Abbeyroad45 comments

Japanese news says she told her husband they were sleeping at her parents’ house, and told her parents they were going home. She also had done this multiple times but usually returned to the car at dawn. She used a window shade and other means to cover the windows so nobody would know the kids were in there. Very sad story but I don’t see anything to blame the father for—as far as he knew, his kids were safe at their grandparents’ house.

It’s not actually “babysitting,” it’s interacting with someone over the Internet while the parent is in the home. My kids would love something like this. They enjoy meeting people from other countries and they’ve embraced talking to far away family and friends over the Internet since we aren’t able to visit them now. I’d love to give them opportunities like this to see more of the world.

Are JP banks not insured?

They are, but he apparently kept his money in his house.

As my kids get older, I’ve noticed this more and more. There’s a neighborhood park that I think is used as substitute babysitting by some parents, as there are a few children always there who seem desperate for adult attention but who never seem to go home. I really feel for these kids as they are still out there when everyone else goes home for dinner and bedtime. Sometimes they will ask whatever adult is there if they can come over for dinner, but my husband is very much against having children whose parents we don’t know in our house, so I have never brought them home for dinner. I have brought rice balls to the park a few times, and I have seen other parents do the same. We have also notified the local elementary school, but it hasn’t seemed to do much good. I have no idea who the parents are, not will they tell me.

I don’t think this is something unique to Japan, of course, and I remember similar “stray” children being around when I was a kid. Where I grew up, the city parks offered a safe place for kids to be in the evening, with staff to supervise them and a meal provided to those who needed it. Would like to see communities here do more of the same. I know of one town nearby that does “kodomo no shokudo” for kids who otherwise wouldn’t get an evening meal, and would like to see more of this.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what this phenomenal athlete can achieve in Tokyo next year!

Did I miss something? Is John Legend an elected legislator who is able to pass legislation on criminal justice reform?

The guy’s baby was in the hospital, that’s why he was gone so long. I don’t know if you guys have ever had your baby or small child in the hospital but a parent has to be there pretty much all the time to care for the child. Hospitals are not babysitters or surrogate parents. My younger child was in the hospital for a while as a baby and it was really difficult to manage caring for her, our older child, and just being able to shower and eat, which couldn’t be done at the hospital. I mean I had to wait for my husband to show up just so I could go to the bathroom. Pretty sick to fire this guy because he was providing needed care to his family.

Its all fun and games until your kids get bruised playing, forget how exactly they got the bruises but clearly remember you scolding them that day, and then you have teachers and child welfare types scrutinizing your parenting and police whose job it is to "find" lawbreakers interviewing your very confused kid.

I don’t think this is a realistic situation. Bruises from falling down playing or kids hitting each other look very different from bruises left by an adult hitting a child because of the relative weight and force involved, and people who work with children can generally tell the difference. I’m not saying that it’s never happened, but it is unlikely.

The 48 hour timeline is meant to intervene in the most severe cases where a child’s life is in immediate danger, such as the recent cases of very young children or babies being starved to death. Most cases will take longer to work out, but e.g. giving a starved child food is something that can be done immediately.

I have a child who was very underweight as a baby due to a digestive issue and the city did follow up with me a few times to see how she was doing. They offered services like a dietitian who helped us beyond the help we were already receiving from our pediatrician and I appreciated the help and support they offered. They did ask questions that made me think they were trying to establish whether it was an abuse situation but I don’t blame them for that; there are parents that do starve their children.

but why murder his college aged daughter before doing so?

Of course we don’t know yet in this case, but the general psychological profile of this kind of murder is that she found out something that he wanted to keep hidden from his family: an affair, a business failure, something like that.

This is cool! Like those ukiyo-e designs of Game of Thrones. An interesting mix of the old and the new.

If they just left it alone, the industry would die a natural death. Whale meat is greasy and tastes both gamey and fishy at the same time. There is a reason most people don’t buy it. I often see it in the supermarket, piled up, untouched. People generally buy it once for the novelty and then never again. They could probably satisfy the current demand for whale meat with a handful of whales per year, but since this has become a political/nationalism issue, they keep trying to force it down people’s throats in schools, nursing homes, and other places where people don’t get to choose what they eat. I don’t mind if people who want to eat it do so, but I don’t want it forced on my kids, or anyone else’s.

Even Japanese kids bring sandwiches for lunch sometimes at my kids’ kindergarten. They are easy for little fingers to handle and easy to put together quickly. The only rule at my kids’ school is no dessert other than fruit.

Whenever I hear these stories of abusive parents but having caring grandparents, you would think that just letting the child stay with the grandparents would be the best bet.

The problem is that abusers are mostly people who were abused themselves, and although the grandparents sometimes mellow with age, in many cases the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. A safe relative is better than institutional care, but the people who raised the abuser are not always safe.

@Arrrgh-Type

Yes, exactly. I saw Chinese colleagues treated like garbage by people who had always treated me well. And Vietnamese were treated even worse. I’d say this fear is correct: many people are not willing to put aside their stereotypes of Chinese and other Asians long enough to work with them in a civil manner.

Good childcare workers are worth their weight in gold. I would happily pay more for my children’s care if it were to support higher salaries for the teachers. I am extremely grateful for everything they do for our family.

Yes, I can’t wait!

US automakers have said repeatedly that it’s not worth the cost to set up the dealer and service network that would be required to sell their cars competitively in Japan. Niche auto makers like Porsche, etc. have found it a worthwhile investment because their cars sell for much higher prices. But most people aren’t going to be willing to pay a much higher price for the same level of car with less service and support. So the manufacturers either have to go all in on setting up the sales and service network and just eat the costs while they try to market their cars, or they can just skip Japan and aim for less saturated markets that don’t have as high of service demands.

This is pretty common at “black” companies. My husband used to work for one where this happened regularly. People would agree to start the job and then just never show up, or they would call out sick one day and never come back. But it’s understandable considering the way some employers treat people trying to leave. I worked for two different companies where the boss would try to browbeat and bully people into staying when they handed in their letter of resignation. No idea why they thought that would work, but I think they were just so used to bullying employees that they didn’t know how to turn it off.

Congratulations to one of my favorite actors!

Immunity for many vaccines only lasts around 30 years or so. Generally this is enough to get over childhood when the diseases are most dangerous, but with people having children later, lack of immunity to rubella can be a risk for pregnant women.

Serena!!!

Yes! I love Serena, such incredible talent and such a pleasure to watch.

The police academy training is one year. This officer would have just graduated and be new to the job. The police academies have two courses: one for people who have graduated high school and one for people who have graduated from university. The high school graduates become patrol officers and the university graduates become detectives, etc. So yes, a 19-year old armed officer is nothing unusual.

Had somebody try to do this to me once, but I saw him coming and locked my doors. He pounded on the windows and screamed for a while, but he ran away when he saw me dialing the police.

He’s just tweeting garbage. Garbage in, garbage out. I wish people would stop getting so worked up about a senile old man tweeting about the garbage TV he watches, then maybe he would stop doing it. Until the constitution is amended to allow legislation by tweet, there is no point in everybody freaking out about the stream of consciousness live blog on Twitter.

I remember this story, the boy was crossing a 4 lane road at night by himself because his grandparents lived on one side and parents on the other. It’s a busy road leading up to a highway, but it sounded like the family regularly let the boy cross by himself.

These people always give many warning signs and red flags before these things happen. It’s not like he woke up one day and was like hm I think I’ll kill people. That’s why all the handwringing about “evil” is so useless. It’s just a dodge to avoid doing anything. The truth is there were probably many opportunities along the way to stop this, either with mental health support or gun control or both, but pretending it’s “evil” and not part of the human condition is a great way to avoid having to do anything about it.

I love American meat when I’m in America but the meat that makes it over here is pure garbage. No wonder nobody wants to buy it. Why not export decent meat if they want people to buy it, instead of dumping the meat they can’t sell domestically in other countries?

The problem is lack of experienced anesthesiologists to administer the epidural. In other countries there are staff with decades of experience administering them, so complications are very rare. Here the maternity clinics either hire a 9 to 5 anesthesiologist and induce labor to fit into the schedule, which adds a layer of danger, or obstetricians with insufficient anesthesia experience do it themselves.