Salarymen just can't get a break

[Samurai_Jerk]

Speaking of magic, I love the French obsession with mineral water. It's Chinese medicine-level woo woo.

Like japanese with onsen... We have plenty so might as well enjoy it.

Now I heard that some inferior creatures can't properly distinguish the different taste between Volvic, Evian and Contrex... I pity those poor souls...

Anything is better than...

Ever have LA tap water?

Or has it improved since the early 80's?

[Takechanpoo]

guys demand too much
i drink musashimurayama's tap-water filtered by Cleansui every day. no problem at all

[matsuki]

Speaking of magic, I love the French obsession with mineral water. It's Chinese medicine-level woo woo.

Like japanese with onsen... We have plenty so might as well enjoy it.

Now I heard that some inferior creatures can't properly distinguish the different taste between Volvic, Evian and Contrex... I pity those poor souls...

Anything is better than...

Ever have LA tap water?

Or has it improved since the early 80's?

My parents have had a water softener and filtration system on their home for as long as I can remember so my experiences with pure LA tap water were/are pretty limited. (though I do remember the terrible taste you speak of) Keep in mind, LA is pretty much a desert so the fact there even is potable tap water there is impressive.

guys demand too much
i drink musashimurayama's tap-water filtered by Cleansui every day. no problem at all

We're talking about straight from the tap...I use a Brita filter here and it's fine.

[Coligny]

Speaking of magic, I love the French obsession with mineral water. It's Chinese medicine-level woo woo.

Like japanese with onsen... We have plenty so might as well enjoy it.

Now I heard that some inferior creatures can't properly distinguish the different taste between Volvic, Evian and Contrex... I pity those poor souls...

Evian is easy. It tastes fucking awful. I hate it when I go to a customer's office for a meeting and there are bottles of that garbage on the table.

Contrex is like Evian, that would have been used to give an enema to a goat before being bottled...

[wagyl]

Keep in mind, LA is pretty much a desert so the fact there even is potable tap water there they raped the Owens Valley and Mono Lake is impressive.

[Salty]

guys demand too much
i drink musashimurayama's tap-water filtered by Cleansui every day. no problem at all

Well, that explains your posts....

[matsuki]

Keep in mind, LA is pretty much a desert so the fact there even is potable tap water there they raped the Owens Valley and Mono Lake is impressive.

I never understood the reasoning behind that in the first place...import salty water from afar? Great idea!

[Samurai_Jerk]

Except for booze and the occasional coffee I pretty much just drink filtered tap water or water from the office cooler but all this tea talk got me craving some cold oolong yesterday afternoon so I bought myself a bottle. Kurogane will be happy to know that I walked the extra couple of hundred meters to AEON My Basket to get a 59 yen bottle instead of blowing my fortune on a 108 yen bottle at the supermarket on the first floor of my office building.

[kurogane]

Kurogane will be happy to know .......................

I would go for mugi-cha, but hey, well done.

[Samurai_Jerk]

The Chinese Descend on Japan's Property Market, Pushing Prices Up

The trend has already hit Sydney, Vancouver and the U.S. Now it’s happening in Japan: busloads of real estate buyers from China coming in, buying up homes and pushing prices higher.

Realty agencies in Beijing are organizing twice-monthly tours to Tokyo and Osaka, where 40 Chinese at a time come for three-day property-shopping trips, seeking safe places to invest their cash abroad. They’re being prompted by the yen’s decline to 22-year lows and excitement over the 2020 Tokyo Olympics driving up prices, as they did in Beijing in 2008. Property tours will soon start from Shanghai too.

Partly as a result of nascent Chinese buying, Tokyo apartment prices have reached the highest levels since the early 1990s, up 11 percent over two years, according to the Real Estate Economic Institute Co.

[...]

In Japan, sales to Chinese and Taiwan buyers jumped 70 percent higher in three months through March from the year-earlier period, or 11.1 billion yen ($90.8 million) at Sinyi Realty Inc., a Taiwanese brokerage with outlets in Japan. For every 100 new apartments sold, about 10 to 15 are to foreigners from Asia, according to Sinyi.

“I wouldn’t find a deal like this in China,” said Lin Huan, a 35-year programmer from China’s northeast Liaoning province, who with help from her parents bought a three-bedroom flat in the Shinbashi area of Tokyo for investment, paying the equivalent of $203,000. After recently relocating to Tokyo to work for an technology company, she noticed the weaker yen was making properties cheaper. She expects to make a 5 percent return on the rent annually, whereas property in Beijing yields just 2 percent.

Chinese buyers are typically purchasing in the 1 million to 2 million yuan ($161,000-$322,000) bracket, a range “tolerable to many Chinese,” said Gui Liangjing, SouFun’s international sales director in Beijing.

[...]

“Prices have risen while incomes and rents remain the same,” said Tomohiko Taniyama, a senior researcher at Nomura Research Institute Ltd. “No regular salaryman will find apartments cheap in Tokyo.”

While the home price-to-income ratio -- the cost of a home relative to a buyer’s average annual income -- rose to more than 10 times in Tokyo last year, according to according to property appraisal company Tokyo Kantei Co., it’s still below the 18 times it reached during the bubble era in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

[matsuki]

Chinese overlords? Nah, just Chinese landlords....

"you pay now!"

[Russell]

It seems the Russians and the Arabs are still hesitating, unlike in the UK...

[Coligny]

So the chinese are aware of the toilet paper value they got in their wallet...

[Takechanpoo]

j-minimum pay
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... l-of-ramen

but it seems like 技能実習生(aka humantrafficing asian foreigners by j-government)s wages are not converted into it.

[Coligny]

How much does it mean for monthl/yearly pay ?
Not exactly like if I could multiply by 40 for a week here...

(Trying to convince me Julie that we have enough money to feed a fourth kitteh...)

[Salty]

Working for minimum wage is a fool’s errand – and nobody should do so any longer than is absolutely necessary while they plan and execute an escape - pursuing education, obtaining critical skills and experience, etc.

[matsuki]

j-minimum pay
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... l-of-ramen

but it seems like 技能実習生(aka humantrafficing asian foreigners by j-government)s wages are not converted into it.

When they cite the cost to produce anything locally is too expensive due to "high local labor" rates...I always chuckle "yeah, those kyabajo's are making bank."

[chibaka]

(Trying to convince me Julie that we have enough money to feed a fourth kitteh...)

A man can never get enough pussy..........

IMG_20150202_155545 (Small).jpg

[J.A.F.O]

When they cite the cost to produce anything locally is too expensive due to "high local labor" rates...I always chuckle "yeah, those kyabajo's are making bank."

One of the reasons I'm not against the more protectionist ideologies.

and when I read shit like this:

"Some businesses are experiencing a labor shortage, so increasing the minimum wage will probably provide more merits than demerits to Japan,'' says Hisashi Yamada, chief economist at the Japan Research Institute in Tokyo.

I just gawk with incredulity.

I used to chit chat with an economics professor (my kids used to figure skate with their kid) It was like he had never considered anything other than Keynesian Economics.

[Samurai_Jerk]

"Some businesses are experiencing a labor shortage, so increasing the minimum wage will probably provide more merits than demerits to Japan,'' says Hisashi Yamada, chief economist at the Japan Research Institute in Tokyo.

I just gawk with incredulity.

Yeah, I'm not really sure what the logic is there since they're not trying to entice low wage workers from outside Japan to immigrate. A company upping it's hourly pay will probably help generate more interest from candidates but a blanket raise in the minimum wage The only way I could see that maybe making a difference is if it somehow enticed more women to stop being housewives and reenter the work force. If the opportunity cost of not working becomes high enough for a family, fewer women might opt out.

[Coligny]

(Trying to convince me Julie that we have enough money to feed a fourth kitteh...)

A man can never get enough pussy..........

IMG_20150202_155545 (Small).jpg

Is that turtleshell on the right yours ?
Do you have more pictures of her ?
Does she only have regular fighter pilot license or can she fly from aircraft carriers ?

[chibaka]

(Trying to convince me Julie that we have enough money to feed a fourth kitteh...)

A man can never get enough pussy..........

IMG_20150202_155545 (Small).jpg

Is that turtleshell on the right yours ?
Do you have more pictures of her ?
Does she only have regular fighter pilot license or can she fly from aircraft carriers ?

Called a tortoiseshell in my house...... she was hanging around my garden a year ago and basically invited herself to move in. Got her cleaned up and snipped at the vet and she's been happy ever since. Pic taken 10 minutes ago.

IMG_6391 (Small).JPG

[matsuki]

"Some businesses are experiencing a labor shortage, so increasing the minimum wage will probably provide more merits than demerits to Japan,'' says Hisashi Yamada, chief economist at the Japan Research Institute in Tokyo.

I just gawk with incredulity.

Yeah, I'm not really sure what the logic is there since they're not trying to entice low wage workers from outside Japan to immigrate. A company upping it's hourly pay will probably help generate more interest from candidates but a blanket raise in the minimum wage The only way I could see that maybe making a difference is if it somehow enticed more women to stop being housewives and reenter the work force. If the opportunity cost of not working becomes high enough for a family, fewer women might opt out.

We should turn this into a drinking game...every time the "logic" contradicts itself, we have to take a shot.

[J.A.F.O]

"Some businesses are experiencing a labor shortage, so increasing the minimum wage will probably provide more merits than demerits to Japan,'' says Hisashi Yamada, chief economist at the Japan Research Institute in Tokyo.

I just gawk with incredulity.

Yeah, I'm not really sure what the logic is there since they're not trying to entice low wage workers from outside Japan to immigrate. A company upping it's hourly pay will probably help generate more interest from candidates but a blanket raise in the minimum wage The only way I could see that maybe making a difference is if it somehow enticed more women to stop being housewives and reenter the work force. If the opportunity cost of not working becomes high enough for a family, fewer women might opt out.

We should turn this into a drinking game...every time the "logic" contradicts itself, we have to take a shot.

Dear God, not enough whiskey in japan...

[Coligny]

(Trying to convince me Julie that we have enough money to feed a fourth kitteh...)

A man can never get enough pussy..........

IMG_20150202_155545 (Small).jpg

Is that turtleshell on the right yours ?
Do you have more pictures of her ?
Does she only have regular fighter pilot license or can she fly from aircraft carriers ?

Called a tortoiseshell in my house...... she was hanging around my garden a year ago and basically invited herself to move in. Got her cleaned up and snipped at the vet and she's been happy ever since. Pic taken 10 minutes ago.

IMG_6391 (Small).JPG

Gorgeous. It's her summer lighter fur ? Only her head stays dark ?
Kelche always keep her tanoki face...

image.jpg

image.jpg

image.jpg

We got her for nursing at 600g. Now she's in full teenage rebellion. No kisses whatsoever from daddy allowed anymore, stealing makeup from mom.

[matsuki]

"Some businesses are experiencing a labor shortage, so increasing the minimum wage will probably provide more merits than demerits to Japan,'' says Hisashi Yamada, chief economist at the Japan Research Institute in Tokyo.

I just gawk with incredulity.

Yeah, I'm not really sure what the logic is there since they're not trying to entice low wage workers from outside Japan to immigrate. A company upping it's hourly pay will probably help generate more interest from candidates but a blanket raise in the minimum wage The only way I could see that maybe making a difference is if it somehow enticed more women to stop being housewives and reenter the work force. If the opportunity cost of not working becomes high enough for a family, fewer women might opt out.

We should turn this into a drinking game...every time the "logic" contradicts itself, we have to take a shot.

Dear God, not enough whiskey in japan...

It's better that not getting a buzz, playing "drink every time something makes perfect sense."

[chibaka]

Gorgeous. It's her summer lighter fur ? Only her head stays dark ?

That's her colour, took this when she lived outside.

IMG_20140603_181112 (Small).jpg

[Salty]

"Some businesses are experiencing a labor shortage, so increasing the minimum wage will probably provide more merits than demerits to Japan,'' says Hisashi Yamada, chief economist at the Japan Research Institute in Tokyo.

I just gawk with incredulity.

Yeah, I'm not really sure what the logic is there since they're not trying to entice low wage workers from outside Japan to immigrate. A company upping it's hourly pay will probably help generate more interest from candidates but a blanket raise in the minimum wage The only way I could see that maybe making a difference is if it somehow enticed more women to stop being housewives and reenter the work force. If the opportunity cost of not working becomes high enough for a family, fewer women might opt out.

There are also non-housewife unemployed - dropped out students, unables ( ) to find employmenters ( ), etc. So a higher minimum wage - much higher of course, could entice a few more into the workforce. For example... I am retired now, but if offered a salary above 5,000man PA, I would think it over - but anything less - not a chance.

[J.A.F.O]

We should turn this into a drinking game...every time the "logic" contradicts itself, we have to take a shot.

Dear God, not enough whiskey in japan...

It's better that not getting a buzz, playing "drink every time something makes perfect sense."

Damn it ... Sobriety or death by whiskey. Well I suppose it's a worthy death.

[matsuki]

There are also non-housewife unemployed - dropped out students, unables ( ) to find employmenters ( ), etc. So a higher minimum wage - much higher of course, could entice a few more into the workforce. For example... I am retired now, but if offered a salary above 5,000man PA, I would think it over - but anything less - not a chance.

I think most of them just don't want to work, regardless of pay.