Leopalace comments

I guess this isn't something most of this forum's readers care about, until one of their children end up dead from a silent car. I've been in a Prius taxi and it's creepy how quite and fast they are. I think not only cyclists and blind people rely on sound to some extent, probably a lot of us do. I'd like to hear from presto345 about the experience of being a Prius owner and how pedestrians interacted with it. Also if there are any hearing impaired forum members.

How about cyclists, those of us who ride defensively, don't listen to music players, pick our noses, smoke or read manga while riding, all senses, including hearing traffic are vital to our safety. I've witnessed how quiet hybrids are on a couple of occasions. It's only a matter of time before the injury list and dearth toll mounts. With the ever growing number of cyclists, car makers will, in the end bow to making hybrids easy to identify by size and distance with some kind of sound generation.

Somewhat vague about teacher's working conditions/health benifits.....etc

Too much time on my hands and just looked up the bridge on Google Earth, looks pretty lame, so does Kochi. The locals seem pretty excited about the movie being set in their town though.

Scotty (James Doohan) was also Canadian, both he and Shatner are from Vancouver, it's interesting that they aren't 'Canadian icons'.

My hobby is whitewater kayaking, I often see camping families with small children along the river edge, of fast flowing rivers. If an adult, never mind a child falls into the river, unless they are wearing a PFD (life jacket), there is a high risk of drowning. I'd advise any parent camping riverside to ensure their kids wear PFDs at all times.

Next we'll find out he had a ball gag in his mouth.

The rope detail is kind of interesting

To LoveUSA

"There are millions of chikan occurrences everyday in this country, must you post every story here?"

Why bother to read them?

Awwww, they are adorable!

I think in everyday life, we anticipate lots of things and don't realize we're even doing so. I can imagine how this could easily happen, even to myself. People go out onto crosswalks al the time without carefully looking, most of the time they are lucky.

Tip for those Gaijin "fresh off the boat", Pachinko parlours have nice clean toilets and nobody ever bats an eye at you walking in and using them.

I didn't think it was very funny, one word answers seldom are. I do like him as an actor though, hope he does do more movies in the future.

I don't know if it's just me, but being subjected to smokers in Japan is becoming more and more of a nuisance.

Alaska Airlines smaller planes like Dash and Embrairs only have seat floatation devices, I've been on their flights several times.

Not that agree one way or the other with Air Canada's decision, but apparently safety experts reckon that on a water emergency landing most survivors would inflate their life vests inside the aircraft, despite being told not to, and blocking the emergency exits.

Sure, it's a useless, geeky hobby, I'm in full agreement, but that's my personal taste. These guys are clearly having fun dressing up and walking around with plastic swords and stuffed animals, let them be, they aren't causing us any harm. It's great to see Japan promoting and celebrating itself through visual arts. Lets face it, their music industry won't produce international artists like the UK's anytime soon and their film/TV industry isn't exactly knocking Hollywood off of it's top spot. What they are good at is graphic novels and animation (although not really to my taste)........Have fun anime geeks, welcome to Japan.

From what I've seen, Filipino hostesses do a pretty good job of singing songs with japanese.