Hey, I think I've met you before - or someone just like you. This guy was telling me how AWFUL the Canadian healthcare system was - twelve-hour lineups in every emergency room, gulag-like restrictions on even basic treatment... I said that, as a Canadian, I had never encountered the problems he'd described- but he…

I thought you were funny - and I share your sentiments. It's always interesting how people can get really, really hateful over the most innocuous comments. Maybe they need to adjust their humours - too much choler, not enough phlegm.

The daughter is 19 - does that change your answer at all?

As an Islander, I would like to point out that <i>only</i> Islanders get to have an opinion about Islanders. Everyone else gets to leave all their money at the Butchart Gardens or the Empress Hotel, comment on how pretty everything is, and then take the ferry back to their fancy continental lodgings, leaving us to our…

Some of the dolphins trapped at Taiji are sold off to dolphin shows and 'swim with the dolphins' programs. There is actually a dolphin show in Taiji, very near the cove where the dolphins are trapped and killed.

I can't see the pixil you refer to, and now I'm obsessed with finding it...

"Ridiculous Bougie trend of big round vowels?" As opposed to the perfectly understandable proletarian trend of naming girls with tiny pointy vowels? (Ix, Ypres, Ilky and Britt are perfectly cromulent names!) Big round vowels aren't a trend - they're kind of a global thing, (Yoko, Mika, Hana, Akalena, Bodashka,…

And here's a thing: not all aspects of Japanese culture are just out there for everyone to see - there are deeply held cultural/societal things that outsiders only get to know about if they happen to be in the right place at the right time and know enough of the language to understand what's going on. (I only learned…

I know, right?! I was so confused by the 'bob' description when that kind of length couldn't even fairly be called a pageboy! I've been growing out my bob for more than a year and it's no longer that Klossen's hair, but it is no longer a bob, either.

It is standard for political parties to do the loudspeaker-on-a-truck thing, but I think icantloginagain is talking about the hard-core right-wingers who drive around cities and towns blaring propaganda about driving the foreigners out of Japan and reinstating the godhood of the emperor. The running-for-office trucks…

I hate to say it, but I will: "I am powerless over this will that's driving me..." There's a good chance there's another woman in his destination country. I'm sorry! I know that sounds awful, but I've known enough sneaky men and women to know that the only thing that renders a person 'powerless' is the siren song of a…

I don't know about that - a few years ago, I had a miscarriage at eight weeks - I told my next-door-neighbour about it the day after it happened, because she had known that I was pregnant. She immediately went into one-down mode, telling me about a miscarriage she had experienced more than a decade before, emphasizing…

That'sEXACTLY what I was thinking of!

Actually, plain might be a nice change from most of the plus-size clothing I see, where it's "Nice cut, cute colour, Giant sequined flower on the back! I've heard that plus-sized clothing tends towards garishness because whoever creates them imagines that all larger women are living in a permanent state of luau or…

I'm a little confused - where are you getting the $56.85 figure from? The way I read it, the author was paying $37.95 per day, for a total of $1282.33 for one month.

Yes, right, exactly! And it's an absolute rule that, if someone with a child compliments your child, you compliment their child, too. I got so frustrated when I was reading the article, because the author writes as if she is above these very basic rules of parental etiquette - (not even etiquette really, just basic…

Then maybe you haven't been a foreign woman in Japan - my single gaijin friends experienced horrendous amounts of sexual harassment, up to rape attempts by co-workers. The assumption seems to be that all foreign women, especially the young, pretty ones, are just available. Actually, most Japanese women have…