wolfshine comments

Wow, how kind of the imperial family to grace them with their presence, and how lucky of the Vietnamese to be receiving such dignified guests. rolls eyes

Don't get me wrong, greater Nippon-Vietnam cooperation is needed in the interest of trade and confronting common problems. Against the backdrop of rising anti-Vietnamese sentiment and mistreatment in Japan, however... it should rub them the wrong way. Maybe before Japan goes to Vietnam expecting a friendly audience, Japan should be willing to treat Vietnamese people in Japan with common decency and respect.

The Vietnamese economy is booming compared to Japan.

No it’s not.

Wrong.

While "booming" is not a particularly descriptive way of summarizing the situation... Vietnam's economy has grown to be about thirty times what it was thirty years ago. For Japan, GDP has virtually not moved in three decades.

But the opportunities and future growth prospects for Vietnam look pretty good even if they are still a relatively poor country. They've been peeling more and more manufacturing away from China as well. Japan's economy is still much bigger and richer than Vietnam, that is certainly true. Japan also has this bizarre philosophy of "trickle up" economics wherein they tax the lower and middle classes heavily, expecting government programs to somehow create this atmosphere of prosperity. While the infrastructure looks pretty good, a few people at the top are getting ludicrously rich while nobody else shares in it. Essentially, Taro keeps propping up the unequal and unfair hierarchy complex while stagnant wages and inflation burn away his family's wealth and happiness... that is, if he ever had enough time off from his career to start a family to begin with, that is.

I don't want to take away from the fact that some Japanese corporate institutions are legitimately doing a lot of good for the world, such as their exportation of rail infrastructure that many countries rich and poor desperately need.

Unfortunately, a lot of Japanese allow themselves to be routinely humiliated and made into a meme by the very hierarchy complex that dominates their existence, and they then take it out on foreigners and make them the object of blame. They're very bad at making compromises, aside from historical examples in which they've been forced to.

Like I have been saying: post-Covid Japan is down bad.

Undeniably, a lot of these sentiments existed before that. But I truly believe the pandemic allowed and enabled the xenophobes here to be way more open and vocal about their beliefs, as well as normalizing it to some extent in the general population.

I have no problems with Vietnamese people. They've always been kind and friendly to me, and I'm an American. I'm also well aware of the fact that they probably came to this country with a lot less money and opportunities than I.

I imagine within a few years time the groups that use every possible opportunity to attack Chinese people in Japan will eventually start broadening their scope to include Vietnamese people as well.

And to attach such nasty attitudes to something as cute and harmless as Pokemon trading cards is so sad.

I may be incorrect, but I think Japan's self-sufficiency rate was actually above 70% in the 1960s.

In any event, it's definitely not a good situation right now. At the same time, not a lot of people want to do farming. I remember reading about an old farmer in Hokkaido who's kids didn't want to inherit his business, so the guy found someone to take it over for free. I think a major part of the problem is that apparently their methods remain largely analog compared to that of the US wherein automation is the standard.

Thanks to Japan's partners and trade agreements, I'm not that worried, but this is definitely something they should consider as a serious priority going forward, especially as opposed to trying to one-up silicon valley with half-baked software.

I don't really see a problem with this. Although I believe many environmentalists have good intentions, their solutions to problems are usually not pragmatic, and they also frequently resort to NIMBY-tier behavior when it comes to issues such as this very one.

That being said, Japan has engaged in some of the most egregiously hypocritical virtue signaling on environmental issues in recent decades. Japan is still: butchering tons of whales; polluting the environment by consuming beyond unnecessary levels of plastic; not allowing for more green spaces in the capital thanks to horrendous zoning regulations; to name a few issues. Meanwhile they have the audacity to push the Kyoto Protocol and brainwash salarymen into all wearing those silly SDGs pins.

"NOOOOO OUR PRECIOUS OKINAWA CORAL REEFS!" they scream at their only reliable partner that can help them in the event a nearby neighboring country gets feisty.

Reap what you sow Nippon.

Summertime Japan truly is nightmare fuel. Honestly I barely eat Combini rice balls at this point. When you first move to Japan, it seems like this amazing, always immediately accessible delicacy, but over time, the allure wears off, and you cringe at the thought of eating another one. It's better to support local vendors anyway. Handmade onigiri is always the best way to go.

Though all that being said, when the WEF and that decrepit Klaus Schwab eventually get their way, we will probably be eating insects anyway.

This is just yet another example of a problem the government creates, and later steps in to "fix" with totally negligible and meaningless adjustments. Growing up in this country as a non-Japanese child sounds terrible. Imagine being treated by the official bureaucracy as a legal liability and not as another equal human being from the day you are born.

Japan is not an example of successful nationalist policy implementation - it actually showcases disastrous consequences for the people they are either legally or morally required to represent. This country got exposed by Covid and are still down bad. With each passing day they look worse and worse.

In a society where transit cards can no longer be issued due to a lack of chips, absurdly thick regulations dominate every aspect of life, and children are still too indoctrinated to take off masks over a thing that was literally never a risk to them, I just get the impression this country has bigger issues than supposed "sushi terrorism".

I'd love to see that, but let's be honest: when English is needed in the Japanese business world, Taro the Japanese middle manager will always value other Japanese people with mediocre English over an English speaker from abroad. This is one of the reasons Japan lags so far behind in English: they absolutely refuse to cede authority to a non-Japanese on what is correct, even when the subject is the non-Japanese person's native language.

I'm not talking about Japanese companies - I'm talking about international ones.

Also, if you're a business leader working for a global company that wants to expand into Japan, you really have to staff your offices carefully. Hiring too many Taros means that your office culture will become that of Taro's, ie, people staying at the office until 9PM, poor work-life balance, obsession over business formalities, ect. It may sound harsh but it's the truth. They haven't adapted to the modern world very well.

Ideally, you fill the positions of authority with people from outside the country that know the industry well, and on the customer facing side you get the bilingual Japanese employees to handle that side of things.

Under the new rules, those earning 500,000 yen or more each day during their visit can stay in the country for 30 days, up from the previous 15 days.

Rules regarding venues have also been relaxed, allowing entertainers to perform at smaller venues, including live music clubs that sell food and beverages, according to the Immigration Services Agency of Japan.

Oh wow, what a surprise! If the Japanese can whimsically establish a set of farcical rules around any particular thing, they will. Then they slightly modify said rules, so they can then claim they're making progress on loosening a set of farcical rules they themselves adopted.

Great for the uber rich foreign celebrities like Taylor Swift - but again, for everyone else, just a totally absurd and meaningless policy. What is the justification here?

If it's so much trouble for the average Joe who can't fill a venue of 100 seats and can't pull 500,000 yen a day, why not just enter as a tourist then? Mind boggling.

I'm looking on the bright side. All this will inevitably result in the best jobs, ie international companies, being more accessible to English speakers from abroad. Especially those that require knowledge of English dependent terminology lexicons, like IT.

To propose a "solution" such as this, just goes to show how down bad Japan is in 2023.

I did not go. Just as was the case with this year's Hanami, the Tokyo government banned this event for several years under the false pretense doing so would slow the spread of Covid. For one thing, it's an outdoor, open-air event, and two, Covid is spreading more in Japan now than it ever has in the past. They can't track the numbers anymore, even if they wanted to. Nonetheless - after having it prohibited for so long, popular demand was absurdly pent up, and when that happens, overcrowding and the risks of stampede pose serious danger. It's amazing to me the lengths they're going to try to kill Shibuya Halloween, a far more benign affair, when the crowds for the fireworks seem to dwarf them in comparison. Inconsistent and chaotic seem to be the common theme in post-reopening Japan. I'm not even sure I want to support any events or affairs the Tokyo Metropolitan government is involved in until Yuriko Koike is out of the picture.

The event did run safely though, and I am happy especially for people who live nearby that previously needed to travel to entirely other prefectures of the country in order to witness Hanabi during Covid.

Now listen here folks... We have hundreds of thousands of Covid hospitalizations!... They're not reporting it, but the numbers are way larger than they seem... All the hospital beds are full!... The healthcare system is on the brink of collapse!... No, it already collapsed!!... Now the imperial family has it too... This is all because of the highly vocal and irresponsible minority!...Aren't you worried about the granny living next door to you?...Follow the 3Cs!... Don't take public transit... Wear a mask... Get an appointment for the next booster as soon as you can!... We can get through this, but we need to work together and follow the science!...All the vaccine and science skepticism is just that... Ain't nothing...

Frankly, I'm more interested in what both parties can do to help the country, and what plans the prospective candidates for 2024 can put forward.

For the Democrats however, this is the blowback effect (and one I accurately predicted) created by their generally vacuous impeachments from 2020 and 2021. They took a salient process meant to act as a check on executive power, and rendered it into something to be used in petty quarrels. Impeachment is now just another part of the bifurcated political game in Washington.

It's not good for the country at all, but I kind of want to see it happen to Biden regardless, because the reaction from the political Left would obviously be very hypocritical and entertaining.

Just further proof of how badly Japan fumbled its reopening.

It doesn't matter, though. No matter how much they screw up, Japan will get a million more chances because of the sheer extent to which their pop culture has infiltrated the rest of the world. Just goes to show, that if you're a foreigner, even if you're only here for like a week, they will find a way to leech every last yen they can out of you.

I am proven right yet again.

"Flattening the curve" only spreads it out for a longer period of time.

The Covid era is one that will remembered for insane levels of malinvestment and poor policy that had generational consequences.

Everyone who pushed these ideas has lost literally all credibility.

As for Japan, groundhog day continues...

What has any of this to do with "reading the room"? The clients of an airport are the airlines, not the travelers. If the airlines don't ask for additional capacity, why would the airport open an additional terminal that then remains largely unused? To satisfy who or what exactly?

First you said that Haneda was originally planning to reopen the terminal in 2024, which indicates they were basing that decision off of some theoretical increase in demand. Next you said that if the clients (it's just ANA, lol) didn't need the terminal reopened, they wouldn't reopen it. So I guess the only way I can interpret this is that Haneda and ANA had some agreement to do the former, but completely misread the situation as far as tourism demand went, and also possibly where the situation on Covid would stand in 2023.

Either which way, we're talking about two major Japanese entities that kind of fumbled the bag in being ready for the end of Covid and putting a plan into place for how to handle the situation going forward. All the while, prices for tickets have been through the roof, especially for overseas travel, and both these guys could have potentially eased the burden for everyone involved by doing something.

And again - this is nothing new. We've been seeing this pattern play out for three and a half years. It's all so unbelievably silly. Why does a never-ending stream of excuses need to be made to cover for Japanese bureaucratic inefficiency and general slowness?

They already brought the reopening forward from the originally planned 2024 date

If that was actually their original plan, they are way more poorly run than I thought. Like wow. Utterly incapable of reading the room.

@Ah_so, you are selectively choosing one passage and trying to use that to generalize a culture of like a billion people. I've noticed it's common for people to make use of this sort of tactic when it comes to discussing the Quran and the Bible in particular - not so much with the Talmud, though. Wonder why that is.

Reread my earlier comment - I specifically pointed out the Cologne riots and the Bataclan massacre as examples of what can happen when you let the exact wrong group of Muslims into your country, which is what the EU countries did. All that NATO spending and buildup has yet to protect them from the threats inside their own borders.

The progressive philosophy of the West is exactly what led to this problem. The emasculation of the Western man thanks to leftism and modern feminism created the power vacuum that is currently being occupied by unsavory forces. Moreover, relatively benign Liberal philosophy of America's beloved Obama morphed into something more akin to Maoist Cultural Revolutionary antics pretty quickly. They are another group trying to exploit said power vacuum.

This madness (violence under the pretext of hurt to religious feelings) will pass in the following decades as humans gradually wake up to the real problems threatening our planet.

No it won't. Do you actually believe warring factions that have been going at it for thousands of years will stop fighting to combat, what I believe you are implying is, climate change? Right now many Western countries are implementing futile actions that do nothing to actually reduce the problem of carbon emissions all while hurting farmers and small businesses, as well as passing on the costs of these measures to the little guy. At the same time, the world's true polluters don't care and continue to pollute. I guess such a sentiment is truly emblematic of the crowd that bought into the whole Trump-Russia connection theory.

Its just a book - and not a very logical, scientific or well reasoned one at that. I don't see the problem with burning a holy book - be it a Bible, Koran or Buddhist sacred text. It's just paper.

I don't agree. While I support free speech and freedom of expression, that still doesn't mean we should purposefully antagonize each other by intentionally attacking the parts of people's cultures that they hold most sacred. And despite Japan supposedly guaranteeing freedom of speech in the constitution, I'm not sure you would necessarily hold the same standard if it was someone from overseas coming to Japan and running around joking about the atomic bombings. Of course people have a legal right to do certain things but that doesn't mean there isn't a problem with doing said things.

Correction WolfShine:

While Paris burns, over & over again.

This is true. In terms of the recent riots, it's not solely the Algerians fault. The French have been repeatedly burning down Paris since the late 18th century. So if that's the example you set, why wouldn't others join in? It's like a crackhouse. If you don't respect your own home, no one else will.

For what it's worth, even as a generally secular guy, I agree with and support many of the ideas expressed in Islam, particularly the patriarchal themes and role of strong men in society. Evidently, these ideas are timeless.

However, the weak and spineless European leaders did not import role model Muslim men; they imported savages.

Said savages from parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia saw Western European rejection of gun ownership, embrace of LGBTQ values, and laws against "hate speech" as a sign of weakness to be exploited. And boy they did. People quickly forgot just how horrifying the Bataclan massacre and New Years Eve Cologne riots were. Since then, it has been memory-holed so people can endlessly drone on about the utter tragedy that was January 6th.

Poland and Hungary made the correct choice on rejecting pressure from Brussels on open borders immigration.

Sweden and Italy are also wisely starting to move on that direction, all while London and Paris continue to get worse and worse.

Why did it take three and a half years?

Hands up who said tourist won't return. Because of masks.

You're leaving out the part about how they were still "recommending" people to wear masks inside until March, and requiring unnecessary PCR test results or vaccine certificates until May. I definitely think there would not be as many tourists if that were still the case.

I truly am glad foreign tourists can visit now and experience the good side of Japan. Two of my friends from the US were even able to make it this year. And if there are businesses in Tokyo and Osaka that are thriving, I'm happy for them as well.

The reality of Japan in 2023 is kind of bleak though. What the foreign tourists aren't seeing are the sweltering, still non-HVAC provisioned classrooms full of kids still wearing masks, because they were brainwashed and can't understand the difference between the situation three years ago and now. While foreigners feel free to visit Japan without worry or concern, many of these children's parents won't take them on vacations or talk about it openly because there is still a social stigma associated with it. And the teachers that went out and got vaccinated more times than I can count on one hand are still getting sick once a month it seems. Strange because I didn't get vaccinated and only get sick once a year in the winter.

Outside of Tokyo a lot of places are not recovering. In my city a lot of businesses have been closing recently. And although prices are going up thanks to inflation, nobody can afford to support these businesses because their wages are too low. You know who is killing it in my neighborhood right now? McDonalds, because a single meal is typically under 1000 yen. There are always long lines and the place is usually packed.

Absurd Covid era spending and malinvestment irreversibly damaged the Japanese economy and the commoners are paying the price for all of these mishaps in the form of inflation.

In the end, despite resisting tourism for two and half years and rendering long-term immigration to this country nearly impossible, the Japanese are incredibly lucky they live in a place foreigners want to go to. Kicking and screaming they complain nonstop about how tourists are ruining Kyoto and Mt Fuji, or how the US military is damaging the Coral Reefs in Okinawa, but let's acknowledge reality: essentially Japan is and has been carried by foreign influences. Japan could be a place foreigners don't want to visit or work with. I'm sure there are many countries out there, especially in Eastern Europe or Central Asia, that would literally dream of having anywhere near the number of tourists or foreign workers that Japan has.

I am fine with the result of this. It seems as though the process of releasing the water safely has been thoroughly evaluated by the necessary regulators and evaluating bodies.

That being said, I am sick of Japan's endless environmentalist virtue signalling on other issues. Doesn't matter how much SDGs propaganda they spew - the Japanese are no more or less environmentally friendly than any other modern, developed country.

Anyone who can't accept the reality that this is a new low for the dignity of the White House is playing some serious mental gymnastics.

For context, this also occurred on the same day the SCOTUS ruled Biden can't contact social media networks to remove posts by his opposition.

Maybe a bit of a hot take, but I don't mind this skyscraper. I agree that it looks generic though. I think more people will come around to it once TeamLab Borderless moves in.

There are definitely worse buildings out there. I'll take Azabudai anyday over London's giant Walkie Talkie, Singapore's Marina Bay Sands, or Orlando's unfinished "eyesore on i4". And skyscrapers that twist or bend - never was a fan of that design philosophy.

Bring back Machiya-style houses in the suburbs and Tokyo will look better instantly. Actually I think the residential neighborhoods are the worst looking ones in the city.

They may finally be starting to catch on. Corporate loyalty essentially results in you working harder to earn less money.

The great resignation was a fantastic clapback against the elites in the West and it's time we start seeing that in the East.

Though you can just do it - there's no need to go to a consulting firm.

This "top security official" is coping and seething because a major US duopoly is being challenged. This is actually a very good move on Japan's part. Google and Apple have too much control over the flow of information.

Mixed feelings.

I agree with the majority of commenters stating that the Korean consumer response to this is overblown and a bit hysterical. It appears that the various inspectors and regulators have certainly reviewed this process thoroughly, and that the necessary steps to release the water safely have been taken.

However, I doubt if it were the United States or China doing this, the responses would be equivalent. You would hear massive outcry from opportunists jumping on temporary environmentalist bandwagons.

Take for example the domestic activism against the new US military base in Okinawa. Japan certainly benefits massively from US presence in the pacific, and as tensions with China grow over time, a firm strategy against their expansion is inevitable. Yet here they are crying about a strip of coral reefs, even when the evidence for their supposed destruction in unsubstantial. Nothing to say of the national security concerns which take precedence over minor environmental impact, if any. It's hypocritical, to say the least.

Japan is no more or less environmentally friendly than most other modern first-world countries. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt on this one, but spare me all the climate change hysteria and SDGs nonsense going forward.