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Onuki, a 31-year-old salesman, is headed to the train station to catch the 12:24 a.m. train, the last one of the night, back to his home in Yokohama. The train will quickly fill up with other professional working men.
At about 1:30 a.m., after having made a pit stop at a convenience store to grab a sandwich, Onuki arrives home. When he opens the bedroom door, he accidentally wakes his wife, Yoshiko, who just recently fell asleep after working an 11-hour day. She chides him for making too much noise and he apologizes.
Then, with his food still digesting and his alarm set for 7 a.m., he creeps into bed, ready to do it all again tomorrow.
Over the past two decades, stories like the Onukis' have become commonplace in Japan. Young couples are fighting to make relationships work amid a traditional work culture that expects men to be breadwinners and women to be homemakers. It's a losing battle. Many newlyweds are forced to watch their free time disappear, surrendering everything from the occasional date night to starting a family.
The daily constraints have made for a worrisome trend. Japan has entered a vicious cycle of low fertility and low spending that has led to trillions in lost GDP and a population decline of 1 million people, all within just the past five years. If left unabated, experts forecast severe economic downturn and a breakdown in the fabric of social life.
"Adult diapers have outsold baby diapers in Japan for the last six years."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by idiot_king on Tuesday May 23 2017, @04:57AM (19 children)
There's a lot blatantly wrong with your post, so I don't blame you for posting as an AC. I'll try to go point by point with you.
The USA has had giant numbers of migration in the past and its demographics have not shifted in any negative way. Apparently you missed the whole Trump-being-elected thing recently? Still lots of Rethuglicans hiding in the 'burbs and boonies.
Post-Roman Western Europe was a constant ebb and flow of migrations; countries are, at best, fleeting entities. And beyond that, demographically stagnant places tend to note fare so well. Notice how rural areas are undeveloped and educationally and socially backward? Migration is needed to keep people and ideas fresh so as not to atrophy. History should be indicative of that.
See: USA. Still English speaking. Still racist and Christian as ever.
Who said anything about Muslims, and who said anything about Wahhabism? My Bigotmeter is giving high readings here. You're making huge assumptions. You'd be okay with them bringing in millions of Westboro Baptists, I'm assuming?
Why are kids riding the subway alone in the first place? And cleanliness can be paid for by the state. Assuming migrants == dirt/childsnatchers is plain xenophobia. You don't know people you've never met before.
I'd suggest getting more sunlight and human interaction to quell those reservations of yours.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @05:03AM (11 children)
I notice you skipped the point of the crime among the immigrants they allowed in. Care to address that point? :-)
(Score: 2) by idiot_king on Tuesday May 23 2017, @05:17AM (8 children)
You're right, it's late, I apparently forgot to quote the rest of the atrocity that was typed. Let me continue.
Again: USA. Millions of undocumented citizens let in since 1965. No collapse. Just a racist orange goblin as President and stupid Mideast wars by Bush Jr.
And this is why they jumped too soon. How many rapes happen in Japan by Japanese men? I bet they aren't comfortable with those statistics, either! Men will rape, this is a horribly sad fact of life. But, for some reason, I'm willing to bet if they were Muslim women, you'd be totally fine with it. Just a guess?
And I'm willing to bet that terrorist attacks by Japanese men are orders of magnitude higher than those 1000 Muslims. Remember that sarin attack some years ago in the Tokyo subway? Wasn't a Muslim, was it? Nope. It was home-grown, Japanese terrorists.
*Sigh* Once again, USA. Still racist. Still sexist. Still meddling in global affairs unrelated to anything about them. Same as 100 years ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:13AM (7 children)
Yep, that's the one, a couple decades ago. That was Japan's terrorist attack.
I think that proves my point, hmmm? Terrorism basically doesn't happen in Japan. It's not something you just have to accept, despite what London's mayor says to the contrary.
European countries face Islamic terror on a regular basis. Sweden, France, and Germany have all had the "truck of peace" experience. Bombings are common too. This is not a future that would be good for Japan.
Oh, and rape... well I'm glad you asked! It is rare in Japan. The rate is 1.0 per 100,000 in Japan. We can compare this to 9.4 in Germany, 17.0 in Scotland, 27.3 in the USA, 63.5 in Sweden, and 132.4 in South Africa.
The US hasn't collapsed, but we sure are having problems with our immigrants. Yes, this is partly why we chose Trump. There are towns in the USA that don't speak English. This makes me a stranger in my own country. It hurts our economy; taken to the extremes (as in Paupa New Guinea especially, and also much of Africa) it largely prevents a nation from functioning. We are facing terrorist attacks: the Boston Marathon bombing and the Orlando nightclub shooting would both have been prevented if we had stopped immigration.
That "undocumented citizens" think is a load of nonsense too. Hardly anybody born in the USA is not registered at birth. If you refer to border jumpers, they are not undocumented at all. Identity theft takes care of that. There might be somebody running around claiming to be you. Perhaps you will get arrested for a crime he commits, or get a bad credit history due to his misbehavior, or get inappropriate medical treatment because his medical records are your medical records. Every year, illegal aliens cost our society more than the cost of a wall. We could build a new wall every year and still save money.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday May 23 2017, @10:34AM (5 children)
Might have something to do with them not sticking their military dicks into middle eastern politics like certain other countries I could mention. The USA and Europe are targeted by middle eastern terrorists because those are the people who've been killing and bombing in the middle east for the couple of decades / couple hundred years. Oh, that and the fact that they know that they can easily escalate the violence if they target hysterical, ignorant racists like you.
Ah yes, Japan, a beacon of completely normal and sane and not-at-all dysfunctional sexual behaviour. Where they have women-only subway cars to stop men from frotting themselves on strangers, and vending machines selling worn schoolgirls underwear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @04:06PM (3 children)
Your response is a non sequitur. If your position is that Japan's rape rates are high, then prove it using scientific evidence. And no speculation like 'But there are all these unreported rapes!' unless you have hard evidence to back it up.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday May 23 2017, @08:21PM (2 children)
Sure, here you go. [japantimes.co.jp] It was only a google search away.
But since we're insisting on "evidence to back it up", how about you provide some some proof for your lazy assertion that Japan's low rape stats have anything to do with their immigration rates?
Interestingly, the wikipedia page where you got your statistics (which, by the way, you should be more careful with - your Scotland figure and Japan figures were from different years) show that the muslim country of Pakistan has rates well below the US, Scotland and the other countries you mentioned. A country with very similar per-capita rates to Japan is Canada, which (as I'm sure you know) has one of the Western world's most open immigration policies. [theguardian.com]
Want to try again?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @10:46PM (1 child)
Pakistan is the sort of place where it would be insane to report a rape. You might find yourself killed by your family if you reported it. You might find yourself in trouble with the law, for sex outside marriage, if you reported it.
Japan isn't like that. Japan is just better.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday May 23 2017, @10:54PM
Better to a degree, yeah. But apparently it's still not the sort of place where rapes routinely go all the way from reporting to prosecution to conviction to punishment, so I'd say it's not all the way better.
Well done for completely ignoring the rest of my post, btw.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday May 23 2017, @08:05PM
I wish people would stop underestimate japan's creepiness [wikipedia.org]
(if anyone want to read about the state of affairs [techinasia.com] (js req))
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:33PM
After a few minutes of research I can tell you that the swedish rape rate is massively overinflated. First off, their law deals with sex crimes differently and lumps them all in together. Second, because of such lumping, that number includes crimes and other offences that arent what we Americans do not consider rape. Paying for sex, aka prostitution? Thats a sex crime that gets lumped into their statistic. Plus, each incident is recorded. So one woman reporting twenty different incidents against her drunken husband is 20 reports in that statistic. And lastly, what they don't tell you is that many of the refugee/migrant sex crimes are against their own people.
And let's just ignore that sex crime in sweden has been on a downtrend since 2010 BEFORE the migrants/refugees began arriving. And they have been taking in such people for decades.
I hate religion and think people who believe in it are FUCKING STUPID. And I think Islam is one of the worst of the bunch (also includes government and law, what could possibly go wrong?). But you can't make shit up and expect people to believe it. Some of us actually research outrageous claims. It's why I think trumpies are particularly retarded. They just ate up every little bit of "news" and statistics and voted.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:48PM (1 child)
I notice you skipped the point of the crime among the immigrants they allowed in.
He was doing you a favor because, once again, you are completely wrong.
Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than natives. [cato.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:18PM
You're lumping legal non-refugee immigrants, refugees, and illegal aliens all together. They come from different parts of the world and have different crime rates.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @05:05AM
of Japan.
As if America's Assholish Opening of Japan wasn't bad enough back in the 1850s-1860s, Muslims are colonizing Japan without the normal cultural integration and additionally convincing Japanese women to emigrate to Muslim majority countries.
Combined with everything else going on in Japan they are preparing to enter the exact sort of cultural catastrophe that their far less 'democratic' brethen, the Chinese are making good on avoiding happening in their country. Not to say they aren't irrevocably damaging their culture from within, but the Japanese are allowing cultural contaminates from without to literally replace theirs at the rate they are going.
The only way for Japan to return to prominence is for them to reduce immigration, focus on domestic energy and food production, and regain tech R&D jobs, focusing on automation as much as possible (some of which is already being done, but really needs to be 'moonshot' programmed at the national scale to have a chance at succeeding.)
Hopefully they will not follow the US or EU into a new generation of decline for their cultural uniqueness.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:47AM (1 child)
Kids need to develop responsibility and independence. You don't think kids should ride alone? Why not? Is your culture not as safe as Japan's culture? Are people in your country just not as smart as the Japanese?
There is a TV show in Japan called “Hajimete no otsukai” (“First errand”) which showcases this. Some episodes are on youtube with English subtitles. It's great. Usually the kids are about 4 years old, almost always 2 to 6. People with cameras hidden in various objects line the route.
Haru was 23 months old when she was sent down the block to buy tofu alone. A 4-year-old rode a bullet train to deliver work clothes to his father’s restaurant.
Here is Haru: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xkae7e_toshijima_webcam [dailymotion.com]
Some more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5k5XTZy0rA [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7L6xkpnYc4 [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eMZp8KsZ5k [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh2NwMZozVE [youtube.com]
Some of those, especially Haru, are a bit out of the norm, but only a bit. It is normal for Japanese kids to run errands. It is normal for them to take public transportation to school right from the start -- they are taught to do this in preschool and certainly manage by first grade.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 24 2017, @01:40AM
It's good to hear that Japanese kids get exposed to the real world. But it isn't enough. 7-8 years ago I was working with a Japanese college student, he wanted to send me an international postal money order for something available in USA. I emailed him my postal address and then he emailed back to confirm because the letter had been returned to him.
After a couple of cycles of this I asked him to send me a scan/photo of his envelope. Turned out that he swapped the addressee and the return address, so he was mailing to himself. No one in his family or grade schooling had shown him how to address an envelope.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @11:24AM
I'm not sure the native Americans would agree with that assessment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:43PM
Says the guy posting drivel on a pseudo-anonymous Internet handle.
So, you admit GP's point then, there is a so called "demographic replacement" going on.
Apparently, you missed all the bitching and moaning about how he lost the popular vote. And "Rethuglicans"? How classy.
Fake history much? While migration has always been a factor, it has never been the kind of mass migration we see in modern times.
Bullshit. Underdevelopment is the direct and obvious consequence of poor education and social development. If you don't have smart well-trained people to improve your economy, you don't get economic growth.
White racists don't elect black presidents.
The person you are responding to. There is nothing wrong with raising additional points in a conversation.
Why I'm absolutely shocked! A social justice fundamentalist finding bigots to judge is like a religious fundamentalist finding sinners for much the same purpose. But I repeat myself.
Are you fucking kidding me? You just criticized GP for making assumptions and then you go ahead and make a sweeping assumption about him in the very next sentence.
Why not? This might come as a surprise to you, but kids grow up. Are we not allowed to worry about our teenage/adult children?
But not Chinese migrants for some strange reason. Funny how all these "xenophobes" never have any objections to East Asians who happen to be less prone to criminality than the native population, yet go all up in arms about Middle Easterners who top the crime charts. I'm sure there is no connection there.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday May 23 2017, @09:47PM
I think in this comment the solution to the problem is hiding. Kids are riding the subways alone because their parents are busy working. It's the overwork culture that is the root cause of the problem. Open the offices at 9, close them at 5 and kick everyone out. People will have time for friends, family, hobbies and all sorts of economically beneficial activity. I bet just as much useful work gets done as well.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Thursday May 25 2017, @02:29AM
Have you been in a Wal-Mart recently? I have noticed lots of white people silently shopping, and lots of non-white people on their cell phones speaking languages I have no idea what they are speaking and they tend to speak at the top of their voice. Maybe it's just my Wal-Mart. I'm just sayin...
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A