Japan: still messed up

The Japanese must be pretty mad at us.  And not for those two atomic bombs we dropped on them back in the day.  Though I think they're probably still a little chafed about that as well. 

(For the record, I am personally still angry with Japan for inspiring that unbearable Gwen Stefani song.) 

After all, their bankers figured out how to use easy credit to make trillions of dollars and fuel an economy based on a huge stock and real estate "asset price bubble" way before ours did. And remember how they sent us all of those well made, fuel-efficient cars to attack our very way of life (and then even dared to start making them here).  Then of course the shit really hit the fan when they used all of those ill-gotten yen to buy Rockfeller Center (see: "The Japs Capture Rockefeller Center," National Review, December, 9, 1989).  

Yes, apparently it was still ok for conservatives to use the word "japs" in late 1989.

Well, they got theirs when their bubble burst in a major way in 1990 and they went into a recessionary or zero-growth period that lasted some FOURTEEN YEARS. Yes, zero percent interest rates, 10 different economic stimulus plans, and trillions of yen in bailouts didn't cut it. But then they finally got their shit together in recent years and their economy had actually started to grow again.

But don't worry, we showed them.  We used easy credit to make trillions of dollars and fuel an economy based on a huge stock and real estate asset price bubble, it burst in a major way, and now GDP2 has messed up the Japanese economy all over again.  The Nikkei is now down almost 50 percent on the year.  

Japanese society has of course responded in a predictably bizarre fashion.

I've long thought of Japan as a place where up is down, down is up, black is white, and white is a dayglo-colored piece of plastic.  The aforementioned Japanese recession forced people to live with their parents almost indefinitely, which gave them lots of spending money and thus fueled massive (and massively expensive) consumptive binges on bizarre fads.  This time, however, it is the old people in Japan who are going nuts.

Packs of aged bandits are presently ravaging Japan's shops with an indiscriminate spree of petty theft.  The Washington Post now reports that in Japan--unlike perhaps every other society in the world--the elderly are now vastly more likely than young people to be arrested.  And they are even trying to get caught merely to interact with other human beings:

Here in Sapporo, police in September arrested a 71-year-old retired man in a grocery store after he tried to steal 14 items, including ice cream, worth $27. He told police that he often shoplifts.

The man receives a social welfare check for about $1,600 a month and lives with his wife, who is ill and unable to do housework. He told police that his wife's illness caused him stress but that when he steals, he feels "refreshed."

At the time of his arrest, he had $7,500 in cash in his pocket. He told police that he preferred not to spend money on groceries.

I guess all of those freaky robots aren't doing such a good job taking care of grandma and grandpa after all.

Finally, while we are on the subject of freaky things from Japan, I can't help but bring this clip up: