BertieWooster comments

Kept in solitary confinement, no legal rights, three meals a day, ten minutes "exercise" in a tiny room with no windows. A supervised shower ever couple of days. No one to talk with. No windows in the cell. Nowhere to sit, no chair, no bed, nothing to do, nothing to read. Just waiting for the next meal. "When can I get out of here?" No answer.

You lose the will to live.

May as well be in China, North Korea or Russia.

She had been in solitary confinement for over one month.

Why?

Were they trying to force her to confess to something she didn't do?

With this kind of thing going on, we may as well be in China.

She hated her husband and his mother because of their attitude to her mother, so she stabbed her daughter in the chest.

I wonder if this isn't just another psychiatric failure. There do seem to be rather a lot of them in the news recently.

“Hopefully he’ll get the psychiatric help he needs”

It's quite possible he is having psychiatric "help" or has had some in the past. Many serial killers have had or are in the middle of totally useless "treatment."

Yes. Mental illness even affects those who are supposed to be able to cure it - the psychiatrists. There was the case of the psych who cut a guy's head off in Sapporo recently.

Yamaneko,

If Japan isn't on par with the digital quantum/ space tech threat then all this conventional weaponry is a waste of time and money because it could be rendered inoperable in a heartbeat.

Completely true, but you're missing the point. All this weaponry comes at a VERY, VERY high cost. Some people are making BIG bucks on this. And the "other side" is similarly being hoodwinked. We have only one planet, isn't it about time we stopped this childish nonsense and worked out a way for us ALL to live together?

And yet, the Ministry of Agriculture, in its infinite wisdom (sarcasm) is discouraging local agricultural production and is offering ¥150,000 per cow slaughtered in Hokkaido to reduce dairy production. The point being that they can cut deals for wealthy "friends" Toyota, etc., for other countries to buy Japanese cars, etc., in exchange for which, Japan buys their agricultural products.

This is a mess of worms. What is going to happen if there is a dustup nearby and Japan is unable to produce enough food to feed its people?

I wonder why the activists don't respect women's feelings. Generally speaking, us blokes couldn't care less if there were women using the same toilets. It's the women who want privacy. Why not let them have it?

Mark, totally agree! They are way overpaid for what they do. And how come a civil servant gets a BONUS???? What is this, profit sharing? Also the work force could be halved if they were doing something useful. Mostly what they are involved in is "busy work." Meetings, writing useless reports, writing memos to each other. I know because I've had to work with them. They have far too much time on their hands.

Admirable sentiment. Wish the money-grubbing politicians who are supposedly running the country had the same sentiments. A bit more austerity and a little less bonus is called for.

That a psychiatrist did this and it was planned and premeditated points up the totally useless body of knowledge that is psychiatry. As someone pointed out, it is doubtful if this is an isolated case. This psychiatrist is dangerously insane!

Rodney - good choice of a place to retire to. There is no danger. Just stay home in a typhoon.

Supposing you had a series of tennis lessons where the teacher rabbited on and on about tennis, the history of tennis, how to hold the racquet, the rules of the game, some famous tennis players in history, the tensile strengths of various materials used in racquet making and you never went near a ball, much less played an actual game. How good a tennis player do you think you would be?

This is an analogy of what happens in the classroom in a high school English "lesson."

No wonder they can't speak English.

Thanks to the total failure of the Ministry of Education to teach English, there is plenty of work for English teachers in Japan. (sarcasm)

Blimey, what with taking upskirt pics and driving drunk, our boys in blue are having a whale of a time!

Xavier:

“a united free world”

United?

Free?

You must be using strange and unusual definitions of these words that I don't know.

As usual, there is not enough information to formulate much of an opinion, but if these two had exchanged email communications a couple of times, met at a station and got into his car to go to his place, I'd be willing to bet that she had a pretty good idea of what was intended. She may have got money for it. I don't know, like many other people here, I'm just speculating.

Therapy? Think that's going to do any good? The shrink who chopped the guy's head off in Sapporo recently shows the state of psychiatry here!

“Really? I just thought the 1% that care about that kind of thing were getting louder.”

Ha, ha, ha! 

Spot on! They make a lot of noise and people assume that it's a lot of people. It isn't. It's just a few being really noisy.

“Two goals in 2 minutes help Japan beat Costa Rica”

Seems like an odd way to put it. Since the only way to win a soccer game is to score more goals than your opponent, helping doesn't come into it. The Japanese team beat Costa Rica by two goals to nil.

Much hotter. We didn't used to get summers this hot and humid in England.

The headline says he was a doctor, but he is a psychiatrist. Totally different things! Doctors cure people.

Level, true and fair are not in the Chinese rule book.

I wonder which country's rule book they are in then? Japan? The U.S.A?

Good idea! As long as it's real communication and not just some ceremony!

Come on, Japan! Time for change!

I have a big problem with Katakana. As a method of transcribing foreign words, it basically doesn't work, especially with English. One thing I really cannot understand is why every English word ending in -er has the nobasu sign (-). I cannot think of any case where the final -er in English is a lengthened vowel. "Mothaaah," "fathaaaah," etc. But the worst is "lager," which is rendered ラガー in Japanese. Ordering a lager in a pub with "Pureeze give me a ragaaaaah," would not be understood. ラーガ would be closer as the a vowel at the beginning of the word is lengthened. And, on the subject of suds, why is beer ビール, but beer garden is ビアガーデン?

I was on a subway in Tokyo. It wasn't completely full, but all the seats were taken and there was a line of people in front of the seats, standing, mostly reading. My eye went to a girl who was standing reading a book with a guy standing very close behind her. The carriage wasn't that crowded and he had no reason to stand that close up to her, so I felt something strange about it. Then I noticed his hips moving in and out. The girl had stopped reading and was staring ahead like a deer caught in a car's headlights. The whole thing looked so funny, so like a Far Side cartoon that I just burst out laughing. I said to the guy, in Japanese, "What are you? In heat or something?"

The guy's face went bright red, he rushed to the door and got off at the next station. Admittedly, this wasn't a professional with a camera, but there are times when turning on the humorous side can be very effective.

everyone wants a piece of 'Barbie' movie marketing mania

Don't know about everybody. Count me OUT!

Sleep deprivation, isolation, solitary confinement, beatings, and forced stress positions have been reported by survivors of both systems, according to multiple rights groups. In some cases, inmates may be placed in an infamous “tiger chair” which restricts limb movement for days at a time.

Sounds like Guantanamo.

It takes FOUR MONTHS for these incompetent psychs to determine whether he is sane or not?