In winter, I'm a Buddhist,
And in summer, I'm a nudist.
- Joe Gould
"My Religion"
In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.
- Oscar Wilde, aware in 1889 that popular conceptions about the country and its people are mostly fiction.
Not even 10% of what Japanese people are thinking is communicated overseas.
- Watanabe Tsuneo of CSIS
All foreign correspondents, whenever they desert statistics for judgments of opinion...become models of self-deception. They may call themselves, with proper gravity, ‘reporters’. But...they are nothing but quack psychiatrists who do not even know that this is the field they practise.
- Alistair Cooke
Where all news comes at second-hand, where all the testimony is uncertain, men cease to respond to truths, and respond simply to opinions. The environment in which they act is not the realities themselves, but the pseudo-environment of reports, rumors, and guesses.
- Walter Lippmann
We want...a revolution - a turning of the wheel, so that the state becomes once again the servant of the people, and not the other way around. We are the progressives now, comrades, (and) you the reactionaries.
- Daniel Hannan
If the textbook says, "It is well known that...", you can be sure that is a very good place to begin a research inquiry.
- Isaiah Bowman, geographer and former president of Johns Hopkins University
The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.
- Cicero (55 BC)
We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press. It is not we who silence the press. It is the press that silences us. It is not a case of the Commonwealth settling how much the editors shall say; it is a case of the editors settling how much the Commonwealth shall know. If we attack the press, we shall be rebelling, not repressing.
- G.K. Chesterton
You can see a lot by looking.
- Yogi Berra
All text copyright 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 by William Sakovich
E-mail:
ampontan
- at -
gol
- dot -
com
yankdownunder said
Please tell me this is not true.
When did it start, with DPJ or before?
“There are about 80,000 Chinese students in our universities”
students? – I’m sure some are criminals, some spies and certainly some future illegal immigrants.
” universities are actively soliciting students in China to come to Japan”
The problem is how to keep them out not get them to come.
Another waste of money
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T121019003414.htm
During a session of the House of Councillors Audit Committee on Thursday, lawmakers noted that funds from the budget have been spent on projects totally unrelated to reconstruction in the disaster-hit areas.
Representatives of the government were hard pressed to explain the connection between the projects in question and post-disaster reconstruction.
Masako Mori of the Liberal Democratic Party said of one Foreign Ministry project, “It was revived like a zombie by the reconstruction budget.”
The project, which facilitates exchanges between young people in the Asia-Pacific and North American regions, had 7.2 billion yen allocated to it in a supplementary budget for fiscal 2011.
The project’s purpose was said to be dissemination of information about the current state of the disaster-hit areas to the rest of the world, and youngsters from 41 countries and territories were invited to Japan for about 10 days to that end.
andrewfx51 said
That’s the JASSO/Mombusho(MEXT) scholarship. It’s been in place for a long time (before the current DPJ was even founded).
I doubt even ten percent of Chinese students would receive it, as accepted applicants are limited.
————–
A: Thanks for the note. Interesting.
This has a general explanation of scholarships in English. P 25 says there were 10,000 + Japanese scholarship students, and 33,700 “supported by MEXT”. No further breakdown by nationality. Somewhere on that site it said Chinese students accounted for 56% of all foreign students. In another category, even short-term students are eligible for financial assistance, which includes 3 month to one year language schools. I’ve heard the potential for abuse is greater there, but that’s anecdotal.
-A.
GratefulGaijin said
I got a JASSO for self-financed student for 2 years* of grad school, but it was 65,000 per month. Probably one of the few Westerners to get it just because few Westerners are here in the first place. My application was frank. Being over 29 years old and not from Asia, I was automatically ineligible for just about every merit-based scholarship offered in Japan, including the Monbusho. And I was not mooching off my parents. Following the student visa law means one can only work 28 hours per week to pay tuition, rent, etc. Being able to get research assistant wages for those 28 hours rather than dishwashing in a Chinese restaurant meant I wasn’t as destitiute as some other foreign students, but I don’t have a support network either. There’s no American students association at the uni.
(It was kind of a shock to see the Asian citizen condition in so many scholarships. Basically is it 70 year old war reparations still in action and ignored by China and Korea? Just buying a few thousand hearts and minds each year, a la the JET program?)
I don’t feel guilty at all getting the money. Mainly because the reason I had limited income in the first place was the Japanese government itself making it illegal for me to get paid for more than 28 hours of the work I was doing each week. That was about 50 hours a week. Grad students being demi-slaves is nothing new, but Immigration writing it into the regulations and making it official is a bit maddening..I believe they have changed things since regarding TA/RA work, or perhaps they were just misinterpreting things for me. Immigration officials interpretations of the laws they’re supposed to know are often a bit off. But either way, the 65,000 was a bit less than what I was losing to unpaid work. Plus, I had already paid more in taxes to Japan during my previous years here than I would get from the program, and will pay many times more in the future, unlike most of the recipients who get money.
160,000 a month is way too much if you’re single and living a student lifestyle and have a tuition waiver! Combine that with working 28 hours a week, and you can live even more comfortably than an able-bodied Japanese family mooching off the Osaka Welfare System.
As far as I recall, the application process for my little stipend including writing out your estimated income and expenses for the year, including how much money your parents are giving you. No bank statements or proof was needed, so the potential for abuse seemed huge. I was completely honest and I got my little stipend. But I didn’t (couldn’t) apply for the 160,000/month of free money, that process might be more strict. I would have much rather gotten a scholarship on merit, but those were almost all closed to an “old” fart like me.
On the plus(?) side, the Japanese government canceled a program covering foreign students’ medical expenses about 5 years ago. Foreign students are insured just as Japanese with the 30% co-pay, except this program covered 80% of that co-pay, so foreign students were only paying 6% of their medical fees out of pocket. I think (not sure) that Japanese students still get this?
* I finished my degree 6 months early, and was rewarded by not getting the last 6 months of the stipend, I guess I should have been less diligent.
But, I could finally receive 40 hours of pay per week (but still unpaid overtime.. advancing to Japanese problems rather than ryugakusei ones) once I switched over my visa, so the take home cash worked out almost exactly the same.
toadold said
Follow the money as always. I would bet that government/educators are getting a good piece of that foreign student aid money with a side order of bribes from various Chinese parents to get their kids and relatives out of China.
Ken said
>students? – I’m sure some are criminals, some spies and certainly some future illegal immigrants.
You are right. Tokyo branch of a University of Yamaguchi prefecture removed 112 students from the registration and 70 guys are still staying somewhere in Japan.
http://www.asahi.com/national/update/0914/SEB201209140006.html?ref=rss
Those who join Communist Party are increasing in China because they can become either of political leaders or corrupted executives of national firms. The US, etc are rejecting Communist Party registered students. Japan is not screening this point. So Japan course gives cherry-picking, enjoying advanced college life and promotion after returning to China.