kazan comments

Is there no home/sex/life education in Japanese schools? People(guys especially) should understand how easy it is to get pregnant or get somebody pregnant and how much of a challenge it is actually to raise a kid or 3. It's not something you give up cause it's cutting into your time or cramping your style.

Slightly off topic, but no, there isn't for the most part. I think it is a real issue that needs to be addressed.

But back on topic: this is just so messed up. You don't punish any child by punching them, and from the sound of the article, it doesn't even sound like this guy lashed out against something the child was doing at that moment. It almost sounds like he substituted gentle explanations/scolding with punches. And for crying out loud, if you are frustrated, punch a wall, punch a pillow, punch something that won't be hurt by your poor control.

I also don't think its possible in every case to guarantee that the doctor will definitely work as hard to save a donor who is dying... I mean .. doctors are humans too - They are just as likely to be touched by the story of a child in the next room who will die if they don't receive organ (X) as any of us

It would be a violation of the Hippocratic Oath that all doctors must take if they were to work to less than the best of their abilities to save a dying person, donor or not. Besides, the doctors don't get to decide who the organ goes to. There is a waiting list for each organ: organs have been rush-transported great distances for this purpose, and also the donor must be a blood/tissue match. Finally, the criteria for a "donor organ" is very strict - the person must have died in a specific way (people who die in car crashes often can't donate, as their organs get damaged by the crash; the same goes for people who have overdosed on medicine or drugs) and must also be within a certain physical condition (not too overweight or underweight, no damaging diseases). Even if you have a heart attack or stroke, the chemical changes and stress your body undergoes is sometimes enough to render your organs unacceptable.

My dad worked as an anaesthesiologist before he retired, and from his whole career, he could count the number of organ donors the hospital was able to get organs from on both his hands. This is why Japan needs to encourage the procedure - there are plenty of organ donors around the world, but very few viable organs.

Ugh, this is so messed up. I hope the girl gets a chance to grow up in a safe and happy environment.

There's a 19 year old kid from my area who has to be sent to the U.S. for a heart transplant at a prohibitively expensive cost - somewhere in the hundreds of millions of yen. I see his relatives and friends at almost every major event asking for donations. It's sad that he obviously cannot get a transplant here.

Ive just canvassed MIL for her opinions and she said for Japanese the idea of being cut up in horrible, plus they dont want to give organs to someone they dont know because they wont receive anything in return (WTF??!).

Speaking of donations, I've heard this excuse too. I find the culture of gift-giving/receiving here very polite, but it hasn't seem to have bred much of a charitable mindset, even when it comes to things that are of no use anymore. I've also heard a religious belief that if one's body isn't "whole" when one dies, you won't be able to pass into reincarnation/the afterlife; my friend gave this as the reason why she doesn't have pierced ears (I'm assuming she's probably not an organ donor).

Because plenty of happy couples are living together and raising children together without getting married, I do think the (at least formal) institution of marriage is outdated. I think a lot of people are seeing this in the black-and-white view: you are either single or you are married. Who needs a certificate to tell them they are officially a family? There are certain financial benefits that come from being married, and of course, disadvantages as well, but whether or not you and your s.o. are married has little to do with the stability of a home and/or family.

So yeah, I think marriage will become outdated eventually.

There are plenty of reasons for being lazy too.

I'm certainly not disagreeing with that, but tkoind2 and stevecpfc explained it well. With the collapse of the financial system in America, Japan's homeless situation became even worse: thousands of factory workers were laid off and kicked out of company housing, rendering them jobless and homeless all at once. And many of these homeless are middle-aged and older men with no specific set of skills a.k.a. the very people nobody is hiring right now. Their situation is a lot worse than mere laziness.

there are plenty of jobs available if people are prepared to get off their backsides and high horses and do 'em.

There are more reasons for being homeless than simply being lazy, you know. I wouldn't be so quick to judge.

Wow, this is the dumbest idea ever. Just what Kyoto, the ancient capitol of Japan, famous for its temples and culture needs: an aquarium! Logic seems to have officially died in Japan.

Zenny - I'm not disagreeing with you in that rape is about control, not sex. And while your winking smiley is tasteless, I also agree that resistance doesn't have to be physical.

However, the site still frustrates me. It might only be the wording of how they write the article, but seriously, 80% of women instigated the violence? It honestly does sound like they are trying to justify something. Coupled with what jamal2609 said up there (how did they get these figures? Why don't they disclose their research methods?) and I'm sincerely disinclined to believe that this site is a credible source for information about rape.

Article said he was an "Aquaintance" i.e. someone she knew fleetingly.

In newspaper talk, 'aquaintance' can mean anyone not related to you by blood or marriage. Newspapers tend not to use words like boyfriend unless they are deliberately trying to be sensationalist.

Zenny - If a woman has to resort to physical violence to get a man to back off, the guy is already in the wrong. Whether or not a woman knows killer self-defense skills should not have an effect on whether or not she gets raped. I think what's bothering Cleo and I about the site (and I did explore it a bit) is that it doesn't address the underlying problem of rape, i.e. men's issues with self-control; I personally read this: "Welp, someone's going to sexually assault you and unless you study our self defence courses you're going to get raped."

We shouldn't have to worry about self-defense, protecting ourselves, or even this whole 'don't make the guy angry' nonsense. Rape is unacceptable, no matter what the circumstances are, and people need to learn that.

Personally I would call her foolish. Going to a guys Apartment at 02:00am to discuss something.

If she was in a relationship with the man, she would trust him enough to do that. If your significant other called you up in the middle of the night and said "I need to talk to you about something important" wouldn't you be worried? We don't have all the facts in this case, but her visit to his apartment (especially when she thought he was alone) was not neccessarily foolish.

It honestly wouldn't be difficult for the girl to hide her condition; I've seen women here who are very obviously pregnant, and I've seen people like my neighbor, who look perhaps just a bit fatter than normal - if she hadn't had her baby a month later, I wouldn't have believed she was even pregnant.

As for the girl's actions, I feel sorry for her. She was clearly scared, and compounding that with the observation that the baby seeminly died soon after he was born, she reacted out of fear and did the only thing she could think of to hide what had happened.

What's distressing to me about this article is to learn that some people (Takahashi, etc) clearly have an idea about how education can be made better - and to also learn that the policy makers aren't listening to them.

if she didn't properly care for the baby, she basically killed him

We do not know for sure whether or not the baby's death was preventable or not; there are genetic issues that can result in a stillborn child that no treatment exists for. Like I said, we don't know many of the facts involved, but I am willing to give her the benefit of the doubt in the baby's death for the time being.

Disposal of the body, however, I still think she made a bad decision, so we are in agreement in that respect. She should have done the responsible thing, no matter how frightened she was.

Killing and throwing away her baby certainly wouldn't have been the best answer she could come up with if she cared about the baby even a tiny bit.

We don't know for sure that she killed her baby, it's unfair to make these assumptions.

I can think of a reason why she didn't take the baby's body to the hospital: if the hospital suspected foul play, she'd get turned in to the police. She might have been terrified of this, which led her to make the poor decision of using the garbage instead. Whatever the case, whatever happened, this is a sad event.

No, there is not. Please don´t spread that urban rumour. There is a multi-faith prayer room in the Pentagon, not a mosque.

Thanks for the correction. I don't doubt fewer people would be mad about the building of a multi-faith prayer room... but I can guarantee people would start freaking out when Muslims began showing up to use it.

From that day, everyone became a potential enemy or a "traditional or historical enemy", not a potential friend.

Everything you wrote is absolutely spot on. I couldn't agree more.

PS. I know the Pentagon has no bearing on the New York site, but guess what - there's a mosque in there too. I don't see anyone freaking out about it the way they are over the proposed community center.

No civilized society allows for the desecration of its dead or insults to their memory by outsiders, least of all to those wrongfully killed by a historical or traditional enemy.

How exactly would a community center be desecrating the dead? What about the practicing Muslims who were working in the two towers and in the Pentagon and died that day? Are they "outsiders"? Or a "historical/traditional enemy"? What a fine way to honor their memory, by continuing our irrational hatred for their religion. The fact that the 9/11 attackers were Muslim extremists should have no bearing on where people are allowed to worship or gather.

MisterCreosote: I would think that most people would consider "hallowed ground" the place where the towers fell, not where they found plane engines. The point I was trying to make is people are making a huge deal about a mosque/community center being an insensitive gesture, while in my opinion, there are much more insensitive things much closer to the actual Ground Zero than the old BCF building.

Ground Zero mosque, portrait of the Virgin Mary smeared in elephant dung.

Ahh, people who don't read the news properly. The mosque isn't being built on the site of the attacks, it's several blocks away. There are porn stores closer to Ground Zero than the mosque is, so tell me, which is more disrespectful? And I included the Virgin Mary comment because again, the news misreported it. No dung was used on the painting, it was used as a stand to prop it up - just another example of the media twisting something to warp the opinions of the public.

Bottles of clean water, and Calorie Mate, as well as some essential vitamins and maybe some dried fish or fruit.

Münchausen syndrome

Possible, but unlikely. It's a shame nobody could intervene to stop this - I wonder if there were any warning signs.

Also of note is that these types of family murders seem to increase in times of economic instability, the theory being "I don't want my family to suffer the shame of being poor, so we're going away together." Whatever the reason, it's a tragedy.

How absolutely awful. When will people learn that there are other solutions to their problems? My condolences to this poor family.

Really? All of this happened "in your area"? You must live in the most violent neighborhood in America. OK, assuming that you live in Beirut USA, what are the reasons?

This has nothing to do with the article at hand, so if the moderator deletes it, I have no problem, but I'll answer anyways. I live in a fairly conservative area, and in this case, the broad label of "conservative" runs the gamut from friendly people to KKK members. Popular targets of the more extreme groups include an abortion clinic owned by a family friend, any mosques within city limits, and my neighborhood synagogue (which is set on fire roughly once a year).

As for reasons, only the fundamentalist Christians know for sure. I would guess it has something to do with these buildings going against their personal beliefs. There has never been a Bible burning in my city however, and none of the buildings have held particularly inflammatory events that go beyond day-to-day business.

It's not 'Beirut, USA' as you mockingly call it, but crimes against people of different faiths/beliefs in particular seem to happen more frequently than other crimes.

And seeing the other townspeople's attitudes towards Muslims is what motivates me so much in this debate. Many of the Muslims I know are friendly, open-minded people who dislike the zealotry of al Qaeda as much as the area Christians. This attitude didn't stop them from getting openly attacked in the weeks following 9/11, and they are still discriminated against now. And then this man in Florida decides to hold a burn the Quran day - an insult to anyone of the Muslim faith. When are we going to learn to stop judging books by their covers?

Well, that and the fact that no one is likely to go and blow you up for doing so. Guess you missed that little fact.

I couldn't think of a better analogy, but given that the fundamentalist Christians in my area have bombed abortion clinics, synagogues, and mosques for less than burning Bibles, I thought it was a reasonable comparison.

Thats America, thats freedom. Love it, or leave it.

Read the other posts. People here do support freedom of speech, and the right for an idiot to be an idiot. But America's not a black-and-white "love it or leave it" place, contrary to your argument. Do I support his right to burn Qurans? Yes. Do I support his actions, in that they are inflammatory to extremist Muslims and overwhelmingly rude (at best) to the rest of the Muslim world? No.

To not stand up for what you believe in because you are scared of the consequences seems the most cowardly thing of all.

Excuse me? Just because I am concerned about the lives of soldiers and America's image with the Muslim world doesn't mean I don't believe in freedom of speech. Nobody is forcing this guy not to burn Qurans. We are, however, saying that it is a stupendously idiotic and insensitive action, and that if this man had any respect for other religions, Muslims (including American ones), and the danger that American soldiers are in, he would rethink his decision.

These guys should take their Gods go to a boxing ring somewhere and leave the rest of us to get on with life. Google "Jesus vs. Mohammed", someone's made a great animation of this very idea.

This is the problem with mysticism. If one actually believes that these writings are the word of God or embody God, such a person is likely to hate all kinds of things irrationally.

Which is the reason why fundamentalist Christians flip out at Bible burnings in the same way that fundamentalist Muslims are going to flip out at this Quran burning. The only difference is we're not currently fighting a violent war against fundamentalist Christians. I'm all for freedom of speech and expression, and people have a right, especially in America, to do what they want. However, if your actions start harming other people as a result, I believe you should at least give them some second thoughts.

Yes, offering that much money to citizens to trap monkeys in their houses is going to reduce the maulings. Good move Shizuoka.

But isn´t it fascinating to watch how thousands of peaceful muslims suddenly become very unpeaceful at the drop of a pin (or a koran, as it were?)

Not the ones I've met, at least. Although I can honestly understand why they'd be so upset over the burning of their holy book. Radical Islam is a fairly recent development (my friend's grandfather talks about the days when men and women could attend weddings together) and many practitioners of the faith are peaceful rational people. They don't make the news, however, unlike the violent ones (who are probably going to react to this protest the same way they would react to getting poked in the eye with a stick). This whole Quran burning thing is the product of intolerance, generalizations, and misunderstanding about the Muslim faith.

This guy is insulting the thousands of peaceful Muslims out there and making all Americans look like close-minded bigots because his little crusade is getting so much media attention. I know he has a right to protest and act in ways he want, but whether those actions are doing more harm than good - that's something he should think about.

But it is also an indication that Japan is not as safe as the Japanese like to imagine it to be. It is just far more subtle at being dangerous.

Very true. She should have never agreed to go to such a secluded place by herself. What a tragic story, I hope they find who is responsible.