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  • Tokyo Car Debate Flares Up Again: 5ch Says ‘Factor in Parking and Taxis Are Cheaper’

    The perennial debate over whether you need a car in Tokyo has flared up again on 5ch. Many argue cars are unnecessary, citing steep parking fees and better value from taxis and rental cars, while others — especially those living outside the Yamanote Line loop or raising kids — insist cars are essential. The thread escalated into an argument over an image showing car ownership rates in Suginami Ward.

    1AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:13
    There's no way it's simply "better to have one" or "better not to." Even in Tokyo there are tons of places where the trains are inconvenient with annoying transfers — if anything, the more urban you are, the more you appreciate having a car.
    2AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:14
    Do those two things really add up to "necessary"?
    3AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:14
    Fine if you've got money to spare, but if you're broke you're better off spending it elsewhere.
    4AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:21
    Why bother buying something you can get by without anyway?
    7AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:22
    Once Tesla self-driving gets approved, poor Tokyoites are all going to live in their Teslas instead of paying rent. Calling it now — electricity, bottled water, and public bathhouse fees for a Tesla-dwelling lifestyle would be cheaper than rent and utilities.
    8AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:26
    Looking around at my friends, I don't know a single family living in Tokyo without a car. There's stuff like driving the grandparents to the hospital too.
    11AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:29
    If you ignore the purchase price and upkeep costs, sure, having one is better.
    12AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:31
    There's traffic congestion, so doesn't that mean a lot of people actually own cars after all?
    13AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:32
    Even just factoring in parking fees, calling a taxi when you need one works out cheaper.
    14AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:33
    Unlike the countryside, a lot of places don't even have parking, and where it exists it's expensive. If you're wealthy that doesn't matter, but for ordinary folks, a car isn't necessary.
    24AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:53
    It's more like "nice to have" than "necessary." I own one, but I only drive it about 3 times a month.
    26AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:58
    Re: #24
    If you're not using it for work, of course you're not driving it every day.
    30AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:09
    Outside the Yamanote Line, a lot of areas just have train lines radiating outward, so it's better to have a car. It's only pathetic bottom-feeders whose whole world is the area right around the station who insist cars are totally unnecessary. Big-box stores along the main roads away from the stations blow train-side shops away on both selection and price.
    39AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:20
    People with money to spare own cars at a high rate. Households with kids also have higher ownership rates. The people saying they don't need one are broke, family-less, lonely types.
    41AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:22
    Re: #39
    Please go ahead and keep that prejudice for the rest of your life. I'm not foolish enough to blow money on something I don't need just to keep up appearances.
    48AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:27
    It's not prejudice, it's just how reality is. The truth is you want a car but can't afford to maintain one.
    71AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:43
    Yeah, rich people really do own cars lol. Surprised my own Suginami Ward is this low.
    86AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:49
    Re: #71
    That image is basically the answer. Come on, "necessary" camp, give your take on this.
    107AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:56
    Re: #103
    Like it says in Re: #71, car ownership rates around there are actually low.
    76AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:46
    Having a car is definitely convenient. The people saying they don't need one just can't afford to own one.
    79AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:48
    Re: #76
    Does "gets in the way and costs money to maintain" also count as "convenient"?
    83AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:48
    Poor guy: "Renting a car when you need one beats owning — way better value." Me: "A broke guy who can't even afford to own a car isn't casually renting one either, you idiot."
    94AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:52
    Re: #83
    Factor in the purchase price and upkeep, and rental cars or taxis work out cheaper.
    91AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:51
    Just use whichever is more convenient at the time, car or train. Why are broke people so hostile toward cars anyway?
    100AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:53
    Re: #91
    It's always the "cars are necessary" camp that starts this fight every time.
    103AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:54
    At Toyosu and Kiba where I do my daily shopping — everyone gets 2 hours free, app/credit-card members get several more hours (doubled on weekends), and spending ¥1,000-2,000 gets you another 1-2 hours on top. I never stay for hours on end, so I basically never end up paying for parking.
    109AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:57
    Toyosu's packed with high-rise condos, so parking's probably ridiculously expensive there too.
    121AnonymousAug 22, 2026 15:02
    Re: #109
    The high-rises are only in the redeveloped area right by the station — cross one canal and it's regular condos. The LaLaport parking lot (especially underground) is packed with luxury cars though, makes me nervous parking next to one.
    112AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:58
    Poor guy: "Factor in the purchase price and upkeep, and rental cars or taxis are cheaper." Me: "A broke guy who has to worry about a car's purchase price and upkeep isn't casually affording rental cars or taxis either, you idiot."
    132AnonymousAug 22, 2026 15:12
    Re: #129
    "Fine either way" and "absolutely don't need it" — can you tell the difference? lol
    137AnonymousAug 22, 2026 15:13
    Is the whole of Tokyo a fancy upscale neighborhood or something? Explain why that's the standard you're using.

    Background and Key Points

    For readers unfamiliar with Japan, the key institutional fact behind this whole argument is the “shako shōmei” system — since the 1960s, anyone registering a car in Japan’s major cities must first prove they have a legal parking space for it, which is why off-street parking in central Tokyo is both scarce and expensive (often ¥30,000–50,000, or roughly $200–350, a month in the 23 wards). That single rule underpins nearly every “parking costs more than the car is worth” comment in the thread. The Yamanote Line loop, referenced repeatedly, is the JR line encircling central Tokyo; areas inside and just outside it have dense subway/rail coverage, while wards and satellite cities further out often rely on a handful of radial train lines with long walks or bus transfers to reach them — the geographic split the “you need a car” camp is describing.

    The thread doesn’t actually split on whether cars are useful — nobody disputes that — it splits on whether convenience translates into “necessary,” with income implicitly standing in for both sides’ real argument: one camp reads car ownership as a marker of being comfortably well-off, the other reads it as a trap that eats disposable income better spent on trains, taxis, or rentals.

    What goes unmentioned is the irony in the Suginami Ward image itself: Suginami is one of Tokyo’s more affluent, family-heavy wards, yet posters cite its low ownership rate as proof that “necessary” is wrong — without noting that affluent central wards simply have the best transit access, so wealth and low car ownership aren’t contradictory there at all.

    This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project) thread “You often see this debate about whether you need a car in Tokyo.”

  • Passenger Brings Folding Chair Onto Shinkansen Hayabusa, Sparks Backlash — JR East Responds

    A passenger who brought a folding chair into the standing-ticket area of the Shinkansen Hayabusa and proudly posted about how comfortable it was on social media has drawn a wave of criticism. JR East has stated that “it’s not a problem as long as it doesn’t get in the way of other passengers, such as blocking the aisle,” and discussion on 5ch has spread to whether standing tickets should even exist, and whether all seats should be made reservation-only.

    8/22 (Sat) 9:30 JST

    Weekly Josei PRIME

    On August 17, a post on Threads about disruptive behavior on the Shinkansen caused a stir.

    Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here

    6AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:13
    "Standing seat" doesn't even make sense as a phrase, honestly.
    201AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:44
    Re: #6
    Standing bar: "We've got seats available!" (a jab at tachinomiya, bars where everyone stands anyway)
    12AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:14
    Just sell non-reserved seats already, morons.
    29AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:19
    Re: #12
    Exactly. Non-reserved seats are the whole point of having a Shinkansen in the first place. But now even the Tokaido-Sanyo Shinkansen has started copying JR East's bad habit during peak season.
    103AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:30
    Re: #29
    If you're coming from Morioka, take the Yamabiko instead. If that's too slow, just book a reserved seat.
    147AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:35
    Re: #29
    All-reserved seating is better precisely because it keeps out the clueless idiots who never plan ahead.
    16AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:15
    I hate this penny-pinching mentality of charging money just to let someone stand.
    58AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:22
    Re: #16
    Isn't demanding it be free just because you're standing on the Shinkansen the real penny-pinching move here?
    18AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:16
    There are cane-seats and umbrella-seats you can sit on, you know.
    77AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:25
    Re: #18
    Mine's a backpack you can sit on. Google "backpack chair," lol.
    30AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:19
    Kodama (means "echo" — i.e. speed of sound)
    Hikari (means "light" — speed of light)
    Nozomi (means "wish" — joke: speed of quantum entanglement)

    Wait, isn't Hayabusa ("falcon") slower than the speed of sound?
    224AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:49
    Re: #30
    Well, it does have a track record of going farther than sound waves ever could — all the way to the asteroid Itokawa (a nod to the Hayabusa space probe).
    31AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:19
    A folding chair should be fine, no? Just fold it up once you reach the station. It's not like it's some plush recliner — no need to get so worked up about it.
    280AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:59
    Re: #31
    >A folding chair should be fine, no? Just fold it up once you reach the station. It's not like it's some plush recliner — no need to get so worked up about it.

    If you actually look at the poster's photo, it's not one of those tiny old-school folding stools that just prop up your butt. It's a Coleman chair with a backrest, armrests, and a drink holder — looks genuinely comfortable. And it's huge.
    93AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:28
    Is something like this image okay — a cane that doubles as a chair when you need it?


    133AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:33
    Rather than blasting JR East for selling this ridiculous thing called a "standing express ticket" in the first place, everyone piles on the little guy instead — so typically Japanese, always siding with authority and punching down.
    149AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:35
    Re: #133
    Just book a reserved seat. Are you broke? Then take the bus.
    154AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:36
    Re: #149
    That "3 hours" thing only comes up when the train's fully booked.
    142AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:34
    What about wheelchair users, huh?
    Gonna tell Clara to stand up too? (a nod to the famous "Clara, you're standing!" scene from Heidi)
    153AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:36
    Re: #142
    If you want to ride in a wheelchair that badly, I'll help you lose a leg. You're welcome.
    165AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:38
    Re: #142
    That guy was zipping around on his hands like it was nothing.
    179AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:41
    Re: #142
    Actually, Clara's been standing up just fine for quite a while now.
    157AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:37
    Why not just sell reserved seats only?
    What even is a "standing ticket," lol
    A ticket gives you the right to use that space, doesn't it?
    If you're allowed to leave a bag there, a chair should be fine too.
    185AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:42
    Re: #157
    I don't think they said it's banned — just don't get in the way.
    "Please don't obstruct other passengers' movement," basically.
    225AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:49
    Re: #157
    I've bought a standing ticket on the Hayabusa from Tokyo to Misawa myself — same price as a reserved seat. There are about 3 standing spots per car, and you're expected to stand near the boarding doors. Even if there's an open seat nearby, you can't sit in it. Basically it's a ticket for the doorway space. Next time I use it, I was planning to bring a Gadabout Chair — would that be rude?
    205AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:45
    Even if it's fine when just one person does it, think about what happens if everyone does.
    206AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:45
    Re: #205
    Exactly, that's the point.
    212AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:46
    Re: #205
    "So what if everyone did it" — that's a naive take.
    214AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:47
    Re: #205
    Nothing would really happen, lol. Plenty of people already drag huge suitcases on board anyway.
    222AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:48
    It's all over 🥺

    247AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:53
    Re: #1
    https://www.jprime.jp/mwimgs/d/b/360/img_db32e792e11e55049b7eb5a01c0e88a8936416.jpg
    295AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:02
    Yeah, this, this one right here Re: #247
    282AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:59
    Re: #1
    At the Osaka Expo, I was shocked how many people were casually sitting on folding chairs just like this one while waiting in those massive lines. Probably regulars who knew the ropes.

    https://thumbnail.image.rakuten.co.jp/@0_mall/e-monostore1/cabinet/2025-9-1/70953_1k2.jpg
    293AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:02
    Re: #282
    At places like Maihama (Tokyo Disney) and Universal Studios Japan, people camp out overnight in line with these things all the time.

    Background and Key Points

    The Tohoku Shinkansen’s Hayabusa and Komachi services are entirely reserved-seat trains — unlike the Tokaido-Sanyo Shinkansen further south, which has long kept non-reserved (jiyūseki) cars where passengers without a reservation queue on the platform and, if the car fills, stand or sit on the floor. JR East has no such non-reserved car on these trains; instead, when all reserved seats sell out, it issues a “standing ticket” (立席特急券) at the same fare as a reserved seat, entitling the holder only to ride in the vestibule near the doors — not to sit in any empty seat, even one that happens to be free for that leg of the journey. This is the system the original poster was using when they set up a camp chair.

    The thread’s actual fault line wasn’t really about chairs versus no chairs — it was whether the standing-ticket system itself is reasonable. One camp treated the chair as a harmless workaround for a badly designed product (full fare, no seat guaranteed); the other insisted the fix is simply to book ahead or pay for a seat, and saw the chair as queue-jumping the spirit of standing tickets.

    What outside readers likely miss is that this isn’t casual commuter-train standing — it’s a premium bullet-train service charging full reserved-seat-equivalent price for standing room only, a legacy JR practice dating to the national rail era that has no real equivalent on most other high-speed rail systems. Also unaddressed in the thread: vestibule space near doors is regulated for emergency evacuation and luggage clearance, which is the actual likely basis for JR East’s “as long as it doesn’t block the aisle” line, not mere etiquette.

    *This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “[Railways] Backlash Erupts Over “Life Hack” Bragging About Bringing a Chair Onto the Shinkansen Hayabusa… The Rule JR East Revealed.”

  • Initial D Deserved to Be Way Bigger — 5ch: “The AE86 Is Just Showa-Era Scrap Metal”

    A post on 5ch’s Livegalileo board (a general live-commentary board) arguing that Initial D deserved to be more popular than it was sparked a wide-ranging discussion. The thread covered everything from opinions on the AE86 and Ryosuke Takahashi, to the romance subplot and mixed feelings about the later Project D arc, to how fans feel about the spin-off MF Ghost.

    1AnonymousAug 19, 2026 13:44
    This is way too good
    2AnonymousAug 19, 2026 13:45
    Would've been better without the unnecessary romance stuff
    4AnonymousAug 19, 2026 13:47
    Re: #2
    You need some high school romance in there though
    3AnonymousAug 19, 2026 13:46
    The art style hits just right
    Even decades later, rewatching it doesn't feel dated at all
    6AnonymousAug 19, 2026 13:49
    It got so huge that AE86 prices are still sky-high today, and other FR manual cars haven't turned into junk either just for being FR MTs
    11AnonymousAug 19, 2026 13:50
    Kinda put off that the heroine was into sugar-daddy dating (papa-katsu)
    84AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:28
    Re: #11
    Man, that was way ahead of its time…
    12AnonymousAug 19, 2026 13:50
    The AE86 is slow anyway
    18AnonymousAug 19, 2026 13:51
    Re: #12
    Takumi's AE86 isn't even really an AE86 anymore at that point
    21AnonymousAug 19, 2026 13:52
    Re: #18
    A BMW is faster
    than a Corolla
    24AnonymousAug 19, 2026 13:53
    Re: #18
    An AE86 is an AE86
    Showa-era scrap metal
    20AnonymousAug 19, 2026 13:52
    The cars are great, but aren't the character designs kind of bad?
    29AnonymousAug 19, 2026 13:55
    Re: #20
    Hard to say since the art style changes by season
    The character designs are actually good in the 3rd and 4th Stages
    30AnonymousAug 19, 2026 13:55
    The anime is free to watch from the very start all the way through New Movie Edition 3
    33AnonymousAug 19, 2026 13:56
    Re: #30
    That's why I'm binging it right now — it's so good I can't stop
    47AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:05
    Ryosuke Takahashi was written to seem cool, but he was actually pretty lame
    Burning through his parents' money to run his team and lord it over other teams
    50AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:07
    Re: #47
    That'd be fair if he did it behind his parents' backs, but was there actually a scene showing that?
    He said the reason he provoked other teams on his website was to get them to come at him for real
    51AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:08
    Re: #47
    Go drive a real mountain pass
    Initial D might as well be a video game
    70AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:17
    Re: #47
    I think it's fine since he's a student
    The rivals spent plenty of money on their cars too
    There were some rich kids among them as well
    It's not like Team D was the only one with money
    62AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:13
    Couldn't they have done something about that heroine's face?
    68AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:15
    Re: #62
    The Itsuki parts matter, but the Natsuki parts are the ones you skip
    64AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:13
    Re: #50
    If you're bringing that much manpower and equipment, mooching off your parents is the only option
    Remember, he's still just a student while he's out there going wild
    67AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:15
    Re: #64
    Maybe he was secretly making bank off investments on the side
    72AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:17
    Kids today probably have no clue why he's constantly rattling that shift lever around
    76AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:19
    Re: #72
    If you want that rattly gear-shift feeling, you can still get it from a Prius…
    73AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:18
    Re: #67
    I think it would've been good if they'd actually shown that
    Without it, he's basically just mooching off his hospital-director dad
    75AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:18
    Re: #73
    Ideally they'd have shown him landing sponsors through his racing itself
    79AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:24
    Re: #70
    Team D was clearly on another level
    Showing up with three Hiaces packed with gear, swapping tires nonstop, basically playing pro team
    While everyone else was grinding part-time jobs to scrape by
    89AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:33
    Re: #79
    Can't really help that when you're on the road
    The home team knows the course inside and out and has their car tuned for it, but Team D is seeing it for the first time and has to set up on the spot
    Wouldn't it be weirder if they showed up empty-handed and just dominated anyway?
    83AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:26
    They introduced the Impreza partway through, but the story ended without him ever switching away from the AE86
    100AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:45
    Re: #83
    There was actually supposed to be a rally arc
    But probably due to editorial or sponsor decisions to keep pushing the "fastest on public roads" formula, they kicked off the Project D arc instead
    That turned out to be completely unnecessary and just awful
    I mean, it was already way too fantastical from the start, but it's a manga, so it still would've wrapped up nicely otherwise
    92AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:35
    Maybe it's just because it's the YouTube stream, but up through around Stage 4 it's so blurry it feels like something's wrong with your eyes
    Wish they'd do a digital remaster
    93AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:36
    Re: #92
    Wish they'd also fix those terrible early police-chase battle scenes
    As for the trilogy movies, I just can't get on board with the art style or voice cast
    95AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:38
    What does the 'D' even stand for? I still don't know to this day
    97AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:38
    Re: #95
    Seems like it has several meanings
    For Project D, the D stands for 'Dream'
    96AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:38
    The funniest part is early on when Takumi gets clowned on as 'a guy who doesn't know the first thing about cars these days'
    98AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:39
    Re: #96
    That part's basically a power fantasy
    It's just satisfying and fun to watch

    Background and Key Points

    Initial D began as Shuichi Shigeno’s manga in 1995 and ran until 2013, spawning five TV anime series between 1998 and 2014, three live-action-style CG movies, and a Hong Kong live-action film. Its car of choice, the Toyota Sprinter Trueno/Corolla Levin AE86, was a cheap, unremarkable Japanese economy coupe from 1983–87 with no racing pedigree; it became a cult object specifically because of this franchise, not before it, which is why real AE86 prices are still inflated decades later, as the thread notes. The setting is touge racing — illegal nighttime downhill duels on narrow mountain passes, here fictionalized as Mount Akina in Gunma — a real, longstanding but unsanctioned subculture in Japan that the anime romanticizes without commentary. The board itself, Livegalileo, is a general live-chat board rather than an anime-specific one, so the tone skews toward casual car-culture nostalgia rather than close manga analysis.

    The actual point of disagreement wasn’t the AE86 or the racing itself but Ryosuke Takahashi: whether his Project D operation, bankrolled by his father’s money, makes him an admirable strategist or simply a rich kid throwing resources at amateur racers who fund themselves. Posters split over whether the manga ever justified this financially or just glossed over it.

    What’s likely to surprise outsiders is that even Shigeno himself has never pinned down what “D” officially stands for, giving different answers over the years (Drift, Dream, District, etc.) — the thread’s confusion on that point is faithful to the source, not a gap in fan knowledge.

    *This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Livegalileo board) thread “Initial D really deserved to be bigger, right?”.

  • Hiroyuki: My Assets Are Growing “While I Just Sleep”

    Hiroyuki revealed that after shifting his assets into the eurozone and US dollar zone starting in 2015, his yen-denominated wealth grew 70% “just from sleeping.” The surge was compounded by sharp share-price gains at Louis Vuitton and Hermès, companies he’d invested in. On 5ch, the news sparked a mix of envy and criticism tied to his long-unpaid damages case.

    Addressing the accelerating yen depreciation, Hiroyuki said: “I moved my assets into the eurozone and the US dollar zone back in 2015, so my yen-denominated assets have grown 70% just from sleeping.”

    He also reported: “Louis Vuitton, one of the companies I invested in, has tripled its share price. Christian Dior is up 2.5x. Hermès is up 10x…”

    Last December, appearing on Nippon Broadcasting’s “Izumi Fusaho’s Passion Radio,” Hiroyuki said: “I moved abroad about 10 years ago, and back then it was around 120 yen to the euro. Now it’s 180 yen. Since I moved most of my assets to Europe around that time, they’ve grown 50% over 10 years without me doing anything.”

    Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here

    4AnonymousAug 19, 2026 13:44
    Then just keep sleeping
    20AnonymousAug 19, 2026 16:53
    Re: #4

    LOL LOL ("wara" is Japanese netspeak for laughter, like "lol")
    6AnonymousAug 19, 2026 13:51
    Then pay up your damages already
    59AnonymousAug 20, 2026 13:51
    Re: #6
    He literally turned "contacting creditors and paying off the damages" into a travel-vlog content series, didn't he?
    How old is that joke, grandpa?
    61AnonymousAug 20, 2026 14:03
    Re: #6
    Wasn't Hiroyuki's whole damages case just about him not disclosing the poster's IP (more precisely, not disclosing it to the standard of proof he personally demanded)?
    Isn't it actually the original poster who's supposed to pay, not him?
    7AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:08
    Hiroyuki refuses one "skipped-out damages" claim as "not owed" in TV show project to repay debts… victim presented "objective evidence" but got no response
    https://www.ben54.jp/news/3035
    11AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:27
    He lives in the eurozone, so converting it to yen is meaningless.
    12AnonymousAug 19, 2026 14:29
    As long as you don't realize the profit and cash out, you don't get taxed
    You can just sell off what you need bit by bit
    I messed up buying my gold bullion as a single 500g ingot
    It unexpectedly shot up 300% in value
    Selling bullion off in pieces is a real pain, you know
    14AnonymousAug 19, 2026 15:56
    I get unemployment benefits just by sleeping too
    15AnonymousAug 19, 2026 16:10
    Same story as me
    Just got lucky

    Well, you need real ability as a base
    otherwise
    you'll never build up the capital to invest in the first place
    16AnonymousAug 19, 2026 16:19
    Re: #1
    If it's still positive after subtracting living expenses, then sure, your assets grow while you sleep — but what's the reality?
    17AnonymousAug 19, 2026 16:22
    I've had assets sitting in Japan since I was born too, so converted into Turkish lira, my assets have grown about 30x over the past 20 years just from sleeping
    19AnonymousAug 19, 2026 16:45
    99% of influencers' flashy "look how rich I am" posturing is a lie
    21AnonymousAug 19, 2026 16:54
    I bought "Orukan" (nickname for the popular eMAXIS Slim All Country index fund) but it tanks hard whenever the yen strengthens.
    A cheap yen sucks, but watching your valuation drop is rough too.
    22AnonymousAug 19, 2026 17:10
    There's nothing left worth buying with yen anymore, so what's even the point
    23AnonymousAug 19, 2026 18:12
    Society keeps coddling Hiroyuki, so this guy's assets just keep growing
    25AnonymousAug 19, 2026 18:28
    Well, that's something even an ordinary person would think to do
    26AnonymousAug 19, 2026 19:18
    Says the guy who's out there doing lecture gigs for pocket change
    29AnonymousAug 19, 2026 20:47
    How the heck did he manage to move that much money out of Japan anyway?
    32AnonymousAug 19, 2026 23:21
    Re: #29
    He's only talking percentages, so there's no way to know how much he actually invested or how much he made
    30AnonymousAug 19, 2026 20:52
    If Hiroyuki keeps publicly saying he's got money rolling in, and people keep asking "then why aren't you paying your damages?"
    he'll probably just vanish before long lol
    36AnonymousAug 20, 2026 07:20
    Forex gains get taxed as miscellaneous income, and given how massive Hiroyuki's assets must be
    he'd better be handing over 45% of it in tax
    37AnonymousAug 20, 2026 07:25
    Re: #36
    It's already gotten a corrective recommendation, so it'll probably get scrapped eventually
    39AnonymousAug 20, 2026 07:46
    If the yen strengthens from here on out
    his assets could start shrinking while he sleeps
    42AnonymousAug 20, 2026 08:15
    Re: #39
    Something like 105 yen [to the dollar] from the early COVID days just isn't happening again

    Background and Key Points

    Hiroyuki is Hiroyuki Nishimura, founder of 2channel (now 5channel) and current owner of 4chan. He is a fixture of Japanese online culture and TV commentary, but he is also a long-running defendant in defamation and damages litigation stemming from posts on his boards; Japanese courts have repeatedly ordered him to pay plaintiffs, and he has a public reputation for slow-walking or refusing payment, including one case where he framed “seeking out creditors to pay them” as travel-vlog content. His remarks here are about currency, not investment skill: he moved assets to the eurozone/dollar zone around 2015-2016, when the yen traded near 120/euro; it has since weakened to roughly 180/euro, a decline of about a third, which mechanically inflates the yen value of anything held in euros or dollars even with zero investment return. He separately mentioned equity gains in luxury names (LVMH, Dior, Hermès), which is a distinct, skill-dependent gain layered on top of the currency effect.

    The thread’s disagreement isn’t really about the math — commenters mostly accept the yen-depreciation logic (post 11, 12, 17 extend it with their own examples) — it splits on motive and fairness: whether flaunting overseas gains while dodging domestic damages payments (posts 6, 30, 36) is hypocritical, versus whether the damages claims themselves are legitimate in the first place (post 61 disputes the premise of the case entirely).

    What the thread never addresses is tax exposure: unrealized currency and share gains aren’t taxed in Japan until realized (post 12 alludes to this), so the “70% growth” is a paper figure, not income he owes tax on yet — undercutting the “he should pay 45% tax” demand in post 36, which conflates unrealized gains with taxable income.

    ※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Business News+) thread “[Entrepreneur] Hiroyuki: My Assets Are Growing “While I Just Sleep”.”

  • Sergio Echigo blasts Japan for keeping Moriyasu as coach — 5ch: “Sick of this pattern already”

    After Japan’s national team crashed out of the World Cup in the round of 32, the Japan Football Association decided to extend manager Hajime Moriyasu’s contract for another six months. Commentator Sergio Echigo slammed the decision, saying it’s because “the association doesn’t want to admit failure,” while on 5ch, reactions split between those defending the result as “exactly what was expected” and those pointing out it’s actually a step backward from Japan’s 1-win-2-draw-1-loss record at the Qatar tournament.

    Despite setting “winning it all” as the goal, Japan’s national team saw its World Cup end in the round of 32. Soon after, the Japan Football Association decided to extend manager Hajime Moriyasu’s contract for six months. The familiar pundit Sergio Echigo has voiced strong unease over the current situation, where neither the decision-making process nor any real public debate about it seems to be surfacing.

    [Since when did personnel decisions for the Japan national team manager get this soft?]

    A six-month contract extension for manager Hajime Moriyasu. Both the Japan Football Association’s call and the public’s reaction to it just feel completely off to me.

    Source: sportiva.shueisha.co.jp / Read the original article here

    6AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:18
    It's not really a failure, it's exactly the result everyone expected, so honestly that's plenty satisfying.
    There's no way Japanese athletes can beat teams like Brazil physically anyway.
    8AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:18
    Going on TV acting like some kind of hero —
    this guy's
    completely
    delusional.
    9AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:18
    He's the only sane voice left in the whole Japanese soccer commentary scene.
    14AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:19
    Re: #9
    If that were true, he'd have actually delivered results
    back when he himself was involved with Japanese soccer.
    10AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:19
    Rankings can swing on the luck of the draw, so who cares about that.
    All I care about is whether we can actually compete with the powerhouse nations.
    11AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:19
    Sergio,
    are you planning to spend your whole life just holding a grudge against Japanese soccer?
    12AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:19
    Wouldn't he have avoided getting bashed if he'd just stepped down with a "thanks for the memories" send-off instead?
    13AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:19
    They only managed one win. Nobody's properly calling that out. It's fine to aim for the title, but then you have to judge the results strictly. No real review gets done, they just report the good parts. Of course the team isn't going to get stronger this way — and even the Asian qualifiers have gotten soft too.
    23AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:22
    Re: #13
    It was 1 win, 2 draws, 1 loss —
    that's actually a step down from the 2 wins, 1 draw, 1 loss at the Qatar World Cup.
    21AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:22
    Ancelotti got to keep his job too though.
    74AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:40
    Old man Sergio, dropping one of his rare dead-on takes.

    Re: #21
    Well, it's o-only been six months, so…
    28AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:23
    Re: #1
    Everyone thinks these past 8 years have been a failure, but to spin it as a "success," they keep Moriyasu on and force whoever takes over next to double up on the Olympics too — that's the state of Japanese soccer right now. And it's not just the association; everyone who goes on TV says the same thing.
    117AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:51
    Re: #28Re: #80
    Sergio's been criticizing the media's approach for ages too,
    but the broadcasters' attitude still hasn't improved to this day.

    2014/07/05
    [Soccer] Sergio Echigo: the crushing defeat wasn't unexpected. Fans misled by sales-driven media wrongly believed Japan could win
    https://hayabusa3.5ch.io/test/read.cgi/mnewsplus/1404487440/


    > Japan's actual level is such that just getting out of the group stage would be a good outcome — nowhere near a level where you can talk about "winning it all."
    > They were only beating weaker teams in Asia-level matches or exhibition games where the box office came first, yet sales-driven media hyped it up without giving any fair assessment.
    > Fans misled by that ended up wrongly believing Japan could actually win.
    > The World Cup is a stage where you can't fake it. The real ability the media had been hiding got exposed.
    > The media's job isn't cheerleading, it's critique. If they want Japanese soccer to get stronger, they should actually do the job they're supposed to do.
    30AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:23
    It's honestly funny to call it "round of 32" when 48 countries took part.
    It's like some minor sport's international meet where 12 athletes competed and someone placed 8th, so it counts as "making the finals," or 4 entered and 3rd place counts as a medal.
    Just getting to compete on the international stage at all is impressive enough in a lot of ways, though.
    37AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:28
    Re: #30
    Now that I think about it, even proportionally this isn't better than finishing 16th out of 32 countries, is it?
    40AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:29
    Re: #25
    After Japanese soccer went pro, it followed the South American style,
    and Sergio served as the bridge to South America.
    But around the Falcão era the results were so bad
    that it got switched to the European style, so he got phased out.
    48AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:32
    Re: #40
    Results of what, exactly?
    Makes no sense.
    49AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:33
    Drew with a slightly stronger Netherlands, beat a weaker Tunisia, drew with an evenly matched Sweden, and lost to a stronger Brazil.
    Isn't that just exactly the result you'd expect?
    54AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:34
    Re: #49
    The goal was winning it all, so that's not "exactly as expected" at all.
    50AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:33
    Re: #48
    "Results of what" —
    they didn't even get through qualifying, did they?
    64AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:37
    Re: #50
    Qualifying for what? By your logic, you could just as well say the team got stronger because Sergio started criticizing them.
    Ridiculous.
    56AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:34
    It's genuinely hilarious that just scraping through a lukewarm group stage gets you treated like a national hero in Japan lol

    Is Sergio really the only one saying "Didn't you say you were going to win it all?! Round of 32 — are you kidding me?!"…
    62AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:37
    Re: #56
    Back when Sergio was on the strengthening committee,
    Japan couldn't even get through that "lukewarm" qualifying stage.
    65AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:37
    This old man still believes Japan can get stronger.
    That's sweet and all,
    but honestly Moriyasu is just the right fit for Japan.
    72AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:40
    Re: #65
    He's not remotely "the right fit," though.
    68AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:39
    Go say something about Brazil too — they only made it to the round of 16.
    96AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:46
    Re: #68
    Exactly.
    So it's not that the group draw was tough —
    round of 32 was simply the expected result.
    In other words, a step backward, a regression.
    70AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:39
    The cost of hiring a big-name foreign manager just keeps climbing while the yen keeps weakening to an absurd degree,
    so it's not like they can just swap managers easily.
    79AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:42
    Re: #70
    The players themselves are already playing abroad lol.
    Doesn't even need to be a foreign manager lol.
    All he does is hold the team spirit together lol
    current manager and all that lol lol
    76AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:41
    Properly reviewing things and then stepping down is important,
    but realistically the association probably just doesn't have the connections or the bandwidth to line up the next candidate while the current manager is still in the job.
    116AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:51
    Re: #76
    They loudly declared they were aiming to win it all, only managed one win in the group stage, still couldn't get a single win in the knockout round as usual, and didn't even make the round of 16 — yet somehow the manager gets a six-month extension and the coaching staff stays exactly the same. Who's doing this "review," and how? There's no accountability story here at all.
    80AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:42
    Media: "Japan is strong! We can win!" → gets knocked out in an ugly loss → "thanks for the memories"
    I'm so sick of this pattern already 😗
    86AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:43
    Japan still gets that "thanks for the memories, you did great" treatment just for getting through the group stage.
    If you're an actual powerhouse nation, the bare minimum is the quarterfinals.
    A Brazilian friend of mine was pretty down about it too —
    like, "seriously, a close match against Japan of all teams?"
    109AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:49
    Re: #86
    For a long time "get through qualifying" and "get through the group stage" were treated as the goal itself, so people just aren't used to what comes after that.
    It's also not great that the media goes all-out chasing ratings over something as minor as the group stage — honestly, they might as well not even broadcast it.
    88AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:44
    I mean, a failure's a failure, but the team actually did pretty well considering Mitoma, Minamino, and Endo were all unavailable.
    I think a lot of people would've accepted it even going winless and crashing out in the group stage.
    111AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:49
    Anyway, recent World Cups just aren't fun anymore.
    I'd rather see exciting matches than just wins and losses.
    115AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:51
    Re: #111
    The US-hosted tournament was actually the most entertaining one in recent years though.

    The final itself was a trash game,
    but isn't that basically the default for every other tournament too?

    Argentina and all that,
    plus Trump's political meddling —
    it's been a while since a tournament was this entertaining lol

    Background and Key Points

    For readers unfamiliar with Japanese soccer’s institutional backdrop: the Japan Football Association (JFA) has employed Hajime Moriyasu as men’s national team manager since 2018, a run that already covered the 2022 Qatar tournament. The “round of 32” reference is a product of the format expanded to 48 teams for the first time in this cycle — a new knockout tier inserted before the round of 16 that didn’t exist when Japan reached the last 16 in Qatar. Sergio Echigo, the commentator quoted here, is a Brazilian-born, Japan-based pundit with decades of history around the JFA, including a past role advising the federation’s strengthening committee, which is why several posters bring up his own mixed track record when he criticizes others.

    The thread’s actual fault line isn’t over Moriyasu’s competence so much as whether round-of-32 elimination against a team like Brazil constitutes “failure” at all — one camp treats it as the realistic ceiling for Japan’s talent pool, pointing to the earlier group-stage results as proof this was the expected outcome; the other insists the JFA explicitly set “winning the tournament” as its stated goal, so any measurement short of that demands real accountability rather than a quiet contract extension.

    What the thread never quite reconciles is the discrepancy in Japan’s cited Qatar 2022 record — posters cite different win/draw/loss lines for that tournament without settling which is accurate, so readers shouldn’t take those comparative stats at face value. Also unaddressed: the yen’s prolonged weakness, mentioned only in passing, is a real structural reason hiring another marquee foreign manager is financially unrealistic right now, which quietly explains why continuity was the path of least resistance.

    *This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[Soccer] Sergio Echigo: “The association doesn’t want to admit the World Cup round-of-32 exit was a failure. That’s why manager Hajime Moriyasu got a six-month extension.”“

  • Koshien Final: Chiben Wakayama Rallies in the 8th to Beat Kendai Takasaki, Claims 4th Title in 5 Years

    In the summer Koshien final, Chiben Wakayama defeated Kendai Takasaki 4-3, taking the lead for good in the bottom of the 8th to claim their 4th championship in 5 years. On 5ch, discussion went beyond the game itself to cover differences in how the two schools recruit players and comparisons of broadcast ratings.

    Kendai Takasaki　　0 0 0　 0 1 0　 0 2 0｜3

    Chiben Wakayama　0 2 0　 0 0 0　 0 2 X｜4

    [Battery]

    Source: baseball.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here

    6AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:06
    [High School Baseball] Summer 2026 Koshien Goes Beyond a 'Poor Crop' to a Full-On 'Bad Harvest'… Pro Scouts Point to the Cause of the Anomaly

    Even in the final, it was obvious both teams' defense had really dropped in level.
    It was a low-level game.
    These days the guys still playing 'yakyu' (mocking spelling of baseball) are just soccer's rejects.
    50AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:08
    Re: #6
    If even Koshien is 'over,' baseball's really in trouble now.
    84AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:10
    Re: #6
    You can really tell the athleticism has dropped.
    It's a clear sign that baseball club membership has plummeted.
    151AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:12
    Re: #6
    Baseball is just the dumping ground for soccer, basketball, and track-and-field rejects.
    28AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:07
    Why send in a bench player for his very first at-bat in that situation?
    91AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:10
    Re: #28
    'Went to Koshien' and 'actually played at Koshien' are completely different things on your résumé afterward.
    Still, I think they should've used him before it got to that moment…
    187AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:14
    Re: #28
    The guy who got subbed out is a pinch-runner specialist who hadn't batted all tournament.
    Everyone else on the bench is a pitcher — they wouldn't hit even if they got an at-bat — so they say he's the one with the most power at the plate.
    72AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:09
    Re: #50
    https://tval-now.switch-m.com/
    The ratings are amazing.
    Too bad (for the other side).
    122AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:11
    Re: #72
    Bragging about ratings that only old folks are watching doesn't mean much.
    74AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:09
    Re: #1

    Gunma Prefecture representative, Kendai Takasaki — players' junior high schools

    1 Ishigaki Satoshi · Okinawa, Ishigaki Dai-Ni JHS
    2 Ōiwa Shoto · Shizuoka, Ōsuga JHS
    3 Satō Maon · Gunma, Tomioka Minami JHS
    4 Iwai Yurai · Gunma, Tomioka Minami JHS
    5 Ishida Shodai · Chiba, Nanatsukadai JHS
    6 Kanzaki Shoto · Aichi, Suenohara JHS
    7 Hagiwara Yudai · Gunma, Haruna JHS
    8 Ishida Yūsei · Tochigi, Sano Jōtō JHS
    9 Kano Ren'i · Aichi, Ōbu JHS
    10 Kitada Riku · Chiba, Tōyama JHS
    117AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:11
    Re: #74

    Even after recruiting this many players from other prefectures, they still can't win lol

    Takasaki lol
    172AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:13
    Re: #74
    Still, there are 3 local guys.
    377AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:24
    Re: #74
    Chiben Wakayama is much the same.

    1 Wake Shota, 3rd yr, Osaka — Taishō Higashi JHS / Nakamozu Boys
    2 Yamada Rinko, 3rd yr, Aichi — Ōe JHS / Tōkai Chūō Boys
    3 Arai Yūsei, 3rd yr, Chiba — Toyoshiki JHS / Toride Senior
    4 Kusumoto Ryūsei, 3rd yr, Wakayama — Tōyō JHS / Nanbu Senior
    5 Kurokawa Ridairō, 3rd yr, Osaka — Yamada JHS / Senshū Hankai Boys
    6 Kawahara Kazumasa, 3rd yr, Wakayama — Iwade JHS / Wakayama Uchida Young Tigers
    7 Yamashita Kōhei, 3rd yr, Yamaguchi — Fukugawa JHS / Iizuka Boys
    8 Nagatomo Yūsei, 2nd yr, Okayama — Ishii JHS / Lions Okayama Pony
    9 Imoto Yōta, 2nd yr, Wakayama — Nisshin JHS / Kashihara Shiki Senior
    10 Matsumoto Kotarō, 3rd yr, Nara — Tawaramoto JHS / Kashihara Shiki Senior
    11 Kuba Ryōta, 3rd yr, Hyōgo — Nagasaka JHS / Kobe Chūō Senior
    106AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:10
    Well, that's gotta hurt.
    https://n.picvr.net/2608221150095021.gif
    137AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:12
    Re: #106
    So the pitch missed the bat completely and hit him directly?
    110AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:10
    Re: #1

    [Sad News] J.League Opening Match TV Ratings: 2%

    112AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:11
    Ratings are dirt low.
    That's Kirin Cup soccer-level.
    No, even lower than that.


    143AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:12
    Re: #112
    Already over 11% by the morning, huh.
    Meanwhile the J.League opener only got 2% in primetime.
    154AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:13
    Re: #112
    Lol, comparing a high schoolers' club tournament to a pro national team match.
    176AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:14
    Re: #112
    Wouldn't be surprising if it hits 15% on TVal from here lol
    163AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:13
    They've got so few team members, so why are they so strong?
    Their builds are totally different too.
    219AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:16
    Re: #163
    Well, by that logic, Y-Gakuin, the storied Kanagawa powerhouse, has around 100 members every year,
    but they struggle just to make the round of 16.
    251AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:17
    Re: #163
    Probably the practice is so brutal that people keep quitting.
    So the ones who stick around end up all ripped.
    284AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:19
    Re: #163
    Small and elite through tryouts.
    Not taking in more than they can properly coach is a reasonable philosophy, honestly — even if it's not my style.
    242AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:17
    Soccer World Cup Final
    Argentina vs Spain — rating 22.1%
    ↑
    4am kickoff
    A match with nothing to do with Japan

    And 'invincible' Koshien just got demolished lol
    274AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:18
    Re: #242
    Bragging about a split-broadcast number doesn't mean much.
    308AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:20
    Re: #242
    It's wild that you're this proud of a once-every-4-years pro world tournament with tens of billions of yen in prize money 'beating' a domestic Japanese high school tournament.
    268AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:18
    Re: #251
    Chiben Wakayama only takes in 13 players a year.
    Used to be just 10.
    286AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:19
    Re: #268
    Ah, I see — so it's a full-on elite training school.
    They're selecting talent from the very start.
    330AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:22
    Re: #268
    That's few.
    Guess they're confident they can develop every single one of them.
    405AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:27
    Re: #268
    This style is honestly better.
    Other schools should hold tryouts like this too.
    Schools like Osaka Toin recruit a ton of players, but the ones who don't make the bench spend all three years just cheering from the stands.

    It's brutal to think that those kids cheering in the stands were probably told by a scout back in ninth grade something like 'You could become a Koshien star!'

    And yet schools still poach players early just so rivals can't get them.
    Koshien is warped from top to bottom.
    372AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:24
    That's gotta hurt.
    https://n.picvr.net/2608221148574379.jpg

    Background and Key Points

    Koshien is Japan’s national high school baseball tournament, held twice a year at Hanshin Koshien Stadium; the summer edition is the more prestigious of the two and functions as a de facto national spectacle, drawing broadcast attention that rivals professional sports. Chiben Wakayama’s win gives them a fourth title in five years, making them a genuine dynasty in a sport where single-elimination, no-tiebreaker formats usually produce more variance. Teams nominally represent their prefecture, but rosters are commonly built through nationwide recruiting of middle-schoolers, a practice both finalists’ rosters illustrate.

    The thread’s real disagreement was less about the game than about what that recruiting system means. One camp read Chiben Wakayama’s small annual intake (as few as 10-13 players) as an admirable meritocratic model – scout carefully, coach intensively, don’t over-recruit – implicitly contrasting it with powerhouses like Osaka Toin that stockpile talent and leave most recruits benched for three years. Others pushed back that both finalists field heavily out-of-prefecture rosters, so the “hometown pride” framing of Koshien is itself questionable regardless of squad size.

    A separate strand argued past each other over ratings, pitting Koshien’s numbers against a J.League opener and even the soccer World Cup final, without settling on comparable measures – broadcast platform, time slot, and audience age skew all differ. Readers should know TVal is a real-time, cross-platform ratings service distinct from traditional Video Research household ratings, so headline percentages from different sources aren’t directly comparable, which undercuts most of the ratings one-upmanship in the thread.

    *This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Entertainment/Sports News+) thread “[High School Baseball] Final: Kendai Takasaki 3-4 Chiben Wakayama — Another Comeback in the Bottom of the 8th! Chiben Wakayama Wins Their 4th Title in 5 Years!”

  • Neighbor’s Demolition Turns Ugly: Police Called Over Missing Permits, 5ch Reports

    A thread on 5ch’s Newsoku VIP board reported a dispute over demolition work starting next door that escalated to calling the police. Officers showed up but only issued a warning, and posters quickly noted that neither the demolition company’s name nor a required permit notice was posted anywhere on site. The thread grew into a discussion of legal requirements, with users pointing out that removal of asbestos-containing materials requires advance notification, and others suggesting a report to the Labor Standards Office.

    1AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:54
    Police are here
    8AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:57
    You don't use a bulldozer for demolition
    11AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:58
    Re: #8
    They're using one
    Some kind of CAT (Caterpillar) machine
    19AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:00
    Wait, wasn't your house supposed to be surrounded by roads on three sides, with only one side bordering a vacant lot?
    I remember you writing something like that back in the sensor-light drama thread
    20AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:01
    Re: #19
    Sensor light?
    21AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:01
    So that's why the police came, right?
    What happened?
    22AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:01
    Re: #21
    They're getting a warning right now
    33AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:05
    Re: #27
    Unless the other guy's yakuza-affiliated or actually breaking a law, nothing's gonna happen, right?
    37AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:07
    Re: #33
    Huh?
    They ARE breaking the law
    Demolition of asbestos-containing material requires wetting it down first
    and advance notification is mandatory
    34AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:05
    Whenever someone asks this guy why he'd bother hiding his ID when there's no need to, he never answers
    38AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:08
    Re: #34
    Is it actually required to post one?
    40AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:09
    What's the name of the demolition company?
    41AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:10
    Going ID-less is itself an ID (in 5ch, you can hide your poster ID)
    They're all the same person
    44AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:11
    I've got my own demolition neighbor drama going on right now too
    53AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:17
    Re: #44
    Right?
    Are they doing something illegal?
    47AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:13
    Re: #43
    Nope
    Everyone hiding their ID here is you
    50AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:14
    Re: #47
    Not me lol
    49AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:13
    Straight to the bulldozer for demolition? lol
    Are they filming a movie or something lol
    55AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:19
    Re: #49
    Don't they sort it by material type?
    64AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:23
    Re: #55
    Not sure if it's day one of demolition, but you normally don't use a bulldozer for this lol
    Going straight to the bulldozer is either Showa-era yakuza business or a movie shoot lol
    67AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:25
    Re: #64
    It's yellow and black? and it says CAT on it
    71AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:27
    Re: #53
    They're smashing through the demolition without spraying any water at all
    The dust is insane, my laundry's covered in it
    And of course there was zero advance notice
    No demolition permit posted either, it's a company that clearly doesn't care about the neighbors and won't even give their name
    Calling the police was completely pointless
    72AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:28
    Re: #71
    What do you mean calling the police was pointless?
    74AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:29
    Re: #67
    Isn't that a mini excavator? It's got an arm (the hand-like attachment on heavy equipment)
    Anyway if you want to know the company name, there's a sign posted — just look at that, it's got the demolition permit info on it too
    77AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:30
    Re: #74
    That's exactly it!
    No sign, no demolition permit
    81AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:30
    Re: #72
    Apparently depending on the size of the demolition site they're supposed to post a permit notice, but not doing it isn't actually a crime, so nobody will do anything about it
    Since I don't even know the demolition company's name, I can't even file a complaint about the noise, dust, or vibration
    84AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:31
    Re: #81
    That's a city hall matter
    Civil, not criminal
    91AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:35
    Hang in there
    By the way, I once had a guy pretend to apologize and then try to headbutt me point-blank
    I barely dodged it, so be careful
    100AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:39
    Police first
    Then a report to the Labor Standards Office, maybe?
    101AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:39
    Re: #100
    You really know your stuff
    That's exactly right
    102AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:40
    Re: #99
    Are the police actually coming? How many people are on site right now anyway? If this goes badly the crew might get hauled in lol
    106AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:41
    Re: #102
    They're already here
    116AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:48
    For a single-house demolition, they often don't bother putting up a sign, right?
    118AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:48
    Re: #116
    It's two buildings
    And not posting one is a violation of the ordinance
    123AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:50
    Re: #116
    Normally it has to be posted somewhere visible to ordinary passersby too — maybe it's just hidden because the site's so cramped?
    Though in this case it sounds like there's just nothing there lol

    Background and Key Points

    Neighborhood demolition in Japan runs on a layered set of rules that this thread only partly gets right. Under the Construction Recycling Act, contractors demolishing buildings above a certain size must post a notice board at the site listing the company name, the registered demolition permit number, and the site supervisor — a requirement several posters correctly cited, and the site’s silence on both company name and permit is what triggered the “call the police” escalation. Separately, the Air Pollution Control Act and related asbestos ordinances require pre-work surveys and advance notification to authorities before disturbing asbestos-containing material, plus dust suppression (commonly wetting debris down) during removal — the “no water spraying” complaint posters raised. Police involvement here is a red herring: officers can only respond to an active crime (trespassing, assault, obstruction), not to a paperwork violation, which is why they issued a warning and left.

    Where the thread actually splits is on consequence: some posters treat the missing notice board as proof of an outright illegal operation worth fearing, while others (correctly) point out that failing to post the sign is a municipal/administrative violation, not a criminal one — meaning the appropriate next step is a complaint to city hall or the Labor Standards Office, not the police.

    What the thread never spells out for outside readers is jurisdictional: enforcement of these demolition and asbestos rules doesn’t sit with the police at all but with municipal building-safety divisions and labor bureaus, agencies most residents rarely interact with. That gap explains both the poster’s frustration (“calling the police was pointless”) and why identifying the contractor — normally trivial via the legally required signage — becomes the actual bottleneck once that signage is simply absent.

    *This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Newsoku VIP) thread “Demolition Next Door Is Causing Me Trouble WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.”

  • Domestic Rice Prices Keep Falling — 5ch Reacts: “Way Too Fast lol”

    Prices for domestically grown rice have been gradually falling, with some 5kg bags now going for just over ¥2,000. On 5ch, users express surprise at how fast prices have dropped, reigniting complaints about JA (the Japan Agricultural Cooperatives) and farmers from when prices spiked, along with debates over what counts as a “fair price.” Opinions are divided over the price gap with other countries and accusations of price-gouging resellers.

    1AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:08
    Way too fast lol
    6AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:12
    Why is it that the people saying "I won't forgive rice price hikes" go dead silent about the rising cost of seedlings, farm equipment, and pesticides?
    17AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:16
    Re: #6
    People are complaining because prices suddenly jumped 2-3x by exploiting panic-buying after a natural disaster. Are you dense?
    41AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:22
    Re: #6
    If all of those had tripled too, I could accept rice tripling as well, but even at their worst those only went up about 1.5x. So shouldn't rice have gone up by roughly that much too? Why did rice that used to be ¥1,500 jump past ¥5,000?
    71AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:29
    Re: #6
    I wouldn't complain about a roughly 3% annual increase. It's just that a +50% year-over-year jump is way too greedy — drop dead, basically.
    11AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:14
    Some people seem to have forgotten what rice used to cost, so let me post this reminder:






    10kg: ¥2,690
    5kg: ¥1,345
    That's the fair price. Anything above that is a rip-off.
    14AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:15
    Re: #11
    Then just never eat it again. Ever.
    25AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:18
    World rice prices per 5kg:
    🇯🇵 Japan: ¥4,000
    🇺🇸 USA: ¥1,600
    🇰🇷 South Korea: ¥1,500
    🇦🇺 Australia: ¥1,100
    🇪🇺 Europe: ¥900
    🇹🇭 Thailand: ¥900
    🇨🇳 China: ¥700
    🇻🇳 Vietnam: ¥500

    When sold in Japan, the price gets "corrected" to match this ↓

    27AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:18
    "¥1,359 for 5kg of rice is the fair price. JA is selling it to the public at three times that just to line its own pockets."
    https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/583afc1c4cba913c9bf8a520dc50dd7bff3bee34

    Prices really should have come back down to around ¥1,300-something per 5kg. Households are already struggling with inflation, yet JA and the Ministry of Agriculture committed the grave sin of forcing consumers to buy rice at all-time-high prices.
    JA, which wields huge influence over how rice prices are set, has reportedly been driving prices up by inflating stockpiles — isn't this a violation of antitrust law?




    49AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:24
    Re: #27
    Some people seem confused, but JA mostly sells only to wholesalers/businesses — it isn't really dealing with the general public to begin with. The only JA product aimed at regular consumers is Pearl Rice. It's the rice trading companies that actually sell to the public.
    64AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:26
    Re: #27
    The futures market's been busy manipulating prices one minute and playing fair the next.
    53AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:25
    Wheat, the Western staple, runs about ¥150-300 at local prices. Japan's staple wheat runs ¥400-900. Even accounting for wage levels, that's abnormally expensive.
    55AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:26
    Re: #53
    You meant "rice," not "wheat," for Japan's staple food.
    59AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:26
    Re: #53
    Japan's a high-cost country no matter what you do, so selling off its own labor is about all that's left.
    147AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:46
    Re: #53
    Probably the difference in subsidies.
    78AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:30
    Rice prices have basically been falling for 30 years straight — this is just a temporary bounce-back.

    Fertilizer, fuel, and labor costs all keep rising, so of course farmers can't keep up otherwise.
    102AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:36
    Re: #78
    If they'd said "fertilizer costs went up, fuel costs went up, please let us raise prices this much," the way Akagi Nyugyo (a confectionery maker famous for its price-hike apology ad) did, consumers would have understood and kept buying. But instead prices suddenly tripled and they ran newspaper ads insisting THIS is the fair price — that's what turned everyone against them overnight. People say the farmers aren't at fault, but if they're backing JA's tactics, they can't complain about getting lumped in with them.
    112AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:38
    Re: #102
    Turns out that Akagi Nyugyo was actually running a full-on cartel… What was all that online praise for Akagi Nyugyo even about?
    120AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:40
    Re: #102
    Farmers aren't backing JA by choice — they have no option but to do as JA says. That was national policy. Farmers only get paid the fixed provisional price JA sets.
    101AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:36
    Rice prices have dropped a lot, so why haven't bento boxes, onigiri, restaurant meals, or conveyor-belt sushi gotten any cheaper?
    110AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:37
    Re: #101
    Because it's an opportunistic price hike riding on rice's coattails.
    111AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:38
    Re: #101
    Kind of like how prices didn't come down even when gasoline dropped sharply.
    114AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:38
    Re: #101
    That's a well-known phenomenon in economics — once a price gets raised due to higher input costs, it almost never comes back down even after input costs fall.

    Normally you could spin that positively as "that's how wages eventually rise," but Japanese companies just hoard the extra profit, so who knows.
    109AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:36
    Is this whole "rice farmers aren't allowed to turn a profit" mentality coming from people looking down on rice farmers?
    113AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:38
    Re: #109
    It's you who's looking down on people — assuming consumers are dumb enough to keep buying even at triple the price. Buying and selling only works on trust between buyer and seller.
    115AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:38
    Re: #109
    The moment you're driving a ¥10 million combine harvester or tractor, you're already in a different league than us poor folks.
    117AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:39
    Re: #109
    All we're saying is: "farmers, go back to being slaves like before."

    We're not asking for tax money to be poured in or for income support for agriculture, not even a little.

    We're just saying farmers should go back to working like slaves who don't care about profitability. It's not a complicated request.
    119AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:40
    The price near me last week:
    127AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:42
    Re: #119
    Kyushu switches over fast, nice.
    137AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:44
    We've reached the point where new-crop rice is actually cheaper than old.
    144AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:45
    Re: #137
    Is this one any good? I've seen it before.
    148AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:46
    Re: #137
    Whoa, Fukui rice, impressive. Obviously buying the new crop.

    See, wholesalers have to cut their losses and sell or they're in trouble.
    156AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:50
    Must be nice going through life just blaming everything on Chinese people.
    161AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:52
    Re: #156
    People really do forget fast, huh.

    https://diamond.jp/articles/-/360463
    165AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:53
    Re: #161
    Seriously, these scummy resellers are the worst.

    Background and Key Points

    Rice is Japan’s most politically sensitive food, and its price has never been a simple free market. For decades the government ran *gentan*, a rice-acreage reduction policy paying farmers to grow less, while a roughly 778% tariff wall keeps foreign rice out except for a small WTO “minimum access” import quota. JA (Japan Agricultural Cooperatives) sits in the middle of this system, historically buying most of the harvest at a provisional price it sets, not the farmers. In 2024-25, a poor harvest, heat damage, and panic-buying after a Nankai Trough earthquake advisory triggered the so-called “Reiwa rice crisis,” pushing a 5kg bag from a historical norm near ¥1,300-2,000 up past ¥4,000-5,000. The government responded by releasing emergency stockpiles, and prices are now sliding back toward ¥2,000.

    The thread doesn’t split over whether prices rose — everyone agrees they did — it splits over whether that rise was justified. One camp treats the old ¥1,300-2,000 range as the only “fair” price and calls anything above it gouging by JA or resellers; another argues input costs (fertilizer, fuel, equipment) genuinely rose ~50% and farmers, who don’t set their own prices, shouldn’t be blamed for JA’s or distributors’ decisions.

    What the thread misses is the structural point: JA mostly deals wholesale, not retail (post 49 half-notices this), so the “villain” consumers pictured overcharging them at the register is usually a trading company or supermarket, not JA itself. Nor does anyone connect the price spike to decades of *gentan* deliberately shrinking supply — the policy that made today’s “return to normal” possible only because stockpiles existed to release.

    *This article is excerpted and summarized from a 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo/”Everything Live” board) thread titled “Domestic rice is finally dropping to around ¥2,000 for 5kg wwwwwwwwwwwwwww.”

  • From the Lion Statue at Nihombashi to Tiny Regional Branches: 5ch Explores Mitsukoshi Department Store

    On 5ch’s Nandemo Jikkyo G (“Live Anything”) board, users shared a stream of Mitsukoshi trivia — from the lion statue guarding the main entrance of the Nihombashi flagship store and the heavenly-maiden statue in its atrium, to its origins as the Edo-period kimono shop “Mitsui Echigoya.”

    Photos of small regional branches in places like Sendai, Takamatsu, Yamagata, Iwaki, and Isesaki (Gunma) poured in too, sparking talk about the size gap between the Tokyo flagship and its regional outposts, and how they stack up against long-established local department stores.

    1AnonymousAug 22, 2026 09:59
    There's a huge wooden statue in the atrium on the first floor of the Nihombashi main store's main building.
    4AnonymousAug 22, 2026 09:59


    The front of the Nihombashi main store


    The main entrance of the Nihombashi main store



    There's a lion statue at the main entrance!
    48AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:27
    Re: #4
    That lion's wild — it's been sitting there since the Taisho era, 100 years now, surviving both the Great Kanto Earthquake and the war.
    6AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:00


    The heavenly-maiden statue ("Magokoro"/True Heart) in the main building's atrium
    8AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:00

    There's a Japanese restaurant on the 4th floor of the main store's main building!


    By the way, I had cream anmitsu (a sweet dessert of agar jelly, fruit, and red bean paste) here!
    9AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:01

    The Nihombashi main store isn't just the main building — there's an annex too.
    10AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:01

    The main building of the flagship store is a nationally designated Important Cultural Property!
    11AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:01

    There's an information center.
    13AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:01
    There are small (satellite) branches in regional cities too!




    A small Mitsukoshi branch in Oyama, Tochigi Prefecture.
    About a 10-minute walk from the east exit of Oyama Station (the Tohoku Shinkansen stop, on the side with Hakuoh University).
    14AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:02
    An AI-generated illustration of Mabel-chan shopping at Mitsukoshi Department Store



    The rabbit girl "Mabel-chan"
    16AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:03
    Re: #14
    Hey, Tetsugaku News (a news-aggregator site)!
    Go make a roundup of this!
    18AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:03
    Re: #14
    By the way, Mabel-chan is from Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, so this is probably Sendai Mitsukoshi…?
    20AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:04



    · Underground exit of the Nihombashi main store

    If you're coming via Tokyo Metro's Mitsukoshimae Station or JR Shin-Nihombashi Station, this is the exit you'll use.
    21AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:05


    On JR, the nearest station to the Mitsukoshi main store is Shin-Nihombashi, on the Sobu Rapid Line (Yokosuka Line)

    But unlike Tokyo Metro's Mitsukoshimae Station, you actually end up walking a long way through underground passages…
    Honestly it's not that different from just walking from Tokyo Station (though at least you won't get rained on, unlike walking above ground)
    22AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:05
    [Bonus]
    I took the Tohoku Shinkansen from JR Utsunomiya Station to Tokyo Station, then transferred to the Sobu Rapid Line (Yokosuka Line)!



    The Sobu Rapid Line (Yokosuka Line) platform is underground.
    The escalator is really long too.




    Got some shots of the Narita Express (N'EX) on the underground Sobu Line platform!


    The station sign at Tokyo Station (underground Sobu Line platform)
    23AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:05
    Mitsukoshi reigns supreme within Tokyo, but in regional areas it's sometimes getting squeezed out by long-established local department stores.


    Sendai Mitsukoshi


    Fujisaki (a long-established department store in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture)
    24AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:06
    Re: #23
    Doesn't look like they're making money anywhere except Nihombashi and Ginza.
    25AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:07

    Its roots go back to the Edo-period kimono shop "Mitsui Echigoya"
    28AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:11
    Re: #25
    By the way, the founder was Takatoshi Mitsui!
    33AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:15

    There's even a small Mitsukoshi inside Smark Isesaki (a large shopping mall in Isesaki, Gunma Prefecture)!
    34AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:16
    Re: #33

    The MITSUKOSHI at Smark Isesaki
    36AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:17
    The only thing I know about them is that KanColle (Kantai Collection) tie-in promo they did a while back.
    43AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:22
    Re: #36
    Oh really!
    51AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:31
    Re: #36

    Maybe this one!?
    41AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:20

    There's a small Mitsukoshi in "LATOV," the station building at Iwaki Station (Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture), too.

    By the way, Iwaki Station is served by Joban Line limited expresses, the Rikuu East Line, and others.
    45AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:23
    Re: #41

    Mitsukoshi Iwaki
    49AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:29
    Re: #41
    They call it "small" but it's actually pretty big — though lately the tenants inside have thinned out and it feels kind of sad.

    The upper floors have public facilities, like a library.
    In the evenings it's swarming with high schoolers waiting for the bus or train home from school.
    52AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:31
    Takamatsu in Kagawa has its own Takamatsu Mitsukoshi too — the only one in the area

    though it's surrounded by such a big shopping arcade that the building itself doesn't really stand out lol
    56AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:34
    Re: #52

    Well, it is one of the biggest cities in Shikoku, after all…

    Unlike Matsuyama, it's also close to Okayama Prefecture and the Kansai region.
    72AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:45
    Re: #56
    But Matsuyama has both Takashimaya and Mitsukoshi too, right?

    That whole city's got a strong orange vibe going on
    Guess that tracks for Mikan Inu (the local mandarin-orange mascot dog).
    53AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:32
    Re: #49
    I see
    So it's more of a mixed-use building than a station building then…?

    By the way, Iwaki Station is the strongest station in the Hamadori region, but there's still a huge gap compared to Koriyama Station (Tohoku Shinkansen, etc.), the biggest in Fukushima Prefecture, right…?
    Sorry if that's a rude question.
    57AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:35
    Re: #53
    Regional areas often team up with local governments to build these commercial buildings.

    Kawaramachi FLAG in Takamatsu has a library and stuff on its upper floors too.
    76AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:48
    I had the image that they used to be all over the country.
    Yokohama's turned into a Yodobashi, Shinjuku into a Bic Camera, other kinds of stores taking over.
    Apparently the Mitsukoshi group (or someone) still owns the building for the latter, though.
    85AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:53
    Re: #76
    Yodobashi and Bic Camera are becoming the go-to fixture in front of regional city stations.
    Utsunomiya, Kashiwa, Koriyama, Iwaki, Sendai — they're everywhere.

    They've even moved into the space above Nihombashi Mitsukoshi, so I guess that's just how it's going to go.
    101AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:02
    Re: #85

    That Yodobashi Camera is in Tonarie (formerly LalaSquare) at the west exit of JR Utsunomiya Station!

    By the way, it used to be a Robinson's department store.
    110AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:08
    Re: #101
    Looking at the alley on the left of the photo from a sign-nerd's perspective —
    the "no entry" supplementary sign has a car icon, below that there's a "no parking" sign, and to top it off the stop line is cut off halfway
    — I feel like that's just packed with quintessential Tochigi elements.
    92AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:58
    Re: #72

    Iyotetsu Railway 🍊
    102AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:02
    Re: #92
    The Iyo Bus runs there too, so yeah, strong orange energy lol
    116AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:16

    There's a small Mitsukoshi in Yamagata City, Yamagata Prefecture too

    It's inside the Yamagata Kotsu (Yamagata Transportation) building
    Maybe a 5-minute walk from Yamagata Station (Yamagata Shinkansen, etc.)
    120AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:18
    Re: #116

    By the way, Yamagata City used to have a long-established department store called Onuma
    It's gone now though.

    Background and Key Points

    Mitsukoshi traces its lineage to Echigoya, the kimono shop Takatoshi Mitsui opened in Nihombashi in 1673, making it one of the oldest continuously operating retail brands in Japan and the model for the country’s first Western-style department store when it rebuilt in 1904. The Nihombashi main building, completed in 1914 and rebuilt after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, is a nationally designated Important Cultural Property, and its bronze lion (modeled on the ones outside London’s Trafalgar Square) and the giant wooden “Magokoro” tenmaiden statue are treated as pilgrimage stops for department-store enthusiasts. Since 2008 Mitsukoshi has operated under Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings, but many of its “small” satellite stores in cities like Sendai, Yamagata, and Iwaki are much older local operations absorbed into the group over decades.

    The thread’s real fault line was less about Mitsukoshi’s history than about scale: Nihombashi and Ginza function as flagship, tourist-facing icons, while the regional branches are described as shrinking annexes squeezed by long-established local rivals (Sendai’s Fujisaki was singled out) and, more pointedly, one poster flatly stated that only the Tokyo stores are actually profitable.

    What the thread never states outright is the broader industry pattern behind that comment: Japanese department stores nationwide have been closing or shrinking for two decades as suburban malls and, especially, electronics chains like Yodobashi Camera and Bic Camera take over prime station-front real estate — the thread even notes Yodobashi has moved into space above Nihombashi Mitsukoshi itself, while the building’s ownership often stays with the Mitsukoshi group even after the retail tenant changes.

    This article has been excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[The Ultimate Department Store] What I Know About Mitsukoshi Department Store [Nihombashi].”

  • New Rice Hits Shelves, Prices Drop — Some 5kg Bags Now Under ¥2,000

    With the new rice harvest reaching stores, wholesale prices have fallen and some shops are now selling 5kg bags for under ¥2,000 (tax included) — sparking discussion on 5ch. While many welcomed the drop, opinions were split: some praised the agriculture minister for resisting calls to boost production during the price spike, others vented about convenience store rice balls that never came back down after being marked up, and some took aim at farmers who they say cashed in during the high-price period.

    1AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:53
    @
    Rice prices crashing. Love it.
    @
    15AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:02
    After training myself to eat as little rice as possible, even this still feels expensive.
    17AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:05
    Re: #15
    A bowl of rice is back down to 20 yen and you're still calling it expensive? lol
    21AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:07
    Re: #15
    What have you even been eating this whole time lol
    24AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:08
    I want the 5-pack of 200g microwave rice to drop back under 500 yen.
    32AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:13
    Re: #24
    Exactly
    Sato's microwave rice packs got jacked up so much it's like, who's even buying that anymore.
    26AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:08
    Convenience store rice balls better drop in price too.
    Don't just fob us off with "sales" and "campaigns."
    143AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:03
    Re: #26
    Convenience stores bought their rice in bulk at the high price.
    They can't budge until that stock clears.
    If prices don't fall once they restock this year, that's on them.
    31AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:11
    Re: #1
    The photo in image 3 is old rice, isn't it.
    Look closely at image 2 too, it says harvested in Reiwa 7 (2025).
    68AnonymousAug 22, 2026 09:39
    Re: #31
    Why are you stating the obvious?

    The thread title literally says new rice is hitting the market — which means last year's rice is what's crashing in price.

    Do you have zero reading comprehension or what lol
    42AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:47
    Guess Agriculture Minister Suzuki was right after all.
    Really shows how short-sighted and reactionary the people demanding he ramp up production were.
    45AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:53
    Re: #42
    How would he know about the guys hoarding it in warehouses?
    The market was short, so ramping up production was the obvious call.
    46AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:54
    Re: #42
    He doesn't look like much, but he's got real nerve — genuinely competent.
    43AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:51
    I've been living on pasta, but maybe it's time to go back to rice.
    48AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:55
    Re: #45
    If they'd boosted production back then, we'd have a glut right now and farmers would be screaming about it instead.
    51AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:59
    Re: #48
    The ones who caused the glut are the guys who sat on the first batch of released reserve rice instead of selling it — that's on them.
    52AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:59
    I've literally never bought rice in my life.
    53AnonymousAug 22, 2026 09:00
    Re: #52
    Rice farmer?
    Or just broke?
    54AnonymousAug 22, 2026 09:00
    Re: #52
    Which ex-minister is this guy? (a jab referencing a real politician's infamous "I've never bought rice" gaffe)
    55AnonymousAug 22, 2026 09:04
    Re: #17
    I got by telling myself pasta's fine, or okonomiyaki (savory Japanese pancake) made from flour and leftover veggies is fine — and along the way my whole lifestyle shifted to where I just don't need much rice anymore.
    72AnonymousAug 22, 2026 09:45
    So this was just a bottleneck somewhere in the supply chain the whole time — and that's exactly why they even released the reserve rice stockpile, right?
    Someone should be held accountable for causing this.
    Are they just going to sweep it under the rug in the end?
    73AnonymousAug 22, 2026 09:46
    Re: #72
    Well, that's because Minister Suzuki is competent.
    82AnonymousAug 22, 2026 09:56
    Honestly, is rice even that tasty to begin with?
    92AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:13
    Re: #82
    No way, rice is easily the tastiest staple food out there.
    People just won't buy it when it's like 4,000 yen for 5kg.
    93AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:14
    Me: Hey conbini, you can lower the price of rice balls now, right?
    7-Eleven: ………
    Me: Uh, hello? Anybody home?
    Lawson: ………
    FamilyMart: ………
    95AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:15
    Re: #93
    Retail pricing on the shelf and wholesale pricing to vendors run on completely different systems.
    103AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:20
    So basically it gets marked up somewhere between leaving the farmer cheap and arriving at my door?
    104AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:21
    Re: #103
    Be grateful to wholesalers like JA (Japan Agricultural Cooperatives).

    Background and Key Points

    New rice hits Japan’s shelves each autumn once the harvest — labeled by the imperial era year, here “Reiwa 7” (2025) — comes in, and prices reset from whatever the previous crop year’s supply-and-demand left behind. The 2024–25 season saw a well-documented shortage: warehouse hoarding and speculative buying up the chain (not farmers holding back at the source) pushed 5kg bags toward ¥4,000, prompting the government to release emergency reserve rice. Agriculture minister Suzuki drew scrutiny for not ordering an output increase during that spike; with the new harvest now pushing bags back under ¥2,000, posters read that restraint as vindicated.

    The thread’s real fault line isn’t the price drop itself — nobody disputed that’s good news — it’s whether Suzuki’s decision was foresight or luck. One camp argues boosting production mid-crisis would have simply created today’s glut a year early, dumping the pain on farmers instead of consumers; the other counters he couldn’t have known hoarders were the bottleneck and that the “obvious” move at the time was still to increase supply. That’s an argument about a counterfactual policy call, not about anything happening in stores now.

    What the thread’s convenience-store complaints skip over is the structural reason konbini rice balls haven’t cheapened: retailers like 7-Eleven, Lawson, and FamilyMart lock in bulk wholesale contracts well ahead of sale, so they’re still working through rice bought at peak prices, and shelf pricing doesn’t move in lockstep with wholesale spot prices the way a supermarket bag might. Readers unfamiliar with JA (the Japan Agricultural Cooperatives), the dominant intermediary between farmers and retailers, may also assume farmers pocketed the shortage-era markup, when much of that margin sits with distributors and wholesalers instead.

    *This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “New rice hits the market, prices crash, 5kg now under 2,000 yen tax included wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.”