Microaggression: the new scapegoat for our ills

Posted by Ken Y-N (aka Tepido Naruhodo) on May 1, 2012 103 comments

It’s Just Be Cause time again, and Mr Arudou tackles what he labels "microagression", but what I would call "making small talk". It’s difficult for me to find any stand-out nonsense, but I think my readers more versed in the social sciences may be able to fight their way through verbiage like "since NJ subordination is so constant and renewed in daily interaction that it becomes normalized".

The second half fortunately uses smaller words:

Sooner or later you have to take a taxi, deal with a restaurateur, have words with your neighbors. And then [...] you begin to dread interacting with the outside world.

Yes indeed, every interaction is doomed to microagressive failure. As usual, replacing "you" for "I", or "my Debito.org commenters" helps make sense of what he is trying to say.

The power of microaggression is perhaps a reason why activists like me occasion such venomous and obsessive criticism, even online stalkers.

Nope, that would be macroagression, and as you have defined microagression as racially based, it would only be 空 and ponta, perhaps, that would qualify. The rest of the article gets all very CJ-ish, quite frankly.

And we will gain the appropriate respect for those brave enough to stand up to it.

RESPECT MY AUTHORITAH!

BTW, the replies to last month’s column are out too, with a two-to-one pro-Arudou ratio.

Gaijin gulagged – NHK hacker hacks off The Man

Posted by Ken Y-N (aka Tepido Naruhodo) on April 25, 2012 73 comments

First, I must declare a work interest in being pro-copy protection, so take all the rest with as much of a dose of salt as required.

This copy-paste of recently Tweeted then deleted comments come from OishiiSlurper:

OishiiSlurper 10:29

Fucking Japan,Im back in USA. I was refused entry at Narita, my residence visa was cancelled and my apartment was raided.

OishiiSlurper 10:32

I was withheld at immigration for 8 hours without food or phone, asking about TV, had to pay for an expensive return ticket. Fuck you, BCAS.

OishiiSlurper 11:39

I have a strong feeling "they" traced me from credit card purchase of several BCAS in akiba. Buyers beware.

B-CAS is BS Conditional Access System, that smartcard thingie you have to plug into your digital telly to get NHK and other protected contents. OishiiSlurper has form for leaking cracks for the cards onto Twitter, so it is interesting that (a) they traced him/her, and (b) cancelled his residence visa at the airport. I suspect for (b) he was given the choice of either handing in his Alien Registration Card there and then, or be handed straight over to the authorities if he landed.

More nuclear panic, less nuclear power

Posted by Ken Y-N (aka Tepido Naruhodo) on April 19, 2012 91 comments

Remember a few weeks ago that the Japan Times published a letter from a person from Singapore and their miscarriage rumours? Fortunately, but a bit belatedly, the Japan Times has published evidence that it is all nonsense. Although others say the evidence is nonsense. :roll:

In the JT the day before, we got Bread and becquerels. I think :headdesk: provides enough of a review for now. This bit stands out:

my wife has decided to take our sons to Italy and spend the “radioactive pollen” season with my mother.

Cue a chorus of “More radiation from the flight and natural background in Italy”, no doubt countered by “Hot particles! Hot particles!”

Now, getting on to the business of restarting the Ooi reactors 3 and 4. I can well understand why people are so opposed as the government is completely and utterly wishy-washy on the whole affair, with no-one willing to stick their head above the parapet for long enough to make the economic and environmental cases for turning them back on, so all the anti- Kansai governers have free rein to state their opposition without needing to worry about detailing how they will actually keep the air conditioners running this summer. As the Asahi says:

Since Hashimoto presented the conditions, he needs to come up with substantial steps to tide over summer demand for electricity without relying on a nuclear power plant. He should not let the message end up being empty words.

Quite frankly, I wonder if as a last-ditch attempt to derail the One Osaka movement, the DPJ are prepared to let the lights go out in Kansai just to show Hashimoto up?

Magical radiation detectors

Posted by Ken Y-N (aka Tepido Naruhodo) on April 6, 2012 238 comments

I saw a story today about some radiation-related quackery being flogged to unsuspecting members of the Japanese public.

Some of the most anxious are the parents of young children, who experts say are the most vulnerable to the effects of radiation.

And, I would add, these parents in turn are the most vulnerable to the effects of snake oil sellers. The con-men are selling their “tests” at 8,400 yen per child, it appears.

Recalling that Doug mentioning Ene-news as a source, I decided to see how they were talking about it. Check the comments! :facepalm:

To preempt certain comment directed towards Japanese, note that the UK government recently fell for bomb detecting quackery. And a darling of the anti-nuclear village teepee compound, Christopher Busby, also sold anti-radiation quackery.

And just to keep Laxman happy, I hear both CJ and Mr Arudou bought one. :lol:

Assfinger IV: CJ’s Back!

Posted by Ken Y-N (aka Tepido Naruhodo) on April 3, 2012 117 comments

And he’s firing on all cylinders, with only just a little sugar in the tank:

http://globalite.posterous.com/mental-meltdown-in-an-nhk-world

It’s an, umm, interesting and exceptionally lengthy read. :roll:

Elderly abuse

Posted by Ken Y-N (aka Tepido Naruhodo) on April 3, 2012 84 comments

Donald Keene gets slagged, along with a rehash of Mr Arudou’s PowerPoint slides. And yes, as iago and Eido predicted, Mr Keene’s joke about his promising not to commit crimes based on his naturalisation oathhas been taken by Mr Arudou as an attack on flyjin.

Just to balance things out, Mr Arudou himself gets a good shoeing, with me contributing one of the size 7s.

Taking the piss

Posted by Ken Y-N (aka Tepido Naruhodo) on March 31, 2012 107 comments

In the annals of Debito.org :facepalm: and :headdesk: posts, today’s utter bollocks takes not just the biscuit, but the biccie tin and the whole Hobnob factory as well.

FOBer gets asked for a standard (for almost every full-time employee in Japan) health check result including blood pressure, X-ray, and pee check: the pee check in my office looks for IIRC sugars or protein as markers for potential diabetes. FOBer gets upset that it must surely be for drugs and Japanese don’t have to do it as he is unaware of the yearly checks, and of course Mr Arudou accepts the FOBer’s viewpoint as it proves that once again All Yamato Japanese Are Bastards.

And what on earth are "tits and giggles"? I didn’t understand his previous obsession with fruity judges either.

I wonder what JET’s administrative arm, CLAIR, has to say about this.

Indeed, if only there was some way in which you could get in touch with them…

Feel free to tell them

Obviously there are neither telephones nor email in Hawaii. Christ on a bike, Mr Arudou, even by your own standards you are really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

NHK Newswatch 9 on Koreans and Indonesians

Posted by Ken Y-N (aka Tepido Naruhodo) on March 28, 2012 78 comments

Tonight on NHK Newswatch 9 there was not one, but two back-to-back stories on foreigners in Japan. The first looked at the older group, the Zainichi voting for the first time in the upcoming Korean election. They focused on two people, one an 87 year old who came over before the war and joined (or was enlisted into) the Japanese army. However, due to the section he was in (I didn’t quite catch which – perhaps he was stationed in Korea?) if he had returned back home he would have been guilty of war crimes. James at Japan Probe had a story from a while back about how Korea to this day treats those they judge traitors – here it is.

Second was a look at Indonesian nurses; just recently we read an article telling us how 95% fail the exam and they are just exploited as cheap labour. However, this year about 38% passed (the newly-introduced version with furigana over all kanji), a bit over half the rate of native Japanese. We visited a couple of people working in Yamanashi, where the manager of the old folks’ home that they worked in was quoted as saying that a three year internship costs the company about 8 million yen per person over the three years to provide a dormitory, translator services, training, etc, yet they only get about a tenth of that back from the government, thus hiring foreign labour puts a serious strain on the budget, but without foreign staff they’d probably have to close as they cannot find Japanese willing to work there. That doesn’t seem like a very profitable way to exploit people.

In the same segment they visited Yokohama City, one of the few places being proactive in getting the nurses through the test. There the city provides a number of free extras, including a six-month weekend juku studying how to pass the exam. That seems like someone is throwing a wedge into the revolving door.

Anyway, congratulations to the newly-qualified Japanese nurses (both native and immigrant) and best of luck for the future in your vocation!

PS: If you saw the same news stories, please feel free to correct any errors I might have made above.

Powerless, pointless PowerPoint

Posted by Ken Y-N (aka Tepido Naruhodo) on March 24, 2012 92 comments

Mr Arudou stalkerises himself by first off putting "Affiliate Scholar, East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii" on the front page of the presentation, then by saying in the accompanying article "I gave a couple of presentations on my campus", so I wonder if he will entertain questions from his readers about his status? I also note that he assumes flyjin left from Tohoku – I was under the impression it was reserved for Tokyo-based people who took an early plane out.

He does not state who he presented this to, but I will be gentle in my review by assuming it is not to a bunch of Japanese-related post-graduates, but to some campus society or otherwise non-specialists.

But anyway, on to the meat (or perhaps that should be meat-substitute textured vegetable protein?) of his presentation. It gets off to a flying start by mentioning the 3/11/12 earthquake. :facepalm:

Slide 3: Yes, the whole idea of flyjin.com was to indicate that the press pack themselves were scaring themselves away from Japan.

Slides 6 and 7: Why does slide 6, "Open Season on NJ", report stories with a later date than slide 7, "The media wave crests"?

Slide 8: I’m sure students will love to hear praise of government censorship. Furthermore, I don’t believe anything was actually deleted.

Slide 9: With "wave crests" earlier, and "drowned" on this slide, he really needs to be more careful with his words! Furthermore, all four of his bullet points were well-covered in the press, especially for the first, Operation Tomodachi.

Slide 10: And back in time we go again.

Slide 15: "Every NJ crime significantly down", and then he reproduces a table which shows merely totals by crimes and misdemeanours have gone down, but doesn’t bother to point out if they have dropped faster than the foreign population.

Slide 16: There is quite a difference between your nice office in Tokyo having occasional mild aftershocks and your factory in Thailand two metres underwater. For the little or no official acknowledgement, I present as Exhibit A this press release found on the first page of a Google search with obvious keywords. As Exhibit B I present Donald Keene. :grin:

Slide 17: A complete :headdesk: of the pot calling the kettle black.

That’s enough for now; I’ll add more in comments later.

Giving up on Japan – some truth please!

Posted by Ken Y-N (aka Tepido Naruhodo) on March 18, 2012 224 comments

The latest article on Debito.org is enticingly entitled An argument for "giving up on Japan", where a reader writes in with what Mr Arudou says is "considered and considerate", but I would describe as "clichéd and crawling". Sadly, Mr Arudou says "I won’t answer it, for now", but will we have to wait as long as we have for the eulogy to Daniel?

Now, this "considered and considerate" poster makes statements like … ack, just read it yourself!

What bothers me more is that Mr Arudou still does not let on his status and people on his own blog second-guess his motives. So, in that spirit let’s second-guess Mr Arudou’s reasons for not saying where he is.

Oh, and Hoofin, :roll:

PS: I just noticed this comment from beneaththewheel on his comment on the above thread (my emphasis):

Although interestingly, he recent article about a reader asking him “why haven’t you given up” is interesting. (thoughts on my response are appreciated as always. :razz: , although he did cut out the bit where I asked him if he has temporarily stepped “out of the trenches” :sad: )

And a PPS: If you’re going to remove the city that your friend mentioned, you should also remove his handle…