JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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In an OECD survey of 36 nations on people's perceptions of their living conditions, Japan ranked 21st in terms of quality of life; Australia, Norway and the U.S. were the top 3. What do you think of that?
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The Fukuoka mayor is banning public servants from drinking alcohol for a month; the Osaka mayor has declared war on tattoos on civil servants. What do you think of all this?
( 21 )
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Why do you think Facebook's stock failed to live up to the hype in its trading debut?
( 13 )
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Which sport, when played well, do you think is the most exciting to watch?
( 62 )
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What's the difference between an average burger and a great one?
( 12 )
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- 営業パーソン
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- Salary: ¥240,000 ~ ¥350,000 / Month Negotiable
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45 Comments
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Nippon5
There is no way to eliminate it from schools so the question is easy to answer. No best way..
In order to get rid of bullying one would have to be able to control the human mind of others and that isnt possible.
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urufuls
Nippon5, you are right that bullying will never be eliminated, but we can try.
You can't control the human mind, but you can influence it. If all kids were raised well with upright morals and respect for others, I'll bet that you'd see a lot less bullies on the playground.
Short answer: It starts in the home.
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outofmydepth
it would take something major to change the way people in this country think. always pick on the different one - that
s human nature but from what ive read about england and what my family has experienced here it is the single most horrible thing in this society. it has permeated every aspect of society. just think about the workers who dont go home before anyone else, dont take vacation or family time, the silliness on tv that people imitate, the mothers-in-law that bully their husbands wives and that gets passed on, the teachers who bully children, clubs - kidsand adultsclubs - where people are bullied into doing things they dont want to, every sport from little league to sumo. i am sorry but these things are not great problems in my country. of course, we have other problems but even as a foreigner i have been bullied. i could go on and on but whats the point. murders and suicides resulting from bullying have not been the major change i thought would turn things around. its a lost society as far a bullying is concerned. gaman!!!0
Pukey2
You mean their son's wives?
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WMD
Impossible. Bullying is a totally ingrained part of japanese society and culture. From the classroom to the office, it's what japanese do. But on an individual basis, STAND UP FOR YOURSELF. Refuse to allow anyone to bully you. Go to war if necessary. At least they'll leave YOU alone.
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GW
as others have pointed out, just trying to reduce it at schools wud only tackle a tiny tiny portion of the bullying that exists in Japan.
Here is a more interesting question: If the bullying no longer existed in Japan wud Japanese still be Japanese?
I think they resemble very different people than yr average Tanaka
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kimigano
WMD is right. Do not allow anyone to bully you. Call them out on it. Publicly expose them and shame them as a bully.
Two eyes for an eye.
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isthistheend
How to stop the bullying in the schools? How about beginning where the children learn such behavior....in the home, in the neighborhood, in the company in the government, in the free world. Of course, we all know that bullying is the fault of the foreigners. I'm sure you've seen the advertisement for travel on the trains these days, a group of "talents" are sitting around and one of them asks another one of the members if he wants to come to the party this weekend. Since he planned a trip abroad, he hesitates to accept. Then the most famous of these luminaries, the loud-mouth horse-faced female one enters into the discussion and asks the same question more forcibly and with a fake smile, "Do you WANT to come to the party this weekend?!." We then see him in a panic telephoning his wife that they have to change their itinerary for another time.
Point? Bullying is the NORM here. They make themselves feel better by playing these childish games all through adult life. What's a gaijin to do? Not much, but I do like the ideas of speaking out and challenging it whenever possible. But when its 3 to 1 and you depend on them for a ride home, the issue gets muddied....as many of us know. Just don't let it get to the status of major suffering. When its time, stand up and fight back, its the only way to stop it, but be prepared to go the whole yard.
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isthistheend
And if possible, smile while your standing up against it all. That seems to work best here.
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Farmboy
I grew up in the USA, and there was plenty of bullying at my school. Some people just found it entertaining to abuse others. It's not just a Japanese phenomena, though killing oneself because of bullying may be.
As far as stopping it, I've never seen a successful way to do this, but support any and all attempts in this direction.
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Triple888
By assigning spies into classrooms, changing rooms and playgrounds. Bullies who are caught should be put on stage named and shamed.
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Xennon
Eradicate?
Kill the bullies in the worst type of fashion publicly.
If that doesn't eradicate it then I dunno.
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Sarge
When I was bullied in junior high school, I tried everything to placate the bully and just got bullied more. One day I punched him right in the mouth when he grabbed my glasses off my face for the last time. My hand hurt like hell, but I guess his mouth hurt worse. He never bothered me again.
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helloklitty
This is the only known cure for bullies the reason being is that they are truly cowards. I love to toss around the yankees standing in the doorways of convenience stores.
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nutsagain
What's the best way? Simple... Follow the Scandanavian examples of a 'zero tolerance policy'. Every kid in every school knows it's totally unacceptable and that message is constantly reinforced y the staff, all staff. Listening Mombusho morons?
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nutsagain
sarge/Notginger: enough of the David Goliath stories. Things rarely, if ever pan out like this and only a fool would believe it. The issue is to find sensible ways to curb this problem, not your super boy reminiscences.
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Sarge
nuts - OK, what's your sensible way to stop the kid who was bullying me for months before I stopped him with my fist? I tried being nice... I went to the school counselor... I gave the kid money...
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nisegaijin
nutsagain, rubbish! the only way parents can deal with bullies is teach their kids how to be stronger and stand up to themselves.
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NagoyaGaijin
eradicate kids. and teachers. and staff. and society. a bit extreme, but there would be no bullies left, would there?
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nandakandamanda
So, nutsagain, you are saying that the best way would be to create a snitch society where hidden spies report to the authorities to mete out some kind of punishment on the fingered person? Haven't we tried that in East Germany?
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TheNewZen
IMHO, you can't eradicate bullying.
Yeah you can control/ban it at schools it just moves to non-school areas, playgrounds, etc. Who looks after the kids to prevent bullying once the pass the school-gates, etc.
Yes, standing up to a bully might work but if he has peers that are behind him you might be in a LOT of trouble. Any action you take will be 50/50 at best.
I told my son if he gets bullied to shrug it off but tell me, worked so far. A few times I confronted the bullies and told them if they repeat it they will face me, their parents, school officials and cops if he gets injured.
Most parents are NOT aware that their kids are bullies and thus cannot take action.
One guy bullied my son a few meters away from me on the way home from school, he changed his tune quickly when I stepped in and dialed his parents number. Yeah, a few of his buddies tried to confront me, saying it is the norm for 6th-graders to tease 1st graders. Didn't work and I told them if they do it again they will face me mano-o-mano as a group.
What the child needs to know is that he got the support from his folks, he cant sort it all himself but he needs to know who to go to.
As a parent approach the bullies parent and let them know what is happening and the consequences if it continues.
Just my view.
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nutsagain
nandakandamanda: OK, here's my take on it again. The Scandinavian societies have a pretty good grip in the problem in the schools at least. Your reference to a quasi Stasi society are just silly but I take your point albeit exaggerated. The Canadiens have in some places at least, also dealt with the problem pretty effectively.
As an amateur boxer in the school team, other kids left me alone but that was a very long time ago and as long ago as it was, people don't change so bullying is still around and always will be. My point was this; a rigorously enforced policy of zero tolerance works. This isn't the case in Japanese schools at all. What we see in Japan is a very wishy-washy half hearted attempt to deal with a burgeoning problem.
As for fisticuffs? I learned long ago that there's always someone better, quicker, stronger and the stronger and bigger man wins 99.9% of the time, be it bully versus bullied, boxer versus boxer. Besides, as Ghandi said 'an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.'
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Xeno23
Let's not forget that bullying in Japan is vastly different, in root cause, from bullying in the US, and likely other countries too. Sure, the in the end it's one or more ignorant kids beating up on one or more victim kids, but the bullies I recall from my school yard days in American schools were mostly about individual power, not group identity power - which is the source for a lot of Japanese bullying.
The peg that stands out gets beaten down - this is the most common root of bullying in Japanese schools. In order to change this, you have to change the fundamental aspect of a society that supports that idea. A Japanese friend of mine, born in Tokyo, moved with family to California for his dad's work as a child, then moved back to Tokyo after a few years, had a terrible time of it on his return. He was strong, so he overcame it, but had he not been, it would've been hell.
But you can't just change society without committed, long term strategies. Adults, in government, school administration, and PTA have to recognize the severity of the problem and enforce no bullying. Period. There have to be school policies and punishments for bullies. It has to be zero tolerance, and explained why. Kids are malleable; they'll learn those lessons if exposed to them.
In America, we stand up to bullies by eventually punching them out (that's what I had to do too many times) - but that's a distinctly American approach, because bullies aren't backed up by society. Americans like seeing bullies get their reckoning. In any given society where bullying is tacitly approved, punching out a bully can backfire worse than submitting.
The key thing is that adults have to clearly, through word and action, let kids know that bullying won't be tolerated.
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archimech
Parents should teach their kids that get bullied to turn the bully in to the school Principal, and ...if that does not work after reporting them, to simply jump them from behind in the cafeteria in front of everyone and punch them in the face. It worked for me. Just a suggestion.
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nutsagain
And that's my point exactly. Zero tolerance and at the same time, and educated teaching staff that makes both gets the bullies out of the system until such times as they reform and also makes it acceptable to 'inform' staff of problems. Anyone that thinks standing up and slugging it out will work, has been watching too many movies. This just is NOT the way it works. The bullies are invariably stronger and in ANY confrontation it's a certainty the stronger person wins, period.
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outofmydepth
i agree with Xeno23. bullying in japan has society
s OK. it happens in all walks of life - not only school. thats where they hone the bullying skills they use later in life. the teachers, principals, vice principals, parents, PTA, kodomokai - they all turn their heads away from the problem. i have heard instances where the kids run the schools through bullying - the admin is running scared. and working in schools and belonging to clubs has shown me that these very same people who watch over our children bully each other.0
nandakandamanda
Good thread this. Helping me to focus on what I've seen over the years here in Japan but never fully comprehended.
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nutsagain
outofmydepth: You may not have been here long enough to experience the in-office bullying. There's a method called 'mokusatsu' which means killing someone with silence. I know very few foreigners who can pick it, but I certainly can. It's a unique Japanese form of passive aggression, usually from woman to woman. There's an evil bitch in my office who masquerades as an angel to the administrators and gets away with this to three or four in the same office she likes to bully. Unmarried, short, not cute and with a big axe to grind. See if you can pick it out as it's rife here....
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outofmydepth
nutsagain - thank you. i know her but she doesn`t bother me (there are actually a few but as i work in classrooms and visit the teachers room for only minutes at a time) as a foreigner i can usually stand up to that kind of bullying (or ignore back as the case may be). i worry about esp. my teenager.
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BlackTieAffair
Overall, I think the schools here seem to turn a blind eye to this type thing in so many ways. A friends daughter was bullied and raped on school grounds and nothing happened. The school blamed the girl and looked down on her mom cause she is a single parent. Even the boys parents did not have much to say in regards to the matter. The parents and school officials had more concern for their family names than what happened to the girl.
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nandakandamanda
In the UK there is something called "sending someone to Coventry." Some poor kid discovers that no-one will say a word to him/her.
Talented loners tend to get spotted and picked on.
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Gloobey
What's needed here is a little of what the Japanese sorely lack - good old fashioned bollocks! Why don't they just stand up for themselves as appose to caving in to this 'bullying'? I was bullied as a child - had a metal comb dragged across my face. That's bullying, not this 'nobody talks to me' cobblers. They aren't nice people, you don't want to talk to them. Get over it, FFS!
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TheNewZen
Great advise.
Try that in the UK, etc where most bullies carry switch-blade knifes, etc. Heck even 30yrs ago carrying a knife was common.
And guess what, the first you know about the knife is when it sticks in your guts. Or how about sharpened bicycle spoke, chains, sharpened coins, etc.
Guess most of the guys that give the advise of standing up never grew up in a rough neighbourbood.
Just my view.
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chardk1
Interestingly, a lot of people accuse Koreans of whining about Japanese mistreatment but you have to admit the mean-spirited among the Japanese really know how to make people miserable when they think they can get away with it, even when it is one of their own. It does make one wonder about the standard Japanese explanation/excuse that "we were no worse than any strong country ruling the weak back then." Looking at Japanese bullies even today you have to wonder that maybe, just maybe, at least some of them were . . .
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isthistheend
Yes, that comment about mokusatsu is the underlying behavior, among and by Japanese for Japanese and foreigners. We are a given, in fact, it is like a constitutional RIGHT to mokusatsu or just plain out right bully the foreigners intelligence (none to begin with, right?) And the part that makes it so wierd, is that the behavior is never "outgrown". Just a month ago, I received the royal mokusatsu treatment from a 60-something retired guy on the way home from a golf outing. He wouldn't talk to me for the whole 3 hour trip, despite my trying to talk about something objective like the weather in English (he only speaks to me in English), but when that didn't illicit a response, I asked him something in Japanese 10 minutes later, again met by mokusatsu. Only the next day, did I understand the cause of his anger, in an e-mail from him, he described how stupid it was for me to have mistaken our meeting time, though I was out to his car within 30-seconds of receiving his keitai phone announcing his arrival. As non-sensical as this is, there was another reason for his anger, I told him to stop harassing me before a shot (by talking loudly in Japanese about how nevous a golfer the foreigner (me) is), as if I can't understand a word of it, though I'm fluent in the language. It just takes so many twists and turns and you can't believe that a grown-up would take part in it, but they do, so....
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ProudKoreanGuy
I thought bullying was rare in Japanese schools.
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BlackTieAffair
Starviking, The school told the mother that it was best to handle internally to avoid scandal and shame. The staff had more concern for their retirement checks than the welfare of the young girl. I told the mother that I would help her fight for justice but she said it would be better to move to another country. The girl finished the school year but had to deal with the whispers of other students and gossip. I met with the principal and he could not look me in the eye as we spoke. I left his office told him he was a sorry excuse for a Japanese man as tears ran down his face.
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koroke
school bulling results will results a bat in your testicles or nipple twisters.
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Hoolie
Surprised that nobody made a comment about letting the teachers know that they will be held personally and criminally responsible if they encourage bullying in any form, tacitly or otherwise.
A surprisingly large amount of the bullying that goes on in Japanese schools is not only something that teachers are aware of, in many cases, they are actively encouraging it.
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ProudKoreanGuy
I find that incredulous.
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AlliedForces
PrfoudKoreanGuy;
It is true buddy. Teachers instigate and condone a lot of bullying in Japanese schools. The Japanese side of my family has experienced it first hand. Bullying is accepted behaivour in Japan, thus it is condoned.
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