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Navaash posted:I live in Osaka and nominally follow the political scene here. This is a city that's cracked down on dancing in nightclubs (as "unlicensed dancing") because of an obscure, outdated law that started getting selectively enforced last year out of nowhere. Fukuoka's doing the same thing. ReindeerF posted:You should definitely feature ongoing updates of every crazy thing Ishihara says, because he is seriously Parts 2 and 3 have little pop-ups that explain it, although I think you'd get most of it, really.
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Jun 27, 2012 15:02
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Kenishi posted:The biggest players are the agriculture lobbyists who are vehemently against the TPP for obvious reasons (There's like 400% tariff on imported rice). The US players that are against it are actually the automotive industry. They want artificial bars removed which stop the US car companies from getting a foothold in Japan; before they remove tariffs on Japanese light trucks (think Kei cars) which have a 20% tariff on them as I recall. I don't think the tariff is what is holding kei cars back: the speed limits are too high in America and they would perform very poorly in crash-tests (especially considering the size of other vehicles on the road).
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Nov 26, 2012 04:04
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z0glin Warchief posted:Bonus horror: Since the discussion has been about kids and stuff, adoption sometimes comes up too. The general consensus seems to be that adoption is unnatural and parents of adopted kids must be forcing themselves. Well, this should make my orphanage visits more fun  Nah, I realize things must have gotten pretty bad for those kids not to be living with some sort of family over here.
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Feb 27, 2013 10:01
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Sheep posted:Edit: I have been informed that it occurs during PE class, second year, at least in the Saga boondocks. It is not required for graduation though. Woo, go Saga! There are a couple HIV awareness posters with condoms up around at least one of my schools (the overtly low-level one). I am making GBS threads myself laughing imagining one of the PE teachers at that school teaching sex-ed. He used to be the #5 ranked sumo wrestler in Japan and has a voice like a foghorn. Love that dude. Mercury_Storm posted:Just like in the west though, girls in Japan are raised with lower expectations than boys are, and are given less leeway on whatever is considered "acceptable" behavior. They are taught, or come to realize at some point in their early years about the existence of the very low glass ceiling, and throughout their public schooling years respond to questions about what they want to be with "flight attendant" (by far the most common), or "nurse" at best. Though surprisingly, I've never heard of girls saying they "just want to be a housewife" here. It's like they're taught to be ambitious, but are subtly told one way or another to not be too ambitious. I was marking the "My hopes for the future" essays of my graduating third years a few weeks ago and there was at least one who was straight up shooting for "housewife married to a rich guy" (although she wanted to open a bar if the guy was rich enough to support that). To my surprise though, I think it was the boys who mentioned domestic stuff more (wanting to be a good husband/father). Probably with the girls it's just sort of assumed... I'm not about to post students' work online (even without names), but a lot of the essays were really  and  and I transcribed my favorite ones into a text file for a pick-me-up whenever I'm feeling pissed off at Japan or the world in general.
Pompous Rhombus fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Feb 28, 2013 |
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Feb 28, 2013 14:18
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z0glin Warchief posted:"You can cook!?" To be fair, this is probably more related to you being a man than you being a foreigner.
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Mar 6, 2013 09:56
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I was talking with my co-workers Saturday night and they were wondering why I didn't want to live in Japan beyond my next contract year (through August of next year). Obviously that could have been a huge can of worms, so I just asked them how many hours they worked, compared it to what I'd be working in a Western country (for an equivalent if not better standard of living), and was like "yeah I like Japan, but not that much". That's really just the tip of the iceburg for why I wouldn't live here, but it's the least offensive for them to accept.
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Mar 11, 2013 02:56
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Mercury_Storm posted:Does the whole "wow you're a foreigner, you must fly back to America every day!" from children have anything to do with this too? Or is that another separate dumb issue? It's separate in that it's being asked by people (kids) who don't know any better and doesn't have anything to do with being Japanese? (My ex was a middle school geography teacher in the USA and one of her students literally asked another the same thing about his Pakistani uncle, except asking if he drove.)
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Mar 12, 2013 06:06
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caberham posted:The crowd just assumed he was Japanese but when his heritage was discovered a few girls were all surprised going "eeeeeeeeeeeee" (Okay...) And then his friends started exclaiming "OMG I thought you were Japanese, I guess I will start calling you Chinese now" This is going to be pretty old hat for people who know even a medium amount about Japanese culture, but when I was studying in Beijing, a bunch of Japanese university students came over and joined my Mandarin class over their spring break. There was one girl who was part of the group and Korean... I was talking with her after class one day and asked her what she wanted to do after she graduated. She said she wanted to become a Japanese teacher abroad, and I was kinda suprised, and asked her why not teach Korean. Of course, I find out she'd been born and raised in Japan, but her friends still called her "the Korean" (not in an outwardly hateful way or anything, but she was just "the Korean member of the group") despite her not speaking a word of it and I'm not sure she'd even ever been to SK. Bloodnose posted:Make them fit in? So now you're trying to destroy my cultural identity, you imperialist?!!!!? Every now and then I see an "a-ha" lightbulb go on over a Japanese person's head when I'm explaining something, and that's always a nice feeling. But it's certainly the exception rather than the norm... I don't think my co-teachers learn a lot from me aside from bits of English or cultural trivia. Students are a bit more open-minded, but my particular teaching situation isn't for the most part filled with the intellectually curious. What I really think would make a bigger difference than importing foreigners (who mostly go home after a few years) piecemeal would be universities with English as a Foreign Language teaching programs requiring students to pass the TOEFL/IELTS/whatever and do at least a semester, preferably a year of study at an education department overseas (with some sort of a teaching intermship/practicum included). Not that it necessarily hinders their ability to prepare students for university entrance exams, but I'm always really surprised when I meet English teachers who have never even left Japan, let alone lived abroad. BoE's also ought to encourage (or at least not penalize) English teachers who want to spend a year or two overseas on professional development as well, either as an exchange teacher or doing a Master's or something. One of my co-workers (non-tenure) is leaving her job to do a working holiday in Canada to bootstrap her English ability, which I think is really admirable and awesome, but it'd be great to see some institutional support for that kind of thing.
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Mar 12, 2013 12:51
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ReindeerF posted:You're running out of Asian countries, Pompous. This one's gonna be my last, barring maybe going back to teach at an international school for a year or two at some point in my mid-30's. (Although I'd probably be more likely to go with Thailand over Japan in that case, assuming I got job offers that were equivalent in each country). Far from committed to the idea though, would depend on a lot of factors I have no way of knowing for quite a while. Arkane posted:So I just watched this ~50 minute talk by Kyle Bass, the hedge fund guru who bet heavily on the mortgage crisis in 2007 That sounds interesting, looking forward to watching this when I get home. (Don't expect any insightful analysis from me though.)
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Mar 14, 2013 04:47
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My exchange rate 
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Apr 5, 2013 01:55
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ocrumsprug posted:I am more stunned by how the population tolerates it. Putting up with terrible, senseless bullshit is basically the national sport of Japan.
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May 30, 2013 04:29
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Sheep posted:Edit: almost forgot, I can't even do internet banking on holidays because they shut that down too for some reason. I'd never thought about it before, but based on the ATMs I suppose it shouldn't surprise me. That still takes the loving cake though 
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Jun 13, 2013 01:33
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The real mindfuck for me is that as antediluvian as Japan's policies towards women seem, they're still (on paper) better than that of the US. Japan actually has paternity leave too, although the co-workers I've asked have said they've never heard of anyone using it.
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Oct 23, 2013 23:48
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Stringent posted:Thing of it is though, it doesn't. Dudes are just too chickenshit to try. I think it probably would, at least if you weren't willing to further take advantage of anti-discrimination laws (and even then it's a toss-up, because you'd have to prove it was related to taking the paternity leave and not anything else the employer could choose to make up to cover their own asses). You'd be totally in the right as far as the letter of the law, but nevertheless probably be signing on for a lifetime (assuming lifetime employment, heh) of uphill legal battles and making yourself the office gadfly. Not that I don't think Japan needs more people to do that, but it's a big ask of someone. Only reason I felt OK taking my employer to the mat over some discriminatory stuff was that my situation here is temporary so I really had nothing to lose, I can sympathize with why Japanese people wouldn't, even if it's "the right thing to do" and would make Japan a much better place in the long run. In all honesty I think Japan's toxic culture of masculinity (they're certainly not the only country with one!) plays more of a role in men not taking paternity leave more than the direct career implications.
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Oct 24, 2013 07:23
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Reverend Cheddar posted:Plus with all the girls wearing short skirts as part of the uniform it's enough to make an ojiisan's pants explode during the morning commute. At least where I live, the high school uniform skirts are knee-length, but the girls hike them up.
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Nov 3, 2013 12:40
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Sheep posted:Long hours does not necessarily mean hardworking, the Japanese are quite underproductive per hour worked compared to other similarly advanced (G7) nations. Apparently after some incidents (I assume suicides) related to overwork, a prefectural Board of Education instituted a mandatory report of hours for all teachers. If you went over a certain amount per week, you had to speak with a councilor, to make sure you were doing OK. The teacher who was telling me about it said it was common knowledge among teachers that the councilor didn't really do anything and wasn't actually that concerned. Naturally, teachers responded by under-reporting their hours This sort of stuff isn't news to Sheep, but it's a pretty typical explar of the ineffective, "treat a bullet wound with a Band-Aid", COYA-type responses you get in Japan.
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May 11, 2014 14:13
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It's surprising the accommodation (or lack of intervention?) for students with social issues. I have a girl who puts her hair over her face like Cousin It at all times + wears a face mask, and teachers just seem to shrug and ignore it. My (high) schools have school councilors, but I'm pretty sure they're only there certain days of the week. I did one of my undergrad degrees in Psych and while there was a not insignificant amount of research and stuff coming out of Japan (way more so than any other Asian country, at least), from my limited impression it seems like they lag behind in diagnosing and treatment. There also seems to be a lot more (again, this is just anecdotal from my own experience) teachers who take mental health leave. Then again, I assume most teachers back home wouldn't even have the option to do it, but I know of several cases here of teachers who have taken what amounts to multiple years off due to stress, etc. Can't say I blame them, with that workload and the lack of consequences available for lovely students.
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May 16, 2014 00:51
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Samurai Sanders posted:You don't have to be all smug when that's basically what I was saying. Smugness? Among MY Japan experts? *clutches pearls*
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Dec 16, 2014 17:05
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SousaphoneColossus posted:Can someone give an example of rude behavior on trains? I commuted on trains in Hokuriku for about 1.5 years on a semi-regular basis and nothing stands out in my mind except a drunk ojiisan at 10 a.m. kinda being dismissive to a young female attendant once. Stood between train cars with a blind man (and a JR attendant who had taken it upon herself to look after him) for 25 minutes on an express train. A woman had her LV bag on the seat next to her.
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Feb 21, 2015 11:12
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Trivia posted:If anything Japan is a prime candidate for geothermal, but it's anyone's guess as to why they're not going down that avenue. It's unironically NIMBY stuff about messing up the onsens.
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Aug 16, 2015 04:28
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Rochallor posted:Reparation payments to the survivors and their families would probably be on the table if Japan took official responsibility for the comfort women. IIRC Japan actually made a few payments right after the war, but they were small and they basically disappeared in the post-war chaos. Wasn't there a secret agreement/payment made in the 80s, which the South Korean government (a dictatorship at the time, IIRC) promptly plowed into state businesses rather than repay victims or something? Edit: sounds  as heck and I'm trying to find a source, but Google results are now swamped with the most recent news.
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Dec 29, 2015 01:21
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mystes posted:Wasn't this the 1965 agreement? Yup, that's the one.
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Dec 29, 2015 07:04
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Chomskyan posted:So today the cabinet approved a new plan in which the 6-month remarriage wait time for women will be reduced to 100 days. Also if a woman can get proof from a doctor saying she's not pregnant then she can remarry before the 100 days are over. Also the only reason even this much has been done is because it was literally forced on the current administration by a supreme court ruling. happy international women's day, i guess 
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Mar 8, 2016 10:06
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Jake Soo posted:Nuclear bombings were horrible and we hate war. Let's pray for eternal peace. Yeah, basically. The high-school level material concerning the war I came across treated the bombings as if they were some sort of man-made natural disaster that came out of nowhere.
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Jul 26, 2016 07:49
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