Author: Joe Jones

The Onion’s retarded anarcho-encyclopedic sister

If you’re bored with facts, you should visit Uncyclopedia, a no-holds-barred parody of Wikipedia that ranges from hilarious to downright bizarre. Here is an excerpt from its most excellent entry on Japan:

Lying on a fault line located on the shell of a huge turtle, Japan is vulnerable to many natural disasters, up to and including earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, tornadoes, avalanches and capitalism. The current capital city, Takeshi’s Castle, has been destroyed and rebuilt by giant robots no less than 3 times. In addition, because Japan is a nation full of sinners, they are also subject to a bevy of non-fault line related disasters, such as Crustacean Based Monster Attacks, meteorites, and bad dramas. God has also blighted the Japanese populace with reduced height and breast size, as per the Pope’s request (the incident arose when former Japanese Prime Number Junichiro Koizumi mistakenly ejaculated on the Virgin Mary. See also: Sticky Mary Debacle).

Just about any topic worthy of jokes has been written up. Check out:

ANA’s president talks about the future of Japanese air travel

And it looks good for the rest of us, because he speaks of cheaper domestic and international flights out of Haneda. Which means that people in Tokyo can save a few hundred bucks on their airfares, plus the money and time it takes to get to Narita.

“We think we will see low-cost carriers in Haneda in 2009,” President and CEO Mineo Yamamoto told journalists in Tokyo last month at an event organized by Star Alliance. Speaking through a translator, he noted that current plans call for the number of operational slots at the airport to increase by 40% vis-a-vis the current level to 407,000 annually.

ANA accepts that it will lose some travelers to budget carriers but intends to maintain focus on higher-yield passengers. However, this may not be possible. “What we are most afraid of,” Yamamoto explained, is that Japan Airlines “will follow the strategy of LCCs like Skymark and enter the low-fare quagmire.” He said ANA is studying launching a domestic low-fare airline, although it appeared from his remarks that this more likely would be a countermeasure.

The carrier also is concerned that Tiger Airways or another Southeast Asian LCC will be given slots at Haneda to operate discount flights in Asia. ANA is evaluating using Air Japan, its leisure/holiday airline, to counter this threat. In this case, it would look at opening a base in Bangkok or Singapore staffed with foreign cockpit and cabin crews. In spite of the concern over LCCs, Yamamoto told ATWOnline that ANA is asking the Japanese government to double the number of new slots dedicated to international operations at Haneda from 30,000 to 60,000 annually.

In related news, the BIG CHANGE NAA took place earlier this month, in which the South Wing of Terminal 1 opened up for ANA, United and the other Star Alliance airlines. (The ads for it, with a girl deplaning from a hot pink Learjet followed by a badly-rendered Colonel Sanders-ish porter carrying her shopping bags, seem to personify all that is fecked up about Japan to me, but anyway.) The reshuffles will continue later this year when American, BA and the other oneworld airlines move to Terminal 2. Hopefully Keisei will use this as an excuse to change those old and busted seats on the Skyliner.

NHK goons about to get leaner and meaner

It won’t be pretty:

NHK has eight TV and radio channels: two for terrestrial TV broadcasting (general and education); three for satellite TV, including one for high-definition programs; and three radio channels including an FM service. Heizo Takenaka‘s panel argued that one satellite channel is enough and three radio channels are too many for public broadcasting.

The proposed reduction in the channels should be combined with substantial streamlining and downsizing of NHK’s bloated operations to allow a sharp cut in the viewing fees, the panel says. In return, viewers would be legally required to pay for NHK’s services under a new fee system, possibly supported by penalties for nonpayment.

If you’ve lived in Japan, you probably have some experience with the NHK henchmen who troll around apartment blocks trying to collect NHK service fees. Everyone has their own method of dealing with them: say you don’t have a TV, say you don’t get NHK reception, answer the door stark naked, scream in Turkish, etc. But I’m going to hate the day when NHK is legally empowered to collect from me. Sod off, Domo-kun.

“Youse guys bedda ‘habla espanol'”

Geno’s, one of Philadelphia’s best-known spots for crap sandwiches, is being threatened with a smackdown by local regulators:

The city’s Commission on Human Relations planned to argue that the policy at Geno’s Steaks discourages customers of certain backgrounds from eating there, said Rachel Lawton, acting executive director.

Geno’s owner Joseph Vento posted two small signs at his shop in south Philadelphia proclaiming: “This is AMERICA: WHEN ORDERING ‘PLEASE SPEAK ENGLISH.'”

Lawton said that violates the city’s Fair Practices Ordinance, which prohibits discrimination in employment, public accommodation and housing.

“It’s discouraging patronage by non-English speaking customers because of their national origin or ancestry,” Lawton said.

Prepare for war in Souf Philly! Man the wooder ice windows!

Selling my kids to a Caymans entity

I was working on an international divorce case recently, involving parties in Japan and the US. If you know Japanese family law, you know this is going to suck for someone, because the rule in Japan is that the wife gets the kids and the husband pays for them without having the right to see them (unless there’s some sort of amicable agreement to the contrary, but there never is when the parties are completely nuts, as is generally the case).

So here’s my plan if I ever marry a Japanese person: We agree to give up our kids for adoption by a third party. Like placing assets in trust. I’m thinking of starting an offshore corporation—Joe’s Kids Limited, registered in the Cayman Islands.

Education Law: our issue this Sunday

A bill to revise the Education Law made it down to the floor of the Diet last week, and the LDP looks set to push it through by the end of next month. The bill has three basic goals:

  1. Take the 9-year compulsory education period out of the law (it’s already provided for in another law, and may be revised in the near future anyway)
  2. Add provisions for life education, private schools, and home schooling.
  3. Make instilling patriotism one of the formal goals of the education system.

The last point is what has held up the rest of the bill in committee, since some fear that too much nationalism would be a Bad Thing. The language that finally made it to the floor is 我が国と郷土を愛する態度を養う – “instill an attitude of love of our country and homeland.” Even if the few remaining left-wingers in the Diet don’t have problems with that, you can bet that a lot of the teachers will, especially in the major cities where schools are dominated by more “liberal” (in the American sense) types. Should be fun to watch the bickering.

Another Iraq War lawsuit bites the dust

Some people think that the U.S. has a monopoly on stupid lawsuits. Japan has its share, too. The main difference is that the Japanese courts usually tell the plaintiffs to get lost. Yomiuri reports on the dismissal of one such case in Nagoya:

The plaintiffs sought the termination of the deployment, claiming that “the SDF deployment to Iraq, in addition to being an act of war in violation of Article 9 of the Constitution, violates the right to peaceful existence provided in the Preamble to the Constitution, and has caused psychological damage.”

Similar lawsuits are pending in eleven other district courts, including Sapporo and Tokyo; the plaintiffs’ suits in Kofu and Osaka have also been dismissed.

“Dismiss” (却下 kyakka) means that the court found no legal standing for the suit. Article 9 has been the subject of many lawsuits ending in a dismissal, going back to the predecessors of the SDF in the early 1950s. While many citizens might object, few people can prove any injury resulting from the government’s alleged constitutional violations.

One notable exception to this was the Sunakawa Case of 1959, which challenged an arrest made under a law based on Article 9. The plaintiffs, who had been arrested for trespassing on Tachikawa Air Base in Tokyo, made it all the way to the Supreme Court before their case against Article 9 was conclusively thrown out.