JR is a private company since 1987. It does have the image of a public railway, but it’s not actually one.

Come to think of it, I rode the Hanwa-Line almost every day when I lived in Japan. I wonder where their branch office is at.

that’s his style, his girls pretty much all look like that

wakamoto does a lot of non-anime tv stuff. announcing videos and voice overs in game show and talk shows, etc.
less seiyuu, more announcer/narrator kind of work.

most people in japan probably know him for that work, and maybe some of the older mainstream anime he did (cell in dragon ball z for example).

US Naval base there after all. That should explain it.

It is getting better though. If I remember correctly there’s actually a law that makes it illegal for them to refuse service to people just because they are foreigners or look like foreigners. I can’t tell about the shadier businesses, but places like restaurants or inns can usually be convinced to accept foreigners with some [...]

I can confirm this. I can only assume that is because many (not all) Americans that come to Japan behave like total retards while they are there, ignoring even the most basic rules of the Japanese society. They can usually get away with it because the Japanese don’t like having a direct confrontation and rather [...]

The Senkaku Islands are legally (by Japanese law) owned by a Japanese businessman who *loans* them out for a shitload of money to the Japanese state. Technically that guy could sell it to someone else, including anyone from a foreign country as there is no law that disallows foreigners from acquiring land in Japan. Though [...]

You’ll find plenty of places that refuse foreigners in the shadier parts of town.
Also, you get those places in areas where the foreign visitors aren’t tourists normally, but drunk American servicemen or Russian sailors.

どうかな。。。
お相撲も今なら、トップは大体外国人でしょう。20年前の状況と比べたら、外国人力士の扱いが断然変わりましたと思います。ある程度、皆は成れて来ましたんでしょう。
私もよくあの「日本語上手ですね」を聞きましたよ。日本語は別にそんなに難しくないと思います。日本の方々は多、分自分の外国語に対しての経験よりあれを言いますかな。

It’s not 9 to 5 in japan anyway as a salaryman. it’s way more, especially as the new guy. you want to get into public service in japan, it’s a damn lax job compared to the private sector. a friend of mine got a job at a city hall just outside Osaka right after graduation, [...]

the manga has a sudden genre swap, turning it into a battle manga. also, the characters repeatedly break the 4th wall, poking fun at the fact that it turned out this way. it sort of feels like the author was unwillingly pushed into doing battles…

German VAT/sales tax is much higher, and you also have to pay the GEMA fees in Germany.
Also, German retail prices drop slower over time than prices in the US. Prices upon first release are actually quite close.

they will probably insist that those who rip the discs inside are all ‘dirty foreign scum’… korean or chinese most likely.

they pirate as much as any other nationality

Bandai actually has a dedicated streaming/online rental website (called Bandai Channel) for the Japanese market. And not since yesterday, it’s been up for about 10 years. You can’t say they weren’t keeping up, they were pretty much the first ones out there. They just never left the Japanese market with it. I think the site [...]

You could even control the prices by region like Steam does. Of course you could circumvent region checks, but most people just don’t bother anyway (lack of care, knowledge or skills).

Issues are obviously pricing and portability of the content.

Do you actually know what anime shows air at prime time (or as the Japanese call it: Golden Time, starting 19:00, ending 22:00) on the major channels here in Japan? It’s pretty much all aimed at younger viewers. Many channels don’t even have anime featuring in those slots in first place. Keroro Gunsou, Mainichi Kaasan, [...]

there’s a different reason. the prime time slot has to be filled shows that are sure-fire appealing to the largest group of viewers available around those times. that group are middle and high students who come home around 6 to 7pm, any adult who has a job will not be home :D putting a seinen [...]

young adult males primarily, people who come home late (9pm and later) on work days and therefore never able to watch a prime time broadcast. between 0 and 3am isn’t really sleeping time for that age group.

>No, only some animes that are long run, like OnePiece. Most of the short-run anime (animes for one term) doesn’t fit to this idea. better check the veracity your claims before posting them ;) >Lol, that’s also not true, Korean. You are mixing up with the fact that Korean people used to put their names [...]