2. Add cards 101-110 - "budget" to "capital" to Anki.
3. Japan Times Summary and Comments
4. Japan Times Sentence Substitutions (3)
5. Homework
Article 1
About one in four companies want their female employees to quit when giving birth rather than take child care leave, according to a new survey.
Aidem Inc., the publisher of a free job information magazine, said Friday 25.3 percent of firms want such women to quit, while 16.9 percent said they can't allow their male employees to take child care leave.
"The results vividly showed that giving consideration for child care leave has yet to become pervasive among companies," an Aidem official in charge of the survey said. "We want the government to actively raise awareness."
Article 2
The Finance Ministry is considering imposing the consumption tax on digital books, music and other content downloaded from websites operated by overseas vendors, sources said Friday.
Such products are currently tax-free. The change could take effect in April 2014, which is when the consumption tax would be raised to 8 percent under a bill that has cleared the Lower House and is now in the Upper House, the sources said.
The Finance Ministry hopes the change would provide a level playing field for domestic providers of online content, they said.
A panel will be created as early as next month to discuss a possible system to collect the revenue, the sources said.
Article 3
The unemployment rate fell to 4.4 percent in May from 4.6 percent in April, marking the first improvement in three months on the back of the moderately recovering economy, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said Friday.
While the outcome was a positive surprise for private-sector economists who had expected the seasonally adjusted rate to stay flat, a ministry official said the move is in line with the recent "seesawing" trend.
Separate data by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry showed that job availability improved for the 12th straight month, with the ratio of employment offers to seekers up to 0.81 last month from 0.79 in April. This means 81 positions were available for every 100 job seekers.
The internal affairs ministry official said it appears that increasing job availability is gradually starting to help more people find work.
The number of unemployed people dropped by 100,000 to 2.89 million.
The number of people with jobs fell by 100,000, dropping to 62.45 million, but the official noted that the month-on-month decline is becoming smaller than before after logging a fall of 170,000 in March.
The decrease in the number of employed people can be partly attributed to demographic changes, as the baby-boom generation is reaching the age of 65 from this year, he added.
By industry, people with jobs in the manufacturing sector increased, leading to an improvement in the jobless rate for men.
The unemployment rate for men dropped to 4.5 percent from 4.8 percent, but the rate for women increased to 4.3 percent from 4.2 percent.
