TOKYOMANGO

Get your hand-printed limited edition TokyoMango t-shirt now (2 weeks only)

My friend Ben and I made a test run of TokyoMango t-shirts on Saturday. They're really nice, do you want one? If so, you can buy one here. Below are the details:

- All shirts are 100% cotton.
- Each t-shirt will be hand-silk screened by me and Ben on his Yudu machine. The shirt logo was custom-designed by Ben. Mango design courtesy of my web designer James.
- The Women's tees come in a t-shirt style (pistacio and white) and a spaghetti strap ribbed tank (yellow).
- The Men's tees come in orange and white. In the pic above, Ben is actually accidentally wearing a girl's tee, but you get the idea... the sleeves will be more manly on the one you get.
- You can choose a custom colored tee for $25. Just shoot me an email with your preference after you place the order.
- The sizes tend to run a little big (except for the tanktops). They might shrink in the wash.
- Some of you will receive a free surprise Japanese toy or gadget with your t-shirt! I'm just gonna randomly stick them into bags, so keep an eye out.
- We're taking orders over the next two weeks only, at least for this first printing. They'll ship at the end of those two weeks, when Ben & I will silkscreen them by hand.
- Last day to order is Monday, October 5th.

UPDATE: T-shirts are no longer for sale. Maybe we'll do another round sometime!

Video: Government's ominous meth warning

This short video clip made by the Japanese government aired on TV shortly after the recent drug arrest of actress Noriko Sakai. In it, a "bad" man peer pressures his girlfriend to try meth. She ends up folding to the pressure, then suffers choking coughs, addiction, and hallucinations. Is it just me or do these "drugs are horrible!" videos seem propaganda-ish? This is not only in Japan, btw &mdash I think the American PSAs about smoking, etc are just as bad.

(Thanks, Dave!)

Psychiatrist convicted of leaking arson-murder boy's confidential info

In June 2006, a 19-year old boy set fire to his home in Nara, killing his mother and two siblings almost instantly. It was horrifying. What happened next is pretty bad too. The court appointed a psychiatrist, Morimitsu Sakihama, to conduct psychiatric tests on the boy. Sakihama did as told, and then he leaked his assessment and confidential information the boy gave him to a journalist. "I did it to benefit the boy" was his lame excuse. The journalist, a woman named Atsuko Kusanagi, used the information to write a book about the boy titled I Decided to Kill my Dad.

Sakihama was convicted to four months in prison for violating the privacy of his patient yesterday, but I think the larger problem here is that news like this creates an even deeper mistrust of psychologists and psychiatrists than there already is. Mental health care in Japan is scant, and most doctors are quick to prescribe meds without even taking the idea of seeing a shrink into consideration. Problems like hikikomori and suicide arise in large part because these people see no escape. And then some government-entrusted psychiatrist dude comes along and spills his guts to a reporter... not a very good thing for mental health care's rap in an already skeptical society.

Link

Many Japanese die in ambulances because of strange policy

A 69-year old Tokyo man died two weeks ago because of a huge glitch in the Japanese ambulatory system. Somebody was just telling me about this recently. In Japan, if you call an ambulance, they then in turn have to call around to neighboring hospitals to see if the doctors in the emergency room have time to see another patient. As it goes, emergency rooms are often pretty busy and a lot of them say no. On this particular night, 14 hospitals said they were too busy and refused to take the ambulance in. The guy died 90 minutes after he was hit by a motorcycle. Most of those 90 minutes were spent in the ambulance, even though paramedics were at his side within minutes. He had severe head and back injuries and lost too much blood.

More than 14,000 emergency patients were rejected from hospitals three or more times in 2007. The record is a woman in her 70s who was having trouble breathing. She was denied entry by 49 hospitals. WTF?? One pregnant woman died in 2006 from a brain hemorrhage during childbirth because she was rejected by 19 hospitals.

Note to self: If ever in an emergency situation in Japan, don't call an ambulance. Call a cab instead, because if you show up at the door instead of succumbing to the courtesy system of the ambulances, they'll have to see you.

Link (Thanks, Walter!)

Want to Attend Japan's First Public Lesbian Wedding?

Kanako Otsuji, the openly gay politican who is running for national elections this summer, announced that she will be having a public wedding ceremony with her partner so that everyone can attend and see that this is totally okay. Here are the details:

Place: Ikeda Park, Naka-ku, Nagoya
Date: June 3, 2007
Time: 4:30PM
Dress code: Not specified
Gifts: An open mind
RSVP: Not necessary.

If anyone actually makes it out to the wedding, will you email me with an update? And pics, if you get any. Thanks!

Help Me Help My High School Not Destroy the World

To the board members of the American School in Japan:

I heard you guys are about to accept a giant donation from a cluster bomb company executive so you can light up the football field. That's the stupidest shit I've ever heard, and I hope someone knocks some sense into you before you sign up for it. Come on, guys. Cluster bombs are on the brink of being banned via a joint effort by the UN, Human Rights Watch, the Vatican, and many other global VIPs because they're dangerous and threatening to global peace and security, and because that makes them just suck.

It is so not cool to revamp a football field on the blood of thousands of civilians across the world.

OK, thanks. Hope you change your mind.

Lisa

Blog readers: Sign this petition if you agree with me.

Note: I didn't write this letter, some other do-gooder alumnus did.

Abused Woman Arrested For Visa Violations

A story about a kidnapped sex worker in the news today highlights a classic problem in Japan concerning trafficking and immigration.

A 37-year old Chinese sex worker in Tokyo was walking home early in the morning when a group of men gagged her, tied her up, threw her in a truck, beat her, and then made repeated phone calls to her friend asking for ransom money.

She was released today for no known reason, and arrived at her friend's house on a cab. They called the cops. The cops arrested the kidnapped Chinese sex worker.

Okay do you see why this is really fucked up? True, the woman was guilty of violating her visa provisions and being in Japan illegally. But hello. She's a kidnapping and abuse victim. And I am almost willing to bet that part of the reason she was kidnapped was because she was involved in one of the many trafficking rings that manipulates a vast majority of foreign sex workers in Japan in one way or another. If anyone learned a lesson from this incident, it's probably this: foreign sex workers learning that they should not report things like abuse, kidnapping, and trafficking to the cops because they could be deported.

It's the wrong lesson.

For more about trafficking in Japan, please read my Metropolis article.

107 People Died, But Is It All the Driver's Fault?

Today marks the second anniversary of a tragic train crash in Hyogo Prefecture that killed 107 people and injured over 500. They had a gathering commemorating the dead, but excluded the 23-year old driver, Ryujiro Takami's name from the ceremony. Takami died too, of course. But Japan Railways is making the point that the accident was his fault, and hence he should not be honored--honoring him would marginalize the regret that the company is trying to express to the victims' families.

This is interesting. What do you guys think of this decision by JR? Kinda cold, or appropriate given the circumstances?

Tangential thought: After last week's Virginia Tech shootings, 32 stones were laid out on the campus lawn, each one representing a victim. On the fourth or fifth day after the tragedy, a 33rd stone was added to honor the death of the killer himself. Was VT claiming him as a victim too? Maybe. Maybe it means that anyone's death, regardless of his mistakes or fuck-ups or psychosis, is a tragedy, no matter what. Or maybe it's acknowledging that he, too, was a victim of something, even if it was just something in his head. Of course this is highly controversial, but I'm sure Cho's family is deeply moved by the fact that someone thought it appropriate to mourn him, too.

In any case, I do feel bad for the train driver in the 2005 Hyogo incident. There is a lot of pressure on train drivers, especially in Japan, to be not a second late and barely a centimeter off in arriving at train stations. If there wasn't so much pressure to be on time, he might not have lost control and everyone might still be alive. And how can that be just that one guy's fault? In NYC, subways are late all the freaking time. But isn't that because the MTA prioritizes safety over timeliness? I think the right approach would have been for JR to say, yeah. Our driver messed up. But instead of scapegoating him, we are doing our best to protect our employees and customers from this ever happening again.

I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud.

Drop Off Your Baby Here

A Kumamoto hospital just announced that they're going to start a baby drop off service for parents who decided they don't want to raise their kids anymore. It's literally called the Baby Post Box, and it's presumably going to be at some side entrance of the hospital.

Do they have this in the US? It is the first in Japan, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's kind of a good idea that would prevent death from neglect, etc. I guess. But does it make it too easy to abandon the responsibilities of parenthood? Also, sometimes I put things in the mail that I don't really mean to, like magazine subscription postcards. Isn't it possible that a parent might, on a whim, drop off their kid while it's having a temper tantrum, only to realize what a mistake they made later?

Link

Multimillion Dollar Home Giveaway In Hawaii

What do you do when you're one of the richest guys in one of the richest countries in the world, and you have a reputation for spontaneously evicting residents from your mutimillion dollar real estate ventures so you can sell them, and you want to redeem yourself? Well, Genshiro Kawamoto was in this kinda situation, and his solution to bad karma was to lease 8 of his many Oahu mansions to poor, single Native Hawaiian mothers who were previously homeless or on welfare.

Pictured left is the Worley family, who received this 5 million dollar home in Kahala. Needless to say, they're psyched and grateful. Of course, the rich white neighbors in this neighborhood aren't happy with the arrangement. They don't want the ghetto natives from Waianae Coast (on the other side of the island, where homelessness is rampant) hanging out in Kahala (the posh 'hood behind Diamond Head where some of Kawamoto's homes are). Some apparently think that Kawamoto's venture is all strategy and zero philanthropy--an attempt to drive down real estate prices in these wealthy areas by bringing poverty directly in, so he could buy up more land and then kick the poor people out again once he's taken over.

Link (Thanks, KFC!)

Lady Teacher Rapist Is On The Run

I just read this horrible story about a boy who was repeated raped by a female teacher at a children's home run by the government. His parents were in jail, and he had no choice but to live there. And every night, the teacher--who was always on night duty, in her early 20s, and overweight--would come to his bed and take advantage of him. It started when he was 15, and still a virgin.

"She kissed me, fellated me and then had sex all the way to the end. It must have lasted 10, 20 minutes. After she'd finished with me, she told me over and over, 'don't tell anybody, don't tell anybody," Boy A tells Shukan Asahi, adding that he had never been with a woman before that time. "I wanted my first time to be with a woman I liked."

After that, every time Teacher K worked night shift, she would creep into Boy A's futon, strip his pajamas off him and have her way with him. She also began sending him love letters, all of which ended by imploring him to keep her actions a secret.

The kid finally told his sister when he was graduating high school, and now the teacher's been fired and is running around avoiding calls from the boy's family and the media.

 

Link

Retired Weapons Art Project

Retired Weapons is an art project started by peace activists in Japan. The idea is that, if enough people have pictures of weapons sprouting flowers--not shooting bullets--on their desktops, it would create a viral message of peace. I don't know how well it's working, but the images are pretty cool, and the message is simple and nicely executed. Also reminds me of the lady planting daisies(?) in ceramic grenades.

Mom Commits Suicide After Beating Kid

A 39-year-old mom on trial for beating her kid committed suicide yesterday. The 39-year-old was found hanging in her apartment, with a note that said:

I would never be able to apologize to my son enough. I am sorry I could not do things like a mother to you.

I always think it's kind of unfair when someone dies before being brought to justice. Like how Ken Lay died right before he started serving his jail time. Or how Milosevic died in the middle of the war crimes trials in the Balkans. What she really should have done is stood trial and stuck around afterwards so the kid wouldn't be motherless and guilt-ridden for indirectly causing her death--or at least so he will believe.

Link

Domestic Violence Reports Are Up

Police records show that there were 18,236 reported cases of domestic violence in Japan last year, making it the highest recorded number ever. This is up 8% from 2005, and 99% of the victims were female. But the most surprising thing about this piece of news is that domestic violence wasn't officially monitored before 2002. So even though we say 2006 was the "highest," this is only relevant to the last 4 years.

This is my own presumption, but I don't think this higher number necessarily indicates that domestic violence is occurring more frequently. If anything, it may have more to do with women feeling that it's okay to report their fist-happy hubbies to the cops. Especially with the new divorce law kicking in on April 1st, women are going to be complaining--officially--a lot more in the coming years.

Abe Denies Wartime Sexual Slavery

I think it's horrible that PM Shinzo Abe is denying that comfort women ever existed. Sure, there are plenty of ultra-nationalists who would argue the same thing. And granted that is exactly who he is at heart, I don't think he should be saying things like:

"The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion.That largely changes what constitutes the definition of coercion, and we have to take it from there."

He's basically painting this and all the other women who have sacrificed their dignity to speak out against a war crime as liars. Come on, man, we already officially apologized for this in 1993. You can't take that back. Shit happened during the war, and you're never going to get along with our neighbors if you don't face up to it.

Let's not forget that Abe is the grandson of the conservative post-war ex-war criminal ex-prime minister Nobusuke Kishi, and how that lineage influences his perspectives on politics.

Man Seeking Pedophile Friends Arrested

Toshio Watanabe is a pedophile. His fascination with naked and dead children began when he was 15, and only worsened as he grew older. To satiate his hunger, he became an elementary school teacher. In 1999, Watanabe created a Web site on which he posted photographs of children who died in car accidents. He got some crap from some of the parents of the dead children, who were rightfully freaked out. And then, a few years later, he sent pictures of naked kids to two other pedophilic men. The e-mail was traced by the local police, and Watanabe was arrested for violating child prostitution and pornography laws in February. They found around 800,000 pictures of naked kids on his computer.

When asked why he e-mailed naked pics to his friends, Watanabe said: "I wanted to know I wasn't alone."

Does anyone know of a self-help group for this guy? Maybe there's one in prison for pedophiles? They say being a pedophile in a US prison is like the worst thing ever. You're at the bottom of the bottom and you'll probably get butt raped a billion times before they grant you a bed move. I wonder if the same applies in Japan.

By the way, if you're fascinated by pedophiles, watch Capturing the Friedmans. 

Link

Man Kills Forest For Paraglide Launch

See that giant bald spot in the middle of this hill? That's not natural, it was ordered by a company exec in Hiroshima who decided he needed 1100 trees cut down so he could launch his paraglider there. WTF?? Now the guy's in trouble for violating the Forest Law.

The owner of this private forest had carefully planted these cedar and cypress trees, which were mostly between 20 and 50 years old, but 55-year old Hashimoto chainsawed them down. Damages were worth 7.5 million yen.

Mr. Hashimoto, you're selfish and mean, and you suck.

Link

Uniqlo To Send Clothes To Refugees

Uniqlo's starting a clothing recycle campaign. What does this mean? No, it doesn't mean they're morphing into a thrift store, silly. What's happening is that twice a year, in March and September customers will be able to drop off used Uniqlo clothes at any of the 730 Uniqlo stores in Japan. And then Uniqlo will take those items and ship them off to places like Thailand and Nepal via the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (the UN agency formerly led by Japan's top diplomat Sadako Ogata) and hand them out to displaced persons all over the world--like this guy here.

I love Uniqlo, by the way. SO much better than Muji. Maybe I'll tell you guys about my Uniqlo lucky bag later, but for now, I'm just going to give the brand my full support.

Does Osama bin Laden count as a refugee?

Bullying Hotline Opens!

So it seems that Shinzo Abe's new anti-bullying task force has finally got its shit together enough to launch the nation's first 24-hour bullying hotline today. The hotline is based in Nara Prefecture, but it's reachable from anywhere in the nation and is connected to counseling centers at each major city and prefectural education board. They'll even have clinical psychologists on board during nights and holidays for special attention.

The number of the hotline is 0570-0-78310.

Public Blue: Homeless In Japan

When I was in high school, we used to hang out at Miyashita Park, a long stretch of dirt and playground that paralleled the Yamanote Line tracks between Shibuya and Harajuku. Besides the occasional police training program and the couples making out on the benches, the park pretty much belonged to the homeless community. These guys had blue vinyl tents set up on the peripheries of the main walkway, and were always doing laundry or cooking. They hung their damp shirts on tree branches and ate off of makeshift stoves on stones and never, ever messed with the rest of society. Never asked for money, never asked for food. They simply lived there.

Anyway, I'm psyched they made this documentary about a similar community in Osaka. Japanese, American, and German filmmakers collaborated on this project, and the result is an insightful, breathtaking view of what it means to be homeless in Japan.

The Only Thing I'm Gonna Say About Foreigner Crime File

I'm trying to stay out of this "Foreigner Underground Crime File" fuss that's been ricocheting among the ex-pat/English teacher community in Japan. Not because it doesn't affect me, but because I just have too much to say on both ends of the spectrum that I don't even want to get started. This is a fun blog, not a dumping ground for the complexity of political junk that is flowing through my head. But for those of you who have been following this topic and are curious to see WHY such a magazine exists, there's an editorial published today, written by an editor at Eichi Publishing, giving the magazine's response to why they did it:

although the ferocity of this reaction has surprised me, the basic emotions have not. The topic of foreigner crime is taboo in Japan, with people on both sides of the issue distorting the facts and letting their feelings get the better of them...

if we can manage to openly discuss the issue of foreign crime in Japan, we will have the opportunity to address our own problems as well. Sure, we could continue to run away from the topic and remove books from shelves, but in doing so we are losing the chance to become more self-aware. What we need to understand is that by having a conversation about violent and illegal behavior, we’re really talking about ourselves—not as “Japanese” or “foreigners,” but as human beings.

Again, I'm keeping the bulk of my ramblings out of this, but I do believe he's right in saying that this conversation needs to happen. The local and foreign community need to be much more engaging of each other--not just at the top echelons of diplomacy--in order to bridge the cultural divide that keeps the Japanese fearful and the foreign community out of the loop.

Evil Spirits Are Fake

Teikan Akiyama is a Buddhist priest in Hokkaido who was arrested last week for molesting a 17-year old girl while pretending do exorcise an evil spirit from her body. This reminds me of stories you hear about Catholic priests molesting little boys and people committing murder alleging that someone had put a curse on them.

My thoughts on this: If someone tells you that you are cursed or doomed or have bad kharma, don't rely on an institutionalized pervert to save you from it. And definitely don't kill anyone because a witch doctor told you to.

Death Row Policies Under Fire From AI

Remember how I told you about the four death row inmates who were surprised with their death on Christmas Day? Well, now the Japanese Justice Ministry is under heat from international human rights group Amnesty International for its death penalty. AI said of the Christmas day executions:

The retrograde step runs counter to the universal protection of human rights and is at odds with the international trend away from the use of the death penalty.

It's true, the current Justice Minister Jinen Nagase is very gallow-happy, especially compared to the man who held the post prior to him, who didn't order any executions during his 11 months in office.

Here's how the Japanese death row system works:

1. You get sentenced to death.
2. You get put on death row.
3. You have no idea when you're gonna die. Neither do your parents, or your lawyers. It could be tomorrow, it could be 50 years from now. The constant anticipation is part of your punishment.
4. One random morning, you'll find out it's your last day. I think you get a meal. And then you're a goner.
5. An announcement is made in public that one prisoner was hanged that day. But they don't say who. Nobody knows you're dead, they just know that there's one less dangerous criminal alive today.

Maybe the growing prison population has something to do with it.

Health Minister Says I'm A Baby-Making Machine

I think Japan needs a new health minister.

71-year old Hakuo Yanagisawa, who currently holds this post, said the following in a speech on health and welfare today:

The number of women aged between 15 and 50 is fixed. Because the number of birth-giving machines and devices is fixed, all we can ask for is for them to do their best per head, although it may not be so appropriate to call them machines.

Interesting...I was not aware that my main purpose as a Japanese woman was to give birth. He must be very disappointed in me and all the other childless females out here. Sorry, dude.

Link

Abe's Bullying Solution

Here's an important update for those who have been following the story of the bullying letters that started arriving in bulk at Education Minister Bunmei Ibuki's office late last year. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe decided to step up to the plate by encouraging the minister to institute a policy whereby school bullies would be suspended. Half the nation thinks it's a great idea, the other half thinks it's stupid and will perpetuate backlash.

But the final word on this policy will be determined after Ryoji Noyori, the Nobel Prize-winning leader of Japan's Education Rebuilding Council, presents his proposals and emergency measures on how to not have bullied kids committing suicide left and right in 2007.

Link

The New Divorce Law: Men Hate It, Women Love It

Back in September, around the time the baby prince was born, I posted a blurb about a new divorce law that would grant women half of their ex-husband's pension. The law kicks in on April 1st. Which means what?

As with almost anything in the world, there are two sides to every story. In this case, it's the male side and the female side. Now let me give you the low down on both:

THE MALE SIDE. Men work their entire lives, day and night, slaving away under the gynormous meta-corporation that owns them until their final day. Sure, they had a few affairs here and there with their secretaries and the unmarried OLs in their tight little uniforms. But that was just a small bonus for the hours of labor necessary to feed the wife and kids. 48.4 percent of men enjoy spending time with their wives after retirement. They've waiting long enough to reap the benefits of their hard-earned down time.

THE FEMALE SIDE. The wives got married young, and pretty much raised their kids alone since their husbands were always working, playing golf, out drinking with their co-workers, or sleeping with their secretaries. Now, finally, the kids are out of the house, the hubby's still working, and the women have some alone time to enjoy. They spend their days watching soap operas, taking art classes, chatting with their girl friends at the cafe or the park, and window shopping at the station building. They go home in the late afternoon to cook dinner and draw baths for their husbands, who are usually tired and grumpy and demanding. But it's only a few hours before they both go to bed and another day of freedom begins. Only 27.1% of women actually enjoy spending time with their retired husbands. Most of them would rather be free.

Merry Christmas! You Shall Die Today.

In Japan, death row inmates are only given 24 hours notice before they die. We know that cult leader Shoko Asahara is gonna hang, but we don't know if he has one day or 20 years to sit in his cell meditating on more subway gas attacks.

There's been a lull at the gallows for the last 15 months. Until yesterday. 4 prisoners, ages 44 to 77, were hanged on Christmas Day in Japan. The death sentence in Japan is controversial, but experts say that the Ministry of Justice's decision to execute on the last week of the year means they're planning to stick by the current system.

Link

Abe meets Bono and tries on his shades.

Nah...they look better on Bono. But at least the attempt impressed the singer, who said:

George Bush never put them on. The last Pope, John Paul, he put them on, and Prime Minister Abe. Very cool.

Bono and Japan's new prime minister met to discuss the alleviation of poverty this week in Tokyo while U2 was on tour there.

Story here.

Prostitution: Exploitation of women or a tool of exploitation for women?

Dirty older man pays young innocent underage girl for sex.

Statutory rape, right?

Most of the time, it's not so simple in Japan. Case in point: yesterday, 4 minors were arrested for extorting money from a 27-year old opthamologist who paid a 17-year old girl 10,000 yen for a night of fun. After she collected her cash, the girl and her friends blackmailed the doctor into giving them 130,000 and his million-dollar watch.

The doctor turned the kids in, getting himself in trouble for violating the Anti-Child Prostitution and Pornography Law but ending the cycle of violent exploitation that could have ensued.

This type of blackmail is actually fairly common. This instance ended with just one extortion, but there have been previous cases where the blackmail went on for months, and for millions and millions of yen.

I like this story because it reverses the conventional idea that prostitution is an exploitation of women.

Story here.

Gynecologist arrested for being a sick bastard.

Ugh! Every woman's greatest nightmare comes true in the story of Kazuhiro Sekiguchi, director of the Sekiguchi Maternity Clinic in Saitama Prefecture, who was arrested this week for violating child prostitution laws. Sekiguchi went on an online dating site, met a 15-year old schoolgirl, and paid her 50,000 yen for sex.

You know, I always assumed that male gynecologists had some kind of natural exemption from being sick fucking bastards. Otherwise, how can they do their job?

Mr. Sekiguchi has definitely made me rethink that assumption.

Update: More suicide letters from bullied kids.

A total of 36 suicide letters have reached the Ministry of Education since the first one was publicized two weeks ago. Some could be hoaxes--like the one written by a lady employee at the Nagano municipal education board, pretending to be a suicidal teen--but others were actually signed by real kids at real schools. Ministry's scrambling to find these kids to stop them from their fatal jump.

Like most things in Japan, it looks like suicide reportage is quickly gathering momentum as the new trendy thing to do among depressed kids. This time, though, it's not about portable digital pets or cell phone straps. It's a communal cry for help for deep-rooted societal woes.

Hokkaido lawyers sue California water heater company.

A group of Japanese lawyers are preparing to file a lawsuit against California company Paloma Industries for carbon monoxide poisoning caused by the company's gas water heaters.

In July, the Ministry of Trade released a report documenting numerous cases of death by Paloma over the past decade. 10 people had died in Hokkaido from using these "tankless" heating devices in their homes.

The Japanese by nature tend to avoid conflict, so I was surprised by this initiative to challenge a bunch of sue-happy Americans in a court of law. It's kinda like if Napoleon Dynamite fought Mike Tyson in a boxing ring. In any case, I'm rooting for the underdog.

School-related suicide follow-up: A principal sets a not-so-great example.

I promised an update on the bullying-related suicide letters send to the Education Minister last week. The good news is that there weren't any school suicides on November 11th. Maybe the government's subsequent establishment of a new study group to evaluate solutions to the bullying problem was enough to deter their deaths--even though the minister openly urged kids to stop writing to him about their problems.

What we did hear over the weekend was news of a 56-year old elementary school principal hanging from a tree in the forest in Kitakyushu.

The Japan Times writes:

During the past year at the school, eight fifth-graders had extorted some 100,000 yen from a female classmate, and the principal, Kenji Nagata, was criticized for having reported the incident to the city education board merely as "financial trouble."

Great example you're setting there on how problems should be dealt with, Mr. Principal. But I shouldn't be so hard on him. After all, social ills don't just affect children, but often trickle down from generations above.

UPDATE: On the news this evening...Two middle school kids committed suicide today. A girl and a boy, both victims of bullying. And the mother of a 5th grade boy filed a complaint with  the regional education board when her son's pleas for help were repeatedly ignored by school officials. The boy was being pantsed on an every day basis by his classmates, and--unable to deal with the embarrassment--tried to jump out a school window earlier this year.

Education minister responds apathetically to chain of suicide threats.

The Minister of Education received FIVE more letters today from kids threatening suicide. This is after an initial letter from an anonymous schoolboy a few days ago, and then a second from a girl in Tokyo who drew inspiration from the first.

Pressured to respond, the guy didn't make any promises or proposals to change anything.  Instead, he said: "I ask those students to refrain from writing letters that can only confuse those people."

Uhmmmm....so if I was the person in charge of an entire population of youth plagued with such disturbingly profound problems at school that they no longer valued their lives--and if I was receiving a sudden stream of mail that is clearly a cry for help from the top down--I would not just tell them to stop writing.

But that's just me.

The police are upping their surveillance of schools and their vicinity today, hoping that none of these suicide threats will come true. Hoping, mostly. And milling around the schools.

Meanwhile, a 17-year old Kitakyushu girl jumped from the 4th floor of her junior high school building and died yesterday.

Another suicide letter to the Education Minister

Education Minister Bunmei Ibuki got a second letter today from a suicidal teen, who was inspired by the highly publicized letter earlier this week from a boy who threatened to kill himself if something wasn't done by November 11th.

That's tomorrow.

YouTube videos trigger phone revolution against bullying.

This is a breaking story of how one online community is taking their own unique approach to address the problem of bullying at Japanese schools.

The two videos pasted here show a boy being harassed by his peers at a high school in Hokkaido. The first one shows him being ridiculed by a girl in a classroom; the other shows him being shoved around by a guy at the bus stop in front of campus. These incidents happened in March.

The video clips, which were taken by one student on his cell phone, were recently posted on the massive online BBS, 2ch.net, and on YouTube. An anonymous poster encouraged all readers to call the school after 8am on Thursday, November 9th in an attempt to bombard school officials--who have known about these incidents for months but have deliberately failed to respond--with inquiries about the videos, hoping to incite action. 8am was just a few hours ago in Japan, and the phones at the school have been ringing non-stop ever since.

With this and the disturbing story of the boy who sent a suicide notice to the Minister of Education happening within a day of each other, I'm hoping people will start to take this widespread problem--which causes more than 100 school-related youth suicides a year--more seriously.

Full story here.

Boy gives Nov. 11th suicide deadline in letter to the Education Minister.

Yesterday, Minister of Education Bunmei Ibuki received a letter from an anonymous school boy.

"I hereby declare that I will commit suicide on Saturday, Nov. 11. I wrote this letter because it's hard to live," it read.

A recent survey of 13,000 Japanese school kids showed that more than half of them don't think bullies are ever at fault. Usually, the perpetrators are the more popular kids in class, right? So I guess they're sticking by that. The same survey showed that a fifth of kids admitted that they would not consult anybody should they be on the victim end. Even worse, more than half of junior high school kids believed that some kids deserved to be picked on. 

In 2005, over 20,000 cases were reported in elementary through high schools nationwide. 105 kids committed suicide because of bullying that same year.

Bullying most often takes the form of physical assault, humiliation, threats, and taking money. Lots of money, hundreds of thousands of yen, which kids often have to steal from their parents. The kid who wrote the letter to the Minister claimed to have had his pants pulled down in public. He also consulted a teacher but got absolutely no help.

Will the decision of the Education Ministry to expose this letter to the public stop one little boy from taking his life?

Find out on November 11th.

The story of two ex-husbands who want to be women.

Comedian Masaki Sumitani's Hard Gay act mostly pokes fun at the LGBT community--he's totally straight, at least so he claims--but two former husbands are currently fighting for their rights to become women. According to a 2004 law on transgender rights, previously unmarried Japanese are allowed to legally change their gender as long as two doctors diagnose them as having "gender identity disorder." The two men (women?) in question have already had their thingys cut off and go by girl names now, but their marital record prevents them from being legally recognized as women.

I know a lot about transgender law in the US thanks to Donita Ganzon. The law is not perfect anywhere. I'm all for gender rights, and I hope these guys get what they want. And I also think Sumitani should come out of the closet, like, right now, and stop making excuses that he was doing "research" at gay bars on Osaka.

Full story here.

Japanese hermits have newfound access to education.

There's a problem common among Japanese teenage boys called hikikomori. Unable to unleash or vent their pubescent angst, they lock themselves in their room for weeks, even months at a time, doing who-knows-what and coming out only at night to raid the fridge. Mothers don't really know what to do, they're torn between wanting to help their kid but not knowing how and wanting to respect his space and privacy. So they leave pre-cooked meals in the kitchen  and clean folded laundry outside the door.

In an effort to accommodate teenage hermits, Chiba Prefecture just approved the country's first cyber high school. The classes only require basic knowledge of how to use e-mail.

I really don't think this is a good solution to treating kids who have all kinds of emotional blockage, but at least it'll keep them busy. If I was a mom, though, I'd just buy my kid a DS Lite and Brain Age instead of paying for an expensive e-mail education.

Grandma, are you my mommy?

Here's a good reason why you should take care of your aging parents. Word just got out that, sometime last year, a fifty-something year old woman gave birth to her daughter's baby. The daughter had her ovaries removed due to cancer, so her post-menopausal mother volunteered to take in female hormones and her son-in-law's sperm and serve as the surrogate mother. Apparently, a coalition of Gynecologists proposed a ban on surrogate parenthood in 2003 on the grounds that it would complicate family relationships.

We'll see who this baby calls "mommy" when he/she learns how to talk.

Full story here.

DDADD = Drunk drivers against drunk driving

Interesting news bit about a Japan Communist Party assemblyman who was busted for a DUI. He was found driving around at 4am with no headlights on. He's also the guy that introduced a anti-drunk driving resolution to the assembly earlier.

Sex, dares, and the truth we discovered after school, part 2

(Sorry. I fell asleep after dinner last night. Here's the continuation of this story.)

Kyoko didn't run up to fulfill her dare like we expected. Instead, she stood under a tree, holding her stomach, looking like she was about to cry. Her friend patted her shoulder sympathetically.

Had we done something wrong? Was she feeling sick? Was Truth or Dare an inherently evil game that reared its ugly head via this seemingly benign question? I glanced over at Derek. The 12-year old hunk was eagerly climbing the jungle gym in his gray sweatpants. He's so hot, I thought to myself.

Not sure exactly what to do with this awkward situation we'd inadvertently created, we sent a representative over to assess. The rest of us followed, forming a circle around the two Japanese school girls, feigning compassion when all we were was curious.

"Hey, what's wrong?" we asked.

Kyoko was too shook up to talk, so her friend--who will remain anonymous because I don't remember anything about her except that she said this--explained in a desperate whisper: "Kyoko isn't sure if she can hug Derek right now because she's scared she might get pregnant. She has her period!"

OK. So even though most of us hadn't even gotten our first periods yet, we all knew from sex-ed class that this was ridiculous. But we managed to keep those artificial concerned looks on our faces as we gently explained that the chances of getting knocked up from a fully clothed hug while menstruating were pretty slim. Meanwhile, one of our delegates headed over to the jungle gym and brought Derek over so he could give Kyoko a sympathy hug for being so ignorant.

Why do I tell this story? Because this was the first time I encountered the extreme lack of sex education and information in the Japanese school system. I think this is related to why Japanese men would rather buy panties from a vending machine than get laid and why abortion is the number two method of birth control. Of course, Japan's not the only place where this is a problem. (And by this, I mean sex education, not panty vending machines--I think the latter is uniquely Japanese.) It's not like Bush's abstinence campaign is any better.

In closing, I dedicate this story to Mr. Green and Mrs. Clevenger, who armed us with the tools to empower one Japanese school girl to just drop her fears and hug.

Sex, dares, and the truth we discovered after school

The first time I saw a condom was in 4th grade. Mr. Green and Mrs. Clevenger took it gently out of its wrapper and let us play with it. Maybe they even put it on a banana, I don't remember. But I do know that we were aware of how babies are made by the time we were 12 years old and compulsively playing Truth or Dare in Arisugawa Park after school.

Truth or Dare was a good game, because you got to tell boys you liked them without feeling accountable for the admission, and because sometimes, you even got to hug them. There were always about 6 girls and 2 boys (usually Derek, a tall flirty Brit, and Masa, whom everyone called "papa") from my class, plus a couple of girls from a prestigious nearby Japanese middle school who joined us for the thrill. They were a couple years older, maybe 15 years old. One of the girls was named Kyoko,* and one day, it was Kyoko's turn to take a dare.

"Truth or dare." we said.

"Dare."

Since she wasn't one of us, we thought we'd keep it simple. "Kyoko, I dare you to hug Derek!" we said. What Kyoko said next shocked us all.

(To be continued after I eat my dinner...)

*Name has been changed for privacy purposes, and because I can't freaking remember her name.  Oh, and I found this pretty photo of  our beloved park here.

The baby prince and the divorce rate

There's a slightly tragic element to the recent birth of Princess Kiko's son. From a woman's perspective, Japan really needed to have that debate about changing the Law that only allows male heirs to the throne. Now that a boy has joined the ranks of the all girls Imperial descendant's league, the discussion will likely be shelved for another generation or two.

On a brighter note for disenfranchised women in samurai nation, next April will bring into effect a new law that will entitle them to up to half of their ex-husband's 401K in the event of a divorce. This is great news! Up until now, women had no incentive to leave their cheating, beating, bread-winning hubbies.

There's been a lull in the divorce rate ever since the law was announced three years ago, an experts predict that women are waiting in the wings until they can cash in on their share of the family fortune and jet out of there. To alert paranoid husbands, Japan's Weekly Post published a list of 10 warnings signs.

If Divorce In Japan was a publicly traded stock, I would be buying so many shares on e*trade right now.