The Japanese language has a thing for coining new words by abbreviation. A common pattern is to take one syllable or character from each of ...

Osaka Gay Parade 2007 In a happy bit of news, the Swedish parliament have just overwhelmingly (261 out of 349 in favor, with only 22 against...

Pro Baseball Material? From Slate, an interesting take on the automation of manufacturing . While people in the US (and Japan) worry a lot ...

World Economic Forum has posted their annual survey (pdf format) of the gender gap in different countries. They measure criteria like polit...

Policeman breaks up a fight between a drunk and a taxidriver It can't have escaped any reader of this blog that I like Osaka. I really ...

Jun Morimoto brings up an interesting thread on violence in sports and why we allow sports to sidestep civil and criminal law. It's rel...

A Sunday Times article asks the question of why there are so few babies born in parts of Europe. This is of course the same issue that Japa...

There's a constant low-level political argument in Japan about "becoming a normal country". This is often trotted out as a par...

The morning news today featured a report on the problem of young people not buying things. Specifically, 20-30-somethings are not buying car...

Prodded by Shisaku's post on the Tokyo population rebound, I felt a sudden urge (aided and abetted by a too-long to-do list and gloomy ...

It's been all over the news lately that Japan's population is now stagnant and expected to shrink over the next generation or so. Th...

There's been a lot in the news lately about two population trends in Japan. One trend is the disappearing countryside and rural towns in...