53 posts tagged “news”

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Tokyo Hostess Labor Union

No, it's not the title of the next Chuck Palahniuk novel. This is for real. Someone is putting together a labor union, serious, legit, workers-be-united type thing. For the hostesses working in Tokyo, to solve problems such as unpaid salaries and sexual harassment. I am not making this up.

First thing comes to my mind is, they would have to start with defining exactly what type of employment it is (this changes what type of legal regulation will be applied). Are they directly employed by the club? If so, the club is legally required to provide health benefits and paid holidays. If they are freelancers, the club cannot bind them exclusive to one club. (Wait, is a club incorporated in the first place? It's probably owned by some dummy company)
Also, the management in this case is not your average square type characters; raise a hand if you think hostess clubs are run by square, honest, tax-paying, law-abiding citizens with no affiliation whatsoever with Yakuza (or a front company / individual working for Yakuza). I wouldn't try to sue these people for sexual harassment because some customers just kept saying obnoxious things. They wouldn't want the money flow too clear to outsiders (the whole thing would go down in public if there ever is a lawsuit; tax authorities would love to be on the hearing seat)
Which leads to another question- unlike day-time office environment, there has to be a different set of criterea for what constitues as verbal sexual harassment, because, you know, you could argue that the whole business is about those men letting out what they can't say in today's office (or at their home). Read WH's blog for a while. A guy talks about his impotence in his office to female co-workers? He could get sued. Should the same criterea apply in hostess club environment??

Interesting story, but I don't think it would catch on.

 

2 comments Tags: tokyo, japan, news, legal issues, hostess, hostess club

Oil exporters considering to stop using USD

If you happen to frequent business-oriented news sites like Reuters or The Wall Street Journal, you may have come across this article; some middle eastern countries (I suspect they wanted to say OPEC) are considering to stop using American dollars for their oil export transactions. They want to introduce some sort of currency basket and, according to the article, they are already in secret negotiations with central banks from EU, Japan, China and Russia.

Some American "experts" immediately fired off comments saying there are all kinds of technical difficulties for them to implement such move; but you know, technical difficulties are not the essential problem, those are the stuff they can hire experts to figure out if they have really made the decision to ditch USD.

I'm no currency expert (therefore you shouldn't rely on this post to make any kind of investment decisions), but even the fact that the news like this comes up is another sign of the slow decline of the American dollars as the world's de facto standard currency. It's not like it will go down the drain overnight, but a decade from now, it's probably not enjoying the position it is enjoying today. (You may want to read Fareed Zakaria's fascinating book called "Post-American World". He basically says that, while the U.S. succeeded in globalizing the world, it has failed to globalize itself.)

According to this certain study, in 2050 the world's biggest economy will be China, with the U.S. as No.2.  And where Japan would be? No. 8. Surpassed by Brazil, Russia, and India. You know, there was this article on News Week that really struck me, comparing Japan in Asia to Austria in Europe; it said, like Austria, Japan will most like follow the path of slow decay and decline, once powerful and important, now living on memory and nostalgia, so to speak. You could say this view is now the basis of how I see Japan as the country and where the Japanese society is going in general.

2 comments Tags: japan, oil, news, economy, dollar

9.15

Man, it's only a year since Lehman meltdown!? Really?? 


Hard to believe. Things have completely changed since then.

Post a comment Tags: news, lehman brothers, investment banks, 9.15

American Dark Age

A friend just came back from New York. I asked her how things were like, with all the recession and other cheerful news coming from over there.


She just said, "America has entered into the Dark Age!"

But apparently there was a silver lining to the arrival of American Dark Age, namely all kinds of designer shops doing ridiculous sale and many things getting super cheap. (If you really think about it, this is not such a good news, but at least it was a good news for her:-)

Japan's not doing that fine either, but Japan has pretty much been in its own Dark Age for more than a decade:-) So I guess we have been better adjusted to it; must be hard for the American people, until the first half of 2008 things were looking pretty normal. 2008 for them must be like 1991 for us Japanese.

2 comments Tags: new york, japan, news, america, economy, dark age

Regime Change

Man, thought I was going to write about the special kind of humanitarian operation I have conducted last Friday, but DPJ winning over LDP on last Sunday's national election in Japan is so big my attention is diverted to those news reports- and all the guessing-game as to what's going to happen next.


Japan watchers out there have access to better- written articles so I won't repeat stuff already written; LDP has (almost) never lost its position as the ruling party, which means the incoming DPJ won't have a clue how to run the show- I would predict there would be a lot of false starts and some screwups in the first 6 to 12 months, but that's the necessary process for Japanese two party system to start really functioning (more interesting would be, how LDP would handle their historical defeat and where would they be when DPJ finally will get the hang of it ??)

Funny thing about the Japanese conservatives (who mostly hate America) is, what they are today has been shaped by the US. Japan may never have had its Self-Defense Force unless Korean War broke out in 1950 and the U.S. occupying force decided they needed some local muscle for help. The U.S. also helped LDP connect with Yakuza families (so they would fight- and suppress- socialistic movement that was pretty huge in postwar Japan) and (allegedly) supplied covert fund and other help to keep LDP in power. (Read "Embracing Defeat" and "Tokyo Underground" for more on this)

I don't really think everything will change drastically in the beginning, but if they manage to better handle things, change might start to take shape in 2-3 years from now.

Post a comment Tags: politics, japan, news

16.5% !?!?

This professor from some business school in NYC is writing an article in a Japanese business magazine, in which he basically says that if you count part-timers and those who just gave up on looking for jobs, the "real" unemployment rate in the U.S. is 16.5% already.


... No wonder my email account is getting bombarded by all those spam mails. Meh.

5 comments Tags: business, news

Election day

Today I went to vote. This is for the election of Tokyo Metropolitan Government Congress. This is a big deal because, although it in itself is for the local government, it is viewed as kind of a pre-battle before the national election, which could happen anytime. (Japanese Prime Minister can disband the Diet any time, and for some reason, every single one of them wants to use this power. There was only one time the Diet served its full term. It's almost seen as duty, not privilege, to do the disbanding to the best advantage of LDP [Liberal Democratic Party].)


Ever since I got old enough to cast my vote, I made sure I exercise this right every time I could. I strongly believe it's very important for everyone to do so if you are living under a democratic  government system.
See, if there are 100 people who can vote, and 50 people actually cast their vote, and one candidate won by getting 30 votes, did s/he really get the "majority of the voting public"? After all, 70 out of 100 people didn't vote for her/him. 

Besides, young Japanese people should really go and cast their vote; Demographically, young people are already a minority compared to over 60s population. On top of that, very few young people go to polling station, where elderly citizens are more likely to cast their vote. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that everything (from taxation, allocation of public welfare, etc.) goes favorable for the elders, and at the cost of the young (or the generations not yet born).

If you have been watching what's happening in Japanese politics, you'd know that LDP is losing support fast. Japan after WWII has practically been "one-party state" under supposedly democratic constitution (this system of LDP having all the power and political muscle, was actually helped by the U.S. to come into place. check out books like "Tokyo Underworld" or "Embracing Defeat" for details)- some call Japan "the most successful communist nation ever":-)
Current Prime Minister claims to exercise above-mentioned disbanding right, but he's losing political muscle to do that; they know they'd lose in the next election. About time.


1 comment Tags: politics, japan, news, election, democracy

Yearning to be a housewife/ The rise of "Marriage Hunting"

or yearning to be a stay-at-home mom, or whatever is the current correct expression. According to a recent survey, majority of female university students in Japan expressed their 'most desirable future' is to be a housewife. That's right, not working, not being independent, they want to discard the whole thing. About 25% said they would want to work for a while, get get married and 'settle down' (thus ending up as a housewife/stay-at-home mum). Only 25% said they would want to keep working and maintain their professional career.


Until like 20 years ago, housewife was not something Japanese women chose to be, but forced to be. If you would start working for a company, you would be wearing ridiculous uniforms and do secretarial work. You'd marry someone from the office (or through other means) and subsequently quit your job to, as a Japanese expression goes, 'enter into the [or his] house'. Sometimes, a boss brokered such marriage for some of his underlings with bright future. (See, it was pretty much a must for a guy to be married and have a child to rise above certain position; you have a wife at home so you can work late without worrying about housekeeping and stuff, and you have a child so you'd be more loyal to the Company) For women to keep working and be independent, for most cases, was just not the option. I'm not saying it was right, but it was just the way it was.

Looking back, this system worked because job security for Japanese men were pretty solid. (in fact, once you got yourself a job in a fairly large company, you never really worried about getting fired. They might send you to some godforsaken place, force you to work 16 hours everyday, but layoff was just not happening.) Back then the focus was on the lack of option for women, but no one really thought the whole thing worked because men could (mostly) earn enough, earn steadily for his family (most importantly, single-handedly).
Of course, the job security thing is pretty much thrown out of the window. Sure, you don't get the good news as easily as you could in the U.S., but compared to the old days before the burst of Bubble Economy, that's one factor everyone would give a serious thought on when thinking about, you know, future and stuff.

Another aspect is many of the working, independent Japanese women in their 30s and 40s are not happy, and not providing positive role-models. Many of them are downright unhappy for having to work long hours, their partner/husband not being very helpful with household chores (or inability to find one because they are too busy), and how hard it is to raise a child partly because of fecked up support system out there (Japanese social welfare for child-raising is designed with working-pops and stay-at-home moms in mind, and hasn't really been updated) and partly because said support from the husband side isn't exactly ideal. 

So there's this new trend, "marriage hunting" (the term is coined after the Japanese word for "job hunting"), which is pretty much about women trying to score and secure a single guy with a stable (at least seemingly so) and well-paid position/ profession. However, there are only 3.5% of single Japanese men between age 25-35 who earn more than 6 million yen (about 60,000 USD) per year, whereas more than 60% of single Japanese women expect that much of income from her prospective husband. Go figure. Good luck ladies.

On the other hand, many Japanese men are shying away from the whole business- about 25% of men in their 20s haven't been with a girlfriend for more than a year- and are becoming really shy. They won't call up a girl or ask one out unless they really know the girl would respond positively or would agree. (Even better, many would hope the girl would take the initiative thereby freeing them from, you know, making decisions and taking the lead and stuff)

Politicians and many other "specialists" are trying to figure out how to stop this diminishing number of newborns, but the thing is actually pretty simple; people are not even getting married in the first place, because of the economic insecurity. And even for the married couples, the support system is just not what they expect. (more than 70% of Japan's welfare budget goes to things that support elderly citizens. They tend to go to vote more often, you know.)

So. In today's Japan, the whole thing sort of came full-circle; the feminism movement fought so hard to liberate women from this prison called housewife-ing, but now, it's something that modern women crave for. And statistically speaking, it won't happen for many of them.

8 comments Tags: women, marriage, japan, news, men, current affairs

So what are they hiding?

I'm sure that many of you out there are with me; I have no doubt whatsoever that what they are telling us about this recent Swine Flu outbreak is only the tip of an iceberg.


Come on, we have all the educational material we need (such as panic movies, disaster movies, horror movies, bio-terror panic disaster movies, Resident Evil, X-Files, you name it). Governments are hiding stuff. Horrible truth they don't want us to know about. There must be secret camps and black ops facilities set up in underground nuke shelters, decommissioned subway tunnels and such. There must be full of "specialists" totally devoid of facial expressions, wearing Hazmat suit and carrying scary looking metallic crap, telling you what they'd be doing is "all for your own safety", deployed in those places. There must be boneheaded military people to "escort people to safe places". And somewhere up on some unremarkable government building, some suits with bad haircut would be deciding how many of us they need to "terminate" to bury the truth once and for all.

So we need to get one step ahead of them. I'd have to get hold of Otacon and get the word out so Snake could help us beat Them. Do watch your back, people.

4 comments Tags: movies, virus, news, biohazard, resident evil, horror film

GPS

I wasn't even planning to, but on Sunday nights I often find myself watching this CNN program called GPS, hosted by Fareed Zakaria. It's like more intellectual version of Larry King Live. Not that Larry King is dumb, but you know, sometimes the guests to his program are, well, some supposedly famous people who apparently have tendency to open their mouth before thoughts occur (if at all). True, Larry King Live has to run daily so I guess it can't be helped...

On GPS you get economists, experts on international relations and such as guests, and I find the discussion quite intriguing. 

2 comments Tags: tv, television, cnn, news