Nihon Tora comments

Bring him to Japan justice..

ASAP..

Remember the last time the French and Japanese got together to deal jointly with a convicted murderer/cannibal/necrophiliac? The Japanese ended up releasing him unconditionally only for him to go on to gain some kind of macabre celebrity status in Japan being invited as a speaker, commentator, author etc.

Probably just best to let the French deal with it.

I'd like to see the evidence instead of convicting someone just because the girl's body can't be found.

Just pull up the Wikipedia page about the case and read it.

If that doesn't convince you then just consider the fact that he was found guilty in a trial in a country with a respectable, modern legal system in which he was defended by one of the best lawyers in the whole country.

I remember this girl from Tsukuba where I think she went to the uni.

Just because no body was found, it doesn't mean that there isn't enough evidence there to convict this guy. He was obviously involved in her disappearance and there was abundant evidence for it - he's a jealous, possessive, manipulative psychopath. His 28 year term should be upgraded to life with no possibility of parole until he admits what he's done and reveals where her body is so her family can get some closure.

For cases like this, the punishment should not be about rehabilitation, it should be about retribution and sending a clear message that society does not tolerate this behavior. These people should be spending the remainder of their lives in prison. To hell with trying to turn them into functioning citizens.

However, the huge obstacle for Japanese, at the moment, is weak Yen and outrageously high price of everything in Hawaii.

Also the crazy flight prices. It almost costs as much to fly to Hawaii as it does to Europe.

Attempted murder for stabbing someone in the leg?...ok.

A stabbing in the leg could easily kill someone depending where on the leg and how deep - severing a main artery a person could bleed out quite quickly.

If someone is crazy enough to go attacking someone by stabbing them with a knife, I think it’s quite reasonable that the default charge should be attempted murder, even if they only end up slicing the little finger. They can always defend themselves and get cleared or found guilty of a lesser charge in court.

YouTubers should be banned in Japan.

Not all YouTubers are bad! There are some that produce some excellent content - Chris Broad does plenty of very good Japan-centric stuff without causing any trouble or disrespecting anyone - on the contrary, he's been a big proponent of the Tohoku region, for example. One of YouTubes biggest names, Pew Die Pie came over a while back and now makes mainly Japan vlog type videos, again without causing any trouble for anyone. I'm sure there are plenty of others... CDawgVA, Oriental Pearl, Sharmeleon, Dogen, Sundai Love are just a few of the other foreign YouTubers in Japan I've seen that seem to enjoy varying levels of success without annoying anyone.

There was another case a few years back a pretty girl stabbed her host bf. He didn’t die but was seriously injured - she had fully intended to kill him by plunging the largest knife she could find deep into his abdomen. She got something stupid like a 3 year sentence. In other words, a brutal stabbing gets a sentence in the same ball park as a recidivist shoplifter (two years, on JT the other day). Maybe if she’d been put away for a decade or two like she should have been, the girl in this report might have thought twice.

I prefer Twitter - hugely recognisable and successful brand - the name was relevant to the the function of the platform and a cute logo to go with it. X has no meaning - it is a label that relies entirely on the success of the Twitter label to gain any kind of traction or recognition. Without wanting to pass judgement on Musk as a person or on his overall running of Twitter (X), I just can't understand the logic behind this re-branding - for me it was a dumb and rather arrogant move. But then again, I'm not the richest bloke on the planet, so what do I know.

They should officially move the venue so that idiot Ken can see that there are other places than can EASILY hold a Halloween event. Saitama Shintoshin Station area comes to mind. They have a very large plaza which could easily accommodate an event of that size.

Sounds like a sensible idea, but one of the attractions of the Shibuya Halloween was that it was just basically a completely spontaneous thing and not some pre-organized event in the middle of nowhere. Not sure why they focused on the actual Halloween night - at it's peak a few years back, it always happened on the the Saturday night just before Halloween - the reason being that people went there to show off their costumes and then after go to some party in a club or bar somewhere - there is absolutely nothing else like that to do in Saitama Shintoshin.

I'm not sure why they became obsessed with stopping this event - I heard that there were a few public order issues in recent years, but even back when I used to go to it and there wasn't any trouble, they were trying to put a stop to it. In London, they have the Notting Hill carnival and every year there are several hundred arrests and half a dozen stabbings, but they don't stop the entire event! The overcrowding thing just doesn't wash with me because Japan organizes many events that attract far more people to similar urban environments with no issue - if they can organize over 1 million people around the tight streets of Asakusa for the fireworks, then I'm sure they can organize a crowd some 10 times smaller around Shibuya. My guess is that the real reason for wanting to stop the Halloween event is that it's part of a gentrification of the area - they want the young crowd out to be replaced by a more monied, young professional class more like Ebisu or Aoyama.

Israel are currently doing their best to create the next generation of Palestinian terrorists hell-bent on the destruction of Israel and every Jew within, that will be far worse than any previous generation.

It's the most thick-headed response to the events of October 7th imaginable.

 The statue of Hachiko should have been transferred to another location and close the train and subway stations and businesses tomorrow for 24 hours. Stay safe Shibuya and look after each other.

Why? Did anyone do anything to the Hachiko statue in previous years?

The way people are going on about this, you'd think it was a bunch of rioters and terrorists descending on Shibuya to smash the entire place up. While I haven't been there for a few years now, the last time I went it was just a bunch of young people milling around having fun showing off their creative Halloween costumes.

Bit late to ask this isn't it? The Shibuya Halloween thing usually went off on the Saturday before Halloween, meaning if it was going to happen, it would have happened on Saturday 28th. Can't see there being many people there on a Tuesday night....

Deliberately withholding food, water, fuel, electricity and medical aid from a captive civilian population while simultaneously bombing the hell out of the entire city. If that isn’t a war crime, then what is exactly? As usual Israel gets away with it because their supporters in the west ignore it or make excuses for it. It’s a disgrace.

It's possible. But not likely. Drug dealers are not going to go adding more expensive drugs to something to then sell on. If anything they do the exact opposite, cut it with something that doesn't cost anything but looks/tastes/smells similar. Maybe get your quotes from someone who actually knows drug dealers rather than some academic who has probably never even met one and has never had any real-world experience of that lifestyle.

What is a low income household?

Many families have both parents working but make under a million yen a month.

A million yen a month is 12 million yen a year. You say that as if it is a subsistence salary or something - it is close to double the average family income in Japan. Most households would be quite comfortable on that income, unless they insisted on living in a large family home in central Tokyo.

The comments from Japan's foreign minister to her Iranian counterpart to try to ask Hamas to calm tensions with Israel, just a few days after Hamas had committed one of the most brutal terrorist atrocities in modern history, just sounded woefully out of touch with the situation - bizarre almost.

Japan should stop pretending to have any interest in a conflict that it really doesn't - it neither understands it, nor does it hold much influence over any of the belligerents.

If Japan wants to be involved at all, I think it would be best sticking to humanitarian efforts.

Still on an iphone8 - haven't replaced the battery but it's down to 74% of it's original capacity. Even so, it is still running with nothing dialed down. I'll have a go at changing the battery myself at some point. I've serviced my previous old iphones myself before with varying levels of success - it would cost almost as much to pay apple to change it as it would to buy another 2nd hand iphone8 or even something a bit newer.

Not my cup of tea. I’ve had some Japanese wines and they taste very similar. I usually go for a good rioja, although since they slackened the requirements, the lower grades have gone downhill noticeably.

Even if Israel are successful in their objective and manage to kill every last member of Hamas and completely destroy the organization, if the cost of doing that is to kill thousands of innocent civilians, destroy their cities and homes, make orphans of children, terrorize a population of 2 million people, then something just as bad or worse than Hamas is only going to spring up in its place over the next generation.

Now a hospital attacked - each side blaming the other. Do Hamas or Islamic Jihad have rockets available that are capable of destroying an entire hospital? From what I've seen what they have look like little more than long-range RPGs.

Well, they won't be sending 10 million dollars there in hard cash will they? 10 million dollars worth of aid - food, medicines and so on. Nothing getting in at the minute, but many people working hard to ensure that supplies do get through. Israel has a bit of time and patience in light of the horrific and wholly unjustified attacks on their people, but that is fast running out - the more we see and hear about civilians dying in Gaza, the louder the voices will become calling for supplies to get through and for the blockade to end.

It's just such a horrible situation. If there is one organization that cares less about the lives of Gazan civilians than the IDF, its Hamas. They will gladly watch hundreds of thousands of Gazan civilians die of hunger and disease as long as it makes Israel look bad - as far as they are concerned, they are all martyrs to their cause. Their mentality is that of ISIS or the attackers at the Bataclan or the Manchester arena bombers.

I fully support Israel going after these terrorists, I don't equate civilians killed in Israeli bombing raids targeting Hamas, who deliberately hide among civilians, in Mosques and hospitals, with what Hamas have done - deliberately murdering unarmed civilians. But I also cannot condone turning off water, electricity, fuel and food and medical supplies that are going to be critical to the survival of 2 million citizens in the coming weeks, many of whom are completely innocent in all of this. Israel should abide by the established rules of war.

Turning housing stock into an investment opportunity for the wealthy is disastrous for regular working people - these are not stocks and shares or government bonds, they are homes that people need to buy or rent to live in. The situation in places like London is horrendous - working and even lower-middle class people will never be able to afford to buy a property there, forever living paycheck to paycheck because most of their salary is gone on rent.

They might have some success in attracting a few ultra-wealthy tourists here, but I have my doubts that will be enough to make a big difference in an economy the size of Japan.

There have always been incorrect decisions made in football matches. It really shouldn’t have happened with the VAR but it did and at the end of the day, you just have to accept it in the same way you would any other bad decision. Over the season I’m sure Liverpool will have a few bad decisions go their way. They’ll just have to suck it up and move on to the next game.

Don’t walk on escalators, don’t walk while texting, don’t walk while smoking…. Honestly, haven’t these people got more important things to worry about?

Personally, I hate standing on escalators and it annoys me when people in front of my are standing and blocking me from walking. It’s a waste of my time and a wasted opportunity to get a little exercise!

”Safety” zealots and jobsworths, thanks but no thanks, you take care of yourselves and I’ll worry about me!

You are useless at making a deal with someone if you give them something and simply hope that they might give something back in return. The normal way to do it is to say “We’ll give you this if, and only if, you give us that.” Any tax breaks given to companies should only be given if they increase salaries at the bottom end and middle by a certain amount. No salary increases, no tax breaks.

What happened at Minamata was unbelievable. They knew that the mercury from their factory was killing people and then they installed a filtration system that they knew would do nothing to filter mercury and then just continued to release the mercury into a different river. It wasn’t an accident, and it is no exaggeration to say that the people responsible were mass murderers.

A 30000 yen handout here, a bunch of coupons there - it won’t make the slightest difference. Governments across the world have to find ways to completely reverse, not just slow down or stop, the massive transfers of wealth from the lower and middle classes to the top 0.1% that have occurred over the last 20 years or so.

Well, when a small group of people at the top are deciding how the company's salaries and stock options should be split across the workforce, what do you think will happen? Precisely what does happen - they give the vast majority of it all to themselves and to hell with everyone else! It would be better if they took significantly less and paid the rest of their employees a better salary. It would surely be better for the company because well compensated workers will be more motivated, and better for society as a whole as it would help reduce wealth inequality.