futon

From Saizeriya and Gusto to high class french cuisine restaurants, forks are already commonplace.

They smashed it. They might be able to do the referendum for constitution change with this. Trump's endorsement aligns well with this, a good lead up to March and April visits.

Sure thing. Looks like the Da Yang Yi Hao is a scientific research ressel. https://www.newsweek.com/chinese-ship-surveys-waters-near-us-aircraft-carriers-approach-11422446 https://baike.baidu.com/item/大洋一号/3300143 It'll get a manned deep sea diving submersible upgrade and unmanned remote control submersibles upgrade later this year. https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202502/02/content_WS679f1d3cc6d0868f4e8ef519.html

The standardized PLAN escort missions that rotate at Djibouti typically include 3 ships, a replenisher and two surface combat ships. The current rotation is the 48th one. The three ship names as follows: The 48th Chinese naval escort taskforce is composed of the guided-missile destroyer Tangshan, the guided-missile frigate Daqing and the comprehensive supply ship Taihu, with two helicopters and dozens of special operations soldiers on board. http://eng.mod.gov.cn/2025xb/N/E/16415558.html So if the shadowing PLAN ship has a different name than these, then it counts as addition to ship number presence in the region.

Ah, I see it.

Looks like a reference to Lee Teng-hui.

Heh, thank you for that and the question. On military relations, it should be noted that there is one other bit that's problematic, and its hit the JASDF the hardest. The US's Foreign Military Sales. It's too slow. On a few occasions, both Hegseth and even Trump has acknowledged it. For JASDF, its the F-35s, KC-46s, and E-2Ds. We sort of need what's been ordered now. Time of order to delivery is reaching 5 years. Maybe the F-35s are finally getting into high production rate though.

Yeah, they hit it off pretty good when he visited Japan in October. Trump was even shouting to everyone in the hanger of the US warship rally to go and buy a Toyota. So with trade negotiations have been finished for the time being it looked like the old Trump-Abe relation might have actually been reestablished. Two weeks after that, he made that Kamikaze pilot comment. Japanese business leaders won't care to rock the boat over that, much of the population at large wouldn't care much either in all honesty, but I think it surely watered down the just risen enthusiasm inside the heart of Japanese veteran right wingers. I think Trump wants to make a deal with China in April, so he's been buttering up his relation with Xi for that. So he probably didn't want a Taiwan-anything matter to mess it up the lead up to it. Takaichi made her statement about Japan using the military to defend Taiwan on November 7th. I also suspect that maybe he wouldn't want the US military to draw its attention to Taiwan with the Venezuela operation secretly in the works. He started hitting back at China, but it was after China was critical of Trump in Venezuela and Greenland. But other background stuff could be Japan's general foreign policy to network with as many allies as possible. So with relations between the US and many of those other countries getting really bad, now Japan's relations with the UK, the EU, Canada surely must be uncomfortable. Japan can't severe these relations and put all its eggs in the US. But I think that's what Trump wants. And surely lots of Japanese would start to feel bad about doing 550 billion USD investments to help rebuild the US and the US goes to use that new foundation to make territory annexations on Canada and Greenland.. Below Trump, US-Japan defense relations still look healthy. Koizumi clearly tried to hit a resonating tone by doing morning exercises with Hegseth in early January. We'll see how things look after Xi and Trumps meeting. Takaichi will visit the US and meet Trump before that.

Japan's "far-right" such as Abe and Takaichi were not liked much by the US Left. Obama was critical of Abe visiting Yasukuni. Kishida did pretty good with Biden but maybe Japan was still too slow in getting Japan up to shape as Biden was showing that US reliability was shaky with the woke D path or the over reactive R path.

Takaichi was not backed by Trump himself since November. This will disrupt Japan's desire to defend Taiwan with hesitation about the consequences to that course of action. Maybe it was Japan's fault for not getting Trump to back Takaichi.

A war with China would go quicker if energy sources from Russia were cut off. The US may want to make Russia pay a price for supplying China with oil if US soldiers are getting killed by Chinese missiles. No bigger spot than something related to the Ukraine to hit back at Russia.

China is big and strong enough to the point where certainty is not possible. Because its at the point where the devil is in the unseeable details. Making many assumptions is careless. China should be taken seriously over the course of the long term until some combination of their policies, behavior, material growth trajection, and global influence growth trajection change.

Ukraine's rail production industry was in the Mariupol area. So it of course was destroyed and had been captured by Russia. In 2024, Japan had delivered 25,000 tons of rail to the Ukraine. The 3,000 tons now goes on top of that. https://www.tokyo-np.co.jp/article/463976 https://interfax.com.ua/news/general/1138803-amp.html

There's been some cleaning up last year as well. Last year guys are in Markus's picture. China said on Saturday the senior vice chairman of its powerful Central Military Commission (CMC) and another high-ranking official were under investigation for suspected “serious violations of discipline”, a common euphemism for corruption. The announcement marks the latest push in a sweeping drive to root out graft at all levels of the party and state since President Xi Jinping came to power more than a decade ago. “Following a review… it has been decided to initiate an investigation into Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli,” the defence ministry said in a statement. The two men were “suspected of serious violations of discipline and the law”, the ministry said. Zhang Youxia, 75, is China’s highest-ranked general as the more senior CMC vice chairman. He is also a member of the powerful Politburo, the 24-member executive body of the Chinese Communist Party. He shares the vice chairman title with Zhang Shengmin, a general in Beijing’s secretive rocket force and who is no relation. Zhang Shengmin was promoted to the post in October after Beijing expelled his predecessor in another sweeping corruption purge. Both generals rank below Xi, who has held the CMC chairmanship since 2012. Liu, 61, is the chief of staff of the CMC’s joint staff department, which oversees combat planning. Rumours of a probe swirled this week after Zhang Youxia and Liu appeared to miss an official meeting chaired by Xi and attended by second-ranked CMC vice chairman Zhang Shengmin. Xi has called graft “the biggest threat” to the Communist Party and said “the fight against corruption remains grave and complex”. Proponents say the policy promotes clean governance, but others say it also serves as a tool for Xi to purge political rivals. In October, China announced it had launched corruption investigations into nine military officials. As part of those probes, the defence ministry said it had expelled two top generals from the military. They were He Weidong, the former second-ranked CMC vice chairman, and Miao Hua, the former head of the military’s political work department. In 2024, former Chinese defence minister Li Shangfu was expelled from the Communist Party after being ousted over offences including suspected bribery. Li’s predecessor, Wei Fenghe, was also expelled from the party and passed on to prosecutors over alleged corruption. https://hongkongfp.com/2026/01/25/china-says-top-military-official-under-investigation-for-suspected-serious-violations-of-discipline/