Beth Matsuda comments

I watched the documentary and am quite convinced the man abused children, he was sick and it probably happened to him. He died in his own self created hell and is probably in real hell now. Sad reality that should wake wveryone up. I am no longer a fan of his music....

Garbage bins and a place to sit. Shut up about the smells... Stop teaching the younger generation to be obsessive compulsive robots and relax a bit. I remember Kamakura in the days of sewer smells. Would you rather go back to the good Ole days?

Mirai, you seem totally out of touch with reality. First of all, not everyone has a choice of what time of day they can ride a train. In Tokyo, trains are the only form of transport most people have. Parents with babies in strollers who have strict budgets cannot afford to take taxies, or stay in hotels when they need to travel with their infants for whatever reason. Also, people do not always have a choice of a nice, cushy workplace with flex hours and paid child care. No way. And this sour attitude towards women and children isn't even always during rush hour. It is during any other time of the days and on weekends. I take the Tozai subway line and can tell you any time of the day that line is packed...people are rude to my kids for even making the slightest noise or turning around in their seats to look out the window. My two year old is too big for a carrier or to be held, cannot stand up for long periods of time, especially on a wiggling jiggling train, and needs to be in a stroller. There is no way people would offer a seat to us, and we usually have extra stuff to carry when traveling. My husband is NEVER around and I have absolutely no friends or family willing to help out with anything because they live a 2 hour train ride away...and no apparently all the rude people think it is unacceptable for my children to be on THEIR train. This is the reality almost every mother in the damn city faces. If this country wants women to continue reproducing to save this society from running out of human beings to replace the ones who are dying of old age, you had better learn to have a better attitude towards children, Mothers and families WHO happen to be doing their JOB which is hard and difficult enough as it is without being ridiculed and snooted at everytime we happen to get in "someone's way".

1 meter high balcony wall on the 8 th floor? That is an accident waiting to happen.

Thank you Mr. Onodera

I hate ads that have nothing to do with what they are selling. I find nothing especially shocking about the ad, just that it is meant to be shocking. Totally annoying and useless. If I were in the market for buying a family car, this ad would turn me off for the sole reason that it is sexist and stupid.

Pretty soon, English teachers will be forced to be walking advertisements for their schools without extra pay.

Those are all pretty sensible, but hard to find a guy like that.

Japanese education is doing fine in several areas and lousy in others. The literacy rate in Japan, for Japanese anyways, it outstanding. Schools do a decent job for the budget they are given, grant it, the schools are very old fashioned and run down and teachers do most of the administrative work on top of everything else, however, students are also forced to be more responsible and organized. I highly agree that the English education is a joke. English is an international language, a very useful tool for gathering further education and communicating to the rest of the world, however it should not be forced on the students in the lousy condition that it is in. Large classes, lousy materials and once a week/month classes do not work for learning a foreign language, no matter how good the teacher is. Honestly, it is a terrible waste of money. Computers? Well, I don't know how it is happening, but for some reason a lot of people are learning how to use computers before getting into the work force despite not learning it in high school.

Iwaki IS Fukushima! The Daiichi plant is only 40 KMs from Iwaki. The plant was already destroyed and the situation made worse by the susequent earthquakes. The plant is completely destroyed and in cold shut down and they are working as fast as they can to contain it further, but it is far from being perfectly secure. There are other plants in other areas of the country just sitting ducks for this to happen again. Anywhere in Japan is a bad place for anything unstable like this.

Most women these days would have a very difficult time living up to the standards of the geisha lifestyle as I understand it is quite a lot of torture, not unlike foot binding or elongating the neck. I hope they will relax the rules enough to let them wear wigs and at least be able to sleep on a normal pillow.