Oh, the news...

One unexpected outcome of moving to Japan is that I have become a bit of a news enthusiast. Not just U.S. news (though I do usually check that most often) but also Japanese news, BBC and world news in general. The news has replaced web-comics as my favored form of entertainment after work. Some days this can be depressing, but then there's days like today.

Warning: What started as a light case of eye-rolling at the news got a bit heavy handed and rant-ish below. Feel free to skip this post and or skim heavily. I've spent too much time writing to delete it now...

Out of the Good 'Ole US of A:

Charging a Tourism fee to fund advertising for US tourism abroad. First of all, I'm pretty sure the US makes back any money spent on tourism advertisements. I mean, the idea is that tourists come to the US, spend lots of money and then go home again. Businesses take that money, pay taxes on it, and the government is reimbursed. Charging admission seems to do the opposite. It makes coming to the US a more costly venture up front, and to add insult to injury, the plan is to make the fee only payable with debit or credit card. A rather large number of families outside of the US (certainly the majority in Japan) do not use debit or credit cards. How's that suppose to increase tourism? This hasn't passed congress yet - hopefully it won't. I'm sure they see all manner of wonky bills.

Update: I was just thinking... instead of taxing foreign people for the privilege to spend money in our country, wouldn't it make more sense to tax American tourists leaving the country for the privilege to take US dollars abroad? That way we know that the the tourists have credit cards, we know that $10 a head is not a huge hardship, and we discourage outflow of money in order to increase inflow of money. What do you think? Or we could just forget the whole thing...

More from the homeland:

Do you guys know about "Smart Choice" over there? I hadn't heard about it until today. I'm not sure how widespread it is or how much attention it is getting. The premise (if you are as uninformed as me) is that food companies pay this not-for-profit organization to rate their products and put green check marks on the front of those the organization consider to be "smart choices" - foods that are, in theory, nutritionally sound. The organization drew a bit of fire, though, when foods like Froot Loops got the green check. Here's a link to the article I was reading if you're interested in the Smart Choice article from the New York Times.
My favorite part is the comment from the chairlady pointing out the absolutely valid point that when mothers are trying to choose breakfast for their son or daughter and have to make the decision between Froot Loops and, say, doughnuts, Froot Loops is clearly healthier. Now, the article does point out that there is set criteria to determine the healthfulness of foods - no one is bending rules to sneak a green check onto Froot Loops. It just doesn't say much for the criteria. I think the bonus points for high levels of vitamin C beat out the 42% refined sugar problem. Wasn't the point of this project to help with obesity? And since when do children eat only one serving of ANYTHING? Let alone Froot Loops?

Okay, now on to Japan -

This one at least is just amusing - no ranting required. At least, not from me.
The Mainichi Daily News reported two days ago that the largest Yakuza (organized crime) group in Japan has started giving out "gangter tests." The content of the test is actually designed to ensure that its members are familiar with the newly revised Anti-Organized Crime Law that came out recently and hopefully to reduce the number of lawsuits filed against them. This seems perfectly reasonable, but the image of aspiring gangsters having to sit entrance exams makes me chuckle a bit.

Sorry for the rant-y bits. That wasn't the initial intention. Alas.