JavaChip comments

Posted in: Baby boy dies in locked car while mother plays pachinko in Akita See in context

This is one of those occasions when "an eye for an eye" does not seem all that barbaric anymore. Hey, lady, what will it be, 3 hours locked up in a car around noon on a sunny summer day or 10 years in prison?

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Posted in: Setsubun See in context

Does this guy have any old relatives from Okinawa? Is it his grandmother? Did she die? Is this why he's singing enka?

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Posted in: Junior high school student arrested after bullying incident in Kyushu See in context

@telecasterplayer: so, you thought manga has no role in the education of the young generation in Japan? The answer to your second question is: yes, and definitely yes!

Just my opinion...

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Posted in: Commuters' stamping harnessed for power See in context

electric2004,

JR East expects a generating capacity of total 1,400kW/sec per day.

This means in average 388 W.

This is where you get it wrong, dude. Just like a lot of not-so-technical people, you confuse the concepts of power and energy. Power is actually the amount of energy used (or generated) during a specific time interval, generally one hour. So if a light bulb has the power of 100 W it means that during one hour it will use 100 Wh, or 0.1 kWh of energy (notice that it's watts times h, not watts per h). Similarly, a power plant with an installed capacity of 1 MW will generate 1 MWh of energy every hour. We define the capacity of a device in power units because the energy it will consume (or generate) depends on the amount of time it works. You probably get the idea by now...

As such, 1,400 kWsec (energy) means about 388 Wh, or 0.39 kWh. If this energy is generated per day then the installed capacity of these piezoelectric panels is roughly 5.83 W. Which is really small!

But I guess the idea behind this experiment is not to light up Tokyo, but merely to prove that the technology exists and works, and of course it can be further perfected. 5 watts is still better than 0 watts, in my opinion.

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Posted in: Jero releases new album as tribute to Tadashi Yoshida See in context

So, let me get this straight: Jero comes up with an album as a tribute to a guy he never even met because the guy died when Jero was just a kid and not even in Japan, and then he does a cover on one of the composer's songs and claims it's better than the original. And the other enka singers, who actually worked with the composer, are "featuring" on Jero's album...

Or maybe JT got it wrong again and it's not really Jero's album, but a compilation featuring 15 different artists, except the gaijin community is only familiar with the youngest gem.

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Posted in: Best Dressed Eyes See in context

And the WTF award goes to... (drumroll)... the Blind-As-A-Bat-But-Still-Looking-Cool Competition!!!

Best Dressed Eyes? What is that? My eyes feel so naked and embarrassed right now...

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Posted in: Stalking the predators See in context

While I agree that child-abusers are a chronic disease of our society (maybe victims of it, maybe the cause... that's still debatable) and, if I ever catch a pedophile, I would kick him in the nuts for about half an hour just for the fun of it, here's a selfish point of view: I enjoy taking photos of kids. Not my own, since I don't have any... yet. And not for some perverted pleasure. I do it because I realized that snapshots of animals and children may be the only true candid images of life you can get. They are so... real, and you can always count on the expressions on their little faces to be the true reflection of their inner feelings.

But here comes the dilemma: lately I feel somehow guilty when photographing children, in the parks or wherever I see them, and I feel like I should make sure the parents are not aware I'm taking pictures of their young ones, because maybe they're gonna think I'm up to something. And, most of all, I don't want to cause these people any mental distress.

And I think that, as much as our society may be guilty for creating these monsters who prey on innocence, it may also be guilty for spreading a ubiquitous state of fear, anger and desire to resort to violence as a defense. I don't want to have these thoughts when I raise my kids. Do you?

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Posted in: What do you think is causing the recent spate of random stabbings in Japan and how can society address the problem? See in context

Sorry if I seem cynical, but the "recent spate of random stabbings" in Japan is a fad. Same as the family-member murdering/dismembering fad more than one year ago, or the suicide/neighbor homicide by hydrogen sulfide fad a few months ago (not sure that one's completely over, though). As such, it will sooner or later go away. Nip individuality in the bud and you get little robots!

The dysfunctional mental state of the larger part of the Japanese society, however, is not temporary. And waiting for the current fad to go away is, of course, not a solution, not only because it would be morally wrong to do so and more lives would (and, unfortunately, will) be lost in a meaningless way, but also because something else is sure to come up and "inspire" these people who need to vent their anger and are unable to find a less violent way to do it.

Yeah, let's ban long, double-blade knives and cleaning solutions and... what else? Banning the "tools" will always be useless, for a very simple reason: a desperate individual who wants to harm those around him/her will easily find a way to do that (or, in the case of disturbed Japanese individuals, an alternative source of inspiration). Hell, if I, right now, have a sudden urge to kill or at least severely maim someone, I can find within my reach at least 2-3 "tools" to do it. And I'm at my desk, not in the kitchen or in some workshop.

So, "preventing" is not stopping somebody who decided to kill or hurt people to vent their anger at... who knows what or who. Preventing is either providing that person with an alternative, safer way to deal with their anger, and/or thinking of ways to diminish the chances that your average Tanaka-san reaches such a level of mental distress.

How can "society" do that? Well, let's look around for a moment, shall we? If we consider the lives of most Japanese people, I'm sure we can see where the anger and the idea that "randomly killing unknown people on the street is the way to go" comes from. Yeah, these have become clichees, but it's true:

manga and tv-dramas don't help on morality issues; commonplace overtime work doesn't do any good to people's state of mind and definitely increases work-related stress, especially since that overtime is done not because you want to finish a task or you feel that you cannot rest until you do that, but because you know your boss and coworkers expect nothing less of you, in an otherwise meaningless job unsatisfying social relationships (family, friends) deny people exactly the kind of emotional outlet and support they need when life becomes too much.

Speaking of which: God may have given you your family, and you're stuck with it, but the Company did not give you friends, it gave you coworkers! Learn the difference, for there is one, and sometimes it's huge. It will save you all the disappointment and keep you from thinking that your "friends" don't appreciate you. Simple rule: if someone does not appreciate you (or even like you that much), it means they're not your friends, and you shouldn't take their opinion about you as absolute truth. Learn to trust yourself more, and find some real friends, people who understand and relate to you, and you'll see how fast life gets better!

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Posted in: 16-year-old boy arrested for barging into ex-girlfriend's high school with knife in Kitakyushu See in context

Totally agree with the view Fair dinkum! has expressed in several posts.

Reading this story, I imagine this kid as a frustrated individual with a desperate need to express his anger but no clear idea of how to do that. And then there was the Akihabara tragedy just one day before. And the kid thinks: "Yeah, that's it! People will notice me then!"

Is it weird thinking like that? For most of us, with a strong sense of free will and of choice between right and wrong, definitely! But for some Japanese teenagers (I'm inclined to say "most", but I am hardly qualified to give such statistics), raised in such a strongly hierarchical society that snuffs out all independent tendencies and encourages (read "enforces") uniformity, and used to have no original ideas and copying them from somewhere/someone else all the time, it all of a sudden does not seem that strange anymore.

Just the other day I was talking to a friend about possible copycat actions after what happened on Sunday, and my first reaction was: "Why would anyone copy THAT? I partly understand suicidal people in copying a method that was proven simple and highly effective, but... random stabbing?" But then, I wasn't raised in the J-system, by J-standards and regulations, and as such, my thought patterns are obviously different.

Maybe the PM, instead of requesting increased security measures, should propose a plan for heavily funding research aimed at analyzing the general mental state of the nation and its main trends. Look at the cause and stop being so surprised by the effect!

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Posted in: Unsuspecting passenger returns cannabis after sniffer dog test botched at Narita See in context

Location: Narita Airport. Undertrained Customs Dog meets Incompetent Customs Officer

UCD: Okay, let's get this over with. It's late and my bitch is horny. Snif-snif... Are? Snif-snif... What the hell... Hey man, you ain't got no weed on you!

ICO: He-he! That's right, dawg, it's not on me!

UCD: What'd you do with it?

ICO: I stashed it in some bag on the carousel.

UCD: You did what??? Are you stupid or something? What, am I supposed to sniff all those bags now? I'll never find it, you know I'm totally undertrained for that kind of stuff. I'm only in this thing for the uniform, man, bitches love it!

ICO: Hmmm... Ooops?

UCD: Moron! How could you be so irresponsible and trample on a traveller's human rights like that?

ICO: How could I... what? Hey, wait a... He-he! Dawg, you almost had me going there for a second... Hell, I thought you were serious! Ha-ha, that was rich!

UCD: He-he! Yeah, I know, just made that up on the spot... But still, if that weed gets lost, it's our asses, man!

ICO: Hey, it's okay, the boss won't say a thing, he's just as bad as we are, and he knows it...

UCD: But if this leaks out... specially to those JT posting bastards... you know they're gonna have a field day, they'll make mince meat out of our asses! And then the sh*t may hit the fan big-time!

ICO: Hm, didn't think that far... Ooops?

UCD: Moron!

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Posted in: Unsuspecting passenger returns cannabis after sniffer dog test botched at Narita See in context

taiko666, I doubt the customs guy chose a gaijin bag to place the weed in on purpose, he probably planted it randomly in the first bag he thought of as convenient for the "task". This, however, speaks of the total lack of consideration these officers have for the average traveller, be it a Japanese national or not, and of the ease with which they are willing to transform the tourists into their test subjects. Hell, after all, that's what they did with the fingerprinting "counter-terrorist" measure, isn't it? I mean, I don't recall being asked if I'm okay with being fingerprinted at the airport, pretty much the same way the owner of the bag wasn't asked if he's okay with carrying stuff that, under the wrong circumstances, could land him in jail.

Or maybe the customs guy is just plain stupid...

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Posted in: Unsuspecting passenger returns cannabis after sniffer dog test botched at Narita See in context

I remember a few weeks back there was this news report about some police drill aimed at evaluating the response of J-cops in case of a terrorist attack; in that case everybody, including the "bad guys", knew exactly what to do, where to go and at what point to go down, with the crowds cheering from the side. The JT posters back then were outraged by the complete control of the whole operation and by the fact that nothing was left to chance, when in the real world anything can go different than the rehearsed scenario.

Well... THIS is what happens when a J-cop acts on impulse and tries to add one extra variable (or should I say "any variable") to the scenario. It all goes to sh*t! Maybe the reason why the guys high-up on the hierarchy insist on not letting anything to chance is because they know something...

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