Nipponica

A U.S. Air Force member in Okinawa Prefecture pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges related to the alleged kidnapping and sexual assault in December of a girl who was under the age of 16.

The case did not come to light until late June, around three months after his indictment, as local police decided not to disclose the incident. That decision has inflamed strong and long-existing anti-base sentiment in the prefecture, which hosts the majority of U.S. military facilities in Japan.

Kotera is specifically accused of allegedly assaulting a first-year junior high school player (then 12 years old) on the team by punching him dozens of times in the face and stomach and stepping on his face and chest between around 11 p.m. on May 11 and 5 a.m. the next day, causing him to suffer a sprained neck and other injuries that would take up to a week to heal.

Absolutely disgraceful.

Operations at Hawaii’s Hilo International Airport were halted when security screeners spotted two items that looked like grenades in a bag belonging to a man from Japan.

Officers evacuated the terminal area Tuesday morning while a bomb squad determined the grenades were inert, according to a Hawaii Police Department statement. Airport operations resumed about an hour later.

Nothing to declare, apparently.

The work consisted of simply printing personal information data on both sides of a white card with a fake IC chip embedded. She would often make 60 cards in a day, which she would then send to specified domestic addresses. For one day’s work, she would receive electronic money equivalent to about ¥12,000 to ¥16,000.

The MPD investigated, suspecting that the person giving instructions was in China. On May 15, they arrested two Chinese nationals on charges including suspicion of forging sealed official documents for allegedly making fake My Number cards at the request of the same group. They believe the forged cards may have been used for purposes such as setting up mobile phone contracts.

The whole point of a digital ID is that the digital bit can prove authenticity of the card itself. The fact that most businesses and banks rely only on the visual information printed on a card without certifying the digital certificate renders the whole enterprise pointless. While the counterfeiting of these cards is certainly a problem, the real issue is that people don't seem to understand or care on how to use this IDs for their intended purpose.

“Obviously, you got to let the criminal justice process play out. But that doesn’t mean you don’t express on a human level your sense of regret.”

“We have to do better,” he said, adding that the US military’s high standards and protocols for education and training of its troops was “just not working”.

Emanuel said the US may be able to propose measures to improve training and transparency with the public at US-Japan foreign and defence ministers’ security talks expected later this month in Tokyo.

The former professional boxer, now aged 88 and battling physical and mental illness, will learn his fate in late September when the Shizuoka district court rules in his retrial, which started in March 2023. He has not appeared in court, having been declared mentally unfit to give credible evidence. His long incarceration has exposed what campaigners call inhumane treatment of death row inmates in Japan.

Regardless of his guilt or not, the death penalty is an echo of an uncivilized past and Japan could easily gain a few rungs on the human rights ladder by abolishing it.

On March 26 at around 2:30 p.m, the two suspects reportedly told their coworker, a 50-year-old man with an intellectual disability, "You stink! Get in the washing machine."

They allegedly proceeded to force him into the machine and turn it on, resulting in injuries that required two weeks to heal.

Besides the usual comments about harassment in Japanese working culture, I must also make note that this is also harassment of those with intellectual impairments. We all just need to love each other regardless of our differences and get along. This story is so sad.

Molestation cases that occurred in a railway-related setting accounted for 70.0% of the total, including 62.8% that happened on trains. Cases on the streets made up 13%.

Absolutely disgraceful.

Aleph, which has most of the roughly 1,650 worshippers of Aum Shinrikyo's three successor groups, continues to worship the teachings of cult leader Chizuo Matsumoto, who went by the name of Shoko Asahara and was executed in 2018, as dogma. Authorities still believe that Aleph may conduct mass murders.

It is kind of amazing that the Aum Shinrikyo successors are still allowed to operate in the post-Abe assassination world when organizations like the Unification Church are being squeezed. Perhaps this is a first step towards that.

The two biggest Japanese airline operators said the guidelines address customer behaviors such as badgering staff, irrational demands and physical violence, among other typical issues.

Obviously good for the employees of the two airlines and good for the passengers that have the decency to treat these employees like human beings. But, as a troublesome customer can be more than just a nuisance for an employee and be an actual safety hazard for a whole airplane full of passengers, should these guidelines come from the government level and have criminal penalties?