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Shinobo posted:In their defense, I think they meant digital downloads that are PC centric. In that case Steam does lose out....to the services that you mentioned. Them completely ignoring the reality of the structure of the existing market in Japan is not a point in their defense. It's more of this garbage where: 1) Foreign person searches for familiar thing in Japan. 2) Doesn't find familiar thing. 3) Never bothers to talk to a Japanese person about that thing. 4) Comes to bizarre conclusion and justification that doesn't hold up scrutiny. 5) <optional> Tries to start a career blogging about Japan based on their highly-reliable first-hand knowledge of Japan.
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May 12, 2014 04:02
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Posting anecdotes should be made a probatable offense in this thread or something. I can't think of a way other than that to prevent stupid derails that belong in LAN. Anyway, there is actual real news going on in Japan guys! Erlog's Bullshit Summary posted:British right winger lies about denying Nanking Massacre happened in his book, and gets caught. The rest of the world marvels at the extent to which historical revisionism still happens in Japan. Erlog's Bullshit Summary posted:Sheldon Adelson, the rest of the business community, and Japan as a whole continues to mistakenly think gambling isn't legal in Japan. Adelson plans to dump a bunch of money into developing legal western-style casinos in Tokyo/Osaka. Erlog's Bullshit Summary posted:Neoliberal policies are the only way to fix Japan! Erlog's Bullshit Summary posted:The yen weakening moderately failed to unleash the power of exports. I'm so shocked there's not as many exports when the yen is trading at like 102 yen to the dollar. It's almost like the yen being at 135 yen to the dollar or 165 yen to the dollar like a bunch of years ago was a significant factor! Erlog's Bullshit Summary posted:Japanese economy is going to be eaten by a volcano of debt and sink into the ocean any minute now! Any minute now! Oh, and government bond yields are still super low, but they're gonna sky rocket any minute now! Erlog's Bullshit Summary posted:Summer blockbuster slated to be released in Japan as well! ErIog fucked around with this message at 07:43 on May 12, 2014 |
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May 12, 2014 07:41
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Samurai Sanders posted:Has anyone been following this? I've followed it since it's been in the news, but I'm not familiar with the manga. It's a tough situation because you have entrenched interests on both sides that are willing to lie or obfuscate in order to promote their own goals. Neither should be trusted. Ideally, the reports from outside observers and scientists should be checked to see if they corroborate official statements from politicians and activists. The scientists in that news report all seemed to think it was pretty nutty, and that jives with other scientific stuff I've read online in English too. It seems like the Japanese really don't trust their government on this issue, and it's very easy to see why considering things that went on during this disaster and also past disasters. They've seen the way politicians have abused science and numbers, and this has had the impact of many of them being distrustful of all numbers and all science. They now take a lot of their own anti-nuclear assumptions as true based on faith, and the more extremist among them have turned to conspiracy theories. From that news report, it seems like the manga is exaggerating quite a bit in order to make the political point. It's not surprising considering the artist/activist communities are very receptive to anything that's anti-nuclear. There's still anti-nuclear demonstrations going on in a lot of places. Anti-nuclear has now become the politically correct position, and so for a lot of people that means there's no need to pay attention to the science. edit: This is not to say that I blame them for it. At this point, I'm not sure I would trust a Japanese corporation or the Japanese government to handle a nuclear power plant safely. There does not seem to be a culture of responsibility. ErIog fucked around with this message at 06:06 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 05:50
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Samurai Sanders posted:Also, does Japan refer to people irradiated by things other than bombs as "hibakusha" as well? Yeah. It's a little weird, but it can refer to any type of radiation exposure.
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May 13, 2014 06:05
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Samurai Sanders posted:Do both sides use that, or only anti-nuclear people because of the connotations of the bomb? Or to say it another way, is it a way to identify who is on which side? I believe it's a legitimate way to refer to it as a single word. The tricky thing is that being bombed and being exposed to radiation are actually slightly different kanji. 被爆 = hibaku = (atomic) bombing 被曝 = hibaku = radiation exposure It's literally just a few strokes different. Due to the nature of the history of radiation exposure in Japan, I don't believe that's an accident. 曝, in "radiation exposure" is a non-general-use kanji, and so it usually appears in hiragana instead of in kanji. The one for being bombed, though, is a general use kanji. So you would see it as a normal 2 character compound. In that manga they write it out as 被ばく. So if they were wanting to phrase it as "being bombed" then they would have written both parts of the word in kanji. The fact that they used hiragana for the second part means they were referring to the version that contains the non-general-use kanji, the one that legitimately means "exposed to radiation." You probably know this already, but for other people. The word you originally asked about, "hibakusha (被爆者・被曝者)" would be "radiation victims" or "bombing victims" depending on the way it's written. ErIog fucked around with this message at 07:02 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 06:58
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Monty Lemonty posted:http://www.47news.jp/47topics/e/253258.php 選挙権年齢が「宿題」に 国民投票法改正、今国会中に成立へ (Kyodo News Service) This seems like a half-step toward making the process to amend the constitution easier since amending the constitution requires a national referendum. So they think if they can create more eligible voters for the referendum then it might be easier for national referendums to pass. It's a pretty naked political move, though, since they specifically aren't advocating for a change in the age of majority. If I was an 18 year old I would be kind of pissed that they want my opinion enough to be a pawn for their plans to amend the constitution, but not enough to include me in the process of whether or not the people advocating these policies stay in office. The appetite for politics among young people is nonexistent, though. That could change if the unemployment numbers for recent college graduates continue to be bad, but we'll have to see. It sounds really innocuous and pro-democratic on paper, and also sounds, politically, like the perfect to start to an incremental approach toward changing the constitution. Article 96 only requires a 2/3 vote in the Diet and then a simple majority for the national referendum. Even taking the incremental approach, the Japanese constitution could be amended drastically very quickly if the political will was there to do so. Cliff Racer posted:Why not? I live forty minutes away from TMI (and grew up even closer) does that mean that I have even more right to speak than someone from, say, Hokkaido who never had to deal with a nuclear incident? The difference, I think, is in the structure of bureaucracy. Even if you and I know that, in the right hands, nuclear power is safer than things like coal, you still have to trust that it's in the right hands. I could spend a lot of time convincing someone on the science, but with that comes the unavoidable perception that I am advocating for nuclear power to be used in Japan. Even though I know it's safer, I am still not sure I trust the bureaucracy. The government and corporate bureaucracies are something that Japanese people most likely will have a better sense of even if they are ignorant of the science. ErIog fucked around with this message at 07:25 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 07:13
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Constitution chat is fun, but lets talk about the real issues. Misusing $30,000 worth of public funds going to onsen and poo poo, not proving receipts or documentation, and then being asked about it leads to the reasonable response of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gviufzt7dgk Oh... I see.. umm.. can you tell us what kind of important measures you were discussing with regard to Japan's aging population at those onsen?
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Jul 3, 2014 16:04
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dilbertschalter posted:You can become a Japanese citizen if you 'become Japanese,' which lots of people aren't really keen on. To add to this, no amount of holding the right paperwork really matters in a lot of situations in Japan. To lots and lots of Japanese people, if you don't have two Japanese parents and grow up in Japan then you aren't, ya know, really Japanese. This matters in both social contexts and in official contexts because lots of things on many levels are left up to the local bureaucrats or the people who process the paperwork. I've taught Brazilian/Japanese teenagers who are half who have lived their entire lives in Japan, speaks Japanese natively, and are about to graduate from a Japanese high school who are forced to take the Japanese Proficiency Test just because of their nationality. For someone who's a native speaker that's not a high bar to clear, but it takes time and costs money. Japan has quite a lot of on paper rules that get bent or ignored if the person in charge of the situation decides they're not important, and for some reason they're not considered as important when the person being dealt with is Japanese. Often they're also not important when the person is a foreigner either, but if the person in charge gets a bug up their rear end about it then there's quite a lot of roadblocks that can be thrown up. In this case of welfare benefits, the local bureaucrat decided he had a problem with foreigners getting welfare, and so he decided to hide behind the legal equivalent of "it doesn't say anywhere in the rulebook that a donkey can't kick field goals." Smaller versions of this happen every day in Japan. For most foreigners in Japan it's just very minor annoyances, and it really doesn't affect things very much. It sucks that in this case it means a person can't get money out of a system they've paid into. It's certainly an extreme case, but this sort of situation isn't really unheard of, unfortunately. The most common thing foreigners have trouble with in this vein is trying to collect unemployment benefits they're entitled to. I really think her being Chinese plays a big part in this. I can't imagine they'd take this all the way into court if this person had been white. They might have denied initially, but they'd have probably given in sooner or later just to make the problem go away. Fighting this thing out in court takes a special kind of animosity that I think really only racism can explain. ErIog fucked around with this message at 09:39 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jul 26, 2014 09:34
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Charlz Guybon posted:What exactly does this entail? If you become a naturalized Japanese citizen then you must renounce your previous citizenships. This could require the person file as a foreigner in order to even go back to visit family and acquaintances back in their home country, and has the impact of somewhat isolating that person within Japan culturally. He exaggerated it a little bit, but it's accurate. So in the case of these welfare benefits that district court is saying you have to become a citizen, which entails renouncing the old citizenship, in order to receive benefits that have already been earned by having lived in Japan and participated in the economy for the requisite amount of time.
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Jul 26, 2014 15:38
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ArchangeI posted:Pretty sure the US doesn't export stealth technology as such. Interestingly enough, the Japanese are also buying the F-35. Either the Japanese government wants to hedge its bets (a wise decision where the F-35 is concerned) or it is just a make work scheme for their military-industrial complex. Those seem reasonable, but one of LDP's big recent pushes has been to try to break the tradition of Japan's reliance on the US for defense. So recently they've been talking about changing the constitution or reinterpreting the constitution to lessen the restrictions on Japan's ability to go to war. Development of their own stealth fighter would fall in line with things like spying missions that currently don't seem constitutional under as things stand now.
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Aug 21, 2014 09:54
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The theory that I've heard commonly around here is that those Japanese political movements in the 60's felt they lost the moral high ground and support from the public by engaging in more violent rhetoric and methods. They use absurdly cutesy imagery now, sometimes to the point of dissonance with the subject matter involved, so that their movement is not perceived to be violent or extreme. We've had discussions in this very thread before about that very topic of kawaii culture with regard to Japanese politics, and it's an entirely valid thing to study. The Japanese political student political movements in the 1960's used molotov cocktails while today's political movements use cutesy characters on protest signs. Some of them are being done by the very same people even! If you don't think studying that shift from more violent resistance to non-violent demonstrations using elements grounded in kawaii culture is a legitimate inquiry then I wonder why the hell you're even interested in this thread. Seems like some really dumb people here wanted to be first in to declare weeb, and now it's backfiring because they ended up outing themselves as not knowing anything about Japanese politics or culture. Mercury_Storm posted:Kind of related, but I'd like to know if the popular belief that as a Japanese woman, unless you're married by age ___ you're "totally hosed" and are going to be single shrew who hates life forever. I've heard that age vary a lot from anyone who I discussed this with there, and am wondering if it's actually true, or was true at some point but has passed down the generations as a myth, etc. From the post war period up until the 80's there was always the adage that "You don't want to be a Christmas cake after Christmas." which meant that any woman who didn't get married around 25 was going to end up heavily discounted like a Christmas cake the day after Christmas. However, with the falling birth rates, falling marriage rates, and implosion of the bubble economy this line of thinking seems to have gone away almost entirely. It seems like most of my friends aren't getting married until their early 30's, and it's become more similar to the western sense of marriage time frames that involves discussion of biological clocks. ErIog fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Sep 2, 2014 |
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Sep 2, 2014 02:31
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Forums Terrorist posted:I like how obvious the Japanese right wing's neurosis about not being white is with the constant aping of Nazi Germany. It's not neuroses about not being white. The thing that was special about the Nazi ideology was how extreme and completely nuts it was. The idea that white people were awesome wasn't actually that special back then because that's what most white people would say if you asked them. Proclaiming your own people are the peak example of the human race was very common up until quite recently for most of the world. So this comparison you're making is a bit too reductive. Nihon-jinron and other ethnic supremacy viewpoints most definitely predate Hitler's ideology. The Japanese people, even during WW2, also didn't really buy into the entire Nazi mythos. The Japanese mostly used WW2 as an opportunity to do things they already wanted to do that had nothing to do with anything Hitler was doing. The deepest they went was being handed a translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and being suspicious of Jewish people who weren't really perceived as a threat since the people in power in Japan were fairly certain their weren't any Jews there. So it was mostly a, "sure, I guess, why not" kind of thing that I'm sure some believed, but lots of others were just probably okay with agreeing with it in order to ally themselves with the Axis powers to further their own goals. Lawman 0 posted:Hey Japan thread what's the state of Shinto right now? It's mostly become a cultural artifact rather than a religious one. It's very similar to how many secular people celebrate Easter or Christmas. It's also very similar to people tossing coins into fountains for good luck or different things in many western societies. Shinto is a polytheistic point of view, and so Japanese people are typically of the belief that, "the more the merrier" when it comes to deities and blessings. There's a handful of people who would say they're devout believers in it, and the rest of the population is more of the "it couldn't hurt to go to a shrine for good luck after the new year," style of thinking. ErIog fucked around with this message at 12:41 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 12:33
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Samurai Sanders posted:I'm sure someone has...to be demonstrated at a press conference and never actually used in someone's bedroom. I had a fun conversation with a group of older Japanese people a few months back who I had a hell of a time convincing that Japan was not really special when it comes to robotics technology. They were very incredulous because, "c'mon, Japan is the land of robots! Robot anime! Asimo dancing on stage!" Then I showed them videos of the Boston Dynamics BigDog and Petman. I think you're right that it's pretty much all PR or maybe a proxy for bragging about robotic manufacturing processes in factories. It strikes me that the big advances in robotics technology have come on the software side, and Japan traditionally has not been fantastic when it comes to the software side of computer technology. All those stage demos of robots in Japan feel so stiff because they're essentially trying to solve the problem in hardware by making moving sculptures. They're approaching it as a simple physical engineering problem. Increasingly, the modern approach to autonomous robots, though is to pack as many gyroscopes and sensors into it as possible then figure it out in software. *edited because "credulous" is not "incredulous" ErIog fucked around with this message at 07:47 on Oct 10, 2014 |
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Oct 9, 2014 02:16
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Games might be the one area where Japanese companies can turn out something that appears to be decent as long as it doesn't ever interact with the internet or a PC at any point. Pretty much every other software-related experience I have had in Japan has been incredibly dodgy. In recent years even the Japanese supremacy in game software has pretty much gone away. They manage to keep up with the games from other countries, but they tend to do worse with anything that has anything to do with the internet or UI. If you live in Japan, I hope you like being limited to 8-10 character alphanumeric passwords! Don't worry if you forget your password, either. Conveniently, they'll send it back to you verbatim if you use the "Forgot Password" link. That's such a step up over the other companies that will snail mail your password back to you. We care about protecting customer data! We said so in our press release! Kenishi posted:There are a large number of game studios in Japan that are/have building their own engines. They were late to the party on engine re-use in the first place, and now they still lag behind. While each Japanese studio is building their own engine to re-use, Western publishers are buying up devs with good engines and using them across multiple studios and multiple types of games. ErIog fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Oct 14, 2014 |
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Oct 14, 2014 01:13
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Stringent posted:This is all across software in Japan, not just games. I suspect a lot of it is the language gap since there just isn't anything like the amount of information/discussion/documentation in Japanese as what's available in English. I'm pretty sure that this is the reason. I suspect documentation and developer support in Japanese for stuff like Unreal Engine was not great, and there's a lot of institutional inertia towards Not Invented Here syndrome. This is also the reason I've heard as to why a lot of Japanese companies got on board with Games for Windows, and ignored Steam. GFW had Japanese developer support while Steam didn't. There was also a significant lag last generation between when Unreal was available for licensing, and when it was actually robust. Developer support and documentation was terrible for a long time even in English. Japanese companies actually got better about re-using their engines last generation, but by the time UE was fully viable for them they had already developed their engines. It seems like stuff is quite a bit different in that regard for this generation. It was recently announced that the new Kingdom Hearts game is moving to Unreal Engine 4, and I can only assume that happened because somebody on the Square/Enix Europe(Eidos) side was able to spend a lot of time convincing someone on the Square/Enix Japan side that they would have a lot of in-house support for doing so. ErIog fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Oct 14, 2014 |
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Oct 14, 2014 06:03
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Reverend Cheddar posted:Coincidence that they're both women and got hit with a scandal, but business as usual for ministers getting booted. Usually just foot-in-mouth disease is enough. Is it a coincidence, though? They seem like pretty small infractions that I can imagine a lot of their other peers are also guilty of.
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Oct 21, 2014 01:08
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Stringent posted:Completely unrelated to corruption chat, but I for one would be absolutely fascinated to see what would happen here with > 90% voter turnout. You'd still run up against the 5:1 vote disparity between the rural and urban areas. I would also be fascinated by it, but it's unclear what would actually change. The voter apathy in Japan isn't just about the idea of going out and voting. The apathy is a more a general political apathy that extends to the political issues being discussed. My guess is that you would see more movement on banning nuclear power, banning lots of food imports from China, more saber-rattling about Japan not signing on to TPP, and not much else.
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Oct 22, 2014 01:29
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Stringent posted:So your impression of the Japanese people is that the heretofore silent majority shares the same views as the zaitokukai or whatever? That's an extreme interpretation of his point, but his point is still valid. Most of it isn't, "Let's kick out the foreign menace!", but there's still a lot of casual soft xenophobia. Most of it is couched as concern-trolling like, "We have concerns about foreign nurses being hired." that end up with massive roadblocks being put in place. You're right that the majority of Japanese people do not believe themselves to be xenophobic, but the number of casually-held xenophobic views is significant. Basically, they'd just end up using dog whistles which a shocking percentage of the public would probably agree with. ErIog fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Oct 22, 2014 |
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Oct 22, 2014 03:10
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Samurai Sanders posted:I figured they had eventually said no in one way or another. What old Japanese guy is going to be ok with being doted over by non-Japanese nurses? I agree with this, but the way you've phrased it is funny since a lot of old Japanese guys pay a lot of money to be "doted on" by non-Japanese ladies at various upstanding establishments that are legitimate places of business which follow all labor laws and treat their workers with respect.
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Oct 22, 2014 04:47
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There's also hiring discrimination like crazy. I doubt it even gets down to the end-user level of, "I don't want a foreign nurse taking care of me." I bet a lot of places these foreign nurses would be applying are just tossing their applications in the trash for fear that they would upset the harmony of the workplace.
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Oct 22, 2014 05:49
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Ponsonby Britt posted:
Yes, he is extremely popular. School children are taught about him, and are also taught a bit about the American civil rights movement. They're also taught about Gandhi, but to a lesser extent than MLK. This has had some unforeseen negative consequences, though. You get a lot of people in Japan thinking that "racism" is an American phenomenon that doesn't exist in Japan because they only ever hear of it in the context of the American civil rights movement.
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Nov 25, 2014 02:56
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z0glin Warchief posted:Also, anecdotally, there are a lot of people who could be making well more than enough money to make it worth "breaking" those walls, who refuse to anyway for various reasons, i.e. the hassle of having to worry about your own taxes (under 1.03M don't have to file at all). So even if they don't actually change it THAT much, just being able to, somewhat convincingly, tell people they don't need to worry about it anymore could have some positive effects. Well, they also run into a social wall of, "wtf are you doing, you shouldn't be working, go home." Oftentimes one of the people enforcing this social wall is their spouse!
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Dec 17, 2014 14:26
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Kenishi posted:So it now sounds like if you are a hard worker and good at what you do then you could easily see your salary climb a lot higher than your peers. Would love to hear more clarification on this if anyone knows; like how is the labor written for this at the moment? If what you say is true then it would do away with the seniority-based raises, and you'll see wages stagnate. Workers will not end up being paid more in the aggregate. That is for certain. ErIog fucked around with this message at 12:39 on Jan 6, 2015 |
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Jan 6, 2015 12:35
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So umm, what the hell's going on with Kenji Goto? They're saying now that they're gonna murder him if the Japanese government can't force the government of Jordan to agree to a 2 for 1 prisoner swap before sundown today. edit: this post has out of date info ErIog fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Jan 29, 2015 |
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Jan 29, 2015 07:19
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Ah, you're right. It would be up to Islamic State, I guess, if they wanted to do 2 for 1.
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Jan 29, 2015 07:23
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:Jordan seems like they're going for the swap, but they're really only focused on their pilot, I'm a little afraid Goto might fall through the cracks if the Jordanians are handling the details of the exchange. Well the newest message says IS wants to swap Goto for the female the Jordanians are holding. So the one that might fall through the cracks in this case if there's no 2 for 1 deal is the pilot. His death is mentioned as a consequence of noncompliance, but the current trade offer from IS is 1 for 1 the female prisoner for Goto.
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Jan 29, 2015 07:31
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So the Japanese freelance journalist being held hostage by Islamic State, Kenji Goto, was reportedly killed. Abe stressed, "Terrorists committing these atrocities can never be tolerated. The guilty will be brought to justice, and we will continue to coordinate with the world community." Also, "If we cower in the fear of this kind of terrorism.. if we, as the country of Japan, break our stride, that will be just what the terrorists had hoped."(JPN Kyodo News Link) Anyone know what Abe's likely to do in response to this thing completely going tits up? I figure he either resigns or he continues his steady drum beat toward Japan having a more proactive military role in the world. I figure the latter option is more likely, but only because Abe has a huge war boner. I'm not real deep on the LDP backroom dealings stuff, though.
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Feb 2, 2015 01:43
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Abe hosed up big time, and Japanese PM's have resigned over less. The Japanese press caught Abe using the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the kidnappings to showboat and plug his reinterpretation of the constitution: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...&source=twitter Then he also accidentally said he was going to pledge monetary support for fighting ISIS directly: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/25/japanese-government-error-may-have-two-hostages-lost-in-translation.html After all of those mistakes, he was unable to salvage the situation by getting either hostage out safely. Abe's government is also party responsible for the first hostage to begin with as they detained the person that was supposed to be going to help the first hostage get released.
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Feb 2, 2015 02:50
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CronoGamer posted:But also, LOL at Abe resigning over this. This was not at all a stroke against him and can easily be spun into "we need a more proactive presence and representation out there" since they had no one to negotiate with ISIS directly. Them having no one to negotiate with ISIS was directly the fault of Abe, though. I'll buy that it's unlikely he would step down, but what's posted in the articles I linked is pretty damning. Here's a 3rd one to go on the pile of, "Abe sure hosed this whole thing up." http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/22/did-japan-botch-isis-hostage-deal.html
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Feb 2, 2015 04:47
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Kurtofan posted:What was Abe supposed to do in this situation? It was only going to end in death unless wheelbarrows of money were sent to the terrorists. Just spit-balling here, but maybe not borrow a page from Mitt Romney's campaign playbook and spin the deaths of your countrymen for your own political ends. Also, maybe not be such a gently caress-up with speeches in foreign languages that you actively antagonize the people holding citizens of your country hostage.  It does not logically follow that because it was a lost cause then it's okay for Abe to use them as pawns in his political game. People around here weren't happy when it happened with Benghazi, and that was the ultimate lost cause, those people were already dead. Here we had a situation with tremendous incompetence and relentless politicking while people were still alive, and that's cool with people here because the people were gonna die anyway. ErIog fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Feb 3, 2015 |
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Feb 3, 2015 01:28
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We'd all love to believe everyone on Freep is being ironic too, but unfortunately, insane right wing people posting dumb poo poo on the internet is pretty real. Sometimes they like to get together and hold rallies in favor of expelling the foreign menace too. They're a big tent of lunacy.
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Feb 3, 2015 02:41
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If it's sarcasm then it falls under Poe's law. I can't understand why people don't believe that insane right wing people can exist in Japan. Look up nihon jinron for god sakes. It's silly as poo poo, and it was/is pretty popular.
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Feb 3, 2015 12:14
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Kenishi posted:Lol, you know there's a problem with a country's business culture when the only option left is to force people to take vacations. Mandating people take leave is a good idea to take the blame away from them for not being at work, but I wonder if it would actually work. You already have a lot of places basically not bothering to observe pesky things like weekends, national holidays, or their child's first day of high school. I wonder if mandated leave like this would have weird perverse consequences. You might have businesses pressuring their workers to come in, but "sorry, we can't pay you the overtime rate today because you're getting your regular salary as a paid vacation day according to the law." It's not like businesses give any fucks about actually paying the overtime rate anyway, though. So it probably wouldn't happen like that. This is a good idea, but Japan doesn't really need more labor laws. It needs to enforce the poo poo already on the books.
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Feb 5, 2015 02:04
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Bloodnose posted:What does that literally mean? Because those kanji in Chinese mean like "brutal/miserable industry/work". "granted overtime." 残業 itself just basically breaks down to "extra/excess" and "work/industry." 残 isn't really sinister or negative by itself in Japanese. It just becomes negative or sinister when used with other negative or sinister kanji. For example, 残虐. Also, trap sprung, weeb. People who study Chinese call them "hanzi." :gb2adtrw: ErIog fucked around with this message at 07:29 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 07:24
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The thing about the Japanese labor stuff is that you can find examples of the same kind of abuse in America, but usually with low-skilled or minimum wage workers. In Japan this phenomenon is not limited to the lowest rungs of the ladder, it goes all the way up to highly-paid white collar workers. It should also be noted that the Black Kigyou that were talked about above are just the Japanese examples of the most egregious form of abuse. The default state for workers in Japan would be considered unreasonable or abusive in comparison to the generally accepted default state for non-minimum-wage workers in the US. You can find examples of slavery in the US, and you can find similar examples in Japan. The thing that's different is that white collar office workers are usually not subject to the same kind of rampant abuse that Japanese white collar workers are.
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Feb 6, 2015 09:25
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Kenishi posted:Voting age in Japan is now 18 Well, the voting base is literally dying off, and Abe thinks young people are more likely to want to repeal Article 9 for some reason. I think the logic is that they're too young to truly know how lovely WW2 era Japan was. I think he's barking up the wrong tree there, but I see the logic. More young voters could also give them political cover to gently caress with benefits/taxes on old people in the future. Abe wants to continue increasing the consumption tax, and that's something that hits pensioners pretty drat hard. They still re-elected him, though, so I dunno. When he gets around to putting up the referendum to make amending the constitution easier he can also spin it as being part of a broader push to increase direct democratic participation rather than a naked ploy to more easily repeal Article 9. The drinking age is also the first thing I thought of, but I doubt it will change. There's no laws that force carding, and so anyone older than 16 that doesn't have a school uniform on can buy alcohol/porn/cigarettes pretty much anywhere. Legal drinking age is 建前 all the way. When I was on study abroad our handler from the school office took us out for drinks, and just laughed really hard when someone in our group said they were 19. Nobody gives a poo poo. There's alcohol vending machines on the street that don't require any ID. The cigarette machines all require a Taspo, but nothing for the machines that vend Asahi tallboys. ErIog fucked around with this message at 12:21 on Feb 8, 2015 |
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Feb 8, 2015 12:15
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Mayor stands in opposition to air conditioning/heat in his city's elementary schools. Usually the thread title is accurate for Japanese news, but in this case I think "each other" should be replaced with "children."quote:He can ignore the outcome of the referendum because it is not legally binding. Also, fewer than one in three eligible voters cast a ballot, which the mayor had set as the threshold for withdrawing his opposition. Only 31.54 percent voted. So they have these students locked up in these shitbox classrooms with soundproof everything sweating their balls off in the summer because they can't open the windows. :nihon:
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Feb 17, 2015 00:43
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ozza posted:While we're on the topic, has anyone ever heard a plausible explanation for why all the school ovals (and most parks) in Japan are dirt? It's always baffled me, because grass is clearly a safer option for kids, and even in dry dry Australia we use trillions of litres to keep our school ovals and parks grassy. Is the explanation just one of those tautological "this is how we've done it in Japan, so this is how we do it" type things? Well, and it costs money to do that stuff and maintain it. Most schools have 0, 1 or 2 staff members that are responsible for maintaining the grounds as well as the buildings themselves.
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Feb 17, 2015 01:35
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Kenishi posted:The thing that made me the most curious about this was the way the decision process was handled. Mayor wanted 1-in-3 voters to voters to vote on it. But considering when the area voted him in, only 34% of the eligible voters voted; I feel like it was an easy gamble for him to assume that less than 33% would show up. That's interesting. The whole thing comes off as disingenuous. The referendum "failing" is just an excuse. The referendum was also non-binding so even if it passed it's not like he would have to do anything legally. He claims to have not used air conditioning in his home since 2012 and never in his car either. I bet that's a load of poo poo.
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Feb 17, 2015 07:37
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http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2015/02/12/tokyos-shibuya-ward-to-issue-same-sex-partner-certificates/ Shibuya revealed a plan to start giving gay partnership licenses to be used as identification for the purposes of housing, hospital visitation, and next of kin. The licenses will be not be legally binding, though, and the local government is hoping for people to voluntarily recognize them as legitimate. The statements from Shibuya seem hopeful, but I suspect these things aren't going to go anywhere. There's significant prejudice against gay people in Japan. Landlords weren't preventing gay people from cohabitating on procedural grounds. They were deny housing because they're assholes, and will deny housing to anyone from any outgroup. Interestingly, a sane interpretation of the current constitution actually should require the Japanese government to support gay marriage because: quote:Article 24. and quote:Article 14. The wording in article 24 I think most likely refers to putting a kaibosh on things like explicitly arranged marriages or coercive marriage. However, the text of 24 and 14 taken together would lead a reasonable person to assume that gay marriage should be available in Japan under the current constitution. Due to this wording I heard a Japanese pundit tinfoil-hatting about how Abe is going to try to use gay marriage as a wedge issue to amend the constitution. He thinks Abe will use the public antagonism toward gay marriage to amend Article 24, and then people will be caught up in some kind of nationalist haze over having done their duty as a citizen that it will then become easier to amend Article 9. mystes posted:The really dumb thing is that he's rejecting a 31.54% turnout with 56,921 in favor and 30,047 against. Think about that. If only he had been more vocal and gotten 5000 more people to come out to vote against air conditioning, he would have reached his arbitrary turnout limit and had to install air conditioning. I think the referendum was triggered through a petition and signature drive. I'm not sure what the laws are on that, but the referendum certainly wasn't his idea. Also, even if it had reached 33% turnout he wouldn't have had to do poo poo since the referendum was legally non-binding. He would have just spun it differently. Either way it's a tremendously dumb move because turnout for the referendum was high if you take the election that he was elected to office with as a baseline. So this referendum is only slightly lower turnout, and 26,000 more people told him he was doing a bad job than a good job. I wonder if this will have ramifications for his next election. ErIog fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Feb 18, 2015 |
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Feb 18, 2015 02:23
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