So, I was just browsing around the internet, and I came across this article on Mainichi:

Parents hiring private eyes to spy on schoolyard bullies

A growing number of people are commissioning private detective agencies to investigate whether their children are being subjected to schoolyard bullying, industry sources have said.

Now, I’ve heard of overprotective parents, but this just seems a bit much. If I were being bullied, my parents would just tell me to suck it up and ignore them. Is it really that big of a problem in Japan?

Some companies are even offering on their Web sites to conduct detailed investigations into allegations that schoolchildren are being bullied at school.

Detectives tail children and sometimes plant small IC recorders on their satchels to record their conversations with classmates.

Now, I wonder if the children know that their parents are having this done. I would be quite upset if someone was recording everything I said, but no one told me about it. It would suck if you were telling your friend a secret and didn’t know it was being recorded

A major detective agency that has 180 branches across the country said the number of requests from customers to investigate allegations that their children are being bullied at school began to rise in fiscal 1998.

In fiscal 2005, the firm’s headquarters in Tokyo received 260 such requests, the third largest number following requests for investigations into suspected extramarital affairs and to search for family members who had run away from home.

The number of such requests further increased after a number of schoolchildren killed themselves in Hokkaido, Fukuoka and other areas this year after being bullied at school.

Read the full article here

Wow, Japan seems like such a peaceful country, but apparently bullying is so bad that parents have to hire a detective to stalk their kids around.

We used to rent our old house from this guy. Now, we really didn’t like the guy - he kept secret some problems with the house so my parents had to pay to fix a lot of things.

Now, I had heard he was getting/got sued for something, and that his daughter had killed someone in a car accident a couple years ago. Not really any details though.

But tonight, on the news, they were talking about it.

From what I heard, he gave his daughter a BMW, that had bald tires and bad breaks. His daughter decided to challenge another girl to a street race. Well, his daughter (and I guess the other girl?) somehow ended up crossing over the median, to the other side of the road and slamming into some 60yr old women driving.

The girl was going about 90mph, and in the accident she killed her boyfriend and the old lady.

They just got sentenced today, and I think the daughter has to spend 5 years in prison, and the other girl has to spend 4. The daughter was like 16 then, 19 now.

I saw the images of the accident, it was so bad. You could barely tell there were even any cars invloved. It just looked like a big pile of twisted metal.

I also heard the father (who we used to rent from) is being charged for negligence, because he knew the car had bald tires and bad breaks.

Sucks to ruin your own life (and others’) while you’re still so young.

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In other news, I’ve become a fan of Yamapi’s acting. I haven’t listened to his music, but I saw him in Nobuta wo Produce and Kurosagi and now I’m a fan.

I’ve also watched part of Dragon Zakura and Stand Up!! both which also feature him.