Interlude

Yes! Another month has passed between blogs! I'm getting good at this delayed posting stuff. I do have most of the second half of the last post written; however, it is at home and I am currently at school. So I guess I'll just post some random stories and news articles. Hopefully I'll have time to post the second half of the last post sometime this week.

ON MEDICAL ADVANCES
So let's start off with this nice news article I just found today. Many people often wonder why I fear Japan's medical services. People figure that since Japan is so technologically advanced that their medical profession must be as well.

"A woman in her 80s died in Hyogo Prefectural Nishinomiya Hospital in March after an intern inserted a feeding tube, which was supposed to deliver nutrients directly to the woman's stomach, into her lung instead, the hospital said Wednesday. "

Lungs, stomach, they're all the same, right? It's all internal. The thing about Japanese medicine that worries me is that all doctors go to a generic "doctor school." Once they graduate, they can choose to be a doctor of whatever they want - they can be a dentist, eye doctor, etc., regardless of how much of that area they have actually studied. So you can potentially have an optometrist who has only taken 1 3-credit hour class about eyes. He can even perform LASIK eye surgery on you, even if he really hasn't had lots of training. I fear Japanese dentists because I just KNOW that if I go in, I'll walk out with wooden teeth.

ON THE POWER OF ADVERTISING

"The Yomiuri Shimbun
At least 29 people who went to forests at the foot of Mt. Fuji to commit suicide changed their minds after seeing a sign put up by an organization of loan shark victims about a year ago.
The sign reads, "Your loan problem can definitely be solved," and carries a telephone number for a 24-hour consultation service. The sign was put up by a national liaison council of associations of loan shark victims based in Kanda, Tokyo, in an attempt to prevent those troubled by financial difficulties from committing suicide. "

Now THAT'S what I call effective advertising.

ON PREMEDITATION

In March, there was a big news story about a man who killed one person, then stabbed a few more at a train station in Japan. He apparently sent several emails to police before he committed the murders, daring them to stop him. A few days after he was apprehended, the following news article appeared in the Daily Yomiuri.

"MITO--A man who is suspected to have fatally stabbed one person and injured seven others Sunday in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki Prefecture, and who was arrested on suspicion of murdering a man four days earlier, may have been planning to commit the murders, police said Monday. (Mar.25)"

Which is a stunning revelation in and of itself, but it was nicely followed up by this one.

"MITO--The eight plainclothes police officers posted in and around JR Arakawaoki Station on the lookout for a man wanted for murder were not equipped with radios and thus were unable to coordinate their actions when the man they were seeking went on a stabbing spree in the station area, it was learned Monday."

Apparently, the police were all over the train station (remember, the guy called and emailed them before hand, telling them where he would be), but for some reason, they didn't think to carry radios. So when this guy encountered one of them, he just turned and ran to a different part of the station and stabbed someone else. The only thing I can really think to say is, "Duh." I think that covers it rather nicely.

ON BEING CAMERA SHY

And while we're on the topic of police, I have another article. A few days before this next article was posted in the Daily Yomiuri, there was a story of a 70-something year old man who was taken into questioning by police and somehow "accidentally" broke his fingers and 2 ribs while in the station. People suspected possible police brutality. You think? The police in Japan have often been accused of forcing confessions from suspects, often using violence, threats, or plain old guilt. I started to write a long summary of this, then realized I could just insert comments in the article itself.

"The nation's criminal justice system is in a quandary over how to change the way police interrogate suspects ahead of the introduction of the lay-judge system for criminal trials and in the wake of a series of recent revelations [these "revelations" have been coming out for over 30 years; don't know if I'd consider that "recent"] of coercive police questioning that resulted in false charges.
As the National Police Agency released new guidelines to ensure proper investigation Thursday, the focus of the debates will shift to whether the practice of making audio or video recordings of police interrogations of suspects should be introduced.
[...]
A report released this month by a group of judges studying the issue also predicted that if the introduction of recordings leads to stricter selection of evidence, the average period of criminal trials could be shortened to four to eight days from the current period of between 16 and 39 months. [holy crap that's a long trial] NPA officials were initially reluctant to drastically review interrogation practices. [no kidding]
[...]
Though the NPA explained the situation to all 47 prefectural police forces, a sizable number of police investigators expressed embarrassment, saying that filming of interrogation sessions will make it more difficult to get suspects to trust them. [read: more difficult for the officers to beat the suspects]
Because police officers in Japan are not given the authority to carry out as broad a range of activities as their counterparts in other countries, investigators have developed techniques ["techniques"] to make suspects ["]voluntarily["] confess. For example, investigators have tried to ["]guide["] suspects into a sense of remorse by asking about their personal worries and life history.
It is also predicted that gang members will hesitate to confess, if all conversations in the interrogation room might be recorded and replayed in a court.
Requiring that all interrogations be recorded may make investigations more difficult and result in poorer public safety conditions."

To sum up - the courts are talking about requiring the police to tape/record interrogations; the police say that will damage their "trust" with the people they interrogate. Ummm... okay. Does this sound like they're worried about being found out, or am I just overly suspicious?


Well, that's all I guess for now. That was a longer post than originally intended (as they all are). I'll try to update again in the next few days. But I always say that, don't I?