Already wanted for the murder of an old woman, 24 year old Masahiro Kanagawa, stabbed eight people outside a mall in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki Prefecture. One 27 year old man died. Kanagawa was said to be something of a loner who loved playing computer games, and was not very good at communicating or expressing himself. Kanagawa…
JTB did a poll of Japanese people in their 20s published online by Yomiuri here: If you had 300,000 yen would you save it or take a trip? Travel Abroad 20.4% Save it 17.3% Travel within Japan 12.5% The numbers are interesting, but the poll is probably skewed. The poll was given on the internet,…
This was big on the morning news shows today. A 43 year old bus driver killed his wife and son. His wife, Crisanta, was originally from the Philippines. Some friends of the family were interviewed saying that Crisanta had talked about their families plans to sell their apartment, move to the Philippines and live off…
I was glancing at some of the clothes for sale on the Yahoo! Japan’s auction service today when I came across a jacket which was advertised as Abercrombie & Fitch. The genius seller of the auction was kind enough to offer proof of the authenticity of the jacket by providing a close-up photo of the…
Takaaki Obara, a 57 year old high school basketball coach was convicted of raping a member of the girls’ basketball at a hotel when the club was away for a tournament. He was also convicted of punching members of the team in another hotel. The english story on Mainichi points out that he was “highly…
A 53 year old teacher forced a girl to kneel on the floor and apologize in front of the class for having forgotten to give a notebook to one of her classmates. The teacher had asked the girl to deliver a notebook to a classmate who’d had to leave school early one day. This is…
There was another recent case of professor accepting bribes to give a good review to PhD students’ theses… (if anyone’s interested in the details I can dig them up) This time we have a case of a Chiba University professor threatened saying that she would never be able to graduate without his help. In return…
I’ll just give the link. One vice principal was fired for having an affair with a PTA mom. Another teacher at a different public school was fired for having an affair with a mother of one of the students at his school. The story doesn’t tell how they were found out but from the tone…
He was fired but all is good. The principal of Bunkyo Gakuin University admitted to the theft giving the ubiquitous catch-all Japanese reason. He was drunk. He’s since been fired as principal. My comments?He was fired, but probably received his entire severence pay… at age 52, I guess he’s been working and paying into the…
In an attempt to blackmail some money out of a random guy on the train a student from Konan University had his girlfriend accuse the poor guy of groping her. Fumiyuki Makita, a 24 year old senior was expelled from Konan University and arrested for false accusation. (Minor sidenote: He’s a 24 year old senior….
The story is that Richard “Scott” Tucker walked into a bar near the apartment building he owned to complain about the noise. He was puched, kicked, and then eventually choked to death. It seems that the perpetrator, Atsushi Watanabe, will get only “a minor punishment” because witnesses say that Tucker was trying to pick a…
Granted, some of these cases could be people going to hospitals that did not have the facilities to deal with a particular emergency, but this is a huge number of people being refused. But these are just the EMERGENCY patients! What about the non-emergency cases in which people are left taking cabs, subways, or driving…