This is why we must kill all Super Saiyans

A court has ordered the parents of a boy who accidentally kicked a ball into the street to pay nearly $200,000 in compensation after he, in the court’s view, caused the death of an 87-year-old motorcyclist who fell off his bike in an effort to avoid the ball, breaking his leg and later going senile only to die over a year later as a result of an infection stemming from a feeding accident.

According to the Osaka district court, the incident began in 2004 (Japanese link) at a public elementary school in Ehime prefecture, where pupils were practising their football skills by making practice free kicks at a goal.

One fifth year elementary student made a kick which went high, going over the goal posts and into the street beyond. There, it so happened that an 86-year-old man was driving down the street on a bike, and swerved to avoid the ball, crashing and breaking his leg.

He survived, but became senile soon after, and then died some 15 months after the accident as a result of pneumonia contracted after some food accidentally became lodged in his windpipe.

5 members of the man’s bereaved family decided to sue the boy for causing his death, demanding ¥50,000,000. As the boy was a minor at the time of the accident (he is now 19), he could not be held legally responsible, but his parents could, and so the family sued them instead.

In their defence, the boy’s side argued “nothing illegal occurred as he was just normally kicking the ball at the goal.”

The court was having none of it – the judge’s verdict was that “he could have predicted the ball would land in the street and cause an accident,” though he did at least stop short of ordering him to pay compensation, saying “the boy was a youth and bears no legal responsibility for the accident, but his parents do have a duty to pay compensation.”

Accepting that the dead man’s life was drastically altered by his encounter with the stray football, the court ordered the parents to pay up to the family, but reasoned that as the man already had neurological problems prior to the incident they would only have to pay ¥15,000,000 of the ¥50,000,000 demanded of them.

Such a fine example of jurisprudence has not escaped criticism:

“Don’t they normally put up nets around these places?”

“The issue is not the kid, it’s the lack of safety nets.”

“Shouldn’t this responsibility lie with the school which didn’t bother to put nets up and could have predicted the ball would land in the street themselves?”

“If they can sue anyone it’s the school, not the parents!”

“Couldn’t they sue the school and city?”

“Asking 50,000,000 for an 87-year-old man who died as an indirect result of an accident seems a bit much.”

“This old guy was driving a bike at 87? And they sue the boy’s parents? What kind of Japanese are they?”

“Poor parents, suddenly plunged in debt like that.”

“It seems a bit odd that they are attributing his death by misfeeding to this…”

“All ball games in Japan are going to get banned as a result of this, no doubt.”

“Common sense would tell you to expect balls flying out of schools occasionally.”

“Anyone with a car or bike must predict that they could encounter a ball like that. Doesn’t anyone in the court have a driving license?”

“So this 86-year-old man with a known neurological condition was riding a motorcycle around a school?”

“This poor kid and his family have been left worrying about this stuff throughout his childhood for the last 7 years, with no end in sight if they continue to fight the ruling.”

“This verdict is nuts.”

“If he had died right there it might be justifiable.”

“Don’t steal a child’s future for the sake of a dead 87-year-old.”

“I wonder if the bereaved family will be satisfied now the school has banned all ball games?”

“Remember: when you kick a ball you might cause an old man to fall off his bike, go senile and have to be nursed only to be misfed and die.”

After receiving it I immediately ran home and blacked out. After lying on the floor in a near coma for a week, subsisting on nothing but doggie love, I woke up and started to translate what I was given so that I might spread the message in a way similar to cancer or AIDS. What I have below is the front side of what the gods want to tell you.

I’ll translate some of the back later, but I need to go into a coma again before I can do that.

Click for the piously large version!

Even God has a plan.

[Top Right] Why are we brought into this world? Why are we here? Why did the gods create us? What is the purpose of it all? The god that made us has a plan.

1. In the 7th dimension, the god that rules over all came into being – It created time and space. Continuing, It created the fire and water sprits before creating the universe.

2. The god of all then arrived in the 6th dimension and spoke the human race into creation.
“It is not necessary for you to have the power of the gods, but the power to move things, create and innovate I have created something that is, in a way, greater than the gods.” It then required the creation of a world similar to heaven for the people to use.

3. In this way did the human race start its existence in 3D space (the physical world) on earth. Humans absolutely didn’t come from apes or monkeys, we are now as we have always been.

4. The people were led by the sun god and had control over their greed. Because of this there was peace, but no progress or development as there was little need. At that time the true gods who had control over the seat of power were overthrown by the moon gods. This is what we call “Gate of the Celestial Rock Cave” (wiki link for more details). Humans now became filled with greed and pushed forward society. Civilization started to progress at a rapid pace.

5. However, the now greedy humans began to fight one another and there were many massacres and wars. The resulting death count made some dream of a heaven on earth (a better world). To act as a brake against the violent people of the world, the gods used some humans, such as Buddha and Jesus (among others), as prophets.

6. Even after that the insatiable greed of humanity led civilization to reach a splendorous peak. This progress came at a price, Mother Earth was now in dire straits after being ravaged incessantly. On New Years 1962, the real gods returned to the seat of power. This event is called the “Reversal of Divine Will”.

7. Now we are heading towards the establishment of a new, spiritual civilization. On our way there will be a baptism by (the) fire (spirit) – there will be many strange and happenings and calamities across the globe.

People on this Earth, isn’t now the time to act like the gods require of you? “Things”, “Money”, “What feels good”, these greedy and selfish ways only lead to a violent way of life and should be cast aside. A world without want for war, confrontation, and conflict – a world of peace – is in the process of being created. We will break down all walls separating us (religion, race, ideology) and make our way to a new world filled with love and peace. Won’t you be a member of “God’s Team” and join us in this quest?

Big No-nos
I only mention these two because so many people seem to think that they sound like a word in English – they don’t. Please don’t use them or I’ll write a crappy piece of Jacobian literature about you.

Well, I guess I can tell you a little without having to resort to useless violence. There are these places in Japan that were former ninja lairs while at the same time being a regular town – i.e. hidden while simultaneously not hiding, one of the many secrets of pajama wearers. Since you’ve read this far without punching me (or my fake cockatiel) in the face I don’t see any problem telling you the name of the place I went, Iga.

If you ask Japanese people if ninjas don’t exist anymore they’ll look at you like you’re a moron and give you one of those condescending pats on the head. However, don’t let this fool you, fool, you think they’d actually spill the beans? In the land of rice? Never. Not only are ninjas all around you, but they love to just hang around in the strangest of places for no good goddamn reason. You’d know more about this, but they only show themselves in April and May in Iga. Your first impression might be to fear for your life, don’t. What you are feeling is the little samurai that lives inside each and every one of us. They will feel mighty at times, but not around ninjas.

Although it’s unknown if it’s known or unknown, dogs are sometimes said to be ninjas – dogjas in ninsguise. Nonetheless, there are dog cafes in existence within the city limits of Iga and they sell things in quantities! Although I was emotionally famished just walking through the door I still had enough strength to order a energy revitalizing piece of cake. Unfortunately, before I had the chance to take a bite of it a dangerous, hairy, and extremely small ninja came out of nowhere and ordered me to hand it over in nindog. I acquiesced to its request but ever so reluctantly to show it that I only did so because my training is not that great.

Even as I was giving up and devising a way to get back to my land of ninja-less honey, I had realized that I was being tracked the entire time. Luckily, my brain reappeared (also a ninja) and my newly thunked plan to remove me from my quandary worked like a tchotchke. Seeing as how I’m typing this I’m safe and everything is back to … ninja ninja ninja.

Before we get to that here’s some stuff to read/watch:

1. Another opinion similar to mine

2. Should you cancel your trip to Japan?

3. Watching news in Japan

4. A report from Tokyo

All read up now, you big-nosed, gundam-loving fiends? Without having to go into depth about what is fucked up about the US/UK media (easily a 400 page book), let’s just take a look at the headlines and crazy shit said by newscasters, headlines, and the those that were brought on to discuss the incident. Let’s start with the easily most egregious example, The Sun. Now you could say “That’s not fair!”, but, sorry, I don’t give a shit. Highlighting the worst gives us a better view of how far the average viewpoint spread will be. Below is one of their headlines after the earthquake.

Let it all sink in, all the bullshit, fearmongering, and lack of knowledge. They write turgid articles such as that one and this one which, even if you neither read nor subscribe to the less-than-bathroom-reading quality rag, can affect any passerby that sees a shocking headline such as those.

What about the other papers and new stations? How about ABC. They had Michio Kaku come on to Good Morning America to talk about the nuclear power plant. Although he’s of Japanese descent that’s not why they brought him on the show, it’s because he’s a physicist; the problem is that he’s a theoretical physicist, which has fuckall to do with nuclear reactors. Besides that, he goes on to say that this could be worse than Chernobyl and that we should just dump sand and concrete on it. If you think this could be worse than Chernobyl or that dumping sand and then concrete on these would be a good idea you really need to read more about nuclear power plants, second generation nuclear reactors, and what actual nuclear engineers are saying and recommending.

It’s shit like this that causes people to worry much more than they should. News stations should be telling us what is likely to happen but for various reasons western coverage of events comes down to the most horrible and unlikely being described with a short paragraph about the actual situation. They almost made up for bring on Mr. Kaku by showing this clip. However, they just couldn’t help themselves and they had to throw in some worst case scenarios because, like most western media, they’re sluts for chaos and horrible, but interesting, situations.

The effects of this type of reporting can be seen in the following two clips.

No one outside of the eastern seaboard of NE Japan is in any real danger and yet you have people running around in California trying to buy iodine pills and worried parents calling their children (300 miles away from harm) in western Japan. How are any of those people informed? What useful information have they learned that they could put to use? None. Maybe if Fallout wasn’t just a game they’d have a use for iodine pills, but I doubt the Chinese are going to actually cause the world to turn into a nuclear wasteland.

They’re just being “realistic”.

Another thing I don’t understand is that within the reporting no one is bringing up the fact that the United States detonated atomic bombs in the pacific and took radiation samples afterwards. Since these tests were done to the east of Japan and the fallout didn’t hit mainland why aren’t the newsmedia quelling these retarded fears? They’re doing even more harm by just blurting out numbers with no baseline and thus no possibility for comparison.

Then again, the western news media is correct. Just look at this horrible footage from Tokyo.

Learn more:
Radiation comparison chart
A report from another teacher
A short explanation of radiation
And a marmot thinks it’s smarter than real people

The day of the quake I took my dog to the doctor because she was having trouble keeping food down (she’s fine now). I usually go to Japanese class on Friday mornings, but after waking up to a glob of red fluid and a (still) happy dog I thought it best to head straight to the vet and skip class. Later on in the day when I’m wasting time before class starts I suddenly feel slightly dizzy (apparently that was a common reaction in the Mie area). At the time I had no clue that this was actually an earthquake since earthquakes are associated with more jerky movements, not a lazy back and forth for 15 seconds; 20 minutes later I then realize the situation at hand. On the Japan side of things that’s it (so far).

Given my basically pointless account of events, I feel that some perspective would be a good idea. Gakuranman has an extremely detailed list of events as they happened here and here

If you feel like you want to give, please do. However, I feel that money would be better spent helping somewhere else that can’t help themselves as well as Japan can.

Earthquake reports can be found at:
JMA
USGS
Yahoo Japan

Misc. Links:
Before and after photos
Photos from the National Post
Meat and potatoes from NewScientist

TV:
Japanese TBS ustream
NHK ustream