Wall Street Journal
Michael Cash
interviewed me by telephone. Since I am far too destitute and plebian
to actually get the thing myself, perhaps some of you
movers-and-shakers who read the WSJ might keep an eye out for my name.
Bryan Parker
Did they say if they were interviewing everyone
involved in trying to help CREATIVE bounce back
from last year's fourth quarter net loss of $48.4
million?
Michael Cash
<puntspe...@yahoo.com> belched the alphabet and kept on going
with:
What's a quarter net loss? Is that like a full court press?
My handy-dandy 30gb Creative Nomax NX mp3 player ROCKS DA FUKKIN
HOUSE, BEYOTCH!!!!! More importantly, it rocks da fukkin truck. If you
wonder why it took so long for me to reply to your mail to my keitai
today, it is because I couldn't hear the phone ringing. Hell, I
couldn't even hear the engine running. I couldn't hear myself think.
Fortunately, my job doesn't require any thought.
Of course, that is also largely due to the nice new (and very
affordably priced) computer speakers I'm running it through.
Consumer Guide review at http://tinyurl.com/l7t2
That woofer makes a hell of a difference. Why, if Charles Manson had
listened to the Beatles on a setup like mine, we could have avoided
that whole Helter-Skelter misunderstanding.
And the Nomad, now loaded with about 7,000 mp3s (and with room for
more) makes sure I don't have to hear the same song twice in the same
day. Or even in the same month, if I don't want to. And when my
workday is done, I just pull the speaker connector out of the
headphone jack, put the Nomad back in it's neato Made In Chin genuine
faux leather case (with attached belt clip) and take those 7,000 mp3s
with me. I can bring it back home, plug in some earphones and crank it
up. Why, I could even get an adapter and play it in my car stereo on
the way home.
The Nomad only cost about 12,000 yen less than my car, by the way.
wasabi
I did an advanced search on WSJ interactive but your name didn't come
up. What was the subject of your interview?
Michael Cash
alphabet and kept on going with:
>Michael Cash <mike...@sunfield.ne.jp> wrote in message news:<5sbmkv82u7eub84n0...@4ax.com>...
My blueprint for getting the Japanese economy back on its feet.
Actually, a reporter in the Tokyo bureau is/was doing a story on how
expensive Japanese tollways are. Where he got the idea to talk to me,
I have no idea.
wasabi
I'll keep looking for it and post it here when it shows up. I suspect
the article will have something to do with Koizumi's battle to
privatize the highway administration and stop the flow of red ink from
the Treasury.
>Where he got the idea to talk to me, I have no idea.
A good reporter knows where to look for answers.
Michael Cash
Like I said, I have no idea where he got the idea to talk to me.
wasabi
> >> >> I must be moving up in the world. The Wall Street Journal just
> >> >> interviewed me by telephone. Since I am far too destitute and plebian
> >> >> to actually get the thing myself, perhaps some of you
> >> >> movers-and-shakers who read the WSJ might keep an eye out for my name.
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >I did an advanced search on WSJ interactive but your name didn't come
> >> >up. What was the subject of your interview?
> >>
> >> My blueprint for getting the Japanese economy back on its feet.
> >>
> >> Actually, a reporter in the Tokyo bureau is/was doing a story on how
> >> expensive Japanese tollways are.
> >
> >I'll keep looking for it and post it here when it shows up. I suspect
> >the article will have something to do with Koizumi's battle to
> >privatize the highway administration and stop the flow of red ink from
> >the Treasury.
> >
The article finally appeared but I'm afraid you'll be disappointed.
The name Cash seems a little too mundane for this page one Wall Street
Journal article.
Lonesome Highways:
Japan's Hefty Tolls
Drive Cars Away
September 15, 2003
Commuters Take Slow Road
As Truckers Head for Exits
By JASON SINGER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
TOKYO -- Avid surfer Yoshiko Hayakawa will do anything to avoid
driving on Japanese highways. Weekends, to get to a beach where the
surf's up, she snakes along narrow Tokyo city streets for hours, when
she could make the round trips much faster by highway.
She just doesn't want to pay $32 in tolls.
So on Friday nights, Ms. Hayakawa, a 26-year-old graphic designer,
plans her route using her car's global positioning system and checks
it against a map listing tolls. Getting up before dawn, she says, she
thinks twice about all those meandering streets and traffic lights,
when there's a straight shot down the broad expressway. "I always ask
myself, 'Do I have the energy?' " she says. She always does.
For many Japanese drivers, it's their way -- not the highway. They'll
do almost anything not to have to pay the big tolls demanded on the
national road system. A two-hour trip on almost any stretch of a
Japanese expressway can cost $47; crossing a bridge can run $50.
Driving the length of Japan, a country smaller than California, rings
up $330 in tolls.
All 4,350 miles of expressway in Japan's national system are toll
roads. The fees were originally imposed to pay for building the
highways but now are used to pay down the nation's massive debt from
wasteful public-works projects -- $358 billion. Japan began building
its national highways in 1956, with money borrowed from the World
Bank, and it imposed tolls to pay off the loans. The loans were
retired, but the tolls never were. Though expressways in and around
Tokyo see a lot of traffic, the rest of the system is sparsely
traveled.
Toll roads are a hot topic in Japan because they are a symbol of the
country's economic problems. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi would
like to privatize the expressways. The main opposition party wants to
abolish tolls.
Shozo Shimoike, 63, who works several days a week in a tollbooth on a
regional highway north of Tokyo, agrees the highway fees are
exorbitant. Though his booth collects one of the lowest tolls in the
country -- $3.50 -- he says he has sometimes dipped into his own
pocket to help travelers come up with the money.
Noboru Maruyama, an executive at an auto-parts maker in northern
Japan, figures highway tolls to travel from his home in central Japan
to Tokyo -- about 217 miles away -- would cost him more than $85, not
to mention $3.20 a gallon for gas. So he takes what would seem like a
luxury option: He buys a one-way plane ticket for $120. "You can see
there's something wrong," he says.
Some companies, forced to choose between time and money when it comes
to delivery routes, take the slow road. Seino Transportation Co., one
of Japan's oldest and biggest trucking outfits, discourages drivers
from using the highways for all but long trips unless they are really
pressed for time. Drivers using the expressways are asked to take the
exit before the one closest to their destination, in order to shave a
bit off the cost.
Faced with the absurdity of it all, Yasuyo Yamazaki, a 44-year-old
former Goldman Sachs executive, has recently begun a crusade to
abolish tolls on Japanese highways. He believes such a move could help
stimulate the economy by lowering transportation costs, encouraging
commerce between regions and spurring new development along the
highways.
"The highways are like the country's blood system, and right now there
isn't enough flow," he says. Mr. Yamazaki suggests refinancing the
highway debt with low-interest government bonds, and adding a new,
annual $80 tax on each of Japan's more than 70 million vehicles.
One evening recently, Mr. Yamazaki took a taxi onto the fancy Tokyo
Bay Aqua-Line, with four lanes of macadam highway, wide shoulders and
banked curves. Not another car was in sight. That's because the
10-minute drive costs $25 each way from near Tokyo's Haneda Airport to
Chiba prefecture, across Tokyo Bay. That's actually an improvement
over the $42 toll imposed when the highway opened in 1997.
On the other side of the bridge, Mr. Yamazaki believes, there should
be high-rise apartment buildings, hotels and shops. But there's just a
ramshackle fishing village surrounded by rice fields. Mr. Yamazaki
says that's because the Aqua-Line's toll is so high.
Mr. Yamazaki faces tough opposition from the government, which insists
that maintaining the tolls is essential to trimming the highway debt,
incurred in part because of pork-barrel projects such as the $12
billion Aqua-Line.
"Of course, everybody wishes the highways could become toll-free,"
says Naoki Inose, a prominent author appointed by Prime Minister
Koizumi to a task force charged with trying to privatize the
expressways. "But it's not a realistic idea," he says, because the
debt has grown too large to be repaid any other way. Tolls generate
about $15 billion annually.
Some people aren't waiting for any laws to be passed. Hidenori Wago, a
62-year-old factory owner, uses the highways but refuses to pay. He
first started boycotting a toll increase in 1986, then two years ago
stopped paying altogether and formed a club with like-minded
motorists. His Freeway Club, which opposes steep tolls because they
hurt businesses struggling from Japan's four years of falling prices,
now has about 2,000 members. They keep their cash and instead hand
toll collectors a declaration about why they won't pay.
Authorities have been cracking down on these scofflaws recently, and
have seized money from the bank accounts of at least 13 Freeway Club
members, Mr. Wago says. But he vows to continue his boycott.
Other drivers abide by the law but try to economize. Takuma Ogura, a
36-year-old worker with an electrical-equipment company, refuses to
take the highway even for long camping trips, and takes pleasure in
calculating his thriftiness. In the past four years, he says he has
saved $5,143 in tolls. Jin Hiyashida, a 29-year-old technician at
Lehman Brothers Inc. in Tokyo, makes sure he packs five to a car when
he plays golf on the weekends. The discomfort is worth it, he says,
because he has to pay just a fifth of the toll.
--Ichiko Fuyuno contributed to this article.
Write to Jason Singer at jason....@wsj.com
Michael Cash
alphabet and kept on going with:
>> >> >Michael Cash <mike...@sunfield.ne.jp> wrote in message news:<5sbmkv82u7eub84n0...@4ax.com>...
>> >> >> I must be moving up in the world. The Wall Street Journal just
>> >> >> interviewed me by telephone. Since I am far too destitute and plebian
>> >> >> to actually get the thing myself, perhaps some of you
>> >> >> movers-and-shakers who read the WSJ might keep an eye out for my name.
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> >I did an advanced search on WSJ interactive but your name didn't come
>> >> >up. What was the subject of your interview?
>> >>
>> >> My blueprint for getting the Japanese economy back on its feet.
>> >>
>> >> Actually, a reporter in the Tokyo bureau is/was doing a story on how
>> >> expensive Japanese tollways are.
>> >
>> >I'll keep looking for it and post it here when it shows up. I suspect
>> >the article will have something to do with Koizumi's battle to
>> >privatize the highway administration and stop the flow of red ink from
>> >the Treasury.
>> >
>
>The article finally appeared but I'm afraid you'll be disappointed.
>The name Cash seems a little too mundane for this page one Wall Street
>Journal article.
Ain't that some shit!
Here's the original angle he was working the story from, and my e-mail
response to him just minutes prior to the phone interview:
=========================================================================
On Tue, 26 Aug 2003 04:17:50 -0400, you wrote:
>Hello Mike,
>
>I'm a reporter with The Wall Street Journal here in Tokyo and I'm working on
>a story about Japan's highways. The story is about how expensive they are
>and I'm looking for people who have any stories about accidentally taking
>the highway and getting stuck with a big bill, or folks who go way out of
>their way to avoid taking the highways. Do you have any stories like this?
I would imagine such things to be quite rare, actually. The two most
common types of toll collection are:
1. Pay as you get on
2. Take a ticket as you get on, and pay when you get off
The first type applies to things like the Tokyo Expressway. For cars
it is only 700 yen, for trucks 1400. I suppose it is possible to get
caught in the flow of traffic and have no alternative but to go on
through the toll booth, but it would take a real nincompoop to get in
a situation like that. Even then, they'd only be out 700 yen.
With the second type, even if you screw up you can get off at the next
exit and only be out several hundred yen. Anybody who is dumb enough
to keep on going without first having some idea of what the toll is
going to be deserves whatever they get, in my opinion. Harsh, huh?
There is a third, non-expressway type of toll road. These are pretty
rare these days. For some strange reason they typically have a single
toll booth somewhere in the middle. People usually use half of the
road then exit off and go around the toll booth. Tolls on those only
run a few hundred yen, even for trucks.
I would suggest looking at it from the angle of the effect the high
tolls have on surface road traffic in these poor economic times.
Trucking companies that during the bubble days used the expressways
have severely cut back on their use in order to cut expenses. As a
result surface congestion due to trucks worsened. And, quite
naturally, the working hours/conditions of the drivers has suffered
accordingly.
The only times I get stuck with a huge tollway bill are when I
oversleep in the morning and end up using tollways for a portion of
the trip at my own expense in order to make up the lost time. Since I
drive the largest class of truck, I get stuck in the highest rate
class.
Have you taken a look at the new ETC (Electronic Toll Collection)
system the tollway folks are pushing so heavily now? I smell a rat
somewhere in this. The consumer has to purchase and pay for the
installation of a device to be placed in his vehicle. They receive
some small discount on the tolls, but I'm not sure how much it is. I
believe the main thing they tout is that there are special ETC lanes
at the tollbooths and motorists who buy into the system will be able
to zoom right through while all the other poor saps are sitting in
line. What they neglect to mention is that the problem with this is
that the only time you really have to wait to pay a toll is such times
as the roadway for a kilometer (or several kilometers) leading up to
the tollbooths are jam-packed. In such cases, ETC people have to sit
in the slow-moving herd with the great unwashed until they are almost
right on top of the toll booths anyway. And, once clear of the booths,
often have to sit in the same herd again as it funnels itself down
from multiple lanes of toll booths to just a couple of traffic lanes
again. Also, many places have all of their ETC lanes in conjunction
with a regular lane, so there is even less chance of a time savings.
Many years ago I was on the expressway around Shiga Prefecture when
the road was closed off ahead due to a traffic accident. People had to
exit, detour around via surface roads, then reenter the expressway at
a point beyond the closure. Right next to me in the monstrous traffic
jam was a convoy of US Marines attempting to return to Iwakuni. They
were at a total loss as to what was going on, having no Japanese
speakers with them. I called out and told them what was going on. A
couple of them came over and asked me what they should do. They had
with them only a (poorly) xeroxed map which covered everything from
Tokyo to Iwakuni. The prospect of having to leave the expressway was
something they were unprepared for. I gave them directions for
detouring around the jam. As an ex-Navy fellow myself, I couldn't help
but make to them the observation that, as always, once the Marines
arrived the situation would be well in hand, but the Navy had to get
them there first.
>Can I give you a call?
Certainly, if you think I can be of any help.
===========================================================================
At least he didn't misspell my name.....
Declan Murphy
> Have you taken a look at the new ETC (Electronic Toll Collection)
> system the tollway folks are pushing so heavily now? I smell a rat
> somewhere in this. The consumer has to purchase and pay for the
> installation of a device to be placed in his vehicle. They receive
> some small discount on the tolls, but I'm not sure how much it is.
Its 15%.
Which pisses me off a bit since with a 50000 yen pre-paid card I got an
additional 8000 yen worth of tolls - ie 16%. Naturally there was no
incentive to switch to ETC (especially after adding the installation
cost and not much in the way of time saved due to the queues at toll
gates). Earlier this year though, the 50000 and 30000 yen cards were
suddenly "phased out" - the 10000 yen cards (with only 500 yen bonus)
remain, though for how much longer.
Having driven about 16000 kilometers since May, a lot of it on highways,
I'll be getting the ETC thingee soon.
--
"Having tried intelligence to win the war on terrorism and achieved
mixed results - bad and worse - the defense department has decided to go
the other way and give stupidity a chance." - Alan Abelson
Jason Cormier
a24d2dae.03091...@posting.google.com, "wasabi"
<shi...@excite.com> wrote:
> All 4,350 miles of expressway in Japan's national system are toll
> roads.
I can think of at least one section that is free. The old Meihan highway
(now called route 25, IIRC) from the Kameyama junction in Mie to the edge of
Osaka is free.