japan is fucked up!

6.6, Hokkaido. houses buried in landslides, 2 reported deaths already

http://www.asahicom.jp/ajw/articles/images/AS20180906002535_comm.jpg
from the Asahi Shimbun

I missed the recent Kansai earthquake by a day and I’m in Sapporo in a couple of weeks. Sooner or later I’m going to be caught up in one of these, which is a pretty sobering thoughts.

Is the rain from typhoon jebi a factor in the landslides or just a coincidence?

Does dylannnn still post here?

Planning for 2+ week work trip. Last time I commuted from Chigasaki to Shibuya which was a little long but the family was stoked on the beach.

Was considering Karuizawa but that may also suck in the coming months, might be better to stay more local? I used to randomly hang in Tokorozawa back in the day and kind of have a fondness for scraping the edge of the outer suburbs. 2LDK mansions are surprisingly cheap on airbnb.

Haven’t seen him in a while but I thought he moved to china?

I found Ueno pretty easy to stay last time. It's the opposite side of the Yamanote line but there are straight-across trains from Akihabara. But Ueno Park and the museums etc around there make for nice variety, and the place has a good feel.

i'm in beijing a lot these days but still based in tokyo!

i hate leaving this particular ward in tokyo, so i base this mostly on transit. i don't see a commute from karuizawa working... i just looked up the transit situation and you'd have a tough time making it under 3 hours once you came into ueno or tokyo station on the hokuriku shinkansen then transferring to the yamanote. hakone or ohiradai, anywhere out there, not quite as pretty as karuizawa but you're on the odakyu line, one train to shibuya, get there in an hour and a half. you could even go somewhere way up in tochigi and get in easier than from karuizawa, still in some pretty mountains and not far from the water. how about along the ibaraki coast? i was going to recommend hiratsuka or somewhere else on the shonan coast (or down the miura peninsula) for good balance between city/ocean/mountain, but chigasaki is right there.

if it's the city, maybe kitasenju? it's a happening neighborhood suddenly and easy to get into the city but remote enough that it feels like you're in chiba. akabane out in kita ward, if you like that showa atmosphere.

In my much more limited experience, I second Ueno and Okachimachi.

Kitasenju look interesting.

I get to spend a couple of months in Tokyo next fall. My wife is going to be a visiting scholar at Keio, which apparently comes with an on campus flat.

i live just north of ueno station, and i'd recommend getting just a bit beyond the area, especially if you're staying in an airbnb. just the sheer number of tourists staying around here, the hundreds of hotels and airbnbs and other quasi-legal minpaku, all the tourists flocking to asakusa and ameyoko and the zoo, it can be offputting, i think.

if not kitasenju, then maybe minami senju or nihonzutsumi, a fascinating neighborhood that has a history as a center of labor struggle, outcastes, day laborers and homeless and plenty of charm still left, fairly welcoming because around 2008 world cup and before, hostels started to be built, business hotels, slowly being gentrified as the flophouses and business hotels are being converted to hotels catering to chinese tourists and suburbanites move in from chiba, still close enough to asakusa to walk down (five, ten minutes) and see the northern half of that area, yoshiwara, kappabashi etc. eat on the arcades around sensoji at dusk when the tourists have left... or around the triangle formed by nishi-nippori, nippori and mikawashima stations, right in the heart of gritty shitamachi, very quiet especially as you approach mikawashima, and yanaka ginza and the yanasen area are just to the west, but easy to get in and out. or further west, machiya or oji or otsuka, so you can stay in a chill neighborhood, ride the city's last streetcar around, but still hop on the yamanote to get to ikebukuro or shibuya or wherever. or even across the river in sumida ward, still in the early process of being gentrified (because it's going to be underwater when the big one hits and the alluvial soil liquefies), plenty of charm, museums and parks and good restaurants.

I have been a visiting scholar at Keio with an on-campus flat but it was in Hiyoshi fwiw. Though then you’re close to Yokohama which for livability I might prefer to Tokyo?

I find the areas around Ueno very sympa, Asakusa and even over the river toward the sumo stadium. These areas are older but seem somehow very solid, if that makes any sense.

Hopefully I will be going to Kyoto in April.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/15/japan-cyber-security-minister-admits-has-never-used-computer/

these photos of everyday life are great: https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/tokyo-street-photographer-mikiko-hara/

as is: http://www.youtube.com/user/Rambalac/videos

Tell me more about this "Ueno"...

jk, please don't! I spent way too much time there in the 00s, plying my wares on the mean streets of Ameyoko. Fond memories of this dive: https://tabelog.com/en/tokyo/A1311/A131101/13008521/

Thanks dylannn for the recs, I'll spend this weekend doing some more research and hopefully booking by Sunday. No offense to the other recommendations but in case it's not obvious I'm looking for to stay not quite inaka but as far outside of town as I can manage (now that Karuizawa is off the table, Chichibu may be pushing it).

I’m still perplexed ueno is an actual tourist spot

chichibu would be doable. you could probably go a little further west to kofu, and have an easier time getting in to tokyo and be way out there but still in a town.

ueno, the keisei narita line dumps people right there, within walking distance to asakusa, the zoo, akihabara on 99% of foreign tourist itineraries and package tour stops, a billion hotels around the stations, ameyoko is now given over to mostly touristy-type shit, so it makes sense that people stroll through on their way to akihabara. it's a weird place to choose to live, i realize now, at ueno in peak tourism. i live in a danchi occupied by mostly 70 and 80 year olds who protested the construction of a hotel right next door, but what can you do? i should take my own advice and move to kofu.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Why-large-scale-immigration-would-be-bad-for-Japan

Replace japan for the US in that article and ilxors would ban the hell out of you

Thing is, nikkei’s arguments are exactly the same arguments US republicans and Canadian tories make

i don't really agree with tasker. i don't think japan will tolerate large-scale immigration, anyways, but i don't think that's what abe is trying to push, either.

i'm not really a keen observer of japanese politics but it seems like it's not immigration but deeper problems that are the issue. i think you could look at it from tasker's point of view, like, there are inefficiencies and we could just solve them.

but also, there are "labor shortages" but most new jobs are low income zero hour contract jobs: low-paid irregular workers account for nearly 40% of the entire labor force in 2017 (compared with 15.3% in 1984 before deregulation),29 while Japan’s minimum wage is the lowest among 19 advanced economies: ¥798 per hour (on average for FY 2016). ... Moreover, the number of the working poor (those who earn less than ¥2 million a year) increased from 10.9 million in 2012 to 11.32 million in 2016. https://apjjf.org/2018/6/INOUE.html bringing in temporary and quasi-temporary workers from the china or vietnam or nepal helps put off real reform, caters to the corporations that have benefited from abenomics, maybe forestalls left agitation for better quality of life, worker rights etc. don't worry about immigration fucking up the social welfare system when it's already been gutted. don't worry about a labor shortage when everywhere else in the developed world is reducing poverty except japan, 1 in 7 japanese children are poor, the worst gender pay gap among developed nations, corporations are making record profits but wages haven't stagnated for nearly three decades...

turn the place over to the chinese, i don't care

fuck, have stagnated for decades, among other typos.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/07/13/business/poverty-japan-underclass-struggles-achieve-upward-mobility/#.W--Zonozarc

ilx japanophiles, are any of you knowledgeable about japanese art history especially okakura tenshin, fenollosa, meiji aesthetic nationalism, new conceptions of oriental art history and unitary asia?

or any good books on the development of asian art history, even.

if not, that's okay, too.

The Musée Guimet here just had an exhibition on Meiji art and the catalogue could be relevant: here. Nb it may be in French, I haven’t seen it. My autumn was too busy to go to the exhibition.

“On Tuesday, after a flood of eager consumers crashed the website of the electronics manufacturer Sharp, the company said that it would sell its latest line of masks via lottery.”

if you had told me in advance that Japan and Sweden would be outliers in the quality of their response to covid-19 I would have said "sure, makes sense" but I would have assumed the opposite of what actually went down.

Among other headlines you wouldn’t expect about japan

Low-tech Japan challenged in working from home amid pandemic

maybe this will finally cure them of fax machines

And hanko! Nice though they are.

https://newrepublic.com/article/160595/new-yorker-japan-rent-family-fabricated

Thanks, good article

decided to do a (long) thread on nazis in anime/manga lol

major tw for nazi imagery, pedophilia, and antisemitism. pic.twitter.com/rhjaSTiBBT

— ube bebe race reveal party (@VlVlISM) April 20, 2021

Some of this is pretty shocking. I've seen a lot of back and forth about what Attack On Titan is really doing but I don't know.

Thanks for linking

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/08/18/drink-alcohol-japan-urges-young-people/

they should hire Viz as consultants for their national "drink more booze, kids" ad campaign

This is a bad idea

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/business/tiny-apartments-tokyo.html

The times really seems to have a handle on this theme

i lived in a tiny apartment. the bed was in a loft accessed by a ladder. the loft ceiling was too low to make love in many positions, nothing more elevated than a modified froggy style. to avoid climbing down, it was best to begin and finish in the living room / dining room / everything room.

tokyo is affordable. you don't need to live like this. it is fun for a while.