Nipponica

Students at a junior high school here are now able to set their own class rules apart from school rules in an initiative intended to address issues in school life. However, while the system reflects some students' input, others find it confusing, and parents are questioning the entire project, the Mainichi Shimbun has discovered.

This entire story is worth a read simply to see how feckless the school was from preventing students from abusing each other with the regime they created. A personal favorite to demonstrate the monster that was created:

Meanwhile, there are also rules that the school is unaware of, such as, "Gym short drawstrings must be the same color as when purchased." The male student said, "There was an uproar in the class when someone changed their drawstring color." His mother wondered whether the students had adopted the mindset of binding people with rules.

More than half of people in Japan are not comfortable with the recent trend of emphasizing "time performance" in leisure and other daily activities, such as watching movies at double speed, a recent survey by watchmaker Seiko Group Corp. showed.

I haven't heard of タイパ before and the idea of watching a film at double speed is crazy. However, I am guilty of doing the same thing for podcasts and audiobooks so perhaps I am just as culpable for not slowing down and enjoying art.

The owner of a ramen restaurant in the city of Nara appeared frustrated as they described their search for a new hire. In January, they registered their business on a major job search site to hire a part-timer, but received few inquiries. Finally, in March, they got a nibble, but still couldn't fill the position. "Three people were supposed to come in for interviews, but they all pulled out. And only one of them notified me. Young people's thinking is off the rails," they said.

Interesting article about a phenomenon happening elsewhere around the world that is surely linked to a wide dissatisfaction with wages and the expectations of the worker/company relationship. The article also posits that inefficiencies in the application process turn away qualified applicants which also rings true. But they place part of the blame of workers submitting multiple simultaneous job applications as a problem when, in reality, it is a necessary part of job hunting.

The Gamagori Municipal Government in central Japan's Aichi Prefecture is investigating a whistleblower's report that the scores of women sitting its employment exams were lowered to prioritize their male counterparts, apparently at the mayor's instruction, multiple sources told the Mainichi Shimbun on June 14.

Absolutely shameful but no real surprise here. The mayor is states later on in the article that the reason for the exam tampering is due to staff shortages for maternity leave.