Jawaad Mahmood in Tokyo

Asahi took a day off from constant coverage of million dollar frauds; today’s interesting front page story is about corner / convenience stores (such as 7-11 and Lawson) overtaking department stores in terms of sales. It turns out that these stores, first introduced into Japan a mere 40 years ago, now have more than 73 billion dollars in sales an year. Much of this comes through increased sales of in-house brands and income from ATMs, as well as people avoiding the hassle of using tobacco vending machines (to use them now, you have to produce a special magnetic card that proves your age.)

There is an uplifting story about a company converting 1000 hakken (part time & contract workers) to “sei sha in” status (company employees). The fact that this is front page news says a lot about the current economic status, not to mention the vicious job market for the Japanese lost generation. The second page has some more depressing news, in a fascinating nearly-full page article about laid off factory workers in China. Conditions are so dire that many people don’t have enough money to go back to their home villages; in some cases, they have been robbed of all the money they’ve made in their sojurn in the big city. I might even try to translate the article, it was fascinating reading.

On the “Islamic News’ front, there is a front page article about Iraq (and Obama’s apparent plans to withdraw from the country) and an article about Gaza on the front page (and how Safa was basically reduced to a mountain of rubble). I always find it depressing that Muslims only make the front page if it is something utterly awful that happens (although that seems to be the truth for most front page news in Japan). There’s also an interesting article on Mohammad Saleheen on the second page (a member of the World Food Program).