The Japan Society for the Study of Obesity (JSSO) refused to budge as various organizations and specialists criticized it’s tough stance against men’s obesity.

JSSO insists that a man with a waste size of more than 85 cm (33.5 inches) faces the dangers of metabolic syndrome. (Not to be confused with human rights metabolic syndrome).

While many pointed out this was too strict in general, it was also pointed out that Japan is the only country where an organization such as this has a lower cut off point for men than for women. Every where else, the reverse is true. According to JSSO women need not worry until they have a waste size of 90 cm (35.4 inches) or more.

Original Japanese article here.

The result of all this might mean, that if you are a male, then your health risks increase merely by coming to Japan. Think about it.

According to Japan Today:

Osaka man held for abducting 12-year-old Nagasaki girl
A 20-year-old man was arrested Saturday in Osaka Prefecture on suspicion of kidnapping a 12-year-old girl from Nagasaki Prefecture and confining her to his house for eight days, police said. Police identified the suspect as Yusuke Sakamoto, of Osaka City’s Fukushima Ward and said the girl was rescued unhurt Saturday. (Japan Today)

Here are some more details from the Asahi Shimbun:

• The abductor did not think he was abducting anyone, because he loved the girl. He characterized his relationship with here as, お互いに恋愛感情を抱いていた。 (otogai ni ren’ai kanjou wo daite ita). This is hard to translate correctly, but it means something like, “we both strongly held feelings of amorous love for one another.”
• The abductor states he was utterly unaware that he was in some sense kidnapping or abducting the girl.
• They met by chatting on a site for fans of Anime. After chatting with each other, they began to exchange off site messages with one another. They exchanged pictures. They then established verbal communication.
• At one point, the abductor told the abductee that “うちの部屋が空いている”. A literal translation of this might be, “My room is open.” I’m not sure exactly what a more colloquial translation might be. The context in which he said this is not given.
• They met for a date on the 6th. According to the abductor, he had no intention of taking her home with him. However, she said she did not want to return home, so he took her with him to his apartment.
• After the arrest the girl stuck up for the abductor saying many things, such as, “お兄ちゃんは悪くない。長崎に帰りたくない”. This literally translates as “Big brother is not bad. I don’t want to go home to Nagasaki.” The use of the expression “big brother” towards an older, but still relatively young male, is near universal in Japan.

This seems a case of stupidity on the case of the abductor. It’s hard to say who took advantage of who, really.

Is a 12 year old girl old enough to make decisions about going to live with a 20 year old male? Conceivably there might be some cases in which this is true, but it certainly would not be true in every case, would it? So a law against this serves a purpose, right? There are many dangerous predators out there, right? [No sarcasm intended here.]

Certainly the couple should have known society would never tolerate what they were doing. So whatever they were thinking, it was unrealistic and stupid.

In any event, is kidnapping or abduction the correct label for what happened? How deserving of punishment is the abductor? What would be the appropriate punishment?

What’s troubling is this being seen as a problem with the Internet. The Internet is being seen as the culprit here. Is that really the case?

The police are now warning parents to watch what their kids do on the Internet. Given that Fukuda’s already promised to do something about assisted suicide sites, maybe he’ll take on this too … we’ll see.

If you didn’t know already, the 2008 G8 summit will be held in Toyako, Hokkaido. Here’s the link.

Now let me ask you this, what is the man below doing?

He’s putting transparent seals on everyone of his apples. These seals have printed on them in black, “‘08 Toyako Summit Sobetsu”. Once these apples have reddened he will remove the seals, and if things go according to plan, the part of the apple skin under the black letters will not have changed to red. The apples will then appear to have naturally grown with the green label “‘08 Toyako Summit Sobetsu” already there. Quite clever. (From the Asahi Shimbun.)

Masakatsu Shingai is the only candidate putting his name up for reelection as mayor of the city of Nakatsu in Oita prefecture. The candidate, who does not represent any party, will win by default. This is the first time this has happened in 44 years. (Link.)

Just in case you didn’t think this kind of thing happened in Japan —

A fourth grader is being held in protective custody by his guardians [parents?] for hitting the emergency stop button at a railroad crossing. A high speed train headed towards the crossing had to make an emergency stop.

The nine year old boy was crossing the tracks with five companions and a guardian, when he broke from the pack and ran to the emergency stop button. The guardian called for him to stop, and so did some near by officials. But despite their calls he pushed the button, not being able to resist its siren call.

In fact, this is the second time he has done this. It was speculated that he found so much amusement in doing it the first time around, that he found himself wanting to do it even more so. The boy’s guardian and the boy have been sternly warned not to repeat this incident.

I’m probably not getting the details down on this story exactly right, however, I think this is what happened:

A 46 year old salary man came home drunk at about 3 AM. He was infuriated when he found his apartment door couldn’t be opened, as the door had been chain latched. He took out his cigarette lighter, lit the newspaper that had just been delivered, and threw it into the apartment.

The apartment caught fire. Inside was his 46 year old wife and 7 year old daughter. They did not wake up. After setting the apartment on fire, he went to the neighbors door and banged on it, shouting for help. They let him in, and via the veranda he went into his apartment, woke up his wife and daughter, and helped them escape the apartment via the veranda.

This happened on the third floor of a large four story concrete apartment building.

Minshuto: SDF fueled core ship in Iraq war
Opposition Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan) intensified the pressure on the government Thursday, saying a Maritime Self-Defense Force vessel directly refueled a U.S. destroyer used in the war in Iraq. …

If the government was not behaving responsibly here, then certainly this needs to be brought to light. However, it’s an unenviable task. I mean you have to have make arguments like this:

According to government officials, the MSDF refueling vessel Tokiwa provided about 800,000 gallons of fuel to the U.S. military tanker Pecos on Feb. 25, 2003. After that, the Tokiwa directly provided the Paul Hamilton with about 200,000 gallons of fuel. … The Paul Hamilton is said to have launched at least 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles during the Iraq war, the most by any U.S. Navy ship.

You know, didn’t the tanker Pecos perhaps already have some fuel. And if the fuel it had was mixed the fuel it got, which fuel did the Paul Hamilton get? Maybe they should have zapped the Japanese fuel with some kind of radioactive isotope so they could track it? Was their a fuel accountant on board?

Again, I think if the law was not being followed correctly, it should be brought to light. But at least in a superficial way, this all seems … I don’t know … just so lame. It’s hard to understand how this will help the DPJ, unless they come across a real smoking gun.

As far as Ozawa, if his position is that it’s okay to use force overseas, so long as the SDF carries a UN flag, then I strongly disagree with his position. I was at first under the impression he only wanted boots on the ground to help in the rebuilding process. As soon as I have time, I really want to look more deeply into this.

Famous mochi producer falsified expiration date
Akafuku Co., a 300-year-old confectionery maker based in Ise, Mie Prefecture, sold its famed mochi sweets with falsified expiration dates.

I eat this company’s main product several times a year. It’s quite good. (Though occassionally, now that you mention it …) How disappointing. Reading the complete article, I hope the company goes out of business. Companies aren’t museum pieces, and I don’t care how long they’ve been around. They are not the only one’s who make this stuff.

I do wonder what went wrong here. Oh what a tangled we be we weave …

Prefectures to keep school results secret
Not one of the nation’s 47 prefectural governments intends to release the results of national achievement tests in math and Japanese conducted in April for primary school sixth-graders and third-year middle school students, according to a Yomiuri Shimbun survey. The Education, Science and Technology Ministry provides the test results of each city, town and village and each school to the respective prefectural boards of eduction, but the prefectural governments are reluctant to make public such results as they want to prevent schools from being ranked and excessive competition among schools. They are also brushing off demands from residents seeking information disclosure, citing a principle of nondisclosure when it comes to such data.

Who pays for these schools? You mean we’re just supposed to pay money for these schools, send our children there, and then ask no questions?

Why is it that bureaucrats always so despise the populace they serve?

If these were private schools (or after hour cram schools), they would not be able to give you the results fast enough.

A Japanese university student has been taken hostage by an armed group in Iran, but it is unclear who the kidnappers are or what they are demanding, Foreign Ministry officials said Thursday. (Asahi)

Here we go again. Let’s see what the media do with this. My guess is they are going to blame the student for being kidnapped.

You want a policy in place which encourages your people to travel to less developed nations, because this will help develop them. You don’t want a policy that discourages this.

If the government is required to spend an exorbitant amount of money to help someone who has problems overseas, this discourages the practice of traveling to countries like this. (At least puts the government and complicit media agents in the position of doing so.) If people are responsible for themselves, then no worries.

Japan sent (an unconstitutional) regiment of SDF forces to Iraq. On a benefit per cost measure, this operation was a grand failure. It cost so much to protect the SDF forces, that ultimately the water system they built would have been much cheaper had internal elements simply been hired to build it. That’s how politics work.

This horrifically expensive, unconstitutional SDF operation was praised by the media to quite some extent.

However, when three volunteers went to Iraq as private citizens to help Iraqis and were subsequently kidnapped, they were seen almost immediately as villains. The media really played up how those free individuals were creating problems for everyone in Japan. They were viewed as selfish and childish individuals.

Just remember, up is down, and down is up. Let’s see what happens in this new situation.