"تويتر" ينضم لمفاوضات حجب التواصل الاجتماعي

"تويتر" ينضم لمفاوضات حجب التواصل الاجتماعي

Sexy and smart: one sector that won't be left behind: Japan's massive sex industry has shifted from bricks-and-mortar deflation to Internet elation - Industry Overview

  LIKE IT OR LOATHE it, the sex industry in Japan is big business. And despite the rickety economy, it's getting bigger. A recent survey by Takashi Kadokura, an economist with Daiichi Life Research Institute Inc., found that the Japanese market for what is rather quaintly called the entertainment trade fuzoku sangyo, swelled to a tumescent [yen] 2.37 trillion in fiscal 2001, up from [yen] 1.7 trillion a decade earlier.

This figure does not include "virtual sex"--Japan's huge sales of adult magazines, rentals and sales of porn videos and DVDs and the burgeoning market for Internet porn. And let's not forget receipts from the country's 40,000-odd love hotels.

Put together, the buying and selling of sex and related services in the world's second largest economy is worth more than the GDP of many smaller countries.

As the sex business expands along with the service sector it becomes increasingly integrated into the mainstream economy, earning billions for blue-chip firms like NTT and increasingly becoming a source of direct and indirect tax revenue for the government.

Why does this industry seem immune to the problems that have kept Japan on the economic disaster pages of the world's newspapers for over a decade? The truth is: It isn't.

As a stroll around the licentious pink heart of Tokyo's sex industry, Kabukicho, or the "soaplands" district of Yoshiwara confirms, many operators of sex clubs and massage parlors have resorted to the same deflationary price-cutting approaches practiced by other businesses.

More noticeable than the stagnation and decline of some areas of the sex trade, however, are the vitality and innovation that characterize the industry as a whole. Despite its murky image and legal problems, thousands of new businesses have sprung up in the last five years, offering all the eye popping lechery that money can buy.

The older ranks of industry veterans have been swelled by thousands of younger entrepreneurs and casualties from the mainstream economy who are transforming the selling of sex using new technology. Many of them are voraciously ambitious.

Some commentators are now using the once grubby sex trade as a stick to poke in the eye of Japan's arthritic political class. As Dacapo weekly magazine declared in May of this year: "Structural reform has been progressing rapidly in this [sex] industry exactly because the reform-driver has not been Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's administration. If he wants to know what reform is about, this is where he should be looking."

Winners and Losers

So who are the winners and losers in Japan's sex services industry? At the top of the list of losers are brick-and-mortar businesses like brothels, soaplands and strip clubs, which have seen collective revenues slump by over a third since the mid 80s, says Kadokura.

Stuck with high overheads (particularly for utilities), prices in these outlets are mostly fixed and are driving away male clientele, who have less disposable income than in the past. The price of a single visit to a soapland outlet (staffed by naked prostitutes offering soapy massages) is about [yen] 60,000--a price that is out of reach for most salarymen.

Strip clubs too are seen as expensive and old hat, and many exotic dancers are under pressure to broaden their appeal, says Tomomi Sawaguchi, who recently formed Japan's first union for sex workers. "The number of customers has fallen, so managers will ask some women to perform extra services on the cheap. I've seen foreign women having sex for as little as [yen] 1,000."

Rushing to fill the gap are the thousands of "fashion (sex) massage" outlets that sprang up nationwide in the 90s. With faster turnaround and cheaper labor costs (many are run and staffed by heavily exploited foreign workers), they offer sessions for as little as [yen] 10,000--keeping their services within range of the average male worker.

Sex message joins an increasingly long list of exotically titled innovations including imekura (image clubs), sumata (crotch play--an everything-but sex service designed to get around regulations banning intercourse in outlets) and "delivery health," or deliheru, a pizza-like business that dispatches a prostitute directly to your door for about [yen] 20,000 to [yen] 30,000.

"The life span of popular services used to be 22 years in the high economic growth era, but now it's less than three years," says analyst Takuro Morinaga of UFJ Research. "Firms are working harder to come up with innovations designed to add value to their services."

Many of these services flirt with the limits of the law and exploit mobile phone technology to do it. Prostitution, for example, is prohibited under the Prostitution Prevention Law of 1956, helping to explain the huge growth of delivery health. Now a [yen] 461 billion annual business, says Kadokura, delivery health firms hook up working women with paying men by advertising on utility poles in most city neighbor hoods, using only a keitai number. What happens next takes place in the privacy of the client's home and is therefore out of reach of the law.

7 tips for effective listening: productive listening does not occur naturally. It requires hard work and practice - Back To Basics - effective listening is a crucial skill for internal auditors

  TO BE SUCCESSFUL AT THEIR job, internal auditors must be able to write, speak, and listen effectively. Of these three skills, effective listening may be the most crucial because auditors are required to do it so often. Unfortunately, listening also may be the most difficult skill to master.

Effective listening is challenging, in part, because people often are more focused on what they're saying than on what they're hearing in return. According to a recent study by the Harvard Business Review, people think the voice mail they send is more important than the voice mail they receive. Generally, senders think that their message is more helpful and urgent than do the people who receive it.

Additionally, listening is difficult because people don't work as hard at it as they should. Listening seems to occur so naturally that putting a lot of effort into it doesn't seem necessary. However, hard work and effort is exactly what effective listening requires.

Internal auditors must listen to explanations, rationales, and defenses of financial practices and procedures. They are constantly communicating with fellow employees whose backgrounds range from accounting to finance to marketing to information systems. In addition, explanations by fellow employees of any "unusual" practices often pose a significant challenge to an internal auditor's listening skills. Auditors can use the following techniques to improve these skills.

1. CONCENTRATE ON WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING. When listening to someone, do you often find yourself thinking about a job or task that is nearing deadline or an important family matter? In the middle of a conversation, do you sometimes realize that you haven't heard a word the other person has said? Most individuals speak at the rate of 175 to 200 words per minute. However, research suggests that we are very capable of listening and processing words at the rate of 600 to 1,000 words per minute. An internal auditor's job today is very fast and complex, and because the brain does not use all of its capacity when listening, an auditor's mind may drift to thinking of further questions or explanations rather than listening to the message at hand. This unused brainpower can be a barrier to effective listening, causing the auditor to miss or misinterpret what others are saying. It is important for internal auditors to actively concentrate on what others are saying so that effective communication can occur.

2. SEND THE NONVERBAL MESSAGE THAT YOU ARE LISTENING. When someone is talking to you, do you maintain eye contact with that person? Do you show the speaker you are listening by nodding your head? Does your body language transmit the message that you are listening? Are you leaning forward and not using your hands to play with things? Most communication experts agree that nonverbal messages can be three times as powerful as verbal messages. Effective communication becomes difficult anytime you send a nonverbal message that you're not really listening.

3. AVOID EARLY EVALUATIONS. When listening, do you often make immediate judgments about what the speaker is saying? Do you assume or guess what the speaker is going to say next? Do you sometimes discover later that you failed to interpret correctly what the speaker was telling you? Because a listener can listen at a faster rate than most speakers talk, there is a tendency to evaluate too quickly. That tendency is perhaps the greatest barrier to effective listening. It is especially important to avoid early evaluations when listening to a person with whom you disagree. When listeners begin to disagree with a sender's message, they tend to misinterpret the remaining information and distort its intended meaning so that it is consistent with their own beliefs.

4. AVOID GETTING DEFENSIVE. Do you ever take what another person says personally when what her or she is saying is not meant to be personal? Do you ever become angry at what another person says? Careful listening does not mean that you will always agree with the other party's point of view, but it does mean that you will try to listen to what the other person is saying without becoming overly defensive. Too much time spent explaining, elaborating, and defending your decision or position is a sure sign that you are not listening. This is because your role has changed from one of listening to a role of convincing others they are wrong. After listening to a position or suggestion with which you disagree, simply respond with something like, "I understand your point. We just disagree on this one." Effective listeners can listen calmly to another person even when that person is offering unjust criticism.

5. PRACTICE PARAPHRASING. Paraphrasing is the art of putting into your own words what you thought you heard and saying it back to the sender. For example, a subordinate might say: "You have been unfair to rate me so low on my performance appraisal. You have rated me lower than Jim. I can do the job better than him, and I've been here longer." A paraphrased response might be: "I can see that you are upset about your rating. You think it was unfair for me to rate you as I did." Paraphrasing is a great technique for improving your listening and problem-solving skills. First, you have to listen very carefully if you are going to accurately paraphrase what you heard. Second, the paraphrasing response will clarify for the sender that his or her message was correctly received and encourage the sender to expand on what he or she is trying to communicate.

Dangers of Asbestos Exposure and US Soldiers in Iraq

Many United State soldiers returning home from Iraq have complained of asbestos exposure from residing in poorly built housing units with insulation made from the material or working on military vehicles that use asbestos in their brake pads. Some US soldiers have been diagnosed with lung cancer, respiratory disorders and other conditions that result from toxic exposure linked to their service in Iraq.

Asbestos Exposure in Iraq

Reports show that asbestos imports to Iraq amounted almost $200,000 since 2003. There are currently no regulations concerning health and safety of personal on the job in Iraq for those working with asbestos exposure. The whole area has seen a raise in the import of asbestos, excluding Egypt and Saudi Arabia because they have regulations against asbestos. To show how much consumption that is now taking place, Iran alone orders more than 25,000 tons of asbestos each year.

Dangers of Asbestos Exposure

Asbestos is a known toxin that was used for many years in building materials, including insulation. Once inhaled or ingested, microscopic asbestos fibers can become lodged in vital tissues. Over time these fibers can accumulate and cause irritation, inflammation, and eventual damage. Pulmonary diseases such as asbestosis, lung cancer, and pleural mesothelioma are more common illnesses caused by asbestos exposure, but abdominal and heart diseases can result from exposure as well. Numerous studies have also linked asbestos exposure to a range of other diseases, such as gastrointestinal and colon cancer. Exposure to asbestos is the number one cause mesothelioma, a rare but aggressive form of lung and liver cancer.

Lawsuit by US Soldiers Due To Asbestos Exposure in Iraq

In the past year an increasing number of lawsuits have been filed with regards to soldiers and military personnel being exposed to asbestos dust and fibers in Iraq as a result of debris being burned near to the site. The lawsuits were filed in many states, like California, Illinois, Missouri and New York. The lawsuits were filed against the construction and engineering company Kellogg Brown & Root which is a former subsidiary of Halliburton. The company has dealt with a number of United States government and military contracts for some time now. It is said in the lawsuit that Kellogg Brown & Root had many burn pits in Iraq and that they burned many things that released toxic waste and debris into the air, putting soldiers at risk of asbestos exposure.