I just find it difficult to believe that the Japanese have substandard maintenace. Substandard maintenance is indeed a problem. A lot of the maintenance schedules set up in Japan were done so when equipment was regularly being replaced and upgraded. A few years after the bubble burst, companies and...

I suppose it was inevitable:



Source

Kochi Prefecture's katsuo PR mascot

This week's Economist with another variation on the "turning Japanese" theme.

No love for his book at the Japan Times

Watching the 1962 film "The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah", I thought one of the characters looked Japanese. She is indeed Mistuko Takara. Happily someone has uploaded a video with her scene but embedding is disabled so you'll need to click thelink. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS70M5-7DiU She g...

The draw for the qualifying rounds for the next World Cup has just taken place in Rio. Japan is in the Asian Zone Group C and will now face Uzbekistan, Syria and North Korea. Full details of the draw are here (PDF). FIFA does seek to keep teams apart where there are political tensions which might le...

Japan isn't trying to change the terms of the Hague convention. To become a signatory, however, you need to pass domestic legislation to recognize it. It's this legislation which determines how a country intends to apply the convention and that's where the caveats can be introduced. You don't get ki...

That's what the Treaty says but that's not the point if Japan is going to take testimony about domestic violence and mental anguish into account. There are two classes of case. One in which a parent simply takes off with the children, and one in which the parent does so in breech of court-agreed cus...

http://www.fuckedgaijin.com/forums/images/vbimghost/9794e32980538390.jpg This is Miyo, who was chosen as Japan's representative for the Miss Hooters competition. http://www.fuckedgaijin.com/forums/images/vbimghost/9794e329910751a6.jpg http://www.fuckedgaijin.com/forums/images/vbimghost/9794e3299109...

Can't see how he other signors of the Hague would accept these "conditions" that seem to create gray area loopholes for everything in it. Japan is just doing what Switzerland did. Not all signatories to Hague agree on their responsibilities under the treaty and the US accused Swiss courts of trying...

[floatl] http://www.fuckedgaijin.com/forums/images/vbimghost/9794e3202168e1e5.jpg [/floatl]The Ministry of Education has announced that 35.5% of teachers nationwide are now over the age of 50, that's up from 28.4% in 2007. At elementary schools, the figure is 38.4% while at junior high schools, it i...

[yt]IYlxmjGYCBI[/yt] While the Immigration Bureau likes to keep a check on foreigners entering the country, they aren't so hot on departures. Four foreigners wanted by police were able to leave Japan, without being apprehended, in the first four months of the year. Police had notified immigration of...

Reports are coming in that baseball pitcher Hideki Irabu has been found dead at his home in Los Angeles. Local police are suggesting it may have been suicide.

Link

...I also think that this is something that should be clear to any non-Japanese who has kids with a Japanese and should be factored into their decision making. Instead people want to go ahead with it, and then try to fight this way of thinking if/when the marriage goes wrong... There is a danger th...

An Indonesian nurse in Japan under the EPA scheme has been underpaid by her hospital in Kumamoto. Her contracted salary was 180,000 yen a month but the hospital took to paying her only around 120,000 a month. After getting support from a local citizens group, she has now received compensation. The h...

The Miyako has a nice garden but there really aren't many nice views on offer unless you like cemeteries, apartment blocks or Meguro Dori.

More eggs:

Asahi: Young Japanese go abroad to donate eggs to infertile couples

The Sumo Council has set up a body to review tournaments to see whether they can see any evidence of someone throwing a bout. The recent basho has been given a clean bill of health but the report noted that foreign wrestlers tend to speak with each other and shake hands which they think might raise ...

I also agree that service in Japan is polite but can be a bit inflexible a times. This guy, however, seems to have an over-inflated sense of entitlement. He doesn't want the service he paid for, he expects automatic upgrades and special treatment.

Now, why would the Japanese spouse and their family do this? How often do you think this happens to a husband that doesn't deserve it? I think your comment there illuminates how you approach this issue. I have no problem imagining a case where grandparents want to keep the son-in-law they never lik...

He's one of the few people worth reading regularly. He's also on Twitter and happy to engage in exchanges there.

Never fear, Japan Probe continues its mission to set us right.

First auction open to the public since the quake:


(Includes some foreigner reactions)

Yokohammer wrote:This was also posted in this thread (post #2727), and there are a few responses there as well.

Sorry, I should have seen that before posting.

Good coverage and links of the recent accident over on China Geeks.

[YT]rVuGwc9dlhQ[/YT] The YouTube description reads: "On the 19th of July 2011, people in Fukushima had a meeting with government officals from Tokyo to demand that the government evacuate people promptly in Fukushima and provide financial and logistical support for them. Also, they brought urine of ...

Shinichi Sano wrote a book in 2003 about the case. ZakZak quotes him here (Japanese) saying the police falsified evidence. Police alleged Govinda had a key to the apartment but a witness said the key was returned before the murder. Sano says police threatened the witness and coerced him into changin...