Tim Sullivan comments

First class is still good though.

Can we have more women this time, please?

Food is for the rich only as of now

Have you seen the 1973 movie Soylent Green? It's worth tracking down online:

"By 2022, the cumulative effects of overpopulation and pollution have caused ecocide, leading to severe worldwide shortages of food, water, and housing. New York City has a population of 40 million, and only the elite can afford spacious apartments, clean water, and natural food. The homes of the elite are fortified, with security systems and bodyguards for their tenants. Usually, they include concubines (who are referred to—and used as—"furniture"). The poor live in squalor, haul water from communal spigots, and eat highly processed wafers: Soylent Red, Soylent Yellow, and the latest product, far more flavorful and nutritious, Soylent Green"

Kishida thinks the serfs will be impressed when the minimum wage rises to (drum roll) 1,000 yen! Japan is only 40 years behind everyone else in this area -- I guess that is some sort of achievement.

Aso was a good PM. He tells it like it is, unlike Kishida, the dithering master of the word salad. Everything he says sounds like it's been put through Google Translate a couple of times.

"Runa" and her friends could make more money if they plied their trade in Nagatacho near the Diet.

All four young women easily clear ¥1 million a month ... and probably don't declare any of it to the tax authorities. That's illegal as well.

Prostitution is illegal in Japan (need a laughing face emoji here), but the police turn a blind eye if everything is kept discreet and the sleaze is confined to certain areas. A very Japanese solution.

I saw a homeless man smoking crack in Manchester recently -- open drug use is common in the UK these days. But not all homeless people are druggies or alcoholics.

Good for him. His grifter brother may need his help if he ends up living in his car in California.

It's not easy to find healthy food in the UK. Does anyone really need to have chocolate with their Weetabix? The people who dream up these products are evil.

No prizes for guessing the winner! Will the serfs earning 1,000 yen an hour vote for the LDP again? Probably. The one advantage of being a gaijin here is that we have an escape route.

Turkeys voting for Christmas -- rinse and repeat. Nothing ever changes in this place.

It looks like the LDP is starting to panic at the prospect of Japan's extinction, but I'm afraid the usual strategy of throwing lots of yen at problems is unlikely to work in this case.

It has the world's second-oldest population after Monaco, and its relatively strict immigration rules mean it faces growing labor shortages.

I wonder how strict these immigration rules really are. I've lived in Tokyo for decades and the number of people from other Asian countries in my neighborhood has dramatically increased in recent years.

"(A) small group of Japanese bureaucrats with close ties to the U.S. defense establishment continues to work hard to maintain the role of U.S. nuclear weapons in Japanese security policy. They opposed President George H.W. Bush’s 1991 decision to unilaterally remove all U.S. nuclear weapons from Asia. They told the U.S. Congress they support preparations to redeploy U.S. nuclear weapons in Okinawa. And they applauded the Trump administration’s decision to bring U.S. nuclear weapons back into Asia.

These Japanese officials only speak in private and take exceptional measures to keep their comments secret. That’s probably due to concerns about Japanese public opinion. A 2015 NHK poll showed that only 10.3 percent of respondents felt the nuclear umbrella was necessary, down from 20.8 percent in 2010.

This tiny but powerful minority is also preventing the Japanese government from signing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Japanese supporters of the treaty, led by the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are pressing the Japanese government to sign." Does Japan Have Nuclear Weapons? - Union of Concerned Scientists (ucsusa.org)

I'm 74 and I'm still working, but I'm a white-collar professional. It's cruel to force people to keep working past 55 if they have a physically demanding job.

The protesters in the photo have my full support -- all THREE of them. International Women's Day is obviously not a big deal in Japan.

The Japanese "education" system has a lot to answer for in brainwashing women into thinking they are inferior to men. Our daughters went to international schools.

The world has changed, but Japan is still stuck in the 1950s. The antediluvian attitudes towards women here are embarrassing for a supposedly advanced country.

Harry and Meghan are very annoying. I've stopped reading articles about them -- still look at the comments though.

I wouldn't want to live next door to a reactionary bigot like Masayoshi Arai.

TV is still showing those good family lifestyle commercials where the wife stays home while the husband goes to work and the kids are happy in the morning

A more accurate representation of the current Japanese reality would be a couple slaving away at dead-end baito jobs for 1,000 yen an hour (the US minimum wage c. 1986). And they have to maintain the facade of politeness while living these shitty fake lives. A cruel system. Everyone is an actor in Japan.

I would be very worried about the Japanese pension schemes in the future. It's not sustainable. The average payout is 150000 yen a month for 1 of the schemes and just 65000 yen month for the other scheme. You need 40 years of contributions to get the full payment. Might be best to start a plan B for your retirement plans.

They can always print more yen, so you will get your pension -- the problem is the currency won't be worth anything by the time we get to retire.

Most Japanese are now members of the precariat. The country is getting poorer by the day and society is starting to break down. Japan Today seems reluctant to report on the gangs that are robbing (and killing) old people for a pittance in the suburbs. How desperately poor do you have to be to do that? I never thought Japan would get this bad -- it's really shocking.

The suburbs are full of nutjobs -- that's one reason they're so cheap. My advice is rent, don't buy -- it's easier to move if you are unfortunate enough to have a wacko neighbor. The police will do nothing to help you.

RIP Terry. Ghost Town sums up the mood of Thatcher's Britain in 1981, but it also describes what is happening right now in Japan in 2022. Things are going to get a lot worse.

Donki is brilliant -- I love shopping there. You can find stuff you won't get anywhere else in Japan. The staff are great as well.

Bleak and hopeless as usual -- I expect things will become even worse next year. There is nothing to look forward to.

Fairytale of New York (feat. Kirsty MacColl) [Top of The Pops Dec 1987] - YouTube