the type of person that is attracted to terrorist organizations has never, ever believed that the U.S. was part of the "good guys"... regardless of the existence of waterboarding methods. Just like you can't convince a truther than 9/11 wasn't a conspiracy, a birther that obama is an american, a fookooshimar that fukushima will kill every single person in japan and then some, a typical terrorist has an image of the West that does not need to be based in reality or fact.
Good luck keeping all those cars charged, day and night, using solar & wind power. Relying on batteries (for when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing) to charge batteries is like paying off your MasterCard with your Visa.
Have you tried to settle permanently in Japan and get the citizenship? It is almost impossible unless you have Japanese roots
As a matter of fact yes I have and I did it. And I have zero Japanese roots (I am a white born-in-America lived there for 20 years former U.S. citizen native English speaker). Six requirements (simplifying for the sake of the comment; there are exceptions to the below where it's in fact looser/easier than the below) to be Japanese:
1. Be an adult (defined as 20 years or older) 2. Don't be likely to become a welfare case (have a modest, stable source of income w/ an education & Japanese language level high enough that it allows you can to get/keep a job that will allow you to eat and put a roof over your head). You do not need to be rich or even well off or perfectly fluent. 3. Don't have a criminal record, overseas or domestically, and have no immigration problems (overstaying, etc) 4. Don't have any ties to organized crime or terrorism (domestic or overseas) 5. Live in Japan for five years continuously (not on-and-off) and legally (no immigration blemishes) 6. Legally get rid of your other nationalities (if the other country/countries will allow it)... either before (if country will allow it) or after within two years.
It took about five months for me to gather the paperwork and four months for them to approve me. And it is free. Permanent Residency is not a prerequisite, nor is Japanese "roots" (you can be single with no connection).
(for the sake of a comment, I'm grossly simplifying here. The immigration rules of both countries are extraordinarily complicated and there are many special exceptions to the below summaries, but this is a high level gist)
So there are no racial barriers or quotas or racial purity policies within Japan's immigration system. The primary difference between the U.S. and Japan's immigration system is that the U.S. immigration policy allows for two primary paths to legally immigrate:
1. By high skilled work: getting a job that is not considered manual/low-skill labor. 2. By "family reunion": having a family member (brother, sister, mother, father etc) already in the country.
Japan only has one path:
1. By high skilled work. How this is defined is complicated, but in a nutshell it's anything that requires a formal education above high school level. (again, lots of exceptions... too many to get into here)
In America, over 66% of immigration comes from path #2. In Japan, once you're in the country, you can bring your immediate family (your spouse and your direct children), but you can't bring your mother, father, brother, sister, etc. If they want to come, they need to qualify via path #1.
Because Japan is surrounded by seas and oceans with no land border neighbors, it is geographically very difficult for potential immigrants to enter illegally, and makes travel (airfare) expensive compared to land/car crossings. That also keeps the whole immigrant (legal & illegal) population low. Also, the language of the land is Japanese... so in order to qualify for Path #1 (high skilled labor), you usually have to speak/read/write it for >95% of most white collar jobs. This is a higher barrier than other countries, where the availability of high-skilled jobs in "popular" languages (like English) is more plentiful.
Anyway, the reason American's usually call Japan "anti-immigrant" or "restrictive" is because Japan lacks an easier "path #2" as part of their formal immigration policy, not because of race/ethnicity exclusion/quota policies... which is how the bulk of most legal immigration in the U.S. occurs.
for their rebuttals of Brian Chen's Wired blog entry.
Nobi owns and uses an iPhone. I've seen him use it in person. The reason he was using a DoCoMo P905 in June 2008 is because the iPhone wasn't sold in Japan until July 2008.
Let's not be a rmaji/rômazi/roomaji/rohmaji spelling nazi now.:) (apparently anything outside of Latin-1 is filtered by Slashdot's renderer)
If you really want to get pedantic, he missed the double-t () in a couple places as well. But how well you type Japanese in latin letters is irrelevant for useful communication anyway because anything longer than one or two words for tourists or brand names is written in kana/kanji. I see romanization mistakes by Japanese all the time in Japan. Because most Japanese aren't reading/checking that part..
I'm sure when he types or speaks real Japanese it's just fine.
The point he was making is if you speak better than tourist-level Japanese, you usually get through JP immigration/customs faster.
However, if you complain about the fingerprinting process to immigration in any language, you're not going to get through any quicker (if at all).:-p
Hi, I live in Japan too. Some comments on your post, which didn't contain anything false but it did contain a few exaggerations:
1) You don't have to be a permanent resident to go through the "Japanese" line at Immigration. All you need is a re-entry permit. A person on a 3-month Entertainer visa can go through the JP Citizen line if they have a re-entry permit.
2) It doesn't necessarily take five to ten years to get permanent residency. The path that most permanent residents take is to marry a Japanese. In that case, 3 years of being married to a Japanese (with one year of that residing in Japan). To compare, in 2000 the U.S. required two years of marriage (but no residency requirement) for my Japanese spouse to receive permanent residency. Easier, but not that different.
3) You don't know that you will be required to line up with regular foreigners in the immigration line to get fingerprinted.
4) Lining up in the Japanese line is not always faster. Depending on the flights coming in, the Alien/Foreigner lines are sometimes faster and/or smaller. The big benefits you get from permanent residency is a) not needing a visa or a reason (job or spouse) to be in Japan and b) (making it easier to) qualify for home/business loans and consumer credit.
5) The re-entry permit length for permanent residency is not always three years. It lasts until you have to renew your permanent residency status. Usually five years. In comparison, a permanent resident of the U.S. (may) lose their status if they're out of the U.S. for more than a year, unless they can prove a residual tie or they have a re-entry permit. The U.S. re-entry permit lasts only two years. And it's much more expensive (>$150 for one-time use max 2 year US re-entry permit vs ¥3000 for a JP one-timer or ¥6000 for multiple-use permit).
One last thing: you obviously haven't lived in Japan for a very long time, as the non-fingerprinting of foreigners is a new post Y2K phenomenon. Granted, in the past it was done at the Ward Office and put on your Alien Registration Card.
To compare, as an American citizen, I've been fingerprinted for all sorts of jobs: working as a substitute public teacher during college and working at an investment bank. Many Americans whose jobs deal with law enforcement, children, or handling large amounts of money are required to submit to fingerprinting (and often drug tests).
* Also: UNDER FIVE minutes from plane to train? C'mon, even without a single human obstacle in your way, that's at least a sprint/race-walk pace from the jetway and down a lot of hallways and escalators to either the Keisei line or the JR line.
Its ability to pick out words in Japanese is pretty primitive (relies on the transition from katakana to kanji/hiragana and the transition from hiragana to kanji), but (the spec) works relatively well.
Because the Japanese anime company may eventually sell the rights to market and redistribute the DVD media to some company in the U.S..
That U.S. company may add value (subs/dubs/easter eggs/inserts, etc) to the Japanese media. The U.S. company that goes through the trouble of establishing distribution channels and pays for advertising the Japanese DVD in the U.S. will want "exclusive" rights to the U.S.-- that is, it wants to be sure its DVD doesn't have to compete with the original media being sold by some importer.
This is why they region-lock movies that are not new; it's not always about the DVD beating the box office release date.
Region-locking is about guaranteeing that the locals to a particular market get exclusive rights.
The Japanese anime company probably has no clue as to what they want to do with the anime now. But it region locks just in case the thing turns into a cult hit somewhere in the world. By region-locking, it can get more $$$ by guaranteeing that that average consumer (with a region-enforcing DVD player) has never seen the content-- even if it's "old" in its original market.
I too own "hacked" (because they're old) DVD and Playstation hardware because I (legitimately) own Japanese and U.S. media.
I hate that they do it. I especially hate it because the American re-distributers of foreign DVDs often TAKE AWAY value-- remove certain subtitles and dubs, offer only full-screen and not widescreen versions, etc. It's not a matter of being unwillig to pay these re-distributers their cut. It's a matter of getting the same media. If they just ADDED value (an English track or subs, etc.), I wouldn't have a problem with it.
But I understand why they do it.
And I doubt they'll listen to me-- because for every one of me, there are 10000 who are fine with region 1 DVDs in region 1 players that will never complain.
Slashdot Mirror
the type of person that is attracted to terrorist organizations has never, ever believed that the U.S. was part of the "good guys"... regardless of the existence of waterboarding methods. Just like you can't convince a truther than 9/11 wasn't a conspiracy, a birther that obama is an american, a fookooshimar that fukushima will kill every single person in japan and then some, a typical terrorist has an image of the West that does not need to be based in reality or fact.
I sure hope they have a No Smoking rule that is enforced.
Good luck keeping all those cars charged, day and night, using solar & wind power. Relying on batteries (for when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing) to charge batteries is like paying off your MasterCard with your Visa.
Have you tried to settle permanently in Japan and get the citizenship? It is almost impossible unless you have Japanese roots
As a matter of fact yes I have and I did it. And I have zero Japanese roots (I am a white born-in-America lived there for 20 years former U.S. citizen native English speaker).
Six requirements (simplifying for the sake of the comment; there are exceptions to the below where it's in fact looser/easier than the below) to be Japanese:
1. Be an adult (defined as 20 years or older)
2. Don't be likely to become a welfare case (have a modest, stable source of income w/ an education & Japanese language level high enough that it allows you can to get/keep a job that will allow you to eat and put a roof over your head). You do not need to be rich or even well off or perfectly fluent.
3. Don't have a criminal record, overseas or domestically, and have no immigration problems (overstaying, etc)
4. Don't have any ties to organized crime or terrorism (domestic or overseas)
5. Live in Japan for five years continuously (not on-and-off) and legally (no immigration blemishes)
6. Legally get rid of your other nationalities (if the other country/countries will allow it)... either before (if country will allow it) or after within two years.
It took about five months for me to gather the paperwork and four months for them to approve me. And it is free. Permanent Residency is not a prerequisite, nor is Japanese "roots" (you can be single with no connection).
(for the sake of a comment, I'm grossly simplifying here. The immigration rules of both countries are extraordinarily complicated and there are many special exceptions to the below summaries, but this is a high level gist)
So there are no racial barriers or quotas or racial purity policies within Japan's immigration system. The primary difference between the U.S. and Japan's immigration system is that the U.S. immigration policy allows for two primary paths to legally immigrate:
1. By high skilled work: getting a job that is not considered manual/low-skill labor.
2. By "family reunion": having a family member (brother, sister, mother, father etc) already in the country.
Japan only has one path:
1. By high skilled work. How this is defined is complicated, but in a nutshell it's anything that requires a formal education above high school level. (again, lots of exceptions... too many to get into here)
In America, over 66% of immigration comes from path #2. In Japan, once you're in the country, you can bring your immediate family (your spouse and your direct children), but you can't bring your mother, father, brother, sister, etc. If they want to come, they need to qualify via path #1.
Because Japan is surrounded by seas and oceans with no land border neighbors, it is geographically very difficult for potential immigrants to enter illegally, and makes travel (airfare) expensive compared to land/car crossings. That also keeps the whole immigrant (legal & illegal) population low. Also, the language of the land is Japanese... so in order to qualify for Path #1 (high skilled labor), you usually have to speak/read/write it for >95% of most white collar jobs. This is a higher barrier than other countries, where the availability of high-skilled jobs in "popular" languages (like English) is more plentiful.
Anyway, the reason American's usually call Japan "anti-immigrant" or "restrictive" is because Japan lacks an easier "path #2" as part of their formal immigration policy, not because of race/ethnicity exclusion/quota policies... which is how the bulk of most legal immigration in the U.S. occurs.
Both Japanese sources quoted in the article were misrepresented.
See
http://blog.nobi.cc/2009/02/my-view-of-how-iphone-is-doing-in-japan-by-nobi-nobuyuki-hayashi.html
and
http://daijihirata.com/aboutwiredarticle.html
for their rebuttals of Brian Chen's Wired blog entry.
Nobi owns and uses an iPhone. I've seen him use it in person. The reason he was using a DoCoMo P905 in June 2008 is because the iPhone wasn't sold in Japan until July 2008.
Let's not be a rmaji/rômazi/roomaji/rohmaji spelling nazi now. :) (apparently anything outside of Latin-1 is filtered by Slashdot's renderer)
If you really want to get pedantic, he missed the double-t () in a couple places as well. But how well you type Japanese in latin letters is irrelevant for useful communication anyway because anything longer than one or two words for tourists or brand names is written in kana/kanji. I see romanization mistakes by Japanese all the time in Japan. Because most Japanese aren't reading/checking that part..
I'm sure when he types or speaks real Japanese it's just fine.
The point he was making is if you speak better than tourist-level Japanese, you usually get through JP immigration/customs faster.
However, if you complain about the fingerprinting process to immigration in any language, you're not going to get through any quicker (if at all). :-p
Hi, I live in Japan too. Some comments on your post, which didn't contain anything false but it did contain a few exaggerations:
1) You don't have to be a permanent resident to go through the "Japanese" line at Immigration. All you need is a re-entry permit. A person on a 3-month Entertainer visa can go through the JP Citizen line if they have a re-entry permit.
2) It doesn't necessarily take five to ten years to get permanent residency. The path that most permanent residents take is to marry a Japanese. In that case, 3 years of being married to a Japanese (with one year of that residing in Japan). To compare, in 2000 the U.S. required two years of marriage (but no residency requirement) for my Japanese spouse to receive permanent residency. Easier, but not that different.
3) You don't know that you will be required to line up with regular foreigners in the immigration line to get fingerprinted.
4) Lining up in the Japanese line is not always faster. Depending on the flights coming in, the Alien/Foreigner lines are sometimes faster and/or smaller. The big benefits you get from permanent residency is a) not needing a visa or a reason (job or spouse) to be in Japan and b) (making it easier to) qualify for home/business loans and consumer credit.
5) The re-entry permit length for permanent residency is not always three years. It lasts until you have to renew your permanent residency status. Usually five years. In comparison, a permanent resident of the U.S. (may) lose their status if they're out of the U.S. for more than a year, unless they can prove a residual tie or they have a re-entry permit. The U.S. re-entry permit lasts only two years. And it's much more expensive (>$150 for one-time use max 2 year US re-entry permit vs ¥3000 for a JP one-timer or ¥6000 for multiple-use permit).
One last thing: you obviously haven't lived in Japan for a very long time, as the non-fingerprinting of foreigners is a new post Y2K phenomenon. Granted, in the past it was done at the Ward Office and put on your Alien Registration Card.
To compare, as an American citizen, I've been fingerprinted for all sorts of jobs: working as a substitute public teacher during college and working at an investment bank. Many Americans whose jobs deal with law enforcement, children, or handling large amounts of money are required to submit to fingerprinting (and often drug tests).
* Also: UNDER FIVE minutes from plane to train? C'mon, even without a single human obstacle in your way, that's at least a sprint/race-walk pace from the jetway and down a lot of hallways and escalators to either the Keisei line or the JR line.
Scan business cards into your phone? Check. Japan's already got it:
Sharp Advanced ed W-Zero3.
You don't use the camera... you literally slide the biz card in and it scans it.
Windows Mobile 6 phone with Office Mobile for Word/Excel/Powerpoint/PDF
Yours for about a little over ¥20000 with a one year contract.
"IF" they built a waterproof phone?
t erproof-cellphone/
Obviously you're not in Japan. That's old hat. Fortunately, it's now available to the masses:
http://www.engadget.com/2005/12/15/lg-canu-502-wa
Actually, you get the official fedora when you're hired. But no, it's not part of the dress code.
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr29/#Word_Boundari es
Its ability to pick out words in Japanese is pretty primitive (relies on the transition from katakana to kanji/hiragana and the transition from hiragana to kanji), but (the spec) works relatively well.
You need heuristics for Chinese though.
Because the Japanese anime company may eventually sell the rights to market and redistribute the DVD media to some company in the U.S..
That U.S. company may add value (subs/dubs/easter eggs/inserts, etc) to the Japanese media. The U.S. company that goes through the trouble of establishing distribution channels and pays for advertising the Japanese DVD in the U.S. will want "exclusive" rights to the U.S.-- that is, it wants to be sure its DVD doesn't have to compete with the original media being sold by some importer.
This is why they region-lock movies that are not new; it's not always about the DVD beating the box office release date.
Region-locking is about guaranteeing that the locals to a particular market get exclusive rights.
The Japanese anime company probably has no clue as to what they want to do with the anime now. But it region locks just in case the thing turns into a cult hit somewhere in the world. By region-locking, it can get more $$$ by guaranteeing that that average consumer (with a region-enforcing DVD player) has never seen the content-- even if it's "old" in its original market.
I too own "hacked" (because they're old) DVD and Playstation hardware because I (legitimately) own Japanese and U.S. media.
I hate that they do it. I especially hate it because the American re-distributers of foreign DVDs often TAKE AWAY value-- remove certain subtitles and dubs, offer only full-screen and not widescreen versions, etc. It's not a matter of being unwillig to pay these re-distributers their cut. It's a matter of getting the same media. If they just ADDED value (an English track or subs, etc.), I wouldn't have a problem with it.
But I understand why they do it.
And I doubt they'll listen to me-- because for every one of me, there are 10000 who are fine with region 1 DVDs in region 1 players that will never complain.
TurboLinux (the Japanese side) was bought by SRA (Software Reseach Associates) The reason you never heard of them is because they are Japan only:
TurboLinux U.S.A. was dismantled, with various software properties (PowerCockit, enFusion, etc) sold to various companies and people.