We've Posted December Issue

We have posted today the December issue of the PHP GeF and experts’ comments.

The issue is "How Should We Evaluate Prime Minister Hatoyama's Proposal of Reducing CO2 by 25%?”

Experts who commented are:

• Dr. Shuhei Aida (Professor Emeritus, University of Electro-Communications)
• Professor Kazuo Matsushita (Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University)
• Professor Kaoru Okamato (National Institute for Public Studies)
• Dr. B. Sudhakara Reddy (Professor, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research)
• Professor Will Steffen (ANU Climate Change Institute at Australian National University)
• Dr. Kevin Trenberth (Climate Analysis Section at National Center for Atmospheric Research)
• Dr. Adalberto Luis Val & Dr. Antonio Ocimar Manzi (National Institute of Amazon Studies)

[PHP Global e-Forum Editorial Office]

http://www.globaleforum.com/en/

December Issue of PHP GEF

Topic for Global e-Forum December Issue is “How Should We Evaluate Prime Minister Hatoyama’s Proposal of Reducing CO2 by 25%?”

This September, Prime Minister Hatoyama said that Japan would seek to reduce its greenhouse gas emission by 25% by 2020 compared to the 1990 level at the UN Summit on Climate Change.

We are asking experts for their comments on Mr. Hatoyama’s remark.

We will post the issue and expert’s comments on next Monday, December 7 Japan time.


[PHP Global e-Forum Editorial Office]
PHP Research Institute
http://www.globaleforum.com/en/

Haruki World

The December issue of JAPAN CLOSE-UP has been published!

JAPAN CLOSE-UP is an English-language monthly magazine bringing you the latest news on Japanese business, products, culture, society, trends, and people.

One of featured articles on the issue is "Haruki World".

If you're troubled by cats that talk, skies that rain sardines, sheep that hijack people's brains, girls that vanish into other universes and superfrogs that save Tokyo, then Haruki Murakami may not be for you.

But prepare to find yourself in a shrinking minority. Even the critics, once huffily disdainful, are rethinking their earlier hostility. They may be baffled by the enthusiasm Murakami's fiction arouses among readers worldwide — in an age, moreover, when popular passions have lately tended to pass literature by — but they cannot help acknowledging it, or admitting, however grudgingly, that a writer with Murakami's impact must have a finger on the secret pulses of the time.

What are those pulses? What does Murakami's fiction tell us about ourselves?

Read more http://www.export-japan.com/jcu/sample/index.php?page=haruki-world


[PHP Global e-Forum Editorial Office]
PHP Research Institute
http://www.globaleforum.com/en/

President Obama & Matcha Ice Cream

Embassy of the United States invited me to hear “President Obama’s Inaugural Speech in Asia” at Suntory Hall in Akasaka, Tokyo last Saturday.

Suntory Hall is managed and operated by Suntory Holdings Limited, a beverage company.

The US Embassy asked the audiences whether they would come to Suntory Hall by 8:00 a.m. So, I had left my house at around 7:00 a.m. Since public transportations in Tokyo went smoothly, I could arrive there at 7:50 a.m. But, people had already made a long line.

At a time to open main entrances of the hall, we could move and enter inside smoothly, I thought. But, it was not easy to do. On the way to the waiting, we had heavy rain. We opened an umbrella. We were standing each other at close range. An umbrella which a person next to me had held touched me and I got rain drops from the umbrella.

While we were waiting for 20 minutes, the line had come to get out of shape. If a group related to the Japanese government or corporation had hosted such event, they must have put persons who would guide along the line to maintain of order.

I could see many commentators and journalists who were much appeared on TV when I waited.

After I had been screened, I could finally enter inside at around 9:15 a.m. Then, I had waited for another house. President Obama came onstage 10 minutes after ten, and stared his speech.

President’s speech was consisted of US policies toward Asia. Aside from those, what I felt interested in the speech was an episode that his mother took young President to Kamakura, an ancient city in Kanagawa prefecture.

Mr. Obama told that he had been more focused on-- as a child-- the matcha (powered green tea) ice cream than the bronze Amida Buddha. Oh, young Obama was a real expert in Japanese ice cream because he chose match, the taste that an adult is fond of. With the episode, I imagined Mr. President’s good old memory with his mother.

“Obama-Matcha-Ice-Cream” may be on sale before long in Kamakura.


[PHP Global e-Forum Editorial Office]
http://www.globaleforum.com/en/

Next Issue Is "Pandemic Panic"

The November issue of the PHP Global e-Forum is "How Can We Avoid a Pandemic Panic?"

Experts who comments on the issue are as of today:

• Dr. Philip Alcabes (Associate Professor of Urban Public Health at Hunter College in the City University of New York)
• Boston Public Health Commission (Boston, Massachusetts)
• Dr. John Carnie (Chief Health Officer for Department of Health, Victoria)
• Dr. Koya Hakozaki (Director and Clinic Manager of First Department of Internal Medicine, Self-Defense Forces Central Hospital)
• Dr. Oliver Pybus (Royal Society University Research Fellow at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford
• Mr. Yokoo Toshihiko (Mayor of Taku City in Saga Prefecture)
  

The issue and experts' comments will be posted next Monday (Nov. 9) Japan time.


[PHP Global e-Forum Editorial Office]
http://www.globaleforum.com/en/

Fewer Students, More Universities?

The November issue of Japan CLOSE-UP has been published!

Japan CLOSE-UP is an English-language monthly magazine bringing you the latest news on Japanese business, products, culture, society, trends, and people.

One of featured articles on the issue is "Fewer Students, More Universities? It's a Puzzle!" Japan's institutes of higher learning, namely its universities and colleges, are in crisis.

Today there are about 765 four-year national, public, and private post-secondary schools across the country. Although this is an era of so-called universal admissions when anyone who wants to can get into college, half of all private universities are below capacity in terms of enrollment. In a rush to maintain student numbers, many schools are introducing ichigei nyushi, entrance exams geared to a single specialty or field of study, or setting up new "unique" academic departments.

As a result, even students who are subpar academically are now "college students." "They can't do elementary school level computation...." "They can't write decent Japanese…." While we hear more in this vein from the schools, for their part schools have continued to haphazardly add new academic departments that can only be considered transitory and calculating, so to top it all off schools may not even be able to maintain their own academic quality.

What in the world is going on at universities in Japan?


Read more http://www.export-japan.com/jcu/sample/index.php


[PHP Global e-Forum Editorial Office]
PHP Research Institute
http://www.globaleforum.com/en/

GSK's First Meeting

The first meeting of Gyosei Sasshin Kaigi (GSK) was held at the Prime Minister’s office residence in the morning of October 22, Thursday.

GSK’s urgent task is to review the budget for next fiscal year. A rough estimate of the budget swelled out to about 95 trillion Japanese yen. Wow. Current fiscal year’s initial budget is about 88.5 trillion yen. Budget requests in the Hatoyama administration are much bigger than the previous administration’s.

What GSK will use is Jigyo Shiwake or “to sorting out government projects”. It is a work to judge whether a project is necessary or not, either central or local governments should take in charge of it and so on. Mr. Hideki Kato, the secretary-general of GSK and the president of Japan Initiative, a think tank invented this Jigyo Shiwake method. It has already been applied for local governments.

At the first meeting, GSK decided to establish three shiwake (sorting out) groups. Each group consists of Diet members, experts and former local government officials. They are called shiwake-nin, or a sorting out person.

Shiwake groups will hold hearings from each department and agency about the rough estimate of the budget. Then, they will choose 200 to 300 projects which should be sorted out. In this month, works to sort out the project will be open to the public. That will, I am sure, promote transparency of a process to select necessary or unnecessary government projects. By the end of coming November, the groups will arrange their sorting-out-evaluations and propose a reducing expenditure to the Hatoyama administration.

Prime Minister Hatoyama said, “We should cut down on expenses as much as possible.”

With his all-out support, GSK has started.


[PHP Global e-Forum Editorial Office]
http://www.globaleforum.com/en/