
Japan's Ninja Shortage [audio] - ftsq
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/16/629586025/japan-s-ninja-shortage
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unmole
Direct link to the transcript:
[https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...](https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=629584186)

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thom
And the GDPR-friendly text link:
[https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=629584186](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=629584186)

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jackweirdy
Maybe all countries

have ninjas just like Japan

but who hide better

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andygcook
Took me a minute to realize this is a haiku.

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raziel414
This is fake news. [http://the-japan-
news.com/news/article/0004610201](http://the-japan-
news.com/news/article/0004610201)

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prophesi
I was hoping this would dive further into the history and lore of ninjas...
But I suppose I'll just need to visit Iga!

It would be awesome if the small town's population could be saved by ninjas;
Japan is so much more than just Tokyo.

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gexla
> Today on the show, Sally Herships goes to Iga to discuss the city's plan to
> use ninjas to fight depopulation.

Ninjas should be well suited for kidnapping children at night and raising them
to become ninjas. Maybe they just need a more cutthroat leader.

I would apply, but I'm pretty sure the idea of American Ninja was killed off
after the movie of the same name was released.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clA5lOsa6O4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clA5lOsa6O4)

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wolfspider
As a child of the 80's I just have to say- American Ninja 4: The Annhiliation
is positively the worst one. But the first American Ninja is a classic as far
as Ninja movies go. It's no Pray For Death that's for sure but it's still up
there.

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nsxwolf
I really liked part 2. All that non-stop fighting of hordes of ninja super
soldiers, and that final battle with the bad guy.

I took those movies so seriously as a kid.

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wolfspider
As did I to the point of reading Stephen Hayes books on the subject, the
history of Hattori Hanzo, and learning the martial arts techniques. I was a
horrible child in retrospect I could take a long rope tied to a weight and use
it to climb onto a branch 20 ft. in the air. Somehow I thought my parents
would think this was "cool" and send me to Japan for more training. As it
turned out I was grounded a lot :(

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abakus
In contrast, the supply of shaolin monks has always been steady

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themodelplumber
Interesting that you mention this. I was just reflecting: Years ago I had a
shaolin-trained martial arts instructor, and some years after that, several
shorin-ryu-trained instructors; shorin and shaolin are related in interesting
ways in terms of styles but very closely related in the sense that they are
martial arts "disciplines" with similar paths. When I watch e.g. documentaries
of the shaolin way, it cracks me up to see the same attitude again and again--
here are the serious students, and there are the fat teachers with amused
looks on their faces, who just don't seem to care in that way anymore. I
wonder if it's made worse by watching all the hardcore newbies line up at the
door every year.

One guy who impressed me, and everybody else, was an instructor from Japan who
lit into the fat American instructors, telling them they couldn't represent
his way of doing things and also live as such a poor physical specimen. Still,
I felt for them. There's some balance to be found, once the initial excitement
and seriousness is over, once it has become one's day to day, and must now
accommodate natural turns of flaxen emotionality in addition to the iron
discipline. So these instructors talked the iron-discipline talk, but hadn't
been trained, apparently, to navigate a long-term, realistic approach to life
as an expert martial artist. As a result they looked like these guys I always
see in the documentaries: Casting amused glances at the students, pot-bellied,
always looking out for a laugh or a chance to lighten up. Something about that
state of being contains an important martial arts truth.

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bazinga56
The pot-bellied easy nature is one of those Buddhist ideals, not concerned
with vanity, so you are natural and flowing. Sometimes called laughing buddha
or budai

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seanmcdirmid
Budai is the one everyone always mistakes for Buddha, who in contrast was
probably quite thin.

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themodelplumber
After listening through the full podcast, I wondered why someone would want
such a job. I remember people telling me about the park/museum when I lived in
Mie. Lots of physical activity seemed a job requirement. If true, is this
expected _on top of_ the typically high Japanese list of employer
expectations? If so I'm not surprised that even at $85K inaka-bucks nobody is
interested.

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nicolas_t
But $85k is an extremely high salary in Japan... A software engineer in
osaka/kyoto starts at $35k a year.

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dalore
Employment in Japan is extremely low at 2%. It's really hard to find workers.
Also being a Ninja would mean to live and work remotely.

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theandrewbailey
2% employment sounds like there would be an oversupply of workers, therefore
the depressed salaries.

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adamnemecek
Good ninjas are invisible. Maybe the streets are filled with them.

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sorokod
I'd expect to see some of the average ones

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newsbinator
By definition, there's no Ninja of average stealth. You're either
exceptionally stealthy and a Ninja, or not stealthy enough and never made it
to Ninja.

The big question: where are all the people who tried out for Ninja and failed?

Maybe you either pass the Ninja trials and become invisible or you become
invisible because they never find your body.

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garmaine
It's not so mysterious:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bujinkan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bujinkan)

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madeuptempacct
Hatsumi's books are trash.

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garmaine
They’re not meant to be read outside the context of training in the bujinkan.

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duxup
>The unemployment rate in Japan right now is 2.5 percent.

Any idea how that compares to the US rate that while low also has a lot of
underemployment?

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tekno45
What do you mean how does it compare? Ours is around 4 percent and dropping.

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jonhendry18
Participation rate in the US is still depressed.

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gaius
Ironic considering the language Ruby originated there

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pestaa
It's probably a joke in reference to "coder ninjas".

