shallots comments

This crime doesn’t have anything to do with the U.S. It’s true the U.S. is dangerous AND Japan is more dangerous than people think. Recently, my wife had a bad experience walking with our young kids in the neighborhood. She was threatened by some young guys who almost hit her on their motorcycle. They were drunk. The sad part about Japan, sad and unique, is that she screamed and no one nearby stopped to help her. She was right near a festival too. Yes, Japan is safer than many places but Japan is cold. If you DO get into trouble here, it’s very possible no one will help you because Japanese people are less likely to get involved. But, yeah, Japan can be compared positively and negatively with other places…as nauseam.

“…locking people up is almost never the solution…”

it isn’t only about deterrence and rehabilitation. We need to feel that life is valued and that we live in a society that is fair and just. This makes society and life livable. A child’s life matters and we have taboos and laws that can’t be broken. We don’t accept it when they are broken. He tortured a child to death. If we live in a society where this is acceptable, what will be the consequences? This is about trusting that society is meaningful and has values we can rely on. This is about living with our neighbors and in our communities. I really don’t buy into the ideals of Japanese society, seeing how devalued human life is.

This writer has no suggestions really. That would be OK normally. “We should give up trying.” Well, OK, what then? When half the country is retired and hanging around hospitals, what will be done to pay for it all? Um, immigrants AREN’T a solution? Rude awakening: they’re already here. And it’s just the beginning. At least he didn’t try to say robots would fix the problem.

The indifference to human life in this country shocks me.

Yet, the whole country is clean. Perhaps, What Japan needs is foreigners to respect and obey Japanese rules and manners.  Is that to much to ask?

Well, that's not true. There are smokers everywhere in Japan and they rarely fail to litter. The canals around my neighborhood are full of plastic bottles and garbage. But anyway, Japan needs tourists more than tourists need Japan at this point. And Kyoto, which was a bankrupt city last time I checked, even more so. But Kyoto is not very friendly compared to other destinations.

I complain to the police all the time about the dangerous driving in my neighborhood. Their solution is to standout in the middle of the street and wave and blow their whistles. Seriously.

I have very little faith in the police to solve crimes that take real police work. If it's not on camera or they aren't caught in the act or running away, I despair of the Japanese police's ability to catch them. I just find that, like a lot of systems in Japan, they're so busy doing unimportant things that they're useless when it comes to doing something that matters.

Japanese universities have training systems, not education. Students enter without even much of an ability to ask questions about what they don’t know (yes: critical thinking). They’re pretty lost beyond sitting passively, memorizing, taking tests, looking at phones, etc. Ask them about their country and the world and you’ll hear some pretty shocking half-baked “ideas” betraying how unprepared they are to join a global conversation on anything important. This is why Japan doesn’t have a university ranked in the top 50 in the world despite being one of the most powerful countries on the planet. Oh well. Don’t look for changes anytime soon.

Not being from New York, nor being Jewish, I never found any of his movies either amusing or entertaining.

What a small-minded and silly comment. I wonder why his movies are popular in France, considering that most French people aren’t Jewish or from NY? Do you like Spike Lee’s movies? I guess that depends.

Allen was accused directly of essentially the same sex crime but with a much younger child that Roman Polansky was banned for but somehow slithered out from under the charge. His 'last movie' should have been in 1992…

Yes, “accused” being the key distinction here between him and Polanski. I wonder why Mia Farrow’s Asian kids are either dead or “accuse” HER of child abuse? She still gets to be a UNICEF ambassador, doesn’t she?

I watched the transgender female weightlifter from New Zealand at the Olympics, and she did not win or even place, and missed most of her lifts actually. Transphobia is not the way to go.

Hubbard was also the oldest weightlifter at those games. These two facts are neither here nor there. Is there an advantage to having been born biologically male? Does it matter? If there were a proven advantage, would it change your mind? Some activists are arguing that fairness is besides the point and that it's just Hubbard's human right to participate, even without medical intervention.

It will be interesting when we have this same debate come up in the future, after genetic modifications for physical traits start to happen... I wonder if there is already a similar issue occurring with Paralympics and prosthetics....?

Division by gender has generally worked, because there was a fairly clear performance differentiation in most cases. Competitive sports are by their nature fairly unfair though... Height, limb length, age, muscle types, propensity for body fat, intelligence, and many other factors make some people more suited to certain sports than others.

You're only looking at fairness as if that's all sports are about. It's not. People care about meaningfulness first and fairness is only one component of that. What are we seeing? That's the question people ask themselves. There have been games played between professional women and high school boys but these aren't considered meaningful to people because people do not know how to evaluate them. This is the issues that plagues the participation of transgendered people in (at least some) sports. There may be some sports where it might work, but there may be other female sports that just won't be meaningful to audiences if they include people born as male or people that have gone through male puberty. This is because it may be hard to evaluate the outcome. Leah Thomas is an example of this. It's just unclear if Thomas has an advantage or not and it may be truly hard to know.

I always know it's Sora by the slightly goofy, slightly obnoxious, style.

@TokyoLivingToday 

Their country..

Their culture..

Their customs..

Their rules..

Their whales..

GO JAPAN !!..

Stick to it then. But make sure you never voice an opinion about any global matter. Keep your opinions relevant only to the small world in which you live.

It seems to be a thing here that the perpetrator of a crime gets to write to the victim's family from behind bars.

There's just something about these Sora articles and the way they're written. I always feel like the writer is winking at me. I guess they feel it works because it certainly never gets better.

I can't muster any excuse or sympathy for the driver. I live quite near such an intersection as the one described and I have small children. Every day I observe reckless driving and it's mostly older men doing it. They just don't care. Occasionally the police stand patrol but it does little good. They still zip up and down the road. If you aren't required to stop at an intersection, then you must drive slowly enough that you can stop if you need to.

Jim and Pam aren't going to be happy about that.

People often drive recklessly in my neighborhood, including on motorcycles and scooters. They're not only endangering others but risking the ruin of their own lives as well.

What explains these obsessions with utterly banal and shallow aspects of society? This seems like a particularly Japanese thing - this obsession with meaningless minutia.

"...escape the hardships of the 3-D world." Ha ha.

He was handed the gun, told it was safe. He is an actor not a professional gun expert. It’s not like he loaded it.

I totally agree. As a producer, he may be liable. As an actor, I think not. No way actors are the last line of defense, in terms of liability. Why hire gun experts if you expect silly actors to take the risk.

girl_in_tokyoT

When you consider that sexual assault isn't taken very seriously as a crime, this shouldn't be surprising.

Obviously the idea was that it's amazing any society would treat sexual assault lightly. I don't think the comment reflects actual surprise but, rather, indignation. In short, you're too literal.

People often say that it's a big risk for foreigners to intervene. I would like to know some concrete, reasonably recent and clear examples of this going wrong. I'm not disagreeing with it but I am curious about the details of such situations.

People drive like crap in my neighborhood. They drive too fast and recklessly. Having kids, I worry about it every day. They are simply callous.

Americans couldn't think up their own ideas for TV shows then, and still can't today.

I don't think there's a British show in the modern era better than Seinfeld, Curb, Larry Sanders, Deadwood, Mad Men, etc. I doubt there's been a show anywhere as good as The Wire. This is my subjective opinion. British police procedurals are humorless affairs and nowhere near as interesting as The Wire (but what is?).

There've been plenty of American shows over the years that were originals, from I Love Lucy to Columbo, to Northern Exposure. I think the Late Night talk show, a la Johnny Carson and David Letterman, was an American form. A kind of Improv comedy also originated in Chicago (and was done really well outside the U.S., in Canada). Does the UK have a homegrown tradition improv comedy? Maybe? We can't forget early TV variety like Miltie, Smothers Brothers, Laugh In, and Martin and Lewis. These are originals. Of course, there were plenty of great shows in the UK (everyone loves Monty Python and The Office), but I don't think you can say the U.S. didn't or doesn't have ideas. And even shows like All in the Family aren't great because of the concept, though the concept is interesting. They actually did an All in the Family recently with Woody Harrelson and it wasn't great, concept and all. The original American All in the Family was great because of what the Americans did with it on every level, from the acting to the writing and direction. I wouldn't say the British can't think of ideas. That would be as ridiculous as saying Americans can't.

Makes one wonder why people decide to come to a country where they are treated as second-rate not-quite-humans... Are things so desperate for them back at home?

Um. what do you think? Just google "average salary Vietnam." It's less than san man a month.

I'm married to a Vietnamese and to be honest, I think Vietnamese people living in Japan aren't shocked by or disbelieving of Vietnamese crime in Japan. Certainly, they are disappointed. I still think the good outweighs the bad and Vietnamese, like other ethnic groups, will bring economic vitality to Japan in addition to filling entry-level jobs. I also agree that too much immigration isn't good, that balance is important. The number of Vietnamese has grown a lot but it's still a small number and immigration overall is still not comparable to other countries. Vietnamese know, themselves, that as a group they are likely to bring a bit more crime. They know the problems of their country. There is very little social trust in Vietnam and no strong institutions to rely on. Education levels are low and crime and violence are abundant. Again, despite such problems, the Vietnamese community is enterprising, on the whole, and good for the country. Japan cannot survive without workers. And I'll tell you one more thing: Vietnamese respect Japan even though some of the young uneducated Vietnamese that come may lack some basic sense.

I have young kids. The neighborhood has small streets with few continuous sidewalks. People zip up and down the mountain road. Young people drive crazy fast on motorcycles. Old people don't see where they're going and don't anticipate what's ahead in turns and intersections. Trucks navigate this situation with some difficulty too. Plus, people sometimes forget to turn their lights on or their brights off. I'm scared for my family.

Yikes. Hope she can escape the misery. It must be a nightmare.

Market-driven "music"? Songs by committee and "talent" assembled by management companies? The "image" doesn't scream "interesting." It seems like it's all been streamlined and simplified and formulated nowadays for easy promotion on the conveyor belt of production?

*Here you go: "JYP Entertainment Corporation (Korean: JYP 엔터테인먼트) is a South Korean multinational entertainment and record label conglomerate founded in 1997 by J. Y. Park. It is one of the largest entertainment companies in South Korea..." (wikipedia)*

There song "Cry For Me" was written by these people: HEIZE (헤이즈), J.Y. Park, Sophiya, Ryan Tedder, Melanie Joy Fontana, Michel “Lindgren” Schulz & A. Wright.

That's a lot of people - especially for these lyrics:

Oh, on the outside I'll be all calm

Baby no more real love

Imma pretend we're going strong

Then at the end, break your heart

Bad boy, bad boy

Yeah, you really make me a mad girl, mad girl

Woah-oh-oh

And to think It only took one person to write "Sound of Silence." Wow!

Great life: Broadway, off-Broadway, symphonies, great restaurants, opera, jazz and every other kind of music, and lots of fashion shows, museums and openings. They can mingle with other rich people and enjoy one of the greatest cities in the world. I'm sure they'll find time to travel to other destinations and I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunities for the former princess.