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<\/a>WITLife<\/strong><\/a> is a periodic series written by professional Interpreter\/Translator\/Writer Stacy Smith<\/strong><\/a> (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03).\u00a0 In her recent posts, she\u2019s been watching the news in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.<\/em><\/p>\nAkemashite omedetou gozaimasu!\u00a0 Welcome to the year of the cow.\u00a0 I hope it is a happy and healthy one for all!\u00a0 I received some electronic New Year’s greetings from friends in Japan, and the noise a cow makes in Japanese (\u300c\u30e2\u30fc\u300d) was often used as a dajare <\/em>(pun) in the phrase: “Kotoshi mo<\/em> yoroshiku onegaishimasu.”\u00a0 Gotta love Japanese humor!<\/p>\n Social woes are already plaguing Japan in early 2009.\u00a0 During the end of the year a provisional “Toshikoshi Haken Mura<\/em>” was set up in Hibiya Park for temporary employees who have become jobless\/homeless due to premature cutting off of their contracts.\u00a0 This was a village where they could live over the holidays, and on the eve traditional toshikoshi soba <\/em>(extra-long soba connecting the new year to the old) with mochi <\/em>in it was served.\u00a0 One 40-year old recipient said that it was the first proper meal he had had in two weeks.\u00a0 When asked about his prospects for the new year, he said he had no idea.<\/p>\n WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Interpreter\/Translator\/Writer Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03).\u00a0 In her recent posts, she\u2019s been watching the news in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations. Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu!\u00a0 Welcome to the year of the cow.\u00a0 I hope it is a happy and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[30,18,36,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan-trends","category-translatinginterpreting","category-wit-life","category-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-EK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2526"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2528,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526\/revisions\/2528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/multimedia\/archive\/00015\/homeless060280_15254t.jpg\")
This setup complete with tents and other facilities ended today, up until which point 499 people had taken advantage of it.\u00a0 At 5 o’clock on the 5th<\/sup>, four buses came to take people to rental units that the city would be providing for a one-week period.\u00a0 They are allowed to stay in these apartments until next Monday, but after that point no plans have been made.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"