nandakandamanda comments

Thanks taj for the clarification! Really sad and unfortunate story for all concerned. So easy to take your eyes off a young child. There but for the grace of God go I...

Even in the ill-fated 1940 Tokyo Olympics they planned for a September marathon.

Quotes: “he went with his 3-year-old brother and his 66-year-old grandfather to play at some sand dunes 400 meters away.”

and...”home, which was about 100 meters away”...

So how far away was it, I wonder?

PS When the first marathon runner or walker or spectator dies, the whole event will end in farce.

Sounds like inadequate planning and a face-saving exercise. Running street events in Tokyo at this time of year is just wrong.

If Boris apologized he might say sorry for 1. the jokes and 2. for actually supporting a woman’s right to wear the burka in public in Britain. Only a small percentage of Muslim women insist on wearing versions of it, but he was clearly on their side, even if it does in his opinion look ridiculous.

Can’t see anything wrong with those little tents if some people prefer them for changing etc. Quite colorful in fact.

I paid cash in a pub for two drinks today and the transaction was over in a couple of seconds, much quicker than using a card. No security issues with cash, either. Just because the mass media tells us that we are all going cashless, that is no reason for the average Japanese person to believe it or even to be attracted to the idea.

Part of the cumulative damage must be from cracking heads together.

So many possibilities, but I hope they can rule out the prolific Nikko groper referred to at the entrance to Takino-Ojinja (Futarasan Jinja), the warning sign in Takeshi Hasegawa's post above. If Tiphaine had reacted badly to being groped...., but then she could just as easily have hurt an ankle and fallen off one of the paths.

Sign.

"Warning! People are often approached by someone offering to act as a guide, but then taken advantage of and groped. The shrines here have never requested anyone to act as a guide, so please be aware."

"He was later dismissed as head coach of the Shigakkan University wrestling team"...

And why isn't Tanioka Kuniko the University President apologizing for publicly defending her beloved Sakae and for slagging off Icho?

Japan is a democracy, and most people prefer cash.

A discerning bear, but national news?

The Times letter column.....

Sir, Boris Johnson should not apologise for telling the truth. His evocative analogy is unfortunate but he is justified in reminding everyone that the Wahhabi/Salafi-inspired fad of female facial masking has no Koranic legitimacy. It is, however, a nefarious component of a trendy gateway theology for religious extremism and militant Islam.

The burka and niqab are hideous tribal ninja-like garments that are pre-Islamic, non-Koranic and therefore un-Muslim. Although this deliberate identity-concealing contraption is banned at the Kaaba in Mecca it is permitted in Britain, thus precipitating security risks, accelerating vitamin D deficiency, endorsing gender-inequality and inhibiting community cohesion.

The retrogressive Islamic clergy has succeeded in persuading ill-informed Muslims through suspect secondary sources that God wants women to cover their faces, when in reality it is a toxic patriarchy controlling women. Is it any wonder that many younger women have internalised this poisonous chauvinism by asserting that it is their human right to hide their faces? Johnson did not go far enough. If Britain is to become a fully integrated society then it is incumbent that cultural practices, personal preferences and communal customs that aggravate social division should be firmly resisted. For this reason Britain must emulate France, Belgium, Austria, Bulgaria and Denmark in banning the burka.

Dr Taj Hargey

Imam, Oxford Islamic Congregation

Typhoon No.14 is now approaching from the SW and may slam into Amami Oshima. At present the J met office is giving neither size nor intensity figures, but they say it is starting to build up.

Canadian swimmers, just stay in air-conditioned buildings and you'll be fine here.

Canadian swimmers, just stay in air-conditioned buildings and you'll be fine here.

Canadian swimmers, just stay in air-conditioned buildings and you'll be fine here.

Someone gave my explanatory post a minus above so I should apologize and explain.

To be more precise. This typhoon has been classified by the J meteorological office as 'tsuyoi' or 'strong'. The first paragraph of this article in English however uses the word 'powerful', which might be in the dictionary and surely sounds better, but might also simply be a flourish of journalese or poetic license.

As with all warnings of approaching storms, it is better to exaggerate the danger in advance, to make sure everyone stays safe, this time. Next time around however, many people tend not to take such warnings so seriously.

On the J scale you can see that a) this typhoon has no real size, ie it is not yet able to be defined as ‘large’ or ‘very large’, and b) the word 強い ‘tsuyoi’ limits the definition of its power to ‘strong’, ie neither ‘weak’ nor ‘violent’ under the Fujita scale.

Very precise these words, but rarely do typhoons obey them exactly. And will it be a predominantly wind typhoon or a rain typhoon?

https://www.jma.go.jp/jma/kishou/know/typhoon/1-3.html

Forget about sympathy for the athletes, organizers and spectators.

The only way to convince Tokyo or the IOC to change the venue or the season is to point out that New Olympic and World Records are very unlikely to be set in debilitating tropical heat.

They maybe need a room with a bucket (fitted with a seat).

No mention of the Olympics in this article, so I did some digging around and found most of the missing information here:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/07/japan-moving-mosque-welcomes-muslims-180726020125084.html

Still way too many beautiful orphans stuck in Japanese institutions with very few rights. Many cannot even marry legally without any known and provable background. LGBT couples could be useful in helping to clean up this hidden and shameful scandal.

Well we are invited to leave a comment, but the article does not give much information. So I guess, “Wow, that is something quite unusual!”

And, “Tell us more!”

Betting they don’t have air conditioning in the clink.

In self-defense, she said she did not break ALL the violins and bows. So, not just a straight case of domestic violince?

The other aspect to ‘packed’ is to make it invisible.

If a member of the public even glimpses a knife and panics, or perceives a threat of danger, (regardless of whether such intent was there or not) the police can act.

In other words the new regulation (which actually restates the old) clarifies what behavior might be legally actionable, the police tending to follow only the letter of the law.

The reality is as others have stated above, that you must have a valid and checkable reason for carrying a blade, (they might phone to ask the person you say you are selling it to, for example) and it should be packaged in such a way that your intent is obviously transport alone.

A quick look around finds the Japanese word Konpo/Kompo 梱包 being used in this context. The understanding in the Japanese mind has to be ‘properly/thoroughly packed’ or ‘packed away’, ie out of sight and not easily extracted.

https://www.google.co.jp/amp/amp.tokyo-np.co.jp/s/article/2018072001000941.html

From this article in Japanese: 国土交通省は２０日、列車内に梱包していない刃物類の持ち込みを禁じる方針を明らかにした。

People talk colloquially about ‘packing’ a gun. If you are ‘packing’ a knife, that means carrying a concealed knife. In this article the English word ‘pack’ could be ambiguous.