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| 5/25 |
| 2004/6/4 [Reference/History/WW2/Japan] UID:30599 Activity:very high |
6/4 http://www.japantoday.com Schoolgirl killer got angry at being called goody two shoes. Wow, guess she proved HER wrong, huh? \_ Maybe Michael Moore can make a movie called Blogging for Okubo in which he can blame the lack of social welfare, the legacy of Japanese Imperialism, and Japanese fear of the Black Man on this. \_ Oh, even better. The first girls reponse is just RAD. -jrleek http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=popvox&id=486 \_ LOL. Yeah, they don't have a problem with violence and the Internet in South Korea: http://csua.org/u/7l7 (Time Magazine article) \_ I agree. Most of the Koreans I know are self righteous and arrogant and the the Korean girl in japantoday proves just that. \_ w00t! \_ Did nobody else catch THIS gem: TOKYO -- Disaster management minister Kiichi Inoue suggested Friday that women's social advancement is to blame for a recent murder case in which an 11-year-old girl admitted to killing her classmate at a primary school in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture. "It seems to show that assertive women are increasing," the 72-year-old Inoue told a press conference, referring to the Sasebo case. "It must be the first such case involving a girl," he said. "The gap between men and women appears to be have been narrowing recently." \_ japanese are weird. I mean I am a sick person, but some of those japanese fetishes are sickening even for me. I think japanese lost their mojo after defeat by us militarily and economically. that screwed up their brains, and they couldn't find a reason to exist. they then become weird. \_ I think most of east asia would prefer they make tentacle porn over being invaded repeatedly \_ Dude, I don't think the Japanese needed any help getting weird, I think they managed that all on their own LONG before WWII. \_ they were not weird before WWII. they were just barbaric. and militaristic. now they are weird. \_ they were weird before. And that "barbarism" was a stable feudalism for thousands of years- they had a centralized currency before they had a central government. \_ which is kinda cool if you're a minter, but not if you don't want someone whacking off your head with a big sword for standing in the wrong guy's shadow. \_ Alright, so the Japanese specialize in bukkake and the Germans specialize in shit eating porn. Both make great cars but also do weird things. Something about the Axis I tell ya. \_ the Axis is just a symptom... both cultures were characterized by an inferiority complex that could only be remedied by taking over their continent. \_ I used to think they were awfully weird too. The underwear in the vending booths, bizarro porn, Takeshi's Castle, and super strange cartoons. But then you think, hey, we watch a cartoon with a sponge that wears pants. Every culture is weird in its own way. \_ we don't have bukkake and shit eating porn. \_ Uhm, yes we do -- it's just not publicized by American otaku to the same degree. And learn how to post to motd correctly. \_ A sponge isn't weird in that sense. It's just absurd. Anthropomorphic household items are common in cartoons. |
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| www.japantoday.com Former abductees Yasushi and Fukie Chimura, in a letter of protest to a weekly magazine over an article that claimed their 16-year-old son Kiyoshi has a smoking habit. Minister blames women's advancement for school slaying Friday, June 4, 2004 at 12:45 JST TOKYO -- Disaster management minister Kiichi Inoue suggested Friday that women's social advancement is to blame for a recent murder case in which an 11-year-old girl admitted to killing her classmate at a primary school in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture. Schoolgirl killer got angry at being called goody two shoes Friday, June 4, 2004 at 14:00 JST SASEBO -- An 11-year-old girl who admitted to killing her classmate at Okubo Elementary School in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, told police that the victim, 12-year-old Satomi Mitarai, posted a message on an Internet bulletin board taunting her for being a goody-goody, investigative sources said Friday. The girl told her lawyers that she killed Mitarai because she had written a message calling her a goody two shoes last Friday, four days before the incident. That message and a couple of others criticizing her weight and appearance made her angry and decide to kill her classmate, she was quoted as telling police. Diet battles over pension bills Friday, June 4, 2004 at 21:00 JST TOKYO -- The ruling and opposition camps continued their battle over a set of pension reform bills Friday in a last-minute showdown at the House of Councillors but the session was adjourned until after midnight. House of Councillors President Hiroyuki Kurata announced shortly after 8 pm that the session will be adjourned until 12:10 am Saturday, pending an opposition-proposed censure motion against a committee chairman. Ministers slam Mitsubishi Motors Friday, June 4, 2004 at 14:42 JST TOKYO -- Cabinet ministers made scathing attacks Friday on Mitsubishi Motors Corp for a series of vehicle defect coverups. The defect concealments are "so evil that I am struck speechless," Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Shoichi Nakagawa told reporters. Land, Infrastructure and Transport Minister Nobuteru Ishihara said he hopes Mitsubishi Motors will "squeeze out all the pus" and reconstruct its businesses. Japanese tourist missing in NZ presumed dead Friday, June 4, 2004 at 16:07 JST SYDNEY -- A Japanese tourist missing for five days on New Zealand's rugged west coast is presumed dead after parts of his car were found smashed at the bottom of a 70-meter cliff, New Zealand Police said Friday. Despite the biggest ever search and rescue operation along the west coast, involving more than 50 police and volunteers, police have been unable to find the body of Mikimaro Nakanishi. Microsoft scraps development of True Fantasy for Xbox Friday, June 4, 2004 at 16:29 JST TOKYO -- US software giant Microsoft Corp has scrapped the development of True Fantasy Live Online for its Xbox consoles, which was slated for release in Japan during the winter, its Japan unit officials said Friday. According to Microsoft and developer LEVEL-5 Inc, a Fukuoka-based game software production company, the cancellation was due to a lack of progress in creating a new form of online experience. The game was supposed to let 3,000 gamers join a fantasy world where they would take on roles of various professions and battle real-time through high-speed communications networks. Traffic law amended to stiffen crackdown on violations Friday, June 4, 2004 at 06:00 JST TOKYO -- The Diet enacted legislation Thursday to stiffen regulations on parking and driving violations, imposing stricter penalties on drivers using their cell phones. Police will also be allowed to contract out work to handle illegal parking to the private sector. Drivers who use cell phones at the wheel will face fines of up to 50,000 yen if caught talking or messaging. Fines for drunk drivers who refuse to take breathalyzer tests will also be raised to a maximum of 300,000 yen from 50,000 yen. Motorcycle and car gangs will be fined for riding in groups even if they do not cause trouble or harm anyone. Stocks close higher Friday, June 4, 2004 at 16:00 JST TOKYO -- Tokyo stocks rose Friday on late-afternoon buying particularly in export-oriented technology and auto issues following a lackluster trading session as investors opted to make moves after confirming US economic fundamentals. |
| www.japantoday.com/e/?content=popvox&id=486 Former abductees Yasushi and Fukie Chimura, in a letter of protest to a weekly magazine over an article that claimed their 16-year-old son Kiyoshi has a smoking habit. It is hard to believe that such a young child could do such a terrible thing. Something like that would never happen in my country, South Korea. Of course, we also have conflict over children's use of the Internet. Japanese parents need to keep an eye on their kids more and need to know what they are thinking of." Kana Yamamoto, 23 "I cannot understand her action at all. She calls her classmate to a room, slashes her neck, and then goes back to the classroom. It sounds like she thinks it's easy to kill a person and does not know how important a person's life is. I assume that she has been influenced by the Internet, video games and TV. Parents need to teach their children how to use those media and supervise them when they do." Susumu Naito, 39 "Many things such as the Internet and her family relationship have been discussed now, but they all seem unrealistic reasons to me. I think this is going to be a very difficult incident for us to understand. Considering that she planned to kill her classmate, how can she apologize that fast, the day after the murdercomehappen that fast. I suppose she may be acting for the benefit of the police and the public. These days, even a 3-year-old knows how to act favorably and what to say to adults to score points. I also wonder if it was a good thing for the authorities to keep the rest of the class at school for the investigation that day. Shinobu Arikawa, 33 "Although there is saturation media coverage of this right now, I think it's a problem concerning the family structure. We all know families in which kids and adults are using Internet chat sites and message boards. However, the entire society is losing its ethics and morals now. Every time a minor commits a crime, it becomes big news, but I think this is something each of us has to think about rather than just letting the media play it up." Michiko Okubo, 62 "I think it is the very first incident in which a child killed another all of a sudden without a serious motive. However, I knew the world would be like this when I had my first baby about 30 years ago. Let's say the hardware is the Internet, food and the Earth, while human beings are the software. Today the hardware keeps changing and developing every year, but the software is not catching up. I think that sort of distortion has just happened to this schoolgirl. If you look at the entire picture of the family, the way we live, what we eat, the stimulation we get, you realize we are all distorted in some way. I think we have reached a transition point for better or worse. That is why I think this incident will be an important learning experience." Since adults are paying less and less attention to kids, it is getting impossible to understand their inner nature. I think her action resulted from this kind of situation -- a basic lack of communication. When even kids get frustrated today, they have no outlet. Therefore, they need a place to release their stress and need to play outside more. Ryo Yakushijin, 46 "My guess is that as kids live in a free world in which anything is accepted, they become unable to distinguish between good and bad. For example, when I was small, adults told kids not to smoke, not to go out with a girl too young and so on. However, today, if you see a child smoking, no one says anything and more teens are having babies now. When I was in school, we all teased each other with words. Today's kids do not use just words, they use threatening weapons such paper cutters. People say she must have been sending out an SOS, that she was emotionally frustrated, but I don't think so. She had a good relationship with the victim and grew up in a stable family. She just didn't know what was important, so I doubt she was sending out any signals. It's very ironic because I hated rules and restrictions when I was young, but it seems that we need some of it for today's kids." Ayako Shibata, 22 "I wonder what she was thinking of when she killed her friend. Was it an irresistible impulse resulting from anger or a planned action? Compared to my school years, I can hardly believe that an elementary school student could possibly kill someone with a knife. Today's kids should interact more with nature and animals and learn the importance of life." Click here to see all messages by J-t-k (Jun 4 2004 - 22:51) some regular ideas wait.. What do you think about the 11-year-old schoolgirl who stabbed her classmate to death? Click here to see all messages by superfrench (Jun 4 2004 - 22:58) "Something like that would never happen in my country, South Korea." And the worst comments' award of the year goes to Cho Min Ji from South Korea. Sure in South Korea 'nothing like that' would ever happen. How about this man who set fire to Daegu's subway killing 125 people in the process? anyway, on topic - this kind of crap, unfortunately, happens everywhere, not just japan. while i do seem to think that this country has an issue with mental illness and a lack of social infrastructure to deal with it, i've read stories of equally horrible and shocking atrocities carried out in other countries by similarly aged children. |
| csua.org/u/7l7 -> www.time.com/time/interactive/entertainment/gangs_np.html Korean gamers spend most of the day and night playing Lineage or hanging out in a PC cafe waiting for the chance to play. The teenagers come together through their obsession with the online game. Five rough-looking men stepped out of a black sedan and burst into the Seoul PC caf where Paek Jung Yul hangs out with Strong People Blood Pledge, his clan of online gamers. The "wizard" was there, alright, and he was feeling bold. He boasted that he had offed the gangman's virtual character just for the fun of it. The roughnecks dragged the 21-year-old into the urinal and pummeled him until he was covered with real-world bruises. Paek describes the incident--now part of his clan's lore--with jaded nonchalance. Actual violence has become so commonplace among computer-game players that concerned authorities even have a term for it that borrows from the game: "off-line PK" (player killings). Paek, who relishes online killings as a refreshing change from his decorous real-life manner, allows that physical retribution is merited if players engage in particularly craven online behavior, such as theft or scams involving the game's coveted virtual weapons. Those are fighting words, coming from a shy, skinny 16-year-old who regularly tops his high-school class. But this is the other Paek speaking, the ruthless (and female--go figure) elf who is master of Lineage, a medieval fantasy game that has swept Korean society into a gaming frenzy. But sometimes, the 16-year-old Korean admits, things can get a little blurry. Multimedia Feature Our Interactive World, 37 an hour-long special hosted by CNN's Michael Holmes and Tumi Makgabo, featuring luminaries from the world of information technology In South Korea, a deeply conformist society where children must speak to elders with a special deferential grammar, this bloodthirsty game has caught on with a vengeance. In Lineage, gamers playing princes, wizards and elves fight one another to the death in mini-armies or clans, headed by guild masters, to gain control of the castles that dot the virtual world. The victors can then levy feudal taxes upon virtual villages under their control and dun gamers a percentage of each online weapons sale. All this can be fairly lucrative, especially since there's a thriving black market that exchanges the virtual items for cold, hard cash. But what makes the game so addictive is its complex feudal environment, which hooks players after they invest days or weeks building up the strength of their online characters. Based on its success in garnering online subscribers in Korea alone, Lineage is the most popular single interactive online game in the world right now, ahead of Sony's Everquest, Electronic Arts' Ultima Online or even Microsoft's Asheron's Call, according to Samsung Securities. And then there's the universal explanation for escapism: "In the real world, in Korea, you have to repress your drives and hidden desires. Open 24 hours, and charging just $1 an hour to play, these game rooms are well stocked with cheese-whiz sausages, potato wafers and instant noodles. Many games are played here, but Lineage is the most addictive, authorities say. Two million people, out of a population of 46 million, have active Lineage accounts. And when day turns to evening, close to 100,000 Koreans can be found glued to computer terminals around the country, playing the game simultaneously. School kids in Seoul routinely doze through classes after playing all night. Shy young boys take on alter egos as aggressive killers online. A doctor plays ruthlessly while a neighborhood bully has a chance to show compassion. Girl characters, meanwhile, have sometimes been known to offer sexual favors to experienced male gamers in exchange for virtual weapons. But, as one Lineage clan's guild master notes, who's to say the girl characters are really girls? The game has also caught on with the loan-sharking gangsters active in the Korean entertainment industry. Some have seized control of Lineage castles, gamers say. They do a brisk side business trading in virtual weapons and levying taxes in the game. In between off-line heists, they boast among themselves about their online exploits. Sandwiched between news of the latest political scandals, Korea's broadsheets revel in details of Lineage controversies. One March article in the Dong-A Ilbo reports on an online protest--when "more than 1,000 players gathered within the Lineage world"--after unscrupulous gamers took advantage of a computer glitch to make bootleg copies of the game's prized virtual weapons. Korea's intellectuals and literary hopefuls have also gotten caught up in the craze. Gamer Lee Seung Woo, a draftsman by day whose real-life hope is to find a girlfriend, has written a still unpublished novel about male friendship set in the game. Then there's literary critic Park Sang Woo, whose book on Korea's game players draws on the ideas of French philosopher Michel Foucault. Systems administrators, often gamers themselves, have been fired for throwing online events in favor of one gaming clan or another. The company recently issued an online apology to its customers for one such incident and promised it would investigate any allegations of employee corruption. Kim Taek Jin, NCsoft's president, says gamers have attempted to buy off his staffers with gifts of up to $1,000 to manipulate the game. Korean newspapers report that some gangsters recently turned up at the company demanding personal information on online rivals to extract off-line retribution. Not surprisingly, NCsoft's Seoul headquarters is fortified with double steel doors and fingerprint scanners for the server room. Meanwhile, vigilantes with names like the Honorable Resolution Clan take it upon themselves to monitor their own members as well as the behavior of unsavory rivals. Online killings are often accompanied by abusive curses and threats sent in instant messages. Sometimes, entire clans--numbering in the dozens--storm down to NCsoft headquarters to demand redress when another has wronged them. Others take a more legalistic approach, meticulously documenting grievances by taking "screen saves" of incriminating moments in online battles. Others prefer to settle their own scores, such as Paek's Strong People Blood Pledge clan. A number of the 16-year-old's gang sport the close-cropped haircuts and tight suits that gangsters here wear as a kind of uniform, he says. When members meet, they usually like to carry out online player killings together. Paek doesn't seem worried about the clan's reputed gangster ties. Kim Gi Bum, an inspector in one of the police's new cybercrime units--founded after authorities were deluged with complaints from Lineage gamers--tells of a 14-year-old runaway who recently defrauded gamers out of about $10,000 by promising to sell them virtual weapons but not delivering the goods after he was paid. The boy, who often slept in the PC caf where he played Lineage, pulled off 128 fraudulent deals over a year before he was captured. For the non-player, the mixing of reality and fantasy boggles the mind. But serious game players live their lives toggling between the two worlds. More Entertainment Stories 40 Irish music shop finds Web audience Custy's Traditional Music Shop expands business into Japanese-language Web market 41 Crouching Lizard Step aside, Pikachu. The 'King of Games' has stolen your crown in Japan and is poised to conquer America 42 Coming Soon: Me TV Want to be in showbiz? Soon you'll be able to design the set, write the plot and compose the tunes--without leaving home 43 Couch Potato Blight Want to veg out in front of the boob tube? In this multitasking age, forget about it 44 The Sounds of Science With music mixing as easy as logging on to a website and typing on a keyboard, everyone is getting into the act 45 Where Does Fantasy End? Is it time to get up close and personal with your hardware? Enter online publishing 49 Australia's "New Media" Artists "New media" art is the new darling of the modern art scene in Australia 50 Squeeze If You Love Music TIME's Aparisim Ghosh produces sweet melodies with the help of a cushion Quick Links: 51 Sit... |