A Tale of Two Unattended Backpacks

[Bonobo]

In Japan, if you see an unattended backpack, you worry if you can find the person who left it.

In America, if you see an unattended backpack, you worry if it will explode.

In Japan, if you forget your backpack, it will be returned, unopened and wiped of dirt. Seriously.

In America, if you forget your backpack, you will be creating a panic and possibly buying yourself a visit from law enforcement.


You can come up with explanations, rationalizations and justifications for these differences until you are blue in the face.

But in the end, you are creating the country that you live in based on your political choices. Or lack of them. All I can say is that you can get mad at me for pointing out these differences, or you can take something meaningful away from it.

What kind of a country do you want to live in? If the answer is a peaceful one, then start treating other Americans and the rest of the world peacefully. It's the only way.

[Electric Monk]

1. Am I correct that Japan has a mass murder incident every decade or three, on average?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akihabara_Massacre 2008

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaka_school_massacre 2001

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsuyama_massacre 1938

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/japan-safe-guns-article-1.1223065



Compare and contrast with http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map?page=2

[Bonobo]

2. I can't really say much from personal knowledge about that.

There have been a few. Usually a nut with a knife or the Akihabara one with the car.

[davidpdx]

3. I remember one with gas as well

The one from 1938 really is post-modern Japan. Japan's gun laws as you noted are pretty tough (Korea's even more so), so if someone wanted to commit some kind of atrocity it would have to be using a different weapon.

In Korea about 10 years ago or so some nut started a fire in the subway which ended up killing people. I moved to Daegu almost a year to the day after that happened and remember people telling me about it.

[mwrguy]

4. The gas attack:

The Sarin attack on the Tokyo subway, usually referred to in the Japanese media as the Subway Sarin Incident (地下鉄サリン事件 Chikatetsu Sarin Jiken?), was an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by members of Aum Shinrikyo on March 20, 1995.

In five coordinated attacks, the perpetrators released sarin on several lines of the Tokyo Metro, killing thirteen people, severely injuring fifty and causing temporary vision problems for nearly a thousand others. The attack was directed against trains passing through Kasumigaseki and Nagatachō, home to the Japanese government. It is the most serious attack to occur in Japan since the end of World War II.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin_gas_attack_on_the_Tokyo_subway

[jberryhill]

5. A tale of two gay married people

In Massachusetts, they're fine.

In Japan, they can go fuck themselves.