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Rice in Japan is indeed weirdly expensive in the first place. Typical price is ~1 USD/lbs, but there's been a mysterious shortage and they're retailing at doubl
by numpad0 1y ago
Rice in Japan is indeed weirdly expensive in the first place. Typical price is ~1 USD/lbs, but there's been a mysterious shortage and they're retailing at double the regular price.
The minister of agriculture right now, Shinjiro Koizumi, is the son of Jun-ichiro Koizumi with now-unpopular legacy of deregulating and wrecking the Japanese postal service among few other government functions. The minister is now advocating for deregulating rice anyhow in response to the ongoing situation, and the situation kind of stinks.
Sorry that it's probably not the kind of content appropriate at HN anyway. It's more of "uncovering Cold War history podcast" style of content except it's in live.
- daedrdev 1y agoThe previous minister was fired after they admitted they didn't have to experience the expensive rice because they were given free rice by farms in Japan
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoThat is some bizarre obliviousness of privilege. I thought all of the more-equal-animals knew to keep quiet on the implicit bribes and other luxuries of their station.
- mc3301 1y agoIt's rather quite the opposite in Japan. The "more-equal-animals" consistently make public completely oblivious remarks, only to apologize the following day and then (often) just go back to business as usual.
- deadbabe 1y agoI think this is driven by the fetish to be extremely apologetic in Japanese culture.
- mc3301 1y agoI don't think the grey-haired dinosaur politicians are sexist, classist (is that a word?) and racist because they love to apologize.
- Dylanlacey 1y agoYeah, their imperviousness to either progress or consequences is kind of incredible. An entire nation of collectivist, rule-following tendencies with a scummy layer of cartoonishly evil folks at the top, who for some reason seem immune from having to be decent people.
- mc3301 1y agoAnd yet, somehow, it's a generally pleasant country to live in with happy healthy people and opportunity. Though, that momentum Japan's been running on seems to be running out.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bananalychee 1y agoThese days it seems preferable to the Western alternative of politicians blatantly lying about their class to avoid the label.
- gerdesj 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- skhr0680 1y ago> now-unpopular legacy of deregulating and wrecking the Japanese postal service Unpopular with who? In hindsight, the post office was a bandaid that needed to be ripped off before it became the next JNR. If he didn't do that, the tax payer would be on the hook for its final implosion, which is happening right now.