News Alert:: Japanese too busy to have sex!

[jman220]

It should be a self-correcting problem. If in 20 years Japan is suddenly facing a huge labor shortage, it will simply have to raise pay and benefits for the jobs it needs laborers for, thus creating an incentive for immigration. For every first world country with a birth rate less than 2.1, there's a third world country with a birth rate far higher than that.

[xorbie]

[ QUOTE ]
It should be a self-correcting problem. If in 20 years Japan is suddenly facing a huge labor shortage, it will simply have to raise pay and benefits for the jobs it needs laborers for, thus creating an incentive for immigration. For every first world country with a birth rate less than 2.1, there's a third world country with a birth rate far higher than that.

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Yeah, except Japanese people might not be so happy to suddenly have half their population be (relatively) uneducated, poor, culturally different immigrants who probably speak a different language.

[Shadowrun]

[ QUOTE ]
It should be a self-correcting problem. If in 20 years Japan is suddenly facing a huge labor shortage, it will simply have to raise pay and benefits for the jobs it needs laborers for, thus creating an incentive for immigration. For every first world country with a birth rate less than 2.1, there's a third world country with a birth rate far higher than that.

[/ QUOTE ]

it is very hard to immigrate to Japan, and the Japanese like it like that.

[HajiShirazu]

One thing that is interesting in Japan is the relatively large number of divorces by couples in their 60's. Around that age the male usually faces mandatory retirement and is at home a lot for the first time in the history of the marriage. At this point the woman realizes that she hates her husband, can get enough government pension/divorce proceeds to survive, and so she decides to leave. This probably gives some idea about the nature of marriage in Japan.
Japan, or at least the LDP ruling party, is still controlled in most part by right wing (uyoku, type it on youtube for some funny and sick vids) nationalists backed by yakuza gang interests. When America first occupied Japan we were supposed to bring these ties down, but after a decade or so we gave up and some even say there was a conspiracy by the CIA to intentionally aid these groups in coming back to power. So while you would think that a group wanting to re-militarize Japan and bring back the emperor would hate America, they are actually some of our biggest supporters, which led to Japan's "participation" in the Iraq Criminal Conflict.
Japan is a great country to visit, especially if you are a poker baller with cash, studying abroad, or if you can get one of the better English-teaching jobs, because the girls are incredibly hot and very easy to get with for almost any foreigner, plus it is one huge urban area with tons of stuff to do virtually everywhere as long as you can afford it. However IMO it is probably the most miserable industrialized country in the world for its actual citizens. While the per capita income is ~80% of the U.S. (it used to be ~110%, what a bad recession they have had), the income gap is terrible, and gets worse each year. Housing prices are not as brutal as everyone thinks as long as you stay out of Tokyo, but they're still probably 20% more in comparable areas and long commutes are common. Oh, and you could rent a house for the cost of monthly parking in a lot of places, so long train rides are common, and the trains are not always cheap nor do they necessarily run anywhere near where you want to go - these long walks everyday are one of the reasons Japanese people are way skinnier than us.
One of the factors behind the birth rate problem that a lot of people haven't really mentioned is the increasing gap between full-time salaried "salarymen" or "seishain" and the "freeters" or "niito". Japanese young people finally wisened up over the years, realizing that the salaryman successful lifestyle of 80 hr weeks was a bunch of BS and decided to work at part-time "baito" jobs and live with their parents instead of going through the whole hyper-competitive process. The system has changed somewhat, in that it is actually possible to find white collar work not right out of college, but instead of actually giving official positions to those people they instead hire temporary workers to do the same work as the salaried positions at a fraction of the cost. The gap between these classes is similar to that in the US.
Anyway, the problem with all this is that a lot of women, who still have no chance for legitimate advancement in 95% of fields, understandably aren't looking to marry one of these freeters. When it comes right down to it, like most women worldwide they don't care all that much about whether the guy will be around or what he is really like, just how much status and money they can gain from the marriage. The problem is that the only people who actually have time to go out and meet women are those who aren't in careers considered desirable for marriage.
Retail/temp pay is similar to the US, which is pretty pathetic considering everything costs more and a much larger % of people are employed in these jobs. There's virtually no way someone could have children making this kind of money and so people don't.
Almost all of these problems could be solved by enforcement of existing labor laws regarding overtime pay, hiring practices, etc., but the collusion between government and corporations prevents this from happening. In fact Japan has a more conservative and corrupt version of American government, only without the ridiculous Christian social agenda.

[xorbie]

Haji,

Very interesting post.

[Bond18]

On this subject, a good sight about an American living in Japan as a school English teacher is:
www.gaijinsmash.net

[Rick Nebiolo]

[ QUOTE ]
On this subject, a good sight about an American living in Japan as a school English teacher is:
www.gaijinsmash.net

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I just skimmed around your link and it is in fact good stuff.

Interested readers should check out the karaoke song on March 14 and also this little gem excerpted from March 15th in regards to the Japanese obsession with organized scheduled activities for school kids:

"As usual, Ms. Americanized was the only one to understand.

Ms. A: Yeah, [censored]' sports clubs. I hate this [censored]. And do you know why we do it? Because the Japanese hate change. If you started just punching a Japanese guy in the nuts everyday for two weeks, the day you stop punching him in the nuts he'll be all "hey, why aren't you punching me in the nuts? YOU CAN'T CHANGE THE SYSTEM!"
Me: ...Wow.
Ms. A: Now, I don't have nuts, so I don't know what it's like to be punched in them. But working here, I think I feel the same thing emotionally. It's like, the nutsack of my soul is being punched everyday.
Me: ...Profound.
Ms. A: And do you know why I do it? Because in Japan, the only thing worse than being punched in your nutsack is being different. So I just have to stand here and be like "C'mon, punch me in the nuts!" or else I get booted to the out-group and then life really becomes hard. (heavy sigh) I really want to go back to America.
Me: Well, I keep telling you, if you think you'll fit in the overhead storage compartment...

~ Rick

[BigPoppa]

[ QUOTE ]
Japanese young people finally wisened up over the years, realizing that the salaryman successful lifestyle of 80 hr weeks was a bunch of BS and decided to work at part-time "baito" jobs and live with their parents instead of going through the whole hyper-competitive process. The system has changed somewhat, in that it is actually possible to find white collar work not right out of college, but instead of actually giving official positions to those people they instead hire temporary workers to do the same work as the salaried positions at a fraction of the cost. The gap between these classes is similar to that in the US.
Anyway, the problem with all this is that a lot of women, who still have no chance for legitimate advancement in 95% of fields, understandably aren't looking to marry one of these freeters. When it comes right down to it, like most women worldwide they don't care all that much about whether the guy will be around or what he is really like, just how much status and money they can gain from the marriage. The problem is that the only people who actually have time to go out and meet women are those who aren't in careers considered desirable for marriage.
Retail/temp pay is similar to the US, which is pretty pathetic considering everything costs more and a much larger % of people are employed in these jobs. There's virtually no way someone could have children making this kind of money and so people don't.
Almost all of these problems could be solved by enforcement of existing labor laws regarding overtime pay, hiring practices, etc., but the collusion between government and corporations prevents this from happening. In fact Japan has a more conservative and corrupt version of American government, only without the ridiculous Christian social agenda.

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I'd be interested in how much of this was young people "choosing" more freedom and how much was the disappearance of many of the lifetime sinecure jobs with relatively high pay.

In the US, people with crappy dead-end service sector jobs sometimes are people who have dropped out of the rat race for quality of life reasons; but more often they are people who simply don't have the option to take higher paying jobs with more of a future. Those jobs simply aren't there for the taking. There are plenty of temps who would love a career even if it required sacrifice.

We can leave out women, who have never had access to the best jobs in Japan and are facing just as much of a dead-end as an Office Lady as they are in a retail store.
[for those who don't know, Japanese corporations generally hire young women with the understanding that they have no upward mobility and will quit work when they get married or hit age 30, whichever comes first. These women are called Office Ladies, and are there both to preform the more menial office duties and to serve as prospective mates for the salarymen who work too hard to meet women elsewhere.]

Of the men working those low end service sectore jobs, I wonder what percentage would genuinely turn down a salaryman position if it were offered to them? I suspect a surprising number would leap at the chance.