Hey everyone,
Here are some interesting statistics. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/gov_c ... corruption It seems that Japan ranked 21st for the most corrupt governments in the world. I was really surprised to see a few others near the top. Check out New Zealand!

Enjoy,
Sparky

mmm why am I not surprised?

Just look at THE pension problem that's recently popped into view (again) and now a hot issue for the elections.

The Japanese have an unhappy record of refusing to recognize inconvenient problems until it becomes unignorable ... sometimes near fatal.

It's a human trait of course but it can be carried to extremes.
Commodore Perry ... World War II ...

That's why the government should be run by ninja. When was the last time you saw a yakuza "persuade" a ninja? Honestly?

The scores are read from the bottom up. The lowest score has the highest corruption. Pulled the quote from the bottom the the list:

"DEFINITION: A CPI Score relates to perceptions of the degree of corruption as seen by business people and country analysts and ranges between 10 (highly clean) and 0 (highly corrupt). Includes police corruption, business corruption, political corruption, etc. Data for 2005."

Although sme of the top countries should be a bit lower *coughUScough*

The yakuza has to FIND the ninja first.

Well honestly I can't comment since I have yet to encounter a real example of either.
(Stephen Hayes does not count ... I'm having trouble believing the authencity of anyone pushing a supposedly "secret" art like fast-food. "Mc Ninja" anybody? ...)

Hmmm....A CPI score is like your BMI. There's always a justification somewhere for that number ... (I'm muscular ... really ...my bones are heavy...I have water retention problems ....spare me)

Anyway it's all perception based....which always have had a tempestuous(at best), sometimes tenuous relationship with reality.
"Honey does this dress make me look fat"?

What the fish am i babbling about? Ignore me. Too much sake ...

Like sovkan said, the order is inverse: Japan is the 21st least most corrupt government. I generally agree with the list but I'm not particularly sure why the United States and Japan are both so high up and allegedly noncorrupt.