Japan

What will I be able to do for the other week or so after I strike everything off my To-Do list?

Spending a few hours lost in the transit system would probably do you some good.

I will be in your neck of the wood in June, I will have a three week holiday in BC...yes I will bring and post the CD I promised you!!!

Depending on which time in June I'll either be up in the interior ...

You can get farther away from civilization than Kamloops ? wow

pachinko parlors, hostest clubs, blow job bars, brothels, and splash clubs...

A lot of those places are too xenophobic to even allow 外国人 inside, so unless you can speak Japanese pretty well, you're probably SOL anyway. しょうがない、ね？

Which speaking of, does anyone know why Japan barely allows refugees in? I mean, Japan is often considered to be part of the “West,” it being in the G7 and so on, but they seem to be pretty reluctant to participate in things like these. I don't know an incredible lot about Japan, so if anyone could enlighten me I'd be very grateful.

End of seclusion

The policy of isolation lasted for more than 200 years. In 1844, William II of the Netherlands sent a message urging Japan to open her doors, which resulted in Tokugawa shogunate's rejection.[17] On July 8, 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy with four warships—the Mississippi, Plymouth, Saratoga, and Susquehanna—steamed into the bay at Edo, old Tokyo, and displayed the threatening power of his ships' cannons during a Christian burial, which the Japanese observed. He requested that Japan open to trade with the West. These ships became known as the kurofune, the Black Ships.
The following year, at the Convention of Kanagawa on March 31, 1854, Perry returned with seven ships and requested that the Shogun sign the "Treaty of Peace and Amity," establishing formal diplomatic relations between Japan and the United States. Within five years Japan had signed similar treaties with other western countries. The Harris Treaty was signed with the United States on July 29, 1858. These treaties were widely regarded by Japanese intellectuals as unequal, having been forced on Japan through gunboat diplomacy, and as a sign of the West's desire to incorporate Japan into the imperialism that had been taking hold of the rest of the Asian continent. Among other measures, they gave the Western nations unequivocal control of tariffs on imports and the right of extraterritoriality to all their visiting nationals. They would remain a sticking point in Japan's relations with the West up to the turn of the century.

Racial purity is almost as important as the cast system in Japan.

Read the real history of Japan. Like how the English and the USA dragged Japan into the second world war by cutting off oil supplies from Indonesia and elsewhere to Japans conquest of China. Do you really think the Tojo woke up one day and said "fuck it i'm bored let's go to pearl harbor" ...completely unprovoked...??

It seems a bit like a double standard to me. Particularly that there's absolutely no outcry about it, whatsoever.

Japanese government blocks a ban on child pornography


The Japanese government has blocked legal efforts to clamp down on child pornography, with the country becoming the world's "kiddie porn superpower," according to a pressure group.

The ruling Democratic Party of Japan has refused to support legislation that would outlaw the possession of child pornography on the grounds that it would infringe individuals' freedom of expression – although there has been a stepped-up police campaign against people that sell sexual images of children.

Twenty people were arrested this week for posting child pornography on a mobile phone web site that was set up by a 17-year-old high school student, while Japan was shocked earlier this year at the arrest of a mother who took indecent images of her infant son and sold them via the internet.

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Read more here .