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126 points PaulHoule | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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jmpman ◴[] No.44428040[source]
I can buy rice at Costco in the US for $25 for 50lbs, which is equivalent to 854 yen for 5KG. A bit less than 1/4 the cost of Japanese grown rice.
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numpad0 ◴[] No.44428990[source]
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.

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daedrdev ◴[] No.44429058[source]
The 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
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0cf8612b2e1e ◴[] No.44429147[source]
That 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.
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mc3301 ◴[] No.44429195[source]
It'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.
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deadbabe ◴[] No.44429327[source]
I think this is driven by the fetish to be extremely apologetic in Japanese culture.
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mc3301 ◴[] No.44429873[source]
I don't think the grey-haired dinosaur politicians are sexist, classist (is that a word?) and racist because they love to apologize.
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Dylanlacey ◴[] No.44430105[source]
Yeah, 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.
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1. mc3301 ◴[] No.44430234[source]
And 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.