Author: Toshio Aritake

TOKYO, Aug. 11, 2020―It looks like the Tortoise and the Hare of the Aesop’s Fables: ‘Gaijin (westerners looking for powder snow and properties) came several years ago, and many of them are not coming back because of the coronavirus pandemic,’ an official of a small municipality told me recently. Meanwhile, though their visits have decreased, Chinese are continuing to ask for information about snow, accommodations, and properties for potential acquisitions of resort properties, another official of a separate municipality said.
A property agent by the name of one Mr. Ishii, quoted by the media based in Hokkaido, said Chinese investors continued to register acquisition interest in resort housing in Furano, located in the middle of the big island, though his business unsurprisingly plunged as a whole for the pandemic in response to the cancellation of property referral tours for affluent Chinese. Ishii had readied the inventory of a total of 20 houses in Furano or 10 billion yen ($100 million) worth of properties for the tours.
Rich Chinese are set to return to Furano and other resort areas of Japan once the pandemic is wrestled under control. Proof of it, the influential Japan Overseas Chinese Federation held on July 17 a local Hokkaido chapter meeting where the main topic was the promotion of Furano, Niseko and other resorts of Hokkaido to mainland Chinese, especially Furano where posh resort houses can be purchased for 1/3rd of what would cost in Niseko, the area first made internationally famous by Australian skiers in the early 2000s and property prices went through the roof.
While a prime location house, a modest compact one, in Niseko goes for no less than a few million dollars, a much more spacious one can be had for the same price, local property agents said. In June, a Hong Kong developer completed an upscale condominium building in Furano, adjacent to a ski slope, for prices ranging between $300,000 to $2.3 million. All units sold out right away, most of them to Chinese entrepreneurs, according to local media reports.
An official of Furano City Office said that of some 22,000 residents, a few hundreds are foreigners, of which Chinese represent a dominant share, while westerner residents are few, an important reason why Chinese would want to go to Furano Furano attracts more than half a million visitors from Japan and overseas annually. The official said Chinese visitors to Furano had grown sharply in recent years and they continued to indicate wishes to revisit.
The Niseko town, the population of 4,900, drew as many 218,000 foreign visitors in fiscal 2018, of which 59,500 were Chinese, 29,500 Hong Kongers, 25,500 Australians, and 23,000 Taiwanese, according to the town’s data. In fiscal 2019, which ended in March 2020, foreign visitors plummeted to 160,084, but the number of Chinese increased to 67,700, while Australian visitors dropped to 11,600.
An official of Nozawa Onsen village office in Nagano, famous for powder snow for Australians and New Zealanders, said Australian tourists ‘disappeared’ from the village after the pandemic, ‘Nozawa is a popular skiing resort for Australians and New Zealanders. They typically make next season’s reservations while they are visiting the village in the winter but ‘this season, we are hearing almost no reservations for next season.’
By no means, data can be a reliable indicator, yet, if it can offer what to come over coming months and years, Ministry of Justice monthly immigration statistics show a progressive recovery of Chinese residents returning to Japan. In May, according to the data, Chinese entry to Japan numbered barely more than 800. The same data rocketed to more than 2,100 in June. The returnees are Chinese residents with permanent residential permits. Almost in sharp contrast, the number of Australian, U.S. and other western country residents returning to Japan remained in the two or three digit levels. The gap may be an omen of what’ll unfold on the Japanese property market for foreigners in coming months and years.

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TOKYO, Aug. 6, 2020—Over the past many years to today, the 75th anniversary of the U.S. dropping of the world’s first atomic bomb on Hiroshima that killed more than ¼ million Japanese citizens, Japan has been playing a defensive role of promoting a nuclear arms-free world through storytelling of the horrific scenes the bomb caused – hundreds of times the magnitude of the Beirut explosion — but never pointed fingers at the United States.

This needs to change and the world must prod the United States for reasons about why it ignited the bomb on Hiroshima instead of accepting long outstanding explanations to end Japan’s aggressions and end the war because the number of Hibakusha – the victims of the bomb, many over their 80s still haunted by leukemia and other ailments, will be gone soon. That would mean the world is going to be left only with photos and videos and books to learn, bereft of live human voice stories of the horror. 

As the Hibakusha population shrinks fast, speeches and stories about the hell that unfolded after the flash of the bomb at 8:15 a.m., Aug. 6, 1945 that are exchanged among Hiroshima people at the Peace Memorial Park today sounded rather hollow to me and were like discolored old photos.

This year again, sadly, speeches spoken at the Memorial Park were mostly about nuclear arms’ dangers and inhumanity and calls for a total ban. Many newspapers today posted the Hiroshima memorial as the top article but some carried Tokyo’s corona virus resurgence as top. By the time their evening editions are distributed Aug. 7, the papers’s editors and the Japanese public would bury Hiroshima deep in the back of their heads.

That Hiroshima – and the Nagasaki bombing Aug. 9 – atrocities should never be repeated is a universal message that should be shared not only by the Japanese as victims but also by the United States as the developer and executioner of the most ignominious of weapons. Stories about the dangers, history and policies of nuclear arms development should be told to the world from the victor’s perspectives, including racial biases of American policymakers about Japanese, how Washington planned to deploy the bomb in other areas, and so on.

Former President Barack Obama, who visited the 2016 Hiroshima anniversary, did not offer apologies but presumably wanted to do so as he embraced Hibakusha and called for a nuclear arms free world.

In 2019, Pope Francis made his first visit to Japan denouncing the ‘unspeakable horror’ of the bomb.

In an op-ed page, the Los Angeles Time said, ‘The accepted wisdom in the United States for the last 75 years has been that dropping the bombs on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and on Nagasaki three days later was the only way to end the World War II without an invasion that would have cost hundreds of thousands of American and perhaps millions of Japanese lives. Not only did the bombs end the war, the logic goes, they did so in the most humane way possible.

But ‘(T)he overwhelming historical evidence from American and Japanese archives indicates that Japan would have surrendered that August, even if atomic bombs had not been used — and documents prove that President Truman and his closest advisors knew it.’

‘The fateful decision to inaugurate the nuclear age fundamentally changed the course of modern history, and it continues to threaten our survival. As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock warns us, the world is now closer to nuclear annihilation than at any time since 1947,’ the newspaper said. 

It’s long overdue that Japanese politicians take up what the United States did to Hiroshima 75 years ago – in close collaboration with their American counterparts – to achieve nuclear arsenal reductions by sharing the experiences of both the victims and the victor and eventually make a nuclear arms free world at a time when nations around the world are precariously headed in wrong directions like Trump’s ‘America First.’

The American views of atomic weapons are almost the opposite of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims’ suffering. While the victims’ annual storytelling tours to American cities over the intervening years did have effects in winning hearts and minds of people to ban nuclear weapons, most see them as posing limited dangers as long as they are not dropped in their backyards.

In 1958, Count Basie and his orchestra released ‘The Atomic Mr. Basie’ album from Capitol Records that used a photo of an atomic bomb-detonated white mushroom cloud on its cover. It was acclaimed as one of his best albums. The thumping rhythms of the Basie band must have made the listeners’ adrenalin levels soaring to the album’s cover photo.

That was 62 years ago. But the American public opinion seems to be shifting more to the use of nuclear arms after Trump was elected. In August 2017, Stanford University scholar Scott Sagan wrote ‘a majority of Americans prioritize protecting U.S. troops and achieving American war aims, even when doing so would result in the use of nuclear weapons and the deaths of millions of civilians in another country.’

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Chino, Japan, July 30, 2020—It’s been known for decades that Japanese parliament plenary sessions are a wild west of fist-fighting, rugby scrumming, and snoozing while lawmakers on the podium read out whatever is written by corrupt bureaucrats. Over the recent months what’s supposed to be a sacred chamber of legislation has added a new feature: venues for lawmaking morons to study English, reading books and comics, watching an alligator swallowed by a boa constrictor and and applying to become a monitor for a health food product, all unrelated to legislative debates.
Moral and quality degradation of the Diet is nothing new. Ever since its founding some 150 years ago, the two legislative chambers have been drawing ambitious sword and hoe-swinging souls intent about building their personal wealth and comfort save a few, the likes of Renya Mutaguchi who sent tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers onto a death march in Myanmar (formerly Burma) during World War II while wining and dining with geisha far away from the frontline, or, more recently, a lawmaker secretary who had been elected to the House of Representatives in the 2000s and declared immediately that the first thing he wanted to do is to go to a ryotei (a tea house where drinks and meals are served and geisha girls dance).
In recent years, after Abe became the prime minister of this country, the degradation velocity has gone overdrive, and now, the Diet is clearly out of control becoming the chambers in which lawmaker personal interests weigh over voter pleas as is the case of current policies to dole out handouts to hospitality industries over those to prevent the corona virus pandemic spread. This week, at Abe’s instructions, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare began free distribution of 80 million face masks to medical facilities despite the fact that right now, Japan has enough numbers of personal protective equipment. Clearly, the measure is intended to mollify medical workers who had expressed anger at Abe for losing jobs as the September election of his liberal party nears.
As Abe being such a selfish, myopic man who thinks only about himself, so are many of Diet members, and so too are bureaucrats that are supposed to be politically neutral but are willing to ‘take orders’ from Abe and his cabinet ministers, as the 80 million face mask measure attests.
Tetsushi Sakamoto, former vice minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is one of many self-centered lawmakers. On July 28, the 6-term House of Rep of Abe’s ruling party, LDP, was videoed by Fuji Television studying English with a textbook while attending the House’s natural disaster committee session debating rescue policies for recent Kyushu flood victims – the area where he represents. The video was released on the internet immediately. The House’s administrative office told me that reading books while House sessions are held, including committee meetings, is prohibited. Sakamoto and his aides were not available to comment.
Sakamoto, who was interviewed by Fuji, said he regretted his act.
Sakamoto, however, was not alone doing things presumably unrelated to the committee meeting. Fuji TV said there were other lawmakers who was using tablets, PCs and smart phones while hiding the screens from the media scrutiny.
On July 25, Mainichi newspaper reported that Seiko Noda, an LDP member known to be one of candidates to succeed Abe and former minister of internal affairs and communications, was reading a nonfiction on Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike, and current vice justice minister Hirosuke Yoshiie was reading a spy novel while attending Diet sessions. Former science and tech minister Takuya Hirai was watching a video of a boa constrictor swallowing an alligator at a session on May 13 to amend the Public Prosecutor Law in response to a scandal involving Hiromu Kurokawa, Tokyo high prosecutor commissioner general, Mainichi said. Yet another was spotted applying to become a monitor for a health food product from the smart phone.
Solutions to cleanse the Diet are limited. Whoever succeeds Abe, Japanese politics won’t change much. This country and its people have been so deeply immersed in the culture of paying respects to the high and powerful, called the ‘Okami,’ that until they enter critical moments such as death and starvation, they won’t change.

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Chino, Japan, July 24, 2020—On this rainy summer day when the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games should have began with loud fanfare had it not been for the corona virus pandemic, Chinese coastguard ships probably are perilously lurking around Senkaku Islands as Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe is understood to be cocooned at home with his wife and pet dog and keeping mum about the Chinese threat.
A spokesman for the 11th Regional Coast Guard Headquarters, based in the southernmost province of Okinawa, told me that two Chinese coastguard ships remained in the ‘contiguous zone’ bordering with the Japanese territorial waters as of late July 24. It marked the 102th consecutive day that Chinese government patrol ships remained in the zone, he said. There were no Japanese flag carriers near the two Chinese ships, he said.
China had told Japan to instruct Japanese fishing board to halt operating near Senkaku arguing that the fishing boats ‘violated’ Chinese exclusive waters. China also demanded that Tokyo tell the assembly of Ishigaki Island City to register Senkaku as part of the city’s district, according to Japanese news reports quoting diplomatic sources July 19.
On July 22, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin, reiterated to reporters in Beijing that Senkaku Islands are ‘China’s inherent land’ as well as that the Chinese coastguard vessels have the inherent rights of cruising’ the area and that Beijing ‘refuses to receive the Japanese government’s protest,’ according to Japanese news reports from Beijing.
Over the past few months, as the world media attention has been glued to the corona virus pandemic, Chinese patrol ships have been traveling around the Senkaku Island waters far more frequently than before. Through July 3 this year, Chinese ships cruised in Japan’s territorial waters as many as 14 times, the Japanese coast guard spokesman said earlier.
The Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has kept quiet through much of the escalating Chinese violations. On July 23, Japan, the country of 126 million people, began a summer vacation with two legal holidays added to the weekend as an alternative event of the Tokyo Olympic Games that were to begin the same day but were postponed to next year because of the pandemic. Abe, too, went on vacation, probably sitting on the sofa of his house with his wife and dog and listening to music, but without releasing any statement or comment to the Chinese aggression.
On July 19, the Japanese coast guard took delivery of the 6,500-ton new coast guard ship Reimei from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. The ship is the largest Japanese patrol vessel and is equipped with a heliport. It is expected to be commissioned to patrol the southern Japanese waters including Senkaku.
Yet, absent instructions from the prime minister, it’s questionable whether the coast guard can do the job they are supposed to do.
Abe currently is ‘self-quarantining’ not against the corona pandemic but from the public/media scrutiny over the probe of two lawmakers close to him that were known to be the masterminds of a payoff scandal to buy votes in a national election. Abe is widely reported as the kingmaker of this and a string of other scandals that splashed headlines in the Japanese media over the past few years.
Last time he cocooned himself claiming that he had developed a serious intestinal disorder (which was true) was the massive resignation of his ministers from his first cabinet in 2007.

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Chino, Japan, July 21, 2020—Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.’s H-IIA rocket July 21 successfully launched the United Arab Emirates’ Mars probe Hope into orbit, confirming the Japanese space vehicle’s reliability as among the world’s top space launch vehicles, the company announced July 20. The launch reminded the Japanese that one of the country’s industries remains globally competitive.
‘The H-IIA launch vehicle is Japan’s flagship launch vehicle and one of the most reliable launch vehicles in the world. Today’s launch was the 45th consecutive successful H-IIA/H-IIB launch, with an accumulative success rate of 98.0%,’ the announcement said. Not bad!
(https://www.mhi.com/news/story/20200720.html
https://apnews.com/475a4062f4728185e7ea17005f6f4ff7?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top)

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Chino, Japan, July 17, 2020—From July 22, 2020, until this fall, what the Abe cabinet brand as the ‘GoTo Campaign’ starts. The $14 billion government program, which encourages the Japanese to go on vacation to help the coronavirus pandemic-distressed hospitality and leisure industries, basically foots ½ of travel expenses and up to roughly $200 a night no matter many nights vacationers stay. It comes right in the middle of surging infection cases, and on July 16, Abe was forced to partially roll back the program – excluding Tokyoites and non-Tokyo residents visiting Tokyo from the program’s qualification and angering the residents of the 12 million city.

That the program, defined as the core undertaking to salvaging the Japanese economy out of the coronavirus recession, omitted 1/10^th of the country’s 126 million people itself was a fiasco but the Abe cabinet bungling about the program seems unlimited:

–Tokyo residents are known to account for as many as 1/4^th of Japan’s domestic travelers, so their absence at vacation destinations is a big loss to hotels and pleasure businesses, but may help curve the coronavirus spread to other locations, but since Tokyo’s surrounding provinces – Saitama, Kanagawa, and Chiba – qualify for the program, country folks may find accommodations in the three provinces and from there visit Tokyo and go to such attractions like Tokyo Disneyland and Disney Sea, Sumo wrestling and others, and end up getting infected and bringing back the virus to their hometowns;

–By excluding other big Japanese cities from the program, such as Osaka, Fukuoka, Nagoya, Kyoto, and Sapporo (Hokkaido), the July 16 program revision left big holes of potential infections. In fact, Osaka’s new cases have been soaring in recent days from zero cases until the fresh surge;

–The revision also sparked criticisms about government spending discriminations against Tokyoites and complaints that Tokyo vacationers who already had paid for travels won’t be refunded for being denied from the program.

The original program, which was revealed during the height of the pandemic, was very confusing and difficult to understand as it was written in bureaucratic language. It had been revised and posted on the government’s Japan Tourism Agency on July 15. It said travelers can receive ½ of domestic travel expenses, and that 7/10^th of the subsidy can be used for accommodations and transportation and 3/10^th are paid in vouchers to be used in visit areas, as well as that it pays up to $200 per night per person and that the number of stays to be subsidized is unlimited.

Vacationers can submit applications and necessary documents including hotel and transportation receipts to get paid the subsidy or submit necessary documents to the relevant administrative office, according to the agency’s website. Those offices that process applications are expected to be private-sector industry lobbies such as hotel tourism associations. The agency urged them to attend briefings scheduled for July 21 and later. Later!? So, until then, the agency won’t release details how to screen and/or process applications!! Clearly insufficient preparations.

And yet, there’s one thing that has been accomplished: Work for bureaucrats. No matter how clumsy and faulty it can be, government bureaucrats presented the program to Abe and his cronies and the governing lawmakers, many of them formerly bureaucrats, gladly bought it and decided to implement it to squander taxpayer money because it looked complicated and professional.

Bureaucrats who had written the application paper for all Japanese taxpayers to receive $1,000 ‘anti-coronavirus payment’ this spring – which was budgeted for a much smaller expenditure than the GoTo campaign – must have realized that more complex a program is better in disincentivizing the public to apply and rewarding for them for their jobs and career promotions.

–Toshio Aritake

The old man was saying that men’s voting rights were abolished because while they were practicing politics, corruption was rampant so people were fed up with it and female politicians increased gradually, and the first female prime minister was born and men have not been given that post since then. Now, there’s no need to give voting rights to men. Men are showing no interest in politics, so giving them voting rights is a waste. That’s how a national referendum was held and the decision was to let women in change of politics, the economy and other legislative matters. After losing voting rights, me lost upward mobility ambitions and thus, senior corporate posts are all held by women and men are relieved from hard work. It’s really an easy life for us men, I really think so…
In the present time, which is thirty years after the old man’s prediction, there is no school. Neighborhood private classes do the job, and they teach Chinese as the first language. And now, most women don’t marry. This means monogamy has disappeared and Japan’s male-female relationship has returned to that of the Heian period (AD 794-1185), when men visited women’s houses at invitation to do the job. So women would bear babies of their favorite men, most of them different guys, so the babies look all different too. Some women would wash men’s bodies in the bath and cook meals for men. How nice for us men!
The other day, I heard from the 35-year-old Mr. Miyasaka that he had spotted a lovely slender lady at a local supermarket, so he followed her to the lady’s house. He pulled out a small notebook, ripped a page and scribbled down a haiku and posted it into her mailbox. As you know, smart phones no longer exist now after the government’s stupid policy of compulsory assigning the national residential number to each citizen, and as you remember, that had triggered rampant on-line frauds and all other kinds of crimes. So people quit using the smart phones.
Plus, the world had been hit by waves of economic depressions, and Japan’s living standards backpedaled to the levels of the Meiji era (150 years ago). This is good news, though. People started practicing Tanka and Waka (ancient forms of haiku) to attract ladies’ attention.
Mr. Miyasaka said he waited for a reply poem from the slender lady but waited and waited, the express delivery services do not bring her reply. By the way, the postal service had gone bankrupt a long ago. Mr. Miyasaka said he eventually received a reply, which said she already had a partner, a bald, short, bespectacled, stocky guy!

Now, thirty years after the old man’s prediction, the U.S. and Japan are totally done as world powers, and in their place, China is stealing the show. Buildings in Marunouchi, Shinagawa and other Tokyo business districts are all Chinese-owned. The China town in Yokohama has moved to Ginza and the Akasaka Korea town has become a small China town. In many entertainment and business districts now, the Chinese languages – Mandarin, Cantonese and others, are spoken as common languages and many Japanese office workers are attending the Panda Chinese Language School.
‘Mr. Nakamura, where did your daughter started working?,’ asked a male office worker senior to Mr. Nakamura, both of them attending the school at lunchtime. ”My daughter is working at a Chinese pharmaceutical company in Shanghai and developing an energizer called the Have Affairs with 100 Yang Kiki.’ That’s what Nakamura-san told me the other day.
‘How about your daughter, sir?,’ Mr. Nakamura asked his supervisor, who answered that his daughter is also working in China at a company that breeds giant pandas.
Mr. and Mrs. Miyasaka, who runs the pop-and-mom drug store Miyasaka Pharma, one day held a serious family talk and decided that it no longer makes sense to sell Japanese medicine, so they came up with the idea of handling Chinese herbal medicine. Since most Japanese drug stores already were carrying Chinese medicine, they thought that some kind of gimmick is needed to draw customers to their store. This is what Mr. Miyasaka told me.
The middle-aged couple talked about hiring a couple of Chinese employees but rejected that idea because Chinese labor cost is now the highest in the world and there’s no way a small store like theirs can afford expensive Chinese workers. So, Mr. Miyasaka instead donned an antique China dress and spoke Japanese like Chinese do. And they also painted the store signs in red. A local fish store owner came into the store and asked for the Yang Kiki medicine and Mr. Miyasaka negotiated with he fish store owner’s price cutting request in broken Chinese.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSMVYJug8pA&t=1446s

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‘The man who served as the last male Japanese prime minister, I think, was the guy by the name of Koizumi. After him, Seiko Noda became the first female prime minister, and after her, Makiko Tanaka, a very noisy woman who talks too much. Since then, women have been working as the Japanese prime minister and I rather like it because, you see, they don’t pass strange laws,
‘This year’s bill totally banning automobiles on expressways is a good example. You can take a walk or bicycle on the expressway without worrying about being hit by cars. Why they built so many expressways? I thought it was Koizumi who did it. It’s because roads were flooded with cars 30 years ago because Japan had 120 million people and many people had a workaholic-like obsession to work. How stupid.,
‘The Japanese population has decreased quite a bit and now every household is doing farming. Raising what you eat at home is a new normal. Thirty years ago, you were afraid of becoming poor. Now, everyone is poor, and as you can see, people look relaxed and enjoy life. Thirty years ago, buying a house was once in a lifetime decision but look around now, vacancies are all over Japan,
‘And the law to demolish that Yanba Dam (water reservoir dam) is a good law. It’s having a rippling effect to demolish similar dams all over Japan, and as a result, the ocean and river ecosystems were restored and fish are coming back to the rivers,
‘So as you can see, Japan has become a much better country than before and it’s because Japan stripped men of voting rights and asked women to work as politicians. Women do better work than men.
‘What!? The post office finally started selling Yaki-imo (roasted sweet potatoes)?! That sounds great. It’s not unusual, though. I think it was in 2017 when the postal service privatization law was enforced. Then-PM, Koizumi worked hard to allow post offices to sell Yaki-imo. You haven’t heard about it? Better study history.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSMVYJug8pA&t=1446s

(More in Part III)

TOKYO, July 7, 2020—Japan has become a much better country to live now, as I predicted 30 years ago,’ the old man told me the other day.
‘First of all, the population has shrunk quite a bit, so we don’t have to compete aggressively anymore: Tokyo has shrunk to a one-million population city, or one-tenth of 30 years ago and to the same population of the Edo period (approximately 300 years ago),
‘Look, traffic is smooth and the air is clean! Thanks to the relocation of the capital to Sendai, young people have moved out of Tokyo. So the noisy motorcycles and that strange music are gone. The only noise that I hear are karaoke bars and pachinko parlors. The Japanese society has changed dramatically but you know the Japanese love pachinko and karaoke. All foreign things have disappeared from our land. Nobody has smart phones now,
‘Remember Ichiro? He was a pro ball hero in both Japan and the U.S. 30 years ago. Ball games had been popular until the end of the Heisei era (2019). Over time, the teams (previously 12 altogether) had doubled to 12 Central and 12 Pacific league teams. That was way too many, and as a result, player quality was compromised and all competent players moved to the U.S. , so the Japanese leagues were left with lousy players only and the people lost interest in ball games…,
‘Soccer? The last time the Japanese national team played until the final was when Japan and South Korea co-hosted the world cup (in 2002). Since then, Japanese teams have not lasted to the finals, and that’s not surprising since Japanese players cannot score. The last major game was when Japan fought against Nepal and lost the game zero to 5 and dropped of the Asian cup. Of course, people lost interest in soccer too,
‘Soccer stadiums have become housing display grounds and kids are playing empty-can kicking games on the rounds around the model houses. They look active and healthy. They are much better off than playing video games and going to ‘juku (after-school cram classes.’ They don’t have any bullying kids like 30 years ago,
‘Thirty years ago, the U.S. was bossing around the world and Japan was America’s yes man about anything, taking orders for everything from the U.S.: America was fighting war all over the world for what it said was for annihilating terrorism. You know the wars have critically damaged the American economy and the American unemployment rate now is 50 percent! So it’s not surprising that American people are going to China or India for work!,
‘But you know the good thing is that the world has regained peace since the U.S. has become a poor country. Okinawa is a perfect example: It is now the largest Japanese resort. It’s flooded with Asian tourists. 30 years ago, there were many American military bases and aircraft often crashed or dropped debris to Okinawa’s residential areas. Japan also owned a military back then called the self-defense force, but it was really a military. It went to Iraq with ammos. Why? Because Iraq and America was fighting a war and Japan was ordered to follow the Americans
‘Who am I? How old I am? I’m a neighborhood story teller. I’ll be 105 this year (2034).

(More in Part II)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSMVYJug8pA&t=1446s

TOKYO, July 5, 2020—I received a package of Mr. Rainier cherries, yes, that delicious one, from my U.S.-based friend the other day, and intending to reciprocate, I packed Japanese goodies and took the package to a local post office to send. Sending a small parcel has been no hassle and I thought it’s the same this time even if international flights were limited for the Covid-19 pandemic affecting passengers – but not cargo flights.
I was wrong. The post office clerk told me almost curtly, ‘We are no accepting any outbound postal materials excluding mails and postcards to the United States.’ When I asked her how soon the service will resume, she said, ‘We have no idea.’ Delivery to China, New Zealand, Italy and Indonesia reopened on June 30 on a partial basis for small air parcels, the postal company, Japan Post, said on its website, but that accepting cargoes for delivery to the United States remained closed. When pressed on, the post office clerk disclosed that outbound surface (ship) cargoes to the United States remained open but that she had now idea how long. Plus, the fee is twice as much as sending my parcel by air.
I then thought about sending the package I brought back from the post office via Federal Express. They were accepting outbound cargoes to the United States but the fee was too high, at least three times the value of the package, so I gave up that option and decided to sit on it until the postal serve resumes services.
Back home, I thought over the situation: Why is that the Fedex is operating both outbound and inbound cargoes from the United States but Japan Post, the governmental postal and logistics company, is not? Since I am writing this article on a weekend, I cannot investigate but can speculate that it has something to do with Japan Post’s business relations with commercial airlines – and bureaucracy.
My internet searches revealed that Japan Post seemed to be using only or primarily Japanese flag carriers of ANA and JAL to carry cargoes to and from the United States, and since the two carriers now are flying on a vey limited basis, the company cannot accept outbound cargoes. Japan Post can piggyback on Fedex cargo flights but it probably won’t do it so as not to disrupt its traditional business ties with the two Japanese carriers. Call it the old ‘keiretsu’ tie.I have no information about inbound cargoes Japan Post handles from the United States but won’t be surprised if it is handled as business as usual.
The company was privatized a few years ago but its management and employees remain unchanged as a far-end branch of the Japanese bureaucracy.
This can be a reason why the Japan Post stock price has been drifting lower and could even slip further from the current level of 762 yen.

–Toshio Aritake