Mandrake

Japan always clicked with me better than America did. I found it very easy to get on in Japan and within a few years, I had a great system down. I guess that's just a personality and thinking match. Seaweed? Yes please. Shuv me in a tiny tin can full of Japanese people? Don't mind if I do as long as I'm squished between Japanese ladies and not some ojisan that smells like yakiniku and whiskey.

That's a very nice Majesta. If I saw that in Shinjuku, I'd assume there was Yakuza inside. Even the window visors look perfectly JDM.

I usually don't read the business news much in Japan. I was a political science major so I'm more interested in Japanese politics, religion and society. Most of my friends usually want to talk business but it gets boring for me.

I'm not surprised that Japanese businesses are willing to go bankrupt before expanding globally. Isn't that the whole reason that Japan is in the predicament it's in now? I mean more so regarding immigration. It just seems like the Japanese people would rather their entire nation and way of life collapse before polluting it with foreign influence. I have to respect that on one hand, but on the other hand the numbers look extremely bad. The population is projected to plummet below 100 million by 2050. It's already like a retirement home country, I can only imagine what it would be like in 2050.

sojah

iTrader: (1)

talking about all the old people, when we were in Osaka like 3 weekends back we noticed on the trains that it was like 50% retirees (during the daytime) and very few 20-40 year old folks, it was kinda weird to not see many 20-40 year olds out and about. jobs, sleeping off hangovers, laundry day??

I am an IT guy by trade but my real passion seems to be sociology, well other than spending money on fancy cars. I love trying to understand why people act the way they do. I am not mad at japan for their immigration laws and kinda respect that view myself. but if you are a foreigner here (myself not included in this scenario) who works and lives on the Japanese system/society and are not wealthy I feel that japan is very difficult to move up above anything higher than entry level or lower tier mid-level if you were lucky enough to get a good degree and pick up fluent Japanese.

obviously I choose to live here (I did and still do), but I am starting to be more and more aware of how difficult a place this is for non Japanese. I guess it is hard to compare to anything I was familiar with prior to here since japan is something like 98.5% Japanese (2014). it seems like if you are a foreigner you are either loved and they want to touch you and take your picture (have your babies ), or they won't even sit next to you on the train. I just laugh when this happens and it does happen. it was really funny for the first few years I lived here but lately I guess I am getting a little older and wiser to all the subtleties so things are becoming increasingly annoying to me.

I love the food and most of the culture, but can't understand the society and how they always expect you to act/think a certain way. one of the biggest pro's and con's for me is how japan is so obedient. I really wish the younger generation would start thinking for themselves and stop believing everything they hear on TV or read in a newspaper. but on the other hand you have the US and well we can all see lately what Americans want or think is important presently. most of the folks I come in contact with on the day to day are Okinawan and they are so nearsighted that they couldn't plan their way out of a checkers match with a 5 year old. politics here are a joke like they are in the US at the moment.

I don't know what the answers are and I did support Abe for the first few years but now I'm not so sure. I don't even think there is a better option at the moment, or at least NHK won't let us know if there is ( hmm wonder why¿ )

I guess you could say I'm pretty much way right leaning in japan politics which is funny cuz I'm way left on US issues (presently)...

sucks about the babies issue, the population decline is something they talk about almost nightly on the English NHK news I watch often.

I just saw an interesting story on the NHK news last night here that just made me say WHY JAPAN??? obviously we both know that the women in japan are not regarded as equals to men yet,, bizarre to me coming from the US and having a working mom as a child. they were discussing the whole system revisions last night to that thing where senior college students all get to go to these huge job fair/job recruitment events and basically audition to become the salarymen (/women) that are so infamous here. well they addressed that they wanted to get more women into the working industry as this has been a huge topic in the past few months/years for the whole abenomics thing. so they interviewed some of these recruiters for some big companies and they were saying that they were thinking about having briefings only for women so that they could somehow attract and hire more women. WTF over!!!!!! how in the world is this a good idea??? giving a job pitch to only women is seriously not the correct way to get more women in the work force and to become salaried employees. its like they are segregating women and treating them differently and talking to them differently like children. this type of thinking and behavior is just perpetuating the problem and tells me that they haven't got a clue how to get women to be more equal to their male counterparts...

man sorry to type so much but as you can see I am passionate about Japanese society and am always debating/reasoning with anyone I come across who is also knowledgeable/passionate about these topics.

Mandrake

That's every week day in Tokyo, especially the countryside. You mainly see women, kids and retirees out during the day. There is a rush of men heading to the train station at 7 AM and back home at 11 PM. It seems kind of weird but the system works pretty dam good. There are so many young, able bodied men around here who are unemployed for one reason or another.

The idea in Japan is that any job that a Japanese person can do, a Japanese person should do. They believe that every body has their place in society and your place as a foreigner, is doing foreign things. You can work your way into the fabric of society more but you're going to need two things. First of all, you need a 'circle'. Most Japanese people establish this in college and they try to stick with this group and advance together. Secondly, you're going to need 'giri' which is a mutual sense of duty or responsibility. There's been some books written on how Japanese people express this but it's best scene through funeral rites. If you attend someone's wedding or funeral, you start to establish giri with them and you start to move from 'soto' (outside) to uchi (inside). It strongly affects politics and business too. The book I read talked about a Korean construction contractor who just started attending weddings and funerals in his neighborhood and built his business on that. Because of the giri he built, they would be embarrassed to hire any other contractor to do work on their house in that neighborhood. This is how politicians get elected too. Once you have giri, it doesn't really matter if you're a foreigner or not.


You're describing culture shock. Contrary to popular belief, you can't experience culture shock until you've been there for long enough to have a deep understanding between the differences in your culture and the new culture.


Japanese people acting weird around you isn't ever going to change. My suggestion? Wear one of those disposable cloth masks when you ride the train. You can get like 50 of them for 100 yen at Daiso and people will really calm the hell down when they can't see your ethnic features, unless you're black.


Japanese people aren't really known for their critical thinking but just like the US, you get some massive difference in regions. I think Vermont just voted like 90% for Hillary and Alaska just voted 90% for Trump. You're going to get the same variations in Japan. Kyushu and Okinawa are known for being conservative. Tokyo is more liberal. If you go to Tsukuba city, almost everybody there has a PHD because it's a planned city for their NASA headquarters. The attitudes and lifestyle you encounter there is massively different from even Tokyo. To me, it sounds like you need to change cities maybe.


That's not surprising if you have more liberal attitudes in Japanese politics than US politics. You live in Japan and you have to act accordingly so you're going to have different interests. It's like those flag waving "yankee doodle dandy" singing immigrants in the US who are very conservative, nationalistic and yet they are political activists and rebels in their home country.

The population decline and women's rights issues in Japan were actually one of my capstone projects for my underground degree so I'm familiar with the topic although it's changed recently since 3/11.


Japan exhibits an opposite pattern of female workforce participation than the rest of the world. In most other countries, as women become more educated and work more, the fertility rates drop. The rationale is that women who have higher education are more empowered to make choices like taking contraceptives. Also women who have other options like careers will choose to delay marriage and childbirth and have fewer children.


The opposite is true for Japan however. As education increases and female workforce participation increases, the fertility rate actually increases. It's kind of confusing but you have to realize that Japan as a whole doesn't fit a pattern. Tokyo is basically it's own country. The rules that apply there don't apply elsewhere and 50% of the population lives in 3 urban centers: Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. If you divide up the urban centers and rural, then you start to see a more normal pattern in the countryside. You see that people get married younger, are less educated and have more children in the countryside. In the city however, the pattern is opposite.


It makes sense though. Childbirth is related mainly to marriage in Japan. 98% of Japanese children are born to married couples and 90% of Japanese couples have a child within their first year of marriage. It's a very strong correlation which reflects cultural values. The real hurdle for Japanese people is marriage and not childbirth although they are essentially the same thing. Getting married is just expensive and the economy sucks. It's as simple as that. That's why you see the opposite pattern in Tokyo. When women there work, they can afford to have children.


In my eyes, the bigger problem is the distribution of wealth and power in age groups. There's too many pensioners and when I did my calculations in 2012, you'd need 500 million Japanese workers in order to have an even workerensioner salary ratio. Simply put, the workers today are just working to pay the pensions of the retirees who also happen to be the longest lived in the world.


This is only going to get worse over time as there are more and more elders. The young people are so busy taking care of them that they can't have their own families. Some housewives have to take care of 4 elderly parents (husbands parents and her parents). It's very common in fact.


That's why TPP was a chance. It benefitted young families more than the old farmers. Old people in Japan can get by on like 1 natto box per day but have you seen how much rice Japanese kids can eat? There is a 300% tariff on rice right now which means that any foreign rice gets a 300% markup before it can be sold. That means you could cut the cost of rice in third if you opened up trade and eliminated these barriers. It's an important symbolic change and I think if young people got out there and made their politicians vote for it, the politicians would have to start listening to the young people.


Yeah Abe isn't doing the country any good. He's sticking with the 1950's model of economic development just to please the older generations of voters who make up the majority of LDP constituents. Japan has lost the comparative advantage in manufacturing just like the UK did during the 80's. The UK went from being a majority blue collar society to a majority white collar society. Japan needs to do the same. They're running factories at night time with generators in the parking lots because there isn't enough electricity to run them during the day and they're doing this with 50% of their workers over the age of 55.


So of course, Abe wants to strengthen the military but it's seen as a return to Japanese Imperialsm by the neighbors. To pay for the military, they've already doubled the sales tax, inflation and government debt are through the roof. You know who the first people are to lose money in an economic crisis? Minorities. Women and then racial minorities. That's one reason I wouldn't stay in Japan. I couldn't justify building a life in a country which could very possibly be headed for war, which is most certainly headed for a population crash and economic implosion and that has some eery sentiments regarding foreigners.

sojah

iTrader: (1)

so the tariffs are only on foreign (to japan) products that are imported into the country. the states does the same thing on other goods and products. it is so your own population will buy the locally produced items over the cheaper foreign products. if the foreign rice tariff goes away then Japanese people would start buying the cheaper foreign rice which would hurt the thousands of rice farmers in japan. since rice is their single biggest crop and all.

I followed the TPP thing fairly closely and at first it was not in japans best interest. now I think what they agreed on is a little better but the states wants to start selling all their crazy meds to japan, and I say with absolute certainty F that!!! states still wants japan to buy all their lower quality beef that had been tested positive to have issues numerous times. I'm obviously bad with details and my memory is not the best either but I do try to read and pay attention to the news a lot and this was a hot topic a few years back when japan banned the import of US beef cuz it was failing repeated random health inspections.

I know some people in the states think that the TPP is a bad deal for US and that jobs will be lost blah blah blah but if you read it from the Japanese side it is not a good deal either. It is only supposed to help out the smaller Asian countries and be a counter to China's ever growing influence in the region I feel.

I know very well about needing to care for the elderly and how it is presently a big deal in japan.

from what I have read and heard and even experienced at a lower level the Japanese business system has so much red tape and hurdles that it is difficult for a foreign company to even begin to operate here and Abe had preached trying to get rid of a lot of that to make it easier for foreign investors to see japan as an investment opportunity but I haven't read or heard of a single thing that ever changed. japan is very old school and without significant revisions will not be able to keep up in the marketplace.

being a military minded individual myself I don't think personally that Japan's small increase in military spending and wanting to actually upgrade some of their 1970's technology when their scary big neighbor is doing many provocative things at a far greater and more threatening level. I really can't see how anyone can think otherwise unless you are just on the side of China from the get go.

there is all this talk lately from trump that he doesn't want to support japan and that japan needs to be able to defend itself or start paying more $$ for the US to do it. well then I guess japan will need to start putting more money into their military budget then huh??

I don't think they are on their way into another war, but I will say that China seems to be starting to bully all of the countries around it and sooner or later they are going to take it a step too far or pick on the wrong person. then you will have a war possibility.

I am very intrigued with the population and women's rights issues in japan myself. I've never written any papers on the topic but every time I see an article on the topic I read it and listen when it is on the tele. this is the article I just read 2 days ago and I think it is a great new study, horrible results and my coworkers and I have been discussing it here... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/wor...assed-at-work/

pretty sad how big of a group claims to have been sexually harassed and even sadder that only 10% reported it and a large group of them were either fired, demoted, or nothing happened. but not hard to me to see it because it is so normal to talk down to lower ranking employees in a demeaning way here that they don't even notice that they are doing it. I think Japanese women need to be stronger and more assertive to their male counterparts, but at the same time no one wants to be insubordinate to your boss. but if you boss is being a straight creeper jerk ******* then guess you would have to choose between your job and your pride. its like a lesser form of slavery to me.

it is fascinating to me about the babies correlations. again for another year Okinawa had the highest birthrate per capita. also the highest teen pregnancy rate, and the lowest education rate. crazy how the education is increasing the babies, but if it boils down to marriage (money) and homes (money) then I can see that. I know japan pays families with babies every month and that they pay single moms even more. I think these Japanese dudes just need to get off their asses, put down the cell phone and start acting like men to these Japanese women that also need to put down their cell phones, so they can start making more babies I've also noticed that Japanese people by and large do not flirt at all unless they are drinking. and when they are drinking they get so drunk that I don't think sex would even be possible or fun

you ever try to hit on a Japanese girl when she wasn't drinking? seriously? its like their switch is not on, they are not even receptive. but let them be in a setting that tells them that they should be receptive, then it is very easy to flirt.

I read a great book about the Japanese ura and omote a while back and then followed up some on the topic and found that to be very enlightening to the Japanese mindset/society.

sojah

iTrader: (1)

I am having a hard time finding any single source that has TPP info on it concerning japan (in English) but I remember reading that part of the TPP included that American insurance companies were to be allowed to start selling insurance in japan, a big horrible thing in my mind...

Just TPP info that affects US - Japan things:

May 2015 US & Japan held bilateral trade talks regarding one of the most contentious trade issues— automobiles. American negotiators wanted the Japanese to open their entire keiretsu structure which is the corner stone of Japanese economy and society to American automobiles. They wanted Japanese dealer networks, such as Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mitsubishi, and Mazda, to sell American cars.[83] Oe Hiroshi responded that there are fewer American car dealerships in Japan because Japanese consumers prefer European and Japanese cars to American cars.[83] Different vehicle safety program structures also complicate efforts at reciprocal recognition; in Japan and Europe, new vehicles are compliance-tested before they're allowed on the market. Under American laws, automakers self-certify their cars as compliant, and cars are tested only after they go on sale.[84] Nevertheless, as of November 2015 an agreement was released whereby Japan will recognize seven U.S. vehicle safety standards as no less stringent than Japanese national standards:[85] those for front and rear collision, flammability of interior materials, license plate lights, interior rearview mirror impact absorption, and windshield wiping, washing, and defogging systems.[86]

good thing Hyundai isn't American,, we believe them & VW now too I suppose


non car related:

As a result, Japan is to maintain its high tariff of 341 yen per kilogram of imported rice while setting up special import quotas for U.S. and Australian rice totaling 78,400 tons per year.

Japan's import tariff on beef is to be cut gradually from the current 38.5%; in 16 years' time, it is to decline to 9%. But Japan will not eliminate the import tariff on beef.

Also, Japan is to remove import tariffs on all 100 main vegetables. As for fruits and fishery products, Japan is to eliminate import tariffs in principle, except on some items that would put domestic growers under tough competition from tariff-free imported products.

Japan, which already imports many industrial products duty-free, is to abolish tariffs on 95% of industrial products immediately after the TPP takes effect and on all of them eventually.

The TPP is seen greatly benefiting Japanese makers of industrial products, more than 99% of which will be allowed into the U.S. and other TPP countries tariff-free.

Mandrake

So Japan is finally losing some tariffs huh? Does that mean the TPP negotiations are done and it's signed?


I gotta be honest man, I hate the American beef. I ate so much steak, yakiniku, every kind of beef in Japan and it was cheap too. I even ate Motsu and made my own chicken wings regularly. The beef in the US has some weird smells and just dismal quality and taste.

Mandrake

I think the women's rights issues in Japan are a bit misinterpreted by the west. According to the World Economic Forum Gender Gap Report, Japan always falls dead last in rank for first world nations and gender equality. in 2015, Japan ranked 101 out of 145 countries. According to that, women in Rwanda and Mexico have more gender equality. Do you think women in the middle east and Rwanda really have it better? Of course not.


Japanese women are the number 1 most educated on that list in terms of literacy rates and college enrollments and they also have the longest life expectancy. Japan is one of the richest countries in the world and has one of the lowest crime rates in the world.


People (foreigners mostly) use statistics like low participation of women in government and few female executives to criticize Japanese men and make them look like heathen whale eating, wife beating, sake guzzling monsters. That's just not the case. You've been to a Japanese department store so you know that the first 9 floors are all women's clothes and the one dusty shop in the corner of the 10th floor is for men. Women control the money in most marriages and although they don't get the authority to decide which school their kids go to or where they live, they get to decide the family budget. So I think that although women don't participate as much in the workforce, they (the married ones) still have wealth and aren't in poverty or something.


Yeah it's not perfect. There's sexual harassment. Overall though, the society isn't broken like the US society is. Japan right now is a lot like America during the 50's as far as women's rights are. Then we had our civil rights movements and women are more miserable than ever. Crime, unemployment, drugs, alcoholism, teenage pregnancies, homelessness all of these social problems have risen. I don't think it's due to gender equality but we have to bring these social problems into the picture when we say "Japan is ranked #101 in terms of gender equality and America is ranked #21". The Viking countries are always topping the charts for these human rights but can Japan or America be like them?

sojah

iTrader: (1)

since US beef is what i was familiar with for so long i can say that real japanese wagyu and kobe is unarguably a higher quality. which is why even in the US it costs much much more money, but yeah before i ever had it i didn't know what i was missing.

as far as i had heard a few weeks back on the news the TPP thing was done and both parties were calling it a success but yet at the same time were both saying that they were not entirely satisfied with the outcome, weird... so to me that signaled that the overall point was have been to benefit someone else

sojah

iTrader: (1)

Dude yeah i definitely agree. when you put it like that it all becomes more clear... so what i often times think and see in my office place is men acting out because of a possible inferiority complex towards women. at least in my office there are a couple japanese women who are good at their jobs and are rising up through the ranks and some of the older japanese men seem like they are self conscious and paranoid of looking bad so they act weird when the women are around and talk **** about them afterwards. since our office is run by US folks at the top i think it is different and in a normal japanese office they would have surely demoted these women or put them in positions of lesser authority so to save their own positions...

i agree with you again here as well. we always seem to bring up that japan seems like the US back in the 60's in this regard... but be careful what you wish for cuz then you have a lot more problems, cough, US, cough

one thing i forgot to mention in response to your earlier post about the generators at night time and all. after 3/11 they turned off all nuclear power plants as i'm sure you are aware. well for like 4 years the country had to step back 20 years in their power generating scheme/plan and start buying fossil fuels and gas by the boat load in order to get these non nuclear power plants back online. for a few months after 3/11/11 they had timed black out periods and were even stopping baseball games after 7 innings to conserve power.

just recently they put the very first power plant back online that passed all these new super stringent regulations. there are something like 13 more in the pipeline that are pending these new inspections and another like 20 a few years behind that still in prep mode for the inspections (making upgrades and changes). so japan is still having a difficult time to supply the country with the power that it had grown to consume. i am on the fence about the whole nuclear plant issues but a lot of people want them to stay offline. so what is the alternative????

i read recently that after the nuclear went offline and even through about 6 months ago this report had japan listed as the number 1 most expensive first world country for electricity bills... not something to be proud of but it just paints the picture a little about what they were dealing with after turning off all nuclear and switching back to like 2nd gen technologies from like 4th gen...

Mandrake

One of my other capstone classes was on the nuclear energy situation. They actually turned most of the reactors back on by 2012 actually after the million man march against nuclear power. I don't know what reactor you're referring to. Even all the rest of the reactors at Fukushima have been running since 3/11 IIRC but maybe I'm mistaken.

Anyway I wrote a paper on it back in 2012 and you might find it interesting so I attached it here. One of the more interesting points is how expensive a zero nuclear energy scenario would be. Even shrinking the GDP from .5-7% because of a lack of energy and decreasing energy demands by 10%, it would cost Japan about 10% of it's GDP for one single year to hit zero percent nuclear energy by 2030. That's a massive investment and it's only covering government funds. That plan also called for national inspections of home electronics. A man would come to your home and if you didn't have an LED light bulb, you'd get a ticket. You'd have to buy new air con, a new TV, stereo, every last piece of electronics in the entire country would have to be replaced with high efficiency pieces. Yes, even your radio. This is all while somehow planning to take our energy demand from 2011 and shrink it 10% for 2030. It's economic suicide.

The other point I made is that Japan has a duty as a regional technology leader to develop safe nuclear energy. If Japan doesn't, China will continue to build dirty reactors and in the end, because of the way the winds blow, Japan would receive more radiation from a Chinese reactor melting down than China would. Japan already takes a massive amount of Chinese pollution, do we really want them making any more nuclear reactors than absolutely necessary?

sojah

iTrader: (1)

Hey man I call BS on this. not sure where you are getting your info or where you did this paper but unless this is some giant global conspiracy (therefore I would like to know where you got your info) then you are incorrect.

http://af.reuters.com/article/commod.../idAFL3N1682OD

seems that almost all were shutdown immediately following 3/11/2011 and the remaining few a couple months later. it wasn't until last summer (august) that the very first one since then came back online. presently the country has 3 of their 43 reactors online.

it very well could be that the entire populace is not being told the truth but as we know Japanese have little ability to keep secrets (and there was no state secrets bill at that in effect at that time). therefore I know someone or many someone's rather would have came forward with the truth.

sucks that japan has dipped so low in freedom of the press since 3/11/11 amongst other nations, they were doing so well before this, or at least we thought

sojah

iTrader: (1)

I'm reading your paper now, and I like your reasoning and line of thinking. I like how you mention that japan is continuously researching further safer nuclear technologies to share with the rest of the world. I was personally really hoping that after 3/11 that some Japanese company/scientist would develop a radiation proof suit or new way to clean up radiation. sadly I feel that we are still at the same point we were years ago with no ability to clean or prevent radiation.

well I am at work and only got halfway through the paper so far but I hope to finish reading it after lunch time.

Mandrake

It's not unusual to have unreliable media coverage and information about the Japanese nuclear situation. After all we were all assured that it wasn't a meltdown for the first 30 days and now it's quite obvious that it was a total meltdown. Anyways I thought they were back online years ago.

sojah

iTrader: (1)

the reactors being back on line years ago is not correct, please check this site if you haven't already done so. http://af.reuters.com/article/commod.../idAFL3N1682OD

I finished reading your paper, it was good, and brought up some interesting points. I hadn't given much thought to the tepco being a corporation and therefore limiting liability because of the shareholders and all. makes sense though.

overall I think japan will continue to do what japan wants to do, just like the states will continue to do what the states wants to do. I think freedom of the press and the ability to report on it and show the results in our daily news and media are the only way to get the truth(s) out there. once there is enough of a story out there then Gov's seem more likely to come forward and explain further, but if no one brings up these issues in the first place they will both just continue to sweep them under the rug.

I am really on the fence on the whole nuclear issue but I don't see another viable way with our present technology. BTW my brother in law is working on a construction contract presently off the coast of sendai to fortify the tsunami breakers. he is very low level and just works on a crew to place those big cement tetra pods out into the ocean. his next gig might be henoko but he is waiting to find out... fun fun fun huh

Mandrake

Yeah I think for Japan, there isn't really an option to nuclear power until after 2050 at least. It's just ironic that they were the only nation to ever have an atomic bomb used against them and they also nuked themselves afterwards.