Weather and Foreign Tourists Blamed for Japan’s Rice Shortage | @AbroadinJapan #109
Those DASTARDLY tourists are at it again!
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00:00 Coolish Goes Mini
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39 Comments
Yea, I saw an article on NHK that opened with foreigners to blame for rice shortages. Quite deceitful – they interviewed foreigners who said they love rice! Both ridiculous and offensive at the same time. Pretty sad that they would resort to that – straight out of the Trump playbook. Maybe tourists are responsible for saving Kyoto and keeping a lot of restaurants afloat.
I had to read up on Bendy Bananas. Brexit really was a poop-show.
Which black magic camera are you using?
w
Ghostbusters now say it as a Japanese tourist who is speaking English as a second language
I was watching Sora the Troll talking about the rice shortage and denying that it’s the tourists, but a lot of his fans love blaming the US for everything.
I still enjoy rewatching old abroad in Japan videos. Based off what Chris was saying near the end there, I’m curious if he would ever consider a remastered version of his older videos. Is that a thing you can do? He clearly has different ideas for the audio quality and who knows what else now
Not tourists, I’m in S.F. trying to remodel, shipping delays causing unavailability
I know it's probably controversial, but can't they import the rice they need from elsewhere?
The US? Thailand? I know it's going to be looked at as "tourist rice", but surely that's better than no rice.
It's probably just an attempt to increase the price of rice a bit so that the farmers (or most likely the middlemen) can get some more money out of the consumers.
Jaywalking is not illegal everywhere. It depends on where you are. It is left over from when cars first entered the road. Living and working in NYC for many years, I feel comfortable knowing when and when not to cross, but in other cities I’ll usually wait for the light.
ChoCO Coolish is the shit man. I fucking love it. But it seems to be rarely sold, seasonal.
The jaywalking story is funny to me – I'm always shocked at people crossing the road willynilly when I visit the UK. It doesn't seem like anyone waits for the light. I'm guessing Japan is a little more like where I'm from… Here, a few people might but usually only when the road light has already turned and the cars have stopped; there's often a delay between that and the walk symbol turning on.
I wonder if it's because in the UK driving speeds tend to be slower so it's less risky there. Here, sometimes it seems like everything is a highway.
I don't think it's a foreigner issue at this point they'll blame even typhoons on them. I think the recent typhoons and earthquakes are a big cause because it destroyed a lot of crops and also people were panic buying. I also think it's because there's more and more people moving into Tokyo for example and less people out in the countryside to farm rice now.
So they still refuse to admit the fact that farmers are getting too old and the youth don't wanna be farmers and they're not replacing the dying old farmers with younger ones fast enough. What deluded a holes.
saw someone else say that jaywalking is a leftover thing from when cars entered the scene, which is mostly true but it actually happened because of car companies, roads used to be mostly for pedestrians walking around and cars had to basically just deal with it, which lead to alot of accidents of course but also since the car companies wanted people to buy cars they started promoting that "roads are for cars" and the term "jay-walking" was started, jay used to be a slang term for someone stupid, so only stupid people walked in the road basically, and thats how that became a thing.
I basically eat a variation on the bodybuilder meme diet every day: rice, chicken, broccoli or some kind of stir-fry and a 10KG bag lasts ages so it's crazy to me that JP could be running out. A single large bag lasts (me at least) a long time.
It seems like the Rice shortage is getting better. Supermarkets around me have had a lot of rice on their shelves lately but prices are still elevated…
eh they could easily import rice from the US, as it grows Japanese rice in excess.
The foreigners are at fault. Now where have I heard that before?
Foreigners are get out of jail free card for Japanese politicians.
Considering that Japanese people will blame everything on the gaijin, instead of holding the politicians accountable for not doing their job.
Typical, the government won't accept responsibility for its mistakes, so it tries to throw the blame on someone else….
Rice shortage never affected kyushu it seems, never not seen any in stock.
According to media reports at the time, Kyoto City was on the verge of bankruptcy because of the lack of tourists during Covid – I’m sure that many other places that are popular with tourists were similarly economically strained, particularly those who invested heavily in expectation of a tourist boom during the Tokyo Olympics. You would think they would be happy to see lots of high spending visitors to the country.
Also in the news a week ago, "Record amounts of rice exports from Japan" – pure management incompetence and blatant racism to blame foreigners as a cover.
Luckily foreigners don't like rice. Especially white rice 👍🏻
Tho koku!
I think it's important here to remember not to adopt the "Japanese people hate foreigners and me because I'm foreign!!!" victim mentality. Yeah the news is ridiculous, but remember it comes from the NHK which is run by a government who will throw their own grandmothers off a cliff if it meant making Japanese people look like perfect beings given to earth by God.
Jaywalking is a cultural thing. In Australia crosswalks with zebra markings give pedestrians the right of way. We discovered the hard way that in Japan this is not the case. In Kanazawa we encountered a zebra crossing and there was no clearly visible green man. Half way across the road much to our horror we discovered that we had made a mistake that it was a traffic light controlled crossing. A local held up her arms in a cross to show her displeasure at our stupidity. The green man was there, but it was on a pole on the crossing on the other part of the intersection.
Rice shortage: The warning of the potential megaquake caused panic buying. They caused it mostly themselves 😂
We need Professor Coolish pronto Mr Affable 😁
Rice is nice
Being like the cop from Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle when jaywalking in the middle of the night.
Most foreign tourists stay in hotels. They don't have a residential kitchen to cook rice.
I was visiting japan when that article came out. I barely ate rice during my visit, not even half my meals involved rice. I think it's because people hoarded rice during the possible mega quake and the typhoons.
The Vietnamese have a totally different culture regarding jaywalking, in that you cant NOT jaywalk because there is no like, pedestrian crossing lights or anything like that, for the most part. Thats so sad
Does Japan not import rice?
Though they produce Jasmine rice (the king of rice), Vietnam and Thailand are two of the biggest rice producers in the world and they aren't that far from Japan. I feel like other countries could produce Japanese short grain rice.
Japan's Diet ( all Puns Intended since we're talking about Rice here ) has had an agreement with California to purchase and import Rice since the Early 90's sometime whenever such becomes necessary for anyone who doesn't know.
When i lived with japanese baddie girl in japan she always j-walked and sometimes police said abunai (dangerous) she always told they are annoying and they should go home. I was always waiting that they would throw me out of japan because of her .
What I find interesting and hardly surprising is that only a month ago, along with news about low rice harvest, there was an article in about rice exports hitting record high.. Then a week later the government announced it's first ever mega-quake warning.. I remember when I was still in the UK, any time there was worry/panic about something, all the toilet rolls were bought.. 😂
So perhaps allowing such a record high export of rice, combined with the first ever mega-quake warning has contributed more to this rice shortage than foreign tourists.. I AM foreign, but not a tourist as I live here.. So I can't say for sure, but I'm quite certain that tourists don't buy that much rice to be honest. Most tourists are staying in hotels and eating at restaurants.. Most restaurants have deliveries of rice.. The empty shelves in the local supermarket are probably not empty as a result of foreign tourists.
The government here, rightly or wrongly wants more tourism. So they need to facilitate that, and not be so quick to allow blame to fall on those very tourists.
On my screen, the W in the first word of the thumbnail is covered by YouTube's "new" icon, so it looks like you're blaming ho's for the rice shortage. How many people have already pointed this out to you?
Hello Chris bread and patte Pete, I wanted to ask this question last episode when you were on the topic of religion but thought I might have a better chance commenting on the most recent video. As a Muslim how are the praying facilities in Japan and is halal food easy to come by? Thank you for all of the amazing content keep up the good work