Odd bits and pieces of what I do know

Sign of the times - The local Jonathan's (Kamiyachō crossing) finally threw in the towel. A new sign on the front door announces that it will be open from 7:00 a.m. to midnight.

So much for 24 hour service...and do not even ask me about the qualifications of the current cook on the morning shift.

They've run out of impoverished Chinese students, I guess.

So what's the new plan?

Patrick Smith has a new article out from his series on Japan after 5 years of Koizumi -- this time on the new relationship between employees and work.

Freer spirits take root in Japan's firms
International Herald Tribune

By Patrick L. Smith - TOKYO You know there is something a little unusual about Yasuyuki Nambu, chief executive and president of the human resources company Pasona, when his assistant starts talking about the farm in the basement of headquarters in central Tokyo.

For a minute there you thought she said "farm."

For the flip side of the equation, the new management paradigm, see his article of three weeks ago "Made in corporate Japan: New approach to business".


Michael Zielenziger writes in from wherever it is he has been hiding since he left Tokyo. His new book, Shutting out the Sun: How Japan created its own lost generation comes out tomorrow in the United States.

It's about people who hide--and try to stay hidden.

He's back - We are all hiding in some way. Some of us for a good reason.

In all the hubbub these past few weeks over whether or not the LDP exiles should be allowed to return to the fold...

EDITORIAL: Rebels return to haunt LDP
The Japan Times

Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2006 - An aftereffect of the legislative battle over postal service privatization a year ago now vexes the Liberal Democratic Party leadership. It is how to treat Diet members who rebelled against the party by voting against the privatization bills.

Of about 60 Lower and Upper house LDP members who cast "no" votes, nearly 40 were told to leave the party. Even though many of these rebels are no longer party members, some of them still possess political resources that the party leadership would like to tap in next year's Upper House election., the most infamous of the Diet's dearly departed quietly slipped back into his party's good graces.

...the reabsorption of the most notorious, most destructive agent of the past year back into the body politic from whence he sprang went by unnoticed.

OK, it happened on the same day as Abe's announcement of his candidacy, so the story kind of got buried.

Yes, Origami Man, the saviour of the final seven months of the Koizumi premiership, quietly and without any fuss, returned to the Democratic Party on September 1.

Oh that Ozawa Ichirō--Mr. "Values for the 21st Century"--he'll take you as long as you're warm.