in two weeks.

And will he reduce the prices on glutinous rice but reducing the glutton of the foreign tourists stealing it all from the mouths of babes here?

Hang on, hang on…. So they could have been doing this the whole time but haven’t…. Hmmm… I’m guessing it’ll only take effect “after I (Koizumi) am in office” and then he’ll explain how, and then explain his disbelief that rice sellers won’t follow his request?

Hahaha! “Presses Trump on tariffs”! More like, “Presses his nose further up Trump’s backside before bending over and doing whatever Trump wants”!

But hey, you're still invited to Nagasaki!

Another selfish life-taker killing others. You want to take your own life, I am very sorry it has reached that point in this safety country, but feel free. But please spare others the process of dying in your absolute selfishness.

"It is the role of a local government to prioritize the lives of residents and urge tourists to show restraint."

Japanese have no right to criticize people trying to get "the shot of a lifetime". I have seen Japanese sit by and take photos of HEINOUS things, even when photos were not allowed. Saw a Japanese tourist take a photo of Ho Chi Minh in the mausoleum in Hanoi and the guy got picked up, beaten up, and thrown out. How much do you want to bet ALL of the people criticising the photos being taken by others have at least dozens themselves?

"...and remained at double what they were a year ago after extreme heat hit crops and a tourism boom added to demand."

It's not extreme heat -- last year was no hotter than than the aggragate of the past decade. It's because of government stupidity. Period. AND, they could reduce tariffs and import cheaper rice from elsewhere, but nope! Gotta give handouts to the farmers who don't produce enough to begin with.

sakurasuki: "Must be caused something with the supply and distribution in Japan domestically."

It's called "greed".