grjkzz comments

I'm glad the police are doing a good job. Catching drink drivers after accidents happen rather than before.

Reading this makes me just sick to the stomach....50 kids dead, and for what purpose? The total absence of comments shows how immune we have become to this kind of news from African or middle eastern countries..

What do you expect us to say? The usual cliche pity message? You're definitely not wrong in thinking that most people have become immune to news such as this in middle eastern countries though.

"Police believe it may have caused Takahashi to fall suddenly ill."

So are the police doctors saying that jumping in the water caused him to become ill in a short amount of time? Enough to result in his death?

"Takahashi along with four other boys, and two girls had gone to the river to play. Five of the six children decided to jump into the river and swim while still wearing their clothes. "

I'm confused. If I'm counting right, there should be 7 children in total. 5 boys and 2 girls. Is one of them an adult? What's up with the reports? There are so many things wrong with these articles.

WHY? Why would the company hire a pervert to design such an atrocity? There's no point to this item; especially not for the reasons mentioned in the article. The only reason this thing was created was in hopes that little girls and fanatics of the over-merchandized movie would wander around half naked just to see their underwear change colors when pressing their chests together.

Japan is way behind in many other things than smoking.

Seeing how Apple products are so popular with the Japanese, I don't doubt that this may become a major thing in Japan.

I really don't see what's so good about Apple handsets but the Japanese buy it up like candy. They seem to be suckers for advertisement targeting.

As for America, something like this will probably turn out to become a horrible idea. Why? If you know anything about how America deals with lost or stolen phones, you'd know why. For those who don't I'll fill you in. Most companies don't care. They rather have you buy a new one than help you retrieve it. Cell phone thefts are very high because of this. Especially iphones because they have a good resell value. Give it a wallet function and it's not much different than losing your credit cards.

That's just my two cents.

Such a dilemma. Makes me wonder how many people would help someone die if they asked for it, while knowing the consequences of such action.

This is news? There's no information!

If they "reside" in Japan, how about they learn to speak and read Japanese?

Even foreign children are smart enough to work this out. Unfortunately some adults want to believe the world revolves around them,and behave at a more childish level than... children. Perhaps "babies" might be best used to describe them?

While I don't disagree with the "learn our language" idea, it's not nice to ignore the people who are new to the country or have a hard time learning a new language. It's not like people can just read a book and expect to be fluent in the language quick enough to learn the evacuation procedures of something they've never experienced before. I certainly don't have enough time to pick up a book every day and actually learn something from it.

But on the other hand. If you are one of those people who think that they don't need to learn the language because English is da bomb, just follow everyone else in what they're doing during the evacuation. Japanese people are good at that.

I REALLY hope that they come up with an effective emergency evacuation plan and not just use something they think is good enough. (remember south park?)

Most of the new fall anime releases are good. Forget the top 10. Just watch all of them and pick out the few that isn't your cup of tea.

The ones I like in no specific order: Parasyte, Hitsugi no Chaika, Inou Battle ...~, Shingeki no Bahamut, Trinity Seven, World Trigger, Ushinawareta ...~, Garo, Grisaia, Kokkuri-san, Donten ni Warau, Terra Formars.

SAO 2 has gone downhill but I continue to watch it and hope it picks up again. First part of the first season has left too good of an impression to let it go so quickly.

Those utility poles in Japan are really dangerous. I wouldn't be surprised if he hit it while driving sober. But considering he "veered into the opposite lane," drove at 4 in the morning, and this is Japan, I'm going to guess that he wasn't sober and probably started his journey from a bar.

@smithinjapan Your ability to twist others' words to sound worse than they are is amazing. After doing so, you proceed to strongly comment against their opinions with your own delusions of how malicious they sound.

Not only that, you constantly impose your thoughts onto others and use it as a basis to assume what others would say in response to your comment. Here's an example:

Someone should invite them to a maid cafe."

Ummm... why? and, yeah, right... if they said they did not like it or thought it was disgusting you'd call it Japan-bashing.

If these men said that the idea of maid cafes were disgusting and deplorable, I wouldn't call it bashing. I would accept that they simply don't like it for their own reasons. Your threshold for definitions of words are set really low. So low that you'd probably think that any male who glances at a child is a pedophile too.

How DARE you say the negative experiences are 'petty things' to be forgotten and that they should remember or that we cannot learn from!

I NEVER said they were "to be forgotten" nor did I suggest it. I'm not going to even bother explaining anything anymore.

So @smithinjapan, I suggest that you take a long time to look yourself in the mirror and think about why you like to exaggerate things and twist them in ways to benefit yourself. But knowing you, I'm going to assume that you're going to read this as "go kill yourself," then comment with a comeback.

@smithinjapan

Ah you're right. I didn't see the part about them being on a field trip. That's embarrassing.

Insects are animals so the use of the word is appropriate.

Also, "keeping" wasn't used to define them as actually keeping them as pets or something. I meant that they simply left them there, knowing it's potentially dangerous to children.

One more thing, why did you take the flamethrower thing so seriously?

Without anymore detail it's impossible to say anyone or anything is to blame

Seriously? Blame? Are you the type of person who thinks that there always needs to be someone to blame? I've been stung before and there was no reason I should've been. I never bothered any insect and I was just doing my own thing. Are you going to say it's my fault for peacefully doing my own thing?

Are they more flexible?

I'm glad this isn't just another typical Japanese bashing article by Americans.

It seems like these men were able to continue with their lives, living their life to the fullest and not worrying about petty things and a tragic past that a lot of others do too often.

That, is what's important. Not hating on an entire country for something that a few leaders did in the PAST.

Someone should invite them to a maid cafe.

One word: FLAMETHROWER

It is most likely that these children are going to develop a fear of bees and hornets.

Why the hell would you even consider keeping animals capable of harming children near the school?

Must have been for his research.

But seriously though. There needs to be a watch/program for these types of people that may be a threat to society or themselves. Japan needs to take psychology more seriously rather than using hopeful wishing for all the mentally unstable people. Especially school children. But that's another story.

While I agree with the title, this article is very misleading. The companies that produce material such as this is NOT pornography. It is media showing young children in suggestive poses and outfits. There are no laws broken in selling material such as this.

Amazon Japan, Yahoo! Shopping and Rakuten, Japan’s top Internet shopping networks, are exploiting children.

The parents and producers are the ones doing the exploitation.

There are many people who immediately jump on the pedophile-hate train the moment a hint of it pops up. I don't disagree with their opinions but most of them are too dramatic.

Material such as this may add fuel to the fire but on the other hand, it may actually be preventing a lot of actual crimes from happening. We don't know for sure.

What I'm more concerned about are the guardians of the child. People that resort to selling their children to earn money must be pretty desperate. I'm sure that most of the reasons stem from the lack of money. On the other hand, some may actually be selling their children for the sake of hoping that one day, they'll become an idol or something (which eventually means more money as well). Hell, maybe the child actually wants to do it. Who knows.

I think the crazed American culture of making little girls dress in sexy provocative clothing for contests is much worse than Candy on Amazon. -shonanbb

As an American, I'd have to agree with most of what this person is saying. I have always been baffled by the child pageants that Americans have in various parts of the country. Having seen how the children are dressed and trained by their mothers and "professionals," I have grown to despise it. While I wouldn't say that it's worse than Japan, I'd say that they're equivalent in indecent morality.

If America is your country, then go back and fix that first. Leave Japan alone. There is much more pent up sexual frustration in American society than in Japanese caused by bible thumping religious nut cases. At least there are outlets in japan from Girly Bars, Kaiseki Ryori special places, Fashion Massage places etc. Sex is considered natural and not a hang up. Go home if you do not like it here. -shonanbb

This is quite amusing. Why? Because it's true. "Westerners" have a right to voice their opinion but trying to change it is a pretty futile effort. I understand that some of you don't care much about changing things in America because you are currently living in Japan. But you need to understand this: If you didn't care about changing things as bad as provocative child media in America, why do you feel empowered to do it in Japan? Japan is a country that doesn't like to change. Even if they try, they do it wrong most of the time.

This has been getting pretty long.

Finally, I'd like to know why the author tried to buy candy from the internet. According to another commenter, she's lived in Japan for 15 years. Go to Costco. They exist in Japan.

Nothing to see here guys. All is normal.

Japan does a lot of things pretty well but in my opinion, one thing that they do ver, VERY poorly is risk management.

In my opinion, the only thing the Japanese do well is act nice in front of others. As zichi says, most Japanese people are bad at doing any type of management. In my opinion, they seem to always assume that everything will work out on its own because society expects everyone to do the "right thing." They've been trained since birth. If everyone does the right thing, nothing can go wrong, right? Right? Basically, they half-ass things.

With Japan being in such a hot zone on the Earth, having nuclear power plants is already pretty risky. I can't believe they actually thought that they had sufficient protection against all the natural disasters that hit Japan.

I don't want to pay much for utilities, but destroying their own country with a nuclear disaster is just dumb. I would rather pay more for electricity. What ever happened to the environment-loving folk in the country?

Never met one of these NHK guys till I moved into a new apartment. It was this middle aged man with a really warm smile. The kind of person you'd feel bad about slamming the door in their face with. He rang my doorbell while I was playing a game so I ignored him. After I went out and came back from the grocery about 40 minutes later, he rang my doorbell again. It's creepy how he stalked the building for such a long time.

I told him that I don't speak Japanese and he assumed that I don't watch TV. He was right. After that, he wrote something in his little memo pad and left. He saved me the trouble of having to consider slamming the door in his face.

Not sure how often these guys show up but I haven't met another one since then.

This thing looks very small. I don't see any use for it though. It reminds me of that robotic dog that I saw in commercials back in the states a long time ago.

It could be just that it was simply easier to prosecute one person who was easy to get a hold of as opposed to those on the net. It could be that him being Japanese was simply a coincidence. (though unlikely)

Or it could be that he was a juicy target because he is Japanese.

They were both late? Sounds like they were both taking a nap together.

Tell me I am not the only one who has fantasized about doing exactly that every time these punks screech around the neighborhood at 2AM?

You're not. When I moved in to my new apartment, I have heard a small group of bikes traveling down the street right next to my building from half a kilometer away. My room is no more than 5m away from the middle of that street. They'd pass my building then stop at the nearby red light, revving their engines. Because of the small street intersecting with a 2-way, it'd take a while until it turned. I have been tempted to go outside with my Mt. Fuji walking stick and going at them.

Luckily, they have stopped coming for whatever reason.

Japan shouldn't get nor should they be able to control any nuclear weapons. Japan's government and proven time and time again that they are too illogical and dumb to make good decisions.

Why are people so quick try and blame someone for an accident. Children are children, they live in the moment amd easily forget things. Stop blaming the parents and driver.

If you want to blame someone, blame the lack of real sidewalks in this country.