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So the senkaku islands stuff just got more amusing. Apparently some Chinese twit took out an add in the New York Times, in an attempt to try and drag the US into the affair.  Anyone happen to have this paper to check validity?
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Sep 1, 2012 19:46
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| # ¿ May 5, 2024 00:35 |
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BRShooter posted:On this note, how old is the general Japanese electorate? I was under the impression that most Japanese voters are in their 60s-70s... and they like what people like Ishihara and Hiranuma say. A little way down on the thread someone had asked about this. And ozza posted a link: ozza posted:A quick search reveals: http://diamond.jp/articles/-/7508?page=3 Graph shows what could be expected. Voting in the 30 and lower range is low, but 30+ has good turn out. In recent years it has spiked back up some, right around '03. This isn't surprising really since it was around the time Koizumi came to office. I also learned in JP Govt. & Politics that this was also a time when the playing field for Prime Minister election changed. It use to be internal party campaigning. Basically going to each internal faction and gaining their support, since really it is the party that elects the PM based on who has majority (my understanding). But my professor said that Yoshiro Mori showed you could campaign with the public and get the PM spot just as well, it didn't work super well with him though and it really only came to true fruition under Koizumi, who was apparently the underdog during the PM election. He one by populace popularity. Something I am curious about though and I never thought to ask when ozza posted the link. Why does the voter turn out drop precipitously in '91-'97 across all demographics? You would figure with the bubble burst being in full swing that it would motivate people to vote more. So?
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Sep 7, 2012 02:33
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Inu posted:The plan also left plenty of loopholes in place, so 2030 isn't actually when the plants would all be shut down. That's just the number that the DPJ is going to use in its uphill campaign this coming year. In all likelihood if this plan went into effect as is, not all of the plants would actually be shut down until 2070 or something. 2030 is so far off in politics it may as well be an eternity. Crap, a significant chunk of the people that are protesting it now will be DEAD or so senile they can't even remember the problem. Really all they've done is boot the can down the road to the next generation of politicians that will be coming in to deal with. Current old farts will be done retired or in amakudari positions. Hell, they just okay'ed the building of 3 new reactors.
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Sep 18, 2012 02:24
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China: "All those riots here? They're all the fault of Japan. Had they not tried to buy the island, people wouldn't have destroyed buildsing, crippled people, and killed others." Most hilarious thing about this "purchase" business is if the Chinese really saw it as theirs then they would have just shrugged and been like: "  Look at you guys wasting tens of millions of dollars!" Instead they are taking it like Japan stole it from them which seems to lend credence that it really is Japan's.EDIT: Also wanted to add that apparently the Hague Convention on Child abduction basically fell off the table. I expected this to happen. They only put it on the table because of the stupid woman that got arrested in the US. Also an interesting bit in that link about parliament rules and conduct. Kenishi fucked around with this message at 07:52 on Sep 18, 2012 |
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Sep 18, 2012 07:47
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Samurai Sanders posted:These riots serve China's political purposes, at least for the moment. I don't think they were planning on people smashing Korean shops too though. I bet they'll reel it in eventually, like they did back in 2005 or whatever when this happened before. I think they've already started to reel it in. There are some news blurbs floating around stating that China has already stated through state media circuits that it will be cracking down more on the protests. They don't want them to run to long because it'll put an even bigger hamper on their economy if too many businesses are destroyed or feel the need to leave.
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Sep 18, 2012 07:54
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No surprise there. They only bought 10 trillion yen worth of assets back (127Bil USD). That's negligible compared to prior attempts at intervention.
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Sep 20, 2012 09:31
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I realize this isn't related to Japan (directly), but is Korea's domestic market fairly strong? I've heard it stated that that is why Japan has been struggling in recent years. Japan use to have a huge domestic market and then the real estate bubble popped and people started saving, and then Japan's only option was to switch to being an exporter.
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Sep 24, 2012 02:23
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Grand Fromage posted:I'm not sure. Most Koreans will only buy Korean goods because they are Korean, and Koreans hate buying used things or having old things so there's constant turnover. Consumer goods here are also hella expensive though, there are some kind of taxes to encourage selling overseas instead of domestically plus the aforementioned Korean only products thing kind of gives the chaebols license to charge whatever the hell they want. Korea has some of the highest prices in the world for consumer goods.
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Sep 24, 2012 04:35
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I'm not a history buff so I can't really answer the questions. But if I had to speculate, I would say what you said is true (about Ryuku kingdom and what not). China never really developed a huge navy in prior centuries. They relied heavily upon their size and majest to draw countries to them and gain their "security" and market. At one point I believe China had gotten most of East Asia to come and kowtow. You would def. need a history buff on this though in order to sift through the level of misinformation and skewing that's probably going on concerning these topics.
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Sep 24, 2012 06:08
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ClubmanGT posted:There's been big news today regarding the yen. The Finance Minister has been sacked and the Yen is apparently going to be the hot topic of discussion at the G7. This could signal a major poo poo away from the "talk the yen down" approach and hint at a far more aggressive approach to rebuilding export receipts. Lol unless some country besides Japan has came out and said "we will talk about the yen," then all this is is merely Japan stating what they think the rest of the world is going to talk about at G7. Last time they went, they did the same thing, "We will talk about the high yen." and all that happened was there was a statement made uninamiously by the council that "We understand you are having a hard time with the high yen, but it is the opinion of the council that currency manipulation is "A Bad Thing." Don't do it. NEXT" It never even got a full article in a newspaper it was just like a paragraph.
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Sep 28, 2012 10:56
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ErIog posted:I guess they're paid to try to act like they can fix poo poo, though.
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Sep 28, 2012 15:19
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So in a bit of economic news. It seems the new finance minister is threatening to make Japan a potentially [more] poisonous investment.Ritholtz.com posted:The Japanese economy minister Mr Maehara is threatening to buy foreign bonds to weaken the Yen and to create inflation of 1.0%, the target set by the BoJ. He added that the government will be more vigilant of the BoJ’s actions. At present its just talk, but the Japanese will be forced to act soon. I keep watching the Yen, but will not short at present. However, in due course……; I had been wondering how long it would take someone to come out and propose something like this.
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Oct 3, 2012 01:28
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Lol, can anyone confirm or deny this happened? This seems ridiculous. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/201210201434970804.html I seem to recall hearing that the supreme court judges in Japan aren't elected or put in place, they are recruited. Is there any chance this is a play by the LDP to gerrymander? Rejigger the districts to knock out the DPJ strength?
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Oct 28, 2012 05:14
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Samurai Sanders posted:Well, China has a new leader now, and I believe Noda set the general election for middle of next month, where I assume his party will lose power. Will the LDP (I presume headed by Shinzo Abe) and new CCP chairman Xi Jinping go skipping through the tulips together on a fine summer's day, or what? Doubtful. I remember hearing that Abe is pretty anti-China. His policies and rhetoric are generally not supportive. The LDP is also suppose to be the "conservative" party, so I figure they'd be the least amenable to working with China. I'm still waiting for someone to try and push an Article 9 reform through so Japan can start to militarize more. The DPJ was crazy pro-China. In fact, when they came in at first and I was watching them in the news; everything they were doing was screaming "Lets get buddy-buddy with China." There was almost a "anti-US" rhetoric in there two. It was quite subtle. After the quake though that shifted a bit when the US started aiding, plus shortly after that the Senkaku islands came into the media spotlight, and it has been downhill from there.
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Nov 15, 2012 06:59
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Elections, next month! Didn't the supreme court find that the districting was unconstitutional? Did they seriously fix that problem that fast?
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Nov 15, 2012 10:38
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CronoGamer posted:I know the US certainly would like Japan to start taking responsibility for more of the security of Pacific Asia... what about the rest of the world? Average Japanese? LimburgLimbo posted:Personally I think one of the best things for Japan to would be to modify/eliminate Article 9... and then do nothing with their "new" (i.e. what they've had all along) military.
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Nov 15, 2012 15:30
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Defense industry is a lot more about partitioning off large government budgets and then shoving billions at a few companies to do R&D for new stuff. Look at DARPA, look at all the money Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics gets. There's a lot of money there. I believe Mitsubishi has a weapons R&D lab or does work in defense. But I could see many of the old zaibatsu getting involved in defense if only some money would come their way.
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Nov 16, 2012 03:14
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I don't think anything has been done and since I never read the original court ruling in Japanese there may be a stipulation that has a deadline. So they can still use the current districts for this election, but maybe before the next one they can't. Noda wants to get an agreement on the TPP before leaving office but I don't think its coming. The US and Obama realize that Noda and the DPJ's status is very unstable and they've basically taken a "wait and see stance" on letting Japan into talks. 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'm doubtful that Japan will get in on the TPP; doubly so if the LDP comes to power. Removal on tariffs for the agricultural sector would tank the incredibly fragile market.
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Nov 25, 2012 15:29
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Kei cars are a city/urban vehicle, not a highway vehicle. That said, I think the kei trucks would be the most profitable of the two since they are generally what I imagine a truck would be. I've always felt US trucks were too over the top and beyond the point of utility. Kei vehicles would never pass crash tests though.
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Nov 26, 2012 05:26
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So I was reading the prefectural newspaper today and they had an article where they went and asked different industries what their feelings on the TPP was. The one that had me the most confused was the health industry. They said:quote:TPP加われば、保険適用の診断と適用外の自由医療を受けられ、日本が世界に誇られる国民皆保険を守ろう。
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Dec 4, 2012 08:01
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Protocol 5 posted:I don't have any contacts in the healthcare industry, but from what I know about the TPP, it doesn't sound like it would have much of an impact on the health insurance system, since it mainly focuses on intellectual property rights.
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Dec 4, 2012 13:35
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The Wiki seems to suggest that originally it was conceived by New Zealand and Singapore and later added the US. But the IP stuff definitely appears to have been rammed through by the US according to the wiki. Some of this stuff is pretty ridiculous.
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Dec 5, 2012 05:23
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I think its just a way for him to get on TV and get attention. There's no way he is seriously pursuing votes. On a different note. In my prefecture one of the district's LDP runner is coming down on the side of wanting to reform Article 9 which. This has me wondering if the LDP is aiming for Article 9 reform as a party or if its just the usually internal faction stuff. I hear they (and by they, I mean Abe) caused a bit of a ruckus by stating they wanted to increase the reactor count in Japan. Many weren't too happy about that, but according to the polls in my prefecture the LDP is winning by a pretty decent margin in every district.
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Dec 7, 2012 21:24
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I Love Annie May posted:the stagnating nursing home known as Japanese Diet.
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Dec 14, 2012 15:55
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I thought the deal had been that some prefectures would drop a few districts from the election as a sort of "temporary band-aid" fix so that they could get the SC to agree to the election.
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Dec 17, 2012 14:36
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ErIog posted:The markets have really loosened up in terms of the exchange rates, and I can't really see any rational reason why.
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Jan 12, 2013 10:17
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Wow this is kind of big. Japan to join child abduction treaty I had heard somewhere else that part of this push on the treaty, will also help push reform on general child abduction issues domestically in Japan. Apparently child abduction by family members is a huge problem for many and the justice system is really set up to favor those that act first and kidnap the child.
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Jan 20, 2013 18:40
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Constitutions should not be easy to change, just my opinion. If Japan's news media was different, the change on 2/3 to majority, wouldn't be happening because it'd be causing a huge stink. The TPP is back on the table again, and I can't say I'm looking forward to it. The copyright bullshit that the US is trying to shove down everyone's throats for the media corps is pretty ridiculous. With any luck though, the whole thing will probably fall through. Abe has been trying to get an exemption on rice as the thing that Japan needs to open up.
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Feb 22, 2013 05:35
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I think it was on another forum that I heard this, but a lot of the problem present in the justice system probably has everything to do with the judges. I had heard that the unlike other countries where judges are often former lawyers who had years of experience in law. Judges in Japan may not necessarily be lawyers or have ever been lawyers. It had been mentioned that many judges are picked from students straight out of law schools in Japan and are often interviewed on their beliefs. So basically the court system is shaped so that no judges will be put in place that will necessarily affect major social change on the system. The context of this information came on talks about the issue of child abduction and the real reason for the push for the Hague convention (which you'd never guess unless you knew). How accurate this is I don't know, but considering that doctors in Japan don't go to a medical school or go through years of residency, I'm keen to believe it. Take a test, have a chance to become a judge.
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Feb 25, 2013 15:30
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Weatherman posted:Don't leave us hanging, dude ... I went and looked and it wasn't in the main wall-o-text that the guy posted but in a reply to someone. I'll just quote the entire post for context. (Note, this isn't from SA) mcpike posted:I have *very* personal experience with this topic. I have not been given any access to my American-born sons for nearly a year and a half. I also personally know several of the parents covered in the show, and many of the both Japanese and Foreign parents that were shown protesting in the streets of Tokyo - asking for reform of the system. Here's the post talking about the judge thing. I can't comment on the accuracy on this claim but knowing Japan I suspect its true. mcpike posted:
Kenishi fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Feb 26, 2013 |
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Feb 26, 2013 09:06
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Sheep posted:Also one of the the scariest things here is the number of police officers and attorneys being caught doing illegal stuff. There have been so many reports in the news of police officers caught molesting girls, video taping up girls' skirts, etc. over the past year that I've quite literally lost count of them. Police Sergeant arrested in Underage Prostitution Scandal The most remarkable thing about this? That he was actually arrested. He'll probably get let off lightly though. Hell, he'll probably keep his job. Pretty sure I see something like this every week now.
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Feb 27, 2013 03:25
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Reverend Cheddar posted:Well of course they do, who else is going to pour their tea for them? ...and deal with customers. What if they just do away with their women and recruit women from dispatch companies as "tea pourers." (Assuming they aren't already  )
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Feb 27, 2013 05:29
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Samurai Sanders posted:Well, I meant career-wise. The Japanese government is perfectly okay with women working until its time for them to become baby machines. The bolded bit is about all you need to know to understand why it got said. I'm pretty confident you'll see that change in the next decade and a half or so. Japan will start to realize the demographic squeeze that's plaguing them. Of course the main push will be to encourage women to go into nursing and taking care of the olds. When push comes to shove, who do you think they'll bend over for. Women or immigrant workers from some SE Asian country?
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Feb 27, 2013 05:51
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Samurai Sanders posted:You forgot the third possibility: robots. I am not even joking. Even assuming that Japan advanced the robotic industry by leaps and bounds in the next 2 decades. What makes you believe they'd adopt using them around old people? You live here, what on earth makes you think they'll adopt something so radically technological when they have been slow to adapt other advancements? This also ignoring the technological issues that need to be overcome as well not just in robotics but in AI as well. Anyone suggesting robots, as Japan's solution to them not having sex, is joking whether they realize it not.
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Feb 27, 2013 06:07
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Samurai Sanders posted:I only think this because I can see how hellbent they are at both denying women careers after marriage, and denying SE Asians high paying jobs like in nursing. When people start dieing because of staff shortages and just not enough people to watch everyone. The mentality will change. I would like to think that by 2040-2050 that Japan would have become more progressive and less xenophobic. Recruiting Japan-born women to work jobs that need bodies in them is far more likely than someone going "Lets go hire us some Chinese."
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Feb 27, 2013 06:28
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^^^ Recruiting Japanese women won't solve the problem, it'll just kick the can down the road. The only solution to the problem is to reverse their population decline. Turning this demographic crisis away is like turning a cruise ship; it won't happen in a few years. It'll take a generation to fix.Bloodnose posted:What I still don't understand is how Japan can have this culture of women staying in the home and have one of the world's lowest birth rates. The women that are working a career and able to stay home, are a percentage of the population. You still have a large number of women who may not be single, but aren't interested in settling down. In other words, no one is getting married. I believe the average age to get married is sitting around 27 years old for most women and 28 for guys. Why they aren't getting married is up for much debate. My theory is that many women want guys that that have full time jobs and decent salaries; two things which are becoming more and more difficult to come by. Lots of people get stuck working dispatch/temp jobs and they can't ever move out of those jobs into a full time company job due to the [ridiculous] way Japanese business hiring works. It probably wouldn't hurt to also set up ad campaigns encouraging people to get married and have kids as well. Other theories are that people are getting married but due to financial woes and the fact that kids are becoming more and more of a hassle to handle (daycare, school expenses, etc). Its not impossible to turn around your population decline, I believe it was Sweden that had a serious pop. problem, much like Japan, and through some policy changes they had people popping out babies all over the place. Kenishi fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Feb 27, 2013 |
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Feb 27, 2013 06:38
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^^ It probably gets covered in a health class sometime. But it may not get taught in some areas if the PTA is pretty conservative and they force a change on curriculum.LyonsLions posted:I also live in not-Tokyo, and not only is there not a daycare shortage here but there are plenty of different types of childcare available, for example there are a few 24/7 drop-in daycare centers, and some of the pediatric hospitals and clinics offer sick child daycare for parents who can't take time off for a sick child. Bloodnose posted:Yeah what's with Asian people not using condoms? Is sex ed just that bad here?
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Feb 27, 2013 15:12
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^^ Be that as it may, women were still not educated in writing. Hence why court women created and used hiragana. If you read the wikipedia on Women suffrage in Japan there's a line that states: quote:Of prime importance to the early Feminist Movement was the call for women’s education. Policy makers believed this was imperative to the preservation of the state, as it would prepare girls to become effective wives and mothers capable of producing diligent, patriotic sons.
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Feb 28, 2013 02:43
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Sheep posted:The top five for my students was housewife, hostess, nurse, teacher, flight attendant, in that order. Such ambition for one of the top schools in the prefecture.
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Feb 28, 2013 16:06
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| # ¿ May 5, 2024 00:35 |
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quote:There are more women on corporate boards in Kuwait than Tokyo.  I think the second thing in that article that made me stop and go wow was the GDP graph which hasn't moved. at. all. I read it and know it to be true but seeing in a graph like that...   (US GDP looks a lot like China's too for comparison)
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Mar 1, 2013 00:21
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