checking out 2-channel some more, the Koizumi thing seems pretty interesting. basically the Postal system is a huge pork barrel. one of the things that seems to piss a lot of people off are these things called tokutei yuubinkyoku, which i don't know if it's got an official translation, but i think it basically means a kind of designated postal agent. these are people that run scaled-down post offices with limited services out of their own homes, especially in rural areas. and their numbers are legion.
you apparently have to have good connections to get one of these gigs, but it's a sweet deal. the average pay is like 13.3 million yen (about $120K), compared to just 8 million for a salaryman grad of Tokyo University (Japanese Harvard), and 5 million for your average salaryman. it seems to really offend people's sensibilities that a guy who sells stamps on his front porch makes 60% more than a Tokyo U grad, LOL.
of course, there's the hundreds of thousands of postal workers as well. man, you don't want to piss them off or you might slip on some tofu -g-. not to mention all the graft and corruption involved in (mis)managing the oodles upon oodles of JPY locked up in the postal losings system. obviously vested interests there control a lot of LDP puppets, who are attempting a mutiny against their lionheaded captain "Konezumi" ("Little Rat") who is considered a Richard Gere lookalike (by Richard, i think, or maybe the Dalai Lama). but i digress...
so, it seems like the Japanese people, or at least the ones that are young and hip enough to post on 2-channel, see through the special-interest BS, are pretty supportive of Koizumi, and think he had balls to hopefully call the bluff of his corrupt partymembers. they want to end the corruption costing the country trillions, and dammit, they want the Tokyo U grads to be the highest paid pencil pushers in the country -g-. |
