Regression is Progress!
Online filing horror and the quest to keep an old dishwasher functioning.
Two stories from yesterday’s The Japan Times should be of concern for everyone. The first I will highlight is another facet of the troubles associated with doing anything online instead of in person. The headline “Tokyo Police Mistakenly Arrest Filipino Man For Allegedly Overstaying”. Unlike the US, Japan takes violations of immigration law seriously. Those caught doing so can expect to spend time detained in immigration detention, which is not a place anyone wants to be. Deaths are not uncommon and disease common for those that make it through, though making it through usually means deportation and never allowed back into the country. We foreigners (gaijin) who live in Japan are required to carry either our passports, if a short term visitor, or a residence card, aka “gaijin card” in lieu of the passport. In order to avert an argument over my calling the residence card the gaijin card, I will provide a little more detail.
The residence card is rather new and replaces the previous gaijin card that only gaijin were required to carry. The residence card is available to all who reside in Japan, including Japanese, which allows them to claim it is in no way discriminatory to issue it to Gaijin. However, it is only compulsory for gaijin to carry at all times. Thus, I call the new “Residence Card” the “gaijin Card” as I am still required to always have it on my person.
I am not against this requirement, as I think it proper for legal aliens to be able to prove their status. However, I am against the police stopping those they believe to be gaijin just to see if they are carrying their gaijin card. I am also against the pigheaded enforcement of this law as can happen, such as arresting gaijin on immigration law violation when “caught” swimming at a beach or pool or in an Onsen, (hot spring bath) without their gaijin card “on their person”. Like I said, Japan takes violations of immigration law seriously.
When it comes time to renew the gaijin card or a visa, they annotate the card to the fact that the card holder has filed the renewal application. If the application has not been approved before the current card expires, the current card is still valid as long as it has the stamp. However, what happens when you avail yourself to the convenience offered by online renewal? Well, in the case of the Filipino in the news story, he was arrested. While he was eventually released uncharged an hour later, things could have been much worse.
There have been multiple scandals caused by piss poor record keeping on the part of the bureaucracy; notably the big one over misentered pension records. I myself have some experience with misrendered names that I sadly cannot go into any further detail on a public forum. I can say that the possibility of life altering action taken against an innocent gaijin due to a clerical error not of their doing exists. Even an hour long detention at the police station can have profound negative effects upon anyone in Japan, including Japanese. Better to go to the office, wait in line and get the changes registers both electronically and on a hard copy.
The second is on other issues that frequents my substack, ESG and SDGs. The headline reads, “Japan eyes rules for firms to disclose greenhouse gas emissions data”. The first sentence tells all we need to know. “Japan's financial watchdog is considering obliging companies listed on the top-tier section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange to disclose information on greenhouse gas emissions throughout their supply chains.”
In an earlier, recent post I stated that we lost the war on this ESG/SDG BS. I forgot to include the following which ties in to this last article cited. Have any of you replaced any major appliance lately? Normally, technology advances and this advance has been measured by its increased utility. But this is no longer the case for laundry machines, dish washers and air conditioners, among others. SDGs or other environmental rules have been forcing manufacturers of these applicances to discontinue products that worked well and quickly and instead only offer those that fit the new regs. This has caused prices to skyrocket and the functionality to plummet. When we moved in to our new home 18 years ago, we bought an air conditioner for our 16 tatami mat sized living/dinning room, and the kitchen. It cost us around ¥80,000, when it died just before the panic, the least expensive one we could find that was rated for the size of the rooms it would cool and heat cost a whooping ¥300,000!!!!! And it SUCKS, royally.
When turned off after using it to cool, it cleans itself. Sounds great, doesn’t it? We thought so. Until we learned the awful truth of this cleaning function. When it cleans after cooling, it forces hot, moist air through it, back into the room it was cooling. Who in the hell would even think of such a feature? In effect, all the heat and humidity it removed is replaced when it cleans. While you can shut it down once it starts cleaning, doing so every day as we did made a panicked call to the repairman a necessity. An expensive one.
In the past, I would use the A/C only when needed. If it cooled off substantially in the evening, I would enthusiastically throw open all the windows and shut down the A/C. Can’t do that no more unless the cool outside air is accompanied with a wind strong enough to compete with the
A/C pumping hot humid air back in. Tell me again how this helps the environment?
A while back I finally was fed up with the dishwasher. It was no longer cleaning well at all and many dishes had to be run through again or redone by hand. I told my wife we should start looking for a replacement. THEY NO LONGER EXIST. The company that made ours no longer makes dishwashers and they no longer support any they made in the past. All the others that are comparable in size, which are now pathetically few, take hours to wash, like in the 5 to 6 hour range and are expensive. The one we have now takes just 20 minutes. My wife found a website or blog dedicated to those who have the same model of dishwasher; providing tips and resources to keeping them running as long as possible. I just checked online to see if I could get a hard number on the wash times but found not a single posting for this important spec.. I did find that they all have the “Energy Star” rating and use little water compared to our water hog though. I also found online more listings for new and used parts for old dishwashers of many makes and models than i did for new dishwashers. If they did not exist yet, soon there will be junk yards of appliances for those who do not want to wait more than 6 hours before they do a second load of dishes and do not have time to wash them all by hand. Same for air conditioners and washing machines and dryers. Like I said, we lost this war too.
I would love to hear your take on this story I have been working on.
The lab leak hoax is another distraction, the only way to create a worldwide pandemic is to clone lots and lots of virus and spread it all over the place.
More here; https://truthaddict.substack.com/p/lab-leak-zoonotic-spillover-or-deliberate
I wonder if a 3D printer can address some of the issues of maintaining and keeping old appliances working.
I don't think all of this is bad. I still question the use of dishwashers. I mean, we used to wash and insert the dishes into the dishwasher. How does that make any sense? It was like cleaning up for the maid. I still clean up for the maid. After all, I can't have them thinking that I am a slob.