lestratege

That's a scene from Tintin and the Picaros! Schwarzie is Captain Haddock!

I don't think you have been to Italy, Spain, France or Greece to say the "Western culture shuns platonic physical contact".

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If a lesson can be learnt from March 11th in Japan: find out today where you should evacuate and plan your route. You probably will have about 15 minutes. Coastal cities in Japan (even Tokyo) have signs at different locations showing how many meters above sea level you are. Surviving a tsunami is about surviving the short time when the wave hits.

Working 4 days a week would make you fall under the 75% cut off of a full timers, so company would not have to enroll you into the company social insurance (health and pension) and you'd have to pay by yourself into the national system. Quite a few companies actually do that because it allows them to not have to match the employees payment. However, it's restricted to only few industries.

You can also do work under a gyomu-itaku contract, which basically a contractor's contract, under which you are supposedly in charge of your own hours, but many companies abuse these kind of contracts and hire people under the pretense they are contractors even though they really aren't.