Cheap/Free Delivery Jap. Books for overseas peeps
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Asada Mao won the silver medal at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics scoring 205.50 points behind the winner, Kim Yu-na (Yeon Ah?) who achieved 228.56. This year’s olympics in the ladies figure skating event was probably the most competitive and high level competition ever in its history. The top 5 skaters (Kim, Asada, Rochette, Nagasu, Ando) all would have had a chance to win the 2006 Olympics holding all things equal. I am usually fairly apathetic about the Winter Olympics (please get rid of or consolidate some events! *cough* short track skating, curling *cough*), but I was interested in how Asada would do partially because she was deprived of competing at Turin for BS reasons. She is obviously one of the top skaters in this generation and is devoted to getting the gold for the next Olympics. But after watching the most recent competition, I have a hard time projecting Asada to robustly outscore Kim — the biggest obstacle to gold unless the latter retires.
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 There is considerable deliberations on the international policy agreements on each countries’ magnitude of CO2 reductions to avert catastrophic consequences due to climate change. The main indicator for the allocations are based on the percentage reductions in emission rates relative to 1990. This has had a tendency to split international negotiations into developed and developing countries. The difficulty to arrive at an “equal” apportionment of greenhouse gas emissions is due to differences in four main characteristics of each country: population levels, wealth, proportional damage due to climate change and past emission levels.
A metric based on emissions rates (CO2 output / year) is largely dependent on the emission rates it is based on. The current “consensus” seems to be 1990, but tuning this number can easily result in varied emission targets even with the same percentage reduction. This gives countries leeway in fudging numbers to their advantage. Metrics based on population (pdf) can provide moral elegance in CO2 emissions share — every human being has a right for its share of carbon. But practically, a pure population approach gives low population, low wealth countries in a vulnerable spot, while the share of the low population, high wealth countries get distorted (Posner and Sunstein 2008). The urgency of the problem is underwhelming for wealthy countries, which creates a divide in what is an egalitarian emissions distribution.
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There is a revealing trend in the Japanese working population. More and more of them are looking at job opportunities overseas. This is especially true for the young (25~29 years old) (総務省「人口推計」). There are plenty of reasons of course, the economic malaise, increasing proportion of the aging population, impending collapse of the lifetime employment system, the dull economic reforms by the politicians, whatever it is, the outlook looks a little bleak. On the other hand, there seems to be an increasing number of people in the media suggesting alternatives to becoming a sarari-man — like living overseas (see here, here, here, here, here). Countries like South Korea and China have been already aggressively exporting their talent to the West (I don’t recall a day when I haven’t seen people from these two countries at my Univ.). You don’t see many Japanese undergraduates, but this could be that relatively speaking, conditions are good in Japan (only 20% of college graduates get full time jobs in South Korea). But as economic conditions worsen, inevitably, the Japanese are following in their footsteps.
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The structure of online discussions are partially determined by its platform. Whether it is through blogs, BBS, chat, email and other online platforms, the depth, dynamicity, communicability, accountability, communability and the behavior of the discussions vary. As an easy example, the presence of anonymity limits the responsibility and accountability of the communicator — diluting the constructiveness of the thought into a more emotional one. Huffington Post utilizes a thumbs up/down system to establish credibility, while DailyKos lets users post there own diaries. The ability of the latter to recommend diaries make it possible to motivate users to post entire essays on topics of interest — establishing a much higher signal to noise ratio than HuffPo (even if you fix the user base; and yes, there are obvious differences between an online press and a community blog).
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Prominent blogger/economist/journalist Ikeda Nobuo links to Scott Shane’s book that there are wrong preconceptions about America on business (池田, 2009). America tends to have an image that it is a thriving capitalist society with tons of entrepreneurs. But this is partially refuted by the self-employment rate, which is very low compared to other countries. Japan even has a higher self-employment rate than the U.S., and it is considered that many Japanese businessmen are actually “salary-men“.
Since OECD collects data on self-employment, I decided to plot it below (OECD 2009).
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Nevada Democratic Senator Harry Reid’s remarks on Obama during the presidential campaign have created a stir on some language use issues on race. Reid indicated that Obama’s campaign success was helped by being “light-skinned” and having “no Negro dialect.”
The negro -> black -> African American thingie has made many black bloggers up in arms; but I’m sure most of the demographic were apathetic. If I were described as being “oriental,” the only implication I will have towards the mentioner is that he/she lacks experience trending with a diverse group. The word gaijin offends some foreigners residing in Japan, but even with a historically negative (or at least exclusionary) use of the term, I’d verge to say that more than 90% of Japanese use the word because they are: 1. lazy (easier to say compared to the more proper three syllable word, gaikokujin), 2. haven’t thought seriously about the term, 3. don’t care. Harry Reid had no intention of disrespect — he’s just old — and uncareful.
But more importantly lost in the fray, is the implication that a minority candidate can increase their chances of winning by being less exotic. Obama was not a full black candidate nor a stereotypical black man. As Reid said, if Obama had even a darker complexion with a strong accent, would he have won the presidency? — I think it would’ve been more difficult.
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The increasingly apparent  widespread (?) use of illegal drugs in celebrity circles have fired up debate on the drug war in Japan. Most opinion seems to speak ill of the convicted with a touch of fear that more regulation may not be able to contain illegal drug use in celebrities, and worse, children. Of course there is the minority opinion that discusses either decriminalization or legalizing certain drugs. Even the most watched (conservative) political show (Takajin no Sokomade Itte Iinkai) in Japan have invited a guest from the Cannabis Control Law Reform Center to discuss these matters.
Even though the recent bout of drug scandals haven’t included marijuana in the mix (aside from sumo), it’s also the drug that has the most compelling case for legalization. Let’s take a peek at the history of marijuana regulation in Japan.
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As the saying goes:
A raw vegan foodist driving a Hummer leaves a smaller carbon footprint than a meat eating Prius driver.
This is of course because livestock contributes about 18% of the world’s CO2 — more than the CO2 generated from all transportation methods combined. Green conscious does not necessary translate to better decisions for the environment.
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 no it's not flying The Sea Shepherd folks have just announced a new boat to combat the scientific whaling ships in the Antarctic. The boat can speed up to 50 knots, and it is going to be used to disrupt Japan’s whaling ships by intervening the harpooning process. The design of the ship would make the creators of Dark Knight proud. Only thing missing are harpoon launchers to stop the whalers’ harpooning of whales.
I’m the opinion that whaling is OK if it can be taken sustainably, and because of the heavy politicization of the IWC, the ban of commercial whaling is probably a detriment to the whole process. But I’m also sympathetic to anti-whaling arguments and I will easily accept Japan to stop the lethal sampling in ICR’s scientific whaling program (JARPA) if the general populace of Japan (who should take the handle on this issue) thinks so. I also think the Sea Shepherd’s actions are very counterproductive given their aims (i.e. they are full of poop).
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I am currently reading Prof. Cacioppo’s book, “Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection“, and so far, the basic theme is that loneliness or lack of social contact can be fairly debilitating to one’s health. Human beings and pretty much all species evolved through its basic history to generally fear being alone since it is advantageous to work in social constructs. The current estimate is that half of loneliness is dictated by genes; the genes can especially influence your vulnerability to loneliness, while cultural and environmental factors have a bigger influence in dictating how you prevent and cope with loneliness. High loneliness tends to degrade social cognition (ability to understand other peoples’ feelings and to “read” the current social occasion) and executive control of your feelings. The book is fairly heavy on neurobiology with not much emphasis on culture; we already know that loneliness correlates negatively with life satisfaction; therefore, with the rising hikikomori population (or at least the diagnosis), I became interested in how high the loneliness is in Japan.
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