Today's JT included an article by a writer from the LA Times. The article refers to "the governing elite" in Japan. It's about time. The folks running the country come from the same super-rich and juiced-in families who were running things here 50 and 100 years ago. The Japan Times won't come right out and say it, though. Certainly no Japanese staff writer will come out and say it. Get the foreign writer to say it, though, and you can say it but say you didn't.
Today's Irony of Irony: The JT have yet to weigh in on the proper response, if any, of Japan to the recent demonstrations in China, specifically whether or not there should be an tie-in with the demonstrations and the Beijing Olympics.
But the JT did run a story today on a local maker of shot put. That's right. Shot put. He makes the shot puts, the little cannon balls, that shot putters heave around. The shot put maker is angry about Tibet and has told the Chinese authorities they cannot expect to use any of his shot put at the Olympics. Good for him, but I wonder what makes one shot put different from another. They are all the same size and shape and presumably made of the same materials. Do some have splinters?
The JT does not enlighten us on this.
Two controversies are now boiling over at the JT. One concerns the weather section, which has been redesigned by a village idiot, who has been commissioned by the JT to screw up what once was one of the most attractive features of the paper, although JT could never make up its mind what page to feature the weather on.
The overall attractiveness of the paper, or lack of it, will change on April 22, when the look and feel of the paper will be overhauled -- perhaps justifying the recent increase in the price of the JT. The new look of the JT has been a front page blurb in the old look and current JT for several days now.
At least they could have made the changes on April 1. Then if the changes were a flop? APRIL FOOLS!!!!d
I can't wait. And neither should you.
Showing posts with label the japan times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the japan times. Show all posts
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The Sunday Edition
Actually we get the Sunday JT on Monday because we don't live in Tokyo and the JT is too cheap and old-fashioned an outfit to have the paper printed outside Tokyo. In my home town in Georgia I can get the New York Times early edition first thing in the morning, the same morning the later editions come out in New York City. Japan is about the size of California yet can't imagine something as ambitious and consumer oriented as that, or at least the JT can't.
The best writing in today's paper is by Jack Gallagher, in his feature "Sports Scope". His first paragraph sums up the article: There is nothing sadder in sports than seeing a once-great athlete who has hung around too long. Gallagher's subject is Naoko Takahashi, the marathon runner. Gallagher takes a close look at the poor, money-driven choices that Takahashi made in her career. A good article.
Wayne Graczyk's "Baseball Bulletin" is, as always, informative and informative and informative some more.
Those are the highlights.
And now on to the bad and just plain weird.
The "Time Out" section should give itself one. Here we have a half-page article on Ultraman, written by Edan Corkill. Well, Edan. Next time leave this fluff on the JT web site and maybe, maybe give us a one-paraphrah synopsis in the hard copy JT and a link to the bigger non-story.
Felicity Hughes takes up the remaining half of the same page with a story about Cat Cafe Calico, a cat cafe (what else?) in Tokyo (where else?). Cat cafe. Nuff said. But Felicity, how about telling us where the cafe is. You know, like an address? Or web site?
The JT jump on the Metabolic Syndrome bandwagon with a story by Tomoko Otake. The most interesting fact? That the whole concept of MS is so lame, so lazy, and the definition so narrow that have of the 56 million Japanese over 40 would be considered "abnormal"!!!! So of course the old men who run Japan are requiring all Japanese to line up and be "tested" and measured for MS. Projection: In a year no one will remember what Metabolic Syndrome is unless a Eurotrash band comes out with that as a name.
March is St. Patrick's month so Roger Pulvers lathers on the Things Irish in his "Counterpoint" column. His final paragraph illustrates the yawn factor of this story: What will come to symbolize Irishness in the 21st century? That is the question I will address here next week.
You go right ahead, Rog. I'm sure Japan just can't wait to find out what will symbolize Irishness over the next 92 years.
The "Media" section is stronger than usual but as usual can't stay away from tales of free sex and shinanigans in Mark Shreiber's piece about (again, what else?) costume play in Tokyo. Geek culture. Somehow I think there might be a little bit more JT could say about Japanese culture, but that would require some real reporting, so............
Beoff Botting's story on Kazumi Nishio is sad. His main point seems to be that the dominatrix comedian is not dumb. She's a graduate of Aoyama Gakuin. And George H. Bush went to Harvard. Nishio is sure to go the way of Laser Raymond, or however he spelled his name.
The "Book Review" page consists of four stories: two by JT contributors and one each from Newsday and The Observer. We'll ignore those last two. Jeff Kingston reviews Justin Wintle's Perfect Hostage, about Aung San Suu Kyi, but Kingston tells us a lot about the subject and absolutely nothing, not a sentence, about the book. Good job, Jeff! Nothing like staying on subject. Donald Ritchie selects a book about Japanese poetry to write about and as usual he cannot resist name dropping and the little tidbits that show him to be the "insider" he so desperately needs to be. But he does manage to control himself right up until the last paragraph, when he writes "I am told that.....Princess Aiko is memorizing the 100 poems."
Notice that Donny didn't hear this. No, someone told him! Oooh!
The On The Road contribution by Peter Lyons is excellent. Many of Japan's auto innovations in engineering and styling are never seen on the roads here and Lyons tells us why. Nice job.
The best writing in today's paper is by Jack Gallagher, in his feature "Sports Scope". His first paragraph sums up the article: There is nothing sadder in sports than seeing a once-great athlete who has hung around too long. Gallagher's subject is Naoko Takahashi, the marathon runner. Gallagher takes a close look at the poor, money-driven choices that Takahashi made in her career. A good article.
Wayne Graczyk's "Baseball Bulletin" is, as always, informative and informative and informative some more.
Those are the highlights.
And now on to the bad and just plain weird.
The "Time Out" section should give itself one. Here we have a half-page article on Ultraman, written by Edan Corkill. Well, Edan. Next time leave this fluff on the JT web site and maybe, maybe give us a one-paraphrah synopsis in the hard copy JT and a link to the bigger non-story.
Felicity Hughes takes up the remaining half of the same page with a story about Cat Cafe Calico, a cat cafe (what else?) in Tokyo (where else?). Cat cafe. Nuff said. But Felicity, how about telling us where the cafe is. You know, like an address? Or web site?
The JT jump on the Metabolic Syndrome bandwagon with a story by Tomoko Otake. The most interesting fact? That the whole concept of MS is so lame, so lazy, and the definition so narrow that have of the 56 million Japanese over 40 would be considered "abnormal"!!!! So of course the old men who run Japan are requiring all Japanese to line up and be "tested" and measured for MS. Projection: In a year no one will remember what Metabolic Syndrome is unless a Eurotrash band comes out with that as a name.
March is St. Patrick's month so Roger Pulvers lathers on the Things Irish in his "Counterpoint" column. His final paragraph illustrates the yawn factor of this story: What will come to symbolize Irishness in the 21st century? That is the question I will address here next week.
You go right ahead, Rog. I'm sure Japan just can't wait to find out what will symbolize Irishness over the next 92 years.
The "Media" section is stronger than usual but as usual can't stay away from tales of free sex and shinanigans in Mark Shreiber's piece about (again, what else?) costume play in Tokyo. Geek culture. Somehow I think there might be a little bit more JT could say about Japanese culture, but that would require some real reporting, so............
Beoff Botting's story on Kazumi Nishio is sad. His main point seems to be that the dominatrix comedian is not dumb. She's a graduate of Aoyama Gakuin. And George H. Bush went to Harvard. Nishio is sure to go the way of Laser Raymond, or however he spelled his name.
The "Book Review" page consists of four stories: two by JT contributors and one each from Newsday and The Observer. We'll ignore those last two. Jeff Kingston reviews Justin Wintle's Perfect Hostage, about Aung San Suu Kyi, but Kingston tells us a lot about the subject and absolutely nothing, not a sentence, about the book. Good job, Jeff! Nothing like staying on subject. Donald Ritchie selects a book about Japanese poetry to write about and as usual he cannot resist name dropping and the little tidbits that show him to be the "insider" he so desperately needs to be. But he does manage to control himself right up until the last paragraph, when he writes "I am told that.....Princess Aiko is memorizing the 100 poems."
Notice that Donny didn't hear this. No, someone told him! Oooh!
The On The Road contribution by Peter Lyons is excellent. Many of Japan's auto innovations in engineering and styling are never seen on the roads here and Lyons tells us why. Nice job.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
JT for ADD Sufferers
The Japan Times thinks its readers suffer from attention deficit disorder for this is the third time in a week or so that JT has run a story that insists there is no big deal to Ichiro's hitless streak in the pre-season.
Each story is longer than the previous one.
A good motto for the JT: More to say about nothing at all!
The Readers in Council section today is not nearly as bad as it generally is. Ko Unoki says, rightly, that the average Japanese "citizen is by and large....quite hospitable to immigrants as indicated by the increasing number of international marriages". I agree that the average Japanese person is very hospitable but unfortunately the country is run by below average Japanese.....and the argument about international marriages doesn't hold up. Some statistics about international marriages are in order.
Peter Stevenson blasts those who, like himself, write letters to The Japan Times. He's fed up with the anti-Japanese sentiments that have been expressed in the last several months over the fingerprinting and photographing of foreigners as they enter Japan through its airports. His argument is, "The US does it; why not Japan?" Well, yes! The Let's Be Lemmings argument. A good one, and incidentally one that Stevenson levels at those he is criticizing.
But I agree with Stevenson, basically. What I don't get is why foreigners are finger-printed and photographed every time they enter the country, even permanent residents.
Paul Cassity is upset at the creation of a special panel to investigate US military-linked crimes in Okinawa. He makes a good argument but JT should have edited his letter. His basic point of "why the US military-linked crimes and not crimes by Japanese, since they commit the vast majority of crimes in Okinawa and elsewhere in the country"?
Darryl McGarry's letter might have made more sense if JT had no edited out the meat of it. I can make neither hide nor hair of what McGarry's point might be.
Eric Luong blasts an earlier contribution to Readers in Council by the prolific Grant Piper. Piper make the bold statement that food is not important, and a week or so ago he made exactly the same statement about sports. Poor Piper. I wonder what peters him out if it's not food or sports.
But no section of Readers in Council can ever be consistently bad or good or anything else. The section wraps up with a contribution from Greg Garrison who apparently stays awake at night because women want to earn more relative to men. Garrison, no economist, argues that money that goes to pay women more is taken from men, who then earn less, who then can't support their families, which then forces women to work more to augment the family income, which leads to divorce and victimized children!
And Garrison has a thing about lemmings, too. His final paragraph begins, "As far as other countries are concerned, why follow them all off the cliff? Just take a look at family health in the United States. Is this what women want?"
Poor Greg. Still fretting over what women want. He should make like Mel Gibson and just go have a drink, but leave the ranting at the bar or in the car, Greg.
Or he could re-think his argument about health care by reading the news from the JT from the day before about the 24,089 cases of Japanese patients being turned away from hospitals more than three times before being hospitalized.
Each story is longer than the previous one.
A good motto for the JT: More to say about nothing at all!
The Readers in Council section today is not nearly as bad as it generally is. Ko Unoki says, rightly, that the average Japanese "citizen is by and large....quite hospitable to immigrants as indicated by the increasing number of international marriages". I agree that the average Japanese person is very hospitable but unfortunately the country is run by below average Japanese.....and the argument about international marriages doesn't hold up. Some statistics about international marriages are in order.
Peter Stevenson blasts those who, like himself, write letters to The Japan Times. He's fed up with the anti-Japanese sentiments that have been expressed in the last several months over the fingerprinting and photographing of foreigners as they enter Japan through its airports. His argument is, "The US does it; why not Japan?" Well, yes! The Let's Be Lemmings argument. A good one, and incidentally one that Stevenson levels at those he is criticizing.
But I agree with Stevenson, basically. What I don't get is why foreigners are finger-printed and photographed every time they enter the country, even permanent residents.
Paul Cassity is upset at the creation of a special panel to investigate US military-linked crimes in Okinawa. He makes a good argument but JT should have edited his letter. His basic point of "why the US military-linked crimes and not crimes by Japanese, since they commit the vast majority of crimes in Okinawa and elsewhere in the country"?
Darryl McGarry's letter might have made more sense if JT had no edited out the meat of it. I can make neither hide nor hair of what McGarry's point might be.
Eric Luong blasts an earlier contribution to Readers in Council by the prolific Grant Piper. Piper make the bold statement that food is not important, and a week or so ago he made exactly the same statement about sports. Poor Piper. I wonder what peters him out if it's not food or sports.
But no section of Readers in Council can ever be consistently bad or good or anything else. The section wraps up with a contribution from Greg Garrison who apparently stays awake at night because women want to earn more relative to men. Garrison, no economist, argues that money that goes to pay women more is taken from men, who then earn less, who then can't support their families, which then forces women to work more to augment the family income, which leads to divorce and victimized children!
And Garrison has a thing about lemmings, too. His final paragraph begins, "As far as other countries are concerned, why follow them all off the cliff? Just take a look at family health in the United States. Is this what women want?"
Poor Greg. Still fretting over what women want. He should make like Mel Gibson and just go have a drink, but leave the ranting at the bar or in the car, Greg.
Or he could re-think his argument about health care by reading the news from the JT from the day before about the 24,089 cases of Japanese patients being turned away from hospitals more than three times before being hospitalized.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Spring in Niigata
A surprisingly strong effort from the JT this morning.
Ads for Girl Friday, Temple University and an accounting firm on page one, along with five major stories and three color pictures, the smallest of which shows the Serbian Prime Minister leaving a news conference. Not much photo value in that.
On the back page we have a half-page ad for Niigata Prefecture and the spring that is just around the corner, or so says the ad. Kind of hard to see spring through the four feet of snow still on the ground in some areas of Niigata-ken, according to the Japan Meterological Agency weather web site.
Hardly any Japan content in today's paper beyond the six stories on page 2. I could do without the "Kammon tunnel marks 50th anniversary", if only because I can't see the tunnel itself marking anything beyond a hole in the ground.
Nova is still very much in the news, as part of the story about the foreign workers who rallied in Shibuya yesterday. The first paragraph of this story is very revealing: "Foreign workers staged a rally in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, on Sunday as part of their annual spring labor offensive, calling for proper and equal treatment on par with Japanese working conditions."
I guess the foreign workers have been calling for equal treatment for some time. Nothing surprising there but I would be surprised if they ever got it. I would appreciate some editorial comment from the JT on this issue, at some time. Hey! How about next year?
Lots of job postings today and the section starts with "Eastern Japan" and ends with "Western Japan and Overseas", only two sections. I wonder where Northern and Southern Japan are?
No subtlety at all in JT's choice of lead story for the Perspective pages, with stories from the Washington Past and the LA Times. The lead story is about beauty contest contestants who skin dead muskrats as part of the talent competition to win the title of Miss Outdoors. Japanese kill whales and American women skin large river rats. It's nice to have a balance in life.
The we have two whole pages (almost) dedicated to serviced apartments, something that Gregory Clark weighs in on in his editorial deeper in the paper. I say almost because the heading on the second page is "Serviced Apartment Special/World", the two world stories being about private-eyes and the use of police force in LA. Small world.
The lead story in the News Analysis/Topics section is about Prince Harry and there is hardly any analysis and little substance to the topic, with a huge "who cares?" factor. And the picture is laughable -- a quarter page shot of Harry completely disguised in a helmet, ski goggles and a scarf. It might be Harry. It might be Keith Richards. How would we know?
One the same page is a good, solid story by JT staff writer Takashi Kitazume and I wish we could see more staff-written articles in the JT. The story reports on a speech given on February 25 by Thomas E. Mann, who is a US election specialist. It's a bit after-the-fact to be reporting on the speech this late in March but Kitazume focuses on what is still true, i.e., that the US has not elected a democratic candidate yet, much less a president, and so the story remains timely.
Now to Gregory Clarke's piece in the opinion pages, entitled "Mistaken economic policies", which is kind of redundant as Clarke "seems" to feel, rightly, that currently there are no "correct economic policies" being carried out in the US and Japan. Clarke makes a first-year journalism major mistake of beginning his piece with "seems" as in, "Tokyo seems to have difficulties in handling economic problems." But other than that Clarke's piece is a fine one and he makes the very important point that it is difficult to increase consumer spending in Japan because many consumers have everything they want and/or can afford and don't have the interest or the money or the space for new purchases.
Clarke lays a lot of the blame for Japan's economic woes on the old men who run the place, the same men who want to spur demand by passing laws that make it easier for them, not the rest of us, to buy yachts and luxury apartments and houses.
Aside: The movie No Country for Old Men is called simply No Country in Japan. No Country in English -- no Japanese translation or title. "No Country" makes absolutely no sense in terms of the movie itself but you don't have to give yourself a headache wondering why it was changed, because this country IS an old country for old men, but not much for anyone else!
Strong sports writing today, as usual, with a Sports Scope story from Jason Coskfrey, but with a weak ending paragraph that says that if the players and coaches he has written about do in fact succeed at their jobs and can work together then that "could make all the difference". Small point.
Message to the JT: Please keep the weather section on the back page and don't make us have to look for it!
Ads for Girl Friday, Temple University and an accounting firm on page one, along with five major stories and three color pictures, the smallest of which shows the Serbian Prime Minister leaving a news conference. Not much photo value in that.
On the back page we have a half-page ad for Niigata Prefecture and the spring that is just around the corner, or so says the ad. Kind of hard to see spring through the four feet of snow still on the ground in some areas of Niigata-ken, according to the Japan Meterological Agency weather web site.
Hardly any Japan content in today's paper beyond the six stories on page 2. I could do without the "Kammon tunnel marks 50th anniversary", if only because I can't see the tunnel itself marking anything beyond a hole in the ground.
Nova is still very much in the news, as part of the story about the foreign workers who rallied in Shibuya yesterday. The first paragraph of this story is very revealing: "Foreign workers staged a rally in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, on Sunday as part of their annual spring labor offensive, calling for proper and equal treatment on par with Japanese working conditions."
I guess the foreign workers have been calling for equal treatment for some time. Nothing surprising there but I would be surprised if they ever got it. I would appreciate some editorial comment from the JT on this issue, at some time. Hey! How about next year?
Lots of job postings today and the section starts with "Eastern Japan" and ends with "Western Japan and Overseas", only two sections. I wonder where Northern and Southern Japan are?
No subtlety at all in JT's choice of lead story for the Perspective pages, with stories from the Washington Past and the LA Times. The lead story is about beauty contest contestants who skin dead muskrats as part of the talent competition to win the title of Miss Outdoors. Japanese kill whales and American women skin large river rats. It's nice to have a balance in life.
The we have two whole pages (almost) dedicated to serviced apartments, something that Gregory Clark weighs in on in his editorial deeper in the paper. I say almost because the heading on the second page is "Serviced Apartment Special/World", the two world stories being about private-eyes and the use of police force in LA. Small world.
The lead story in the News Analysis/Topics section is about Prince Harry and there is hardly any analysis and little substance to the topic, with a huge "who cares?" factor. And the picture is laughable -- a quarter page shot of Harry completely disguised in a helmet, ski goggles and a scarf. It might be Harry. It might be Keith Richards. How would we know?
One the same page is a good, solid story by JT staff writer Takashi Kitazume and I wish we could see more staff-written articles in the JT. The story reports on a speech given on February 25 by Thomas E. Mann, who is a US election specialist. It's a bit after-the-fact to be reporting on the speech this late in March but Kitazume focuses on what is still true, i.e., that the US has not elected a democratic candidate yet, much less a president, and so the story remains timely.
Now to Gregory Clarke's piece in the opinion pages, entitled "Mistaken economic policies", which is kind of redundant as Clarke "seems" to feel, rightly, that currently there are no "correct economic policies" being carried out in the US and Japan. Clarke makes a first-year journalism major mistake of beginning his piece with "seems" as in, "Tokyo seems to have difficulties in handling economic problems." But other than that Clarke's piece is a fine one and he makes the very important point that it is difficult to increase consumer spending in Japan because many consumers have everything they want and/or can afford and don't have the interest or the money or the space for new purchases.
Clarke lays a lot of the blame for Japan's economic woes on the old men who run the place, the same men who want to spur demand by passing laws that make it easier for them, not the rest of us, to buy yachts and luxury apartments and houses.
Aside: The movie No Country for Old Men is called simply No Country in Japan. No Country in English -- no Japanese translation or title. "No Country" makes absolutely no sense in terms of the movie itself but you don't have to give yourself a headache wondering why it was changed, because this country IS an old country for old men, but not much for anyone else!
Strong sports writing today, as usual, with a Sports Scope story from Jason Coskfrey, but with a weak ending paragraph that says that if the players and coaches he has written about do in fact succeed at their jobs and can work together then that "could make all the difference". Small point.
Message to the JT: Please keep the weather section on the back page and don't make us have to look for it!
Sunday, March 9, 2008
There's something missing here....
To give you an idea of the content that passes for logical argument in JT, take a look at what the national news editor for the paper, Sayuri Daimon, had to say about the readership of the paper:
"...about 63% of our readers are non-Japanese and thus do not share the same common view of Japanese."
Whoo-hoo! How's about lumping together all non-Japanese first and Japanese second, then not defining what those uncommonly shared views are, just taking it as a given that they are not shared and so stating directly that common Japanese views are not found in the JT.
Well, I hope they are not found with Daimon-san, either!
But things get weirder. Daimon goes on to list four reasons for the JT to exist. The fourth reason is "to chronicle history.......We hope to portray the various arguments about the war."
How is that for just being plain confused? Are we to imagine that by "portraying" the various arguments about the war that the historical record of the way will change?
It's scary, but that could be exactly what the JT has in mind.
"...about 63% of our readers are non-Japanese and thus do not share the same common view of Japanese."
Whoo-hoo! How's about lumping together all non-Japanese first and Japanese second, then not defining what those uncommonly shared views are, just taking it as a given that they are not shared and so stating directly that common Japanese views are not found in the JT.
Well, I hope they are not found with Daimon-san, either!
But things get weirder. Daimon goes on to list four reasons for the JT to exist. The fourth reason is "to chronicle history.......We hope to portray the various arguments about the war."
How is that for just being plain confused? Are we to imagine that by "portraying" the various arguments about the war that the historical record of the way will change?
It's scary, but that could be exactly what the JT has in mind.
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