Tag: India

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A Tokyo district thrives with Korean, Indian, Vietnamese residents

TOKYO, Jan. 11, 2024—It’s a tale of two Japanese cities: One being built with huge taxpayer money with no guarantee of sustainable growth, the other spontaneously started by long-time Korean residents and now bristling with vigor with Indian, Vietnamese, Chinese, and other nationalities.

In the western business city of Osaka, the Japanese government is injecting nearly 1 trillion yen for the 2025 Osaka Expo on a small man-made island in Osaka Bay, and adjacent to the site, construction work is about to start for the Osaka IR project to build a casino and entertainment complex.

In Shin-Okubo of Tokyo, which had been a squalid-looking downtown inhabited by Koreans a long time ago, streets and allays are brimming with Korean restaurants, shops, groceries, with the hews and scents of Asian ethnicities added colorfully in short recent years by the influx of Indians, Nepalese, Vietnamese. Chinese of course are ubiquitous.

One can feel that this small district is prospering on the dynamics that a multiracialism society has to nurture sustainably, reminiscent of Queens or downtown Manhattan of New York. It ca be described as the power of spontaneousness created by the gathering of peoples of many persuasions.Korean eateries offer all sorts of BBQs, kimchi, and other goodies, shops sell Korean cosmetics, sweets, characters and so so that draw visitors like magnets. Vietnamese eateries offer phos, spring rolls and many more. Then there are kebabs, Indian and Nepalese curries and samosas…Ethnic culinary experiences in Shin-Okubo being as diverse and tasty, ramen shops, which typically are run by relatively young Japanese, are not as common as in other parts of Tokyo.

Except a few, such as Aeon mini supermarkets, Shin-Okubo is almost devoid of Japanese establishments, showing that they are overwhelmed in competition from Korean and other nationality entities selling everything at cut-throat prices.

It was precisely how Japan grew out of its 1945 post-World War II rubbles. Among few locations that give hints of those days past are Ueno Ameya-yokocho, where many vendors of leather goods, food, clothing and cosmetics are Japanese nationals (though they are surrendering steadily to Chinese, Korean and other rivals), and the Akihabara electric products bazaar (where Arabs are making strong inroads for PCs and smart phones vending, booting out Japanese).

Shin-Okubo, Ameya-yokocho and Akihabara are the areas that are attracting foreign nationals to do business, and they clearly are growing on their own – and without government regulations, directions and money – on free market principle, in marked contrast to the Osaka Expo and the Osaka IR project that are dictated by bureaucrats and politicians with taxpayer money.

Which city prospers is self-evident.

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U.S. shows weakness everywhere as China gears further SE Asia expansion

TOKYO, Dec. 13, 2023—Joe Biden met China’s Xi Jingpin, Isrtael’s Benjamin Natanyahu, Ukraine’s Volodymyl Zelenskyy, India’s Narendra Modi, the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos, Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and dozens of leaders from other countries this year for solving problems that the United States alone has the capacity to resolve: ending wars, preempting potential conflicts, human and drug trafficking, human rights, and climate change mitigation, among them. Understandably, China is watching Biden closely, and something might have clicked to Beijing… It’s the reason behind China’s fresh hegemony.

The White House’s Nov. 15, 2023 readout after the Biden-Xi meeting in San Francisco said the two leaders agreed to cooperate in combatting illicit drug manufacturing and trafficking, including fentanyl, resume high-level military communication, affirmed the need to address the risks of AI, and maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea and East China Sea.ß

Over the past two months since the Israel-Hamas war erupted, Biden told Natanyahu to prtect civilians in phone calls and meetings.

In September, Biden visited India for a one-on-one with Modi. They ‘reemphasized that the shared value of freedom, democracy, human rights, inclusion, pluralism and equal opportunities for all citizens are critical,’ according to the White House readout from that meeting. Before that, in May, Biden welcomed Marcos to the While House, with both leaders agreeing to hold joint military exercises, and Marcos offered to allow U.S. military presence in the Philippines as a show of his country’s counterforce against China. Biden and the Mexican president discussed illicit drugs and migration entering the United States n November.

In the COP28 climate change negotiations having been in session over more than the past week in Dubai, Biden did not show up, thus empowering the powerful OPEC and OPECplus economies to overwhelm outcries of Tuvalu and many other low-lying countries to keep global temperature rise to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

And this week, Ukraine’s Zelenskyy’s plea for more U.S. aide sounded hollow inside the Beltway as Republicans muffled Biden’s pledge for additional funding.

It’s probably no coincidence that heavily-armed Chinese coast guard ships blasted Philippines fishing boats with water cannons near the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, the area that Manila had long occupied for fishing.

Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican House representative, said in his blogpost that what’s happening in Washington looks like a revisit to post-WWI Europe, when the U.S. attitude toward Hitler was that what the Nazi’s were doing was remilitarizing the Rhineland was in Deutscheland, not in other territory. 

Obama deserves to be scorned for missing the opportunity ti staunch Russian expansion to Crimea, Kinzinger said, but ‘the very people who attacked him for weakness now advocate the same policy.’

The whole Biden White House ineptitude is being closed watched by…China as the U.S. weakness and the reason for Beijing to make a go at the Philippines fishing boats, and then other areas of the South and East China seas, possibly including Senkaku Islands claimed both by China and Japan as a precursor to China7s invasion of Taiwan.

All the more encouraging for the Chinese military brass, the Pentagon was forced to ground indefinitely the entire Osprey aircraft fleet following the crash accident near souther Japan in November. The Ospreys were positioned as a key defense fleet for the U.S. military wings.

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Hats off to India’s successful rescue of tunnel construction workers

TOKYO, Nov. 29, 2023—Though details are sketchy and unverifiable, the reported successful rescue of all 41 workers from the collapse of tunnel construction is more than being reckoned with as miraculous and great.

Just like the country’s landing of a Moon rover, Chandrayaan-3, on the planet’s south pole, India’s technicians registered their tenacity and will power to save the 41 lives – who could well have been abandoned as dispensable low-wage labor had it happened a decade earlier.

It appears, to me, to be a combined yield of cumulative technology improvements the country has built up over decades and prime minister Narendra Modi’s policy campaign to uplift his country’s global image.

It’s an analogy in stark contrast to what would be like if a similar accident happens in Japan: The prime minister’s office would convene an emergency cabinet meeting, instructing heads of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications’ Fire and Disaster Management Agency, the Ministry of Defense, the National Police Agency, the Ministry of Health Labor and Welfare, and possibly other ministries that can offer technical and other assistances to come to rescue work.

In reality, though, that emergency cabinet meeting would caution that rescue staff to be dispatched newly to the disaster scene should be extra careful not be get involved in secondary disaster, so those staff would be at the scene but are not likely to engage in the real rescue work that is likely being done by those that were initially sent to the scene.

Even though there has been no comparable disasters in Japan for years, those trapped in the (hypothetical) accident thus may not gain access to much-needed medicine, water, food, oxygen and other vital needs in time since non-first-arrived rescuers may not be allowed to jump into the scene by risking their lives.

Plus, one can speculate from the photos of the Indian tunnel construction site that Indian engineers might have acquired advanced skills in drilling safely and other necessary arrangements as they did in landing the moon rover.

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