Category: Japanese Society/Culture

Nikkeis from South America paid to leave Japan (and not come back to work ever again)

I’ve really been out of the loop, but this was a really interesting read: Japan Pays Foreign Workers to Go Home
Even though the dumbass running the program can’t keep his racist views in check, I basically can’t see how having this choice is a completely bad thing. Sure, it’s insulting if you want to think of it like that, but hell – I know a lot of people who have needed to beg, borrow, or steal money to buy a ticket home when everything went wrong. And pride is a luxury for practical people.

Himiko’s Punch Perm (aka Pimiko’s Punch Perm – PPP)

As in, they have reconfirmed Himiko’s tomb as the kofun (burial mound) in Sakurai that T and Adam and I walked around on the way past Miwa Jinja on a cold drizzly day a few years back. You see, this is important because the location of the Yamato kingdom has always been disputed by tourist money-deficient Kyushans who just can’t accept the fact that Nara always has been and always will be the one, the only, the Kingdom of Heavenlike Yamato, biiiiotches.
What Kyushu is lacking in ancient bronze mirrors from China (burial mound evidence), however, it makes up for in cultural value.
So let that be a lesson to you – Nara has all the dope ancient shit and Kyushu has much better hairstylists (we know firsthand since we [as in, most of Cosmic Buddha plus friends and family] were in a commercial for one in Saga ten years ago..).
That is all.

The Road Warrior would be really happy in post-apocalyptic Japan (because he wouldn’t have to worry about tolls/gas/speeding tickets)

There’s an excellent article up at the Japan Times that explains some of the reasons why even though the government used to subsidize half of the toll for the bridge to the mainland I used every weekend when living on Awajishima, I still had to pay 2600 yen (one way!): Japan’s many roads to ruin

“The results have been a disaster. Certainly, Japan has a lot of roads: four to five times the number of any other Group of Seven country when measured by kilometers of road to usable land. The trouble is, a lot of these roads are in places where they are not needed. The country has an impressive network of toll roads that will never be profitable. It has expressways that connect industrial parks to ports and airports that industries do not want to use, and monumental bridges that suck people and money out of rural towns rather than reviving them. Yet despite decades worth of road and other infrastructure projects, projects that people actually need remain undone: In 2007 the government identified 110,000 km of roads where there was a high risk of accidents because, for example, children used them to walk to school (including 40,000 km of streets lacking separated sidewalks!). Adding sidewalks to streets used by small children simply doesn’t fit the agenda of the road tribes as well as a four-lane expressway to nowhere does.
The cost of all this has also been disastrous. Thanks in part to road-building costs 10 to 30 times higher than in other countries, Japan has the most expensive toll roads in the world, some of the highest vehicle acquisition costs, and a national debt almost double the country’s GDP, the servicing of which consumes about a quarter of the annual budget. Japan’s four principal road corporations stagger under an additional ¥40 trillion in debt that is guaranteed by the government.”

I still have some really crazy road stories from Japan, and I may eventually share them. Some of them may be future editions of Osaka Stories.