Accident In Saga Prefecture

[羽之助]

A while back, MNJetter posted a story about how she was kept in the dark at an elementary school - hushed into an office while teachers frantically convened about a mysterious matter.

Well, some kid went missing in Saga Prefecture - 11 years old, and depending on how rural the place is, he could be some JET's student. I wonder if anyone who reads this board is in the vicinity and notices a kid being absent from class and everyone having a grim demeanour without saying why.

What happened was, he was biking and was hit by a car. The driver dragged the kid into the forest by the road and left him to die, but thankfully he was found eight hours later by searching police.

http://www.crisscross.com/jp/news/373199

[Seaflower]

Fucking hell!

First the driver bashes the kid and then refuses to take responsibility for his actions and leaves the kid to die!

Starting to feel sick, poor kid.

[pockymon]

That's sick. My 4-year-old nephew was just killed a month ago in a hit and run in DC....

It's sort of odd, though. I've noticed that in Japan, while for the most part, kids (and people in general) are safer going about their business than in America, when something does happen, it's always incredibly sickening and/or preverse. Maybe the English papers only print highly disturbing stories for shock value, or maybe there's just more *stuff* to talk about in America - I don't know - but I've never read an article about "typical" crimes that you hear about every day (in America). It's always something like a woman killing all of her children and freezing them "for later use", or some students torturing and then burning a homeless guy alive. It's like their malevolent feelings are kept bottled up until they result in something unthinkable.

[Hira-Kata to Sawa]

Hey 羽之助, what about the dead kids in neighboring Akita? 2 kids dead under dubious circumstances in Fujisato. Living 2 houses from each other, same elementary. Last seen at the same spot. Found 'drowned'. The JET there has got to suffer. I know I would if somethng happened to any of my elementary kids.

[Pierrot le Fou]

There was a meeting about those kids in Akita in my school when it was still unknown what happened to them, and there was a discussion about how we should all make sure that kids leave the school grounds by 6 (when it's still light) so that the same thing doesn't happen. I wasn't kept in the dark on that one.

[羽之助]

Oh, I mentioned the Akita kids in another thread. Sorry. It's just this one that made me make a whole thread about it. Didn't another kid disappear last year under pretty much the same circumstances in that village?

And yes, there does seem to be no middle ground. Either low-level robbery and attempted phone scams, or horrific murder.

Remember the little girl who got murdered after walking home on a mountain road a few months ago? I wonder if they ever found her killer.

Nothing much has changed - sure, more parents come to pick up their kids, but they still get let out at different times from school. Yesterday, some of my kids saw me going up the stairs to my apartment. They asked me to play - hey, what's more important, put groceries away or play with the kids? - and I went out and played tag.

Now, I know Japan isn't exactly the land of spacious back yards, but with the kids running between the two-storey apartment blocks and small parking lot every weekend, but all it would take would be someone to notice the times that they play, and notice that the parents are nowhere around ...

[Urban~Ninja]

I feel that Kagoshima is a very safe city, the only crime that has happened here is that a man pushed a boy off the 6th story of a Apartment Building but since he was on the elevators Video Camera they caught him. There was a suicide of a embarrassed goverment man but thats about it.

Then again im in a city of about 1 million people.

The most scary type of crime i remember being around for was in Malaysia and me and my friend (You can see his picture with me in the picture thread) where hanging with his cousins and her friends and when we caught two taxi's to get to the movie thearte. Me and my friend had to split up and to get in seperate taxi's to make sure the girls in each taxi didnt get raped, supposodly at the time some Taxi drivers had been rapping young girls in their cabs. So its not just Japan that has weird styles of Murders/Rape.

[Hira-Kata to Sawa]

Yeah, the deaths were almost the same, but occurred 3 months? apart. It's a little bit too similar to be coincidence if you ask me. Then again, it could just be just another tragic accidental death in backwater Japan. It's surprising just how many kids wander off and die out here in the sticks.

[羽之助]

Well, I wouldn't call strangulation accidental, but I wouldn't be surprised if they looked at the evidence from the first little girl and said "Whoops, yeah, looks like she didn't drown after all."

[Pierrot le Fou]

Honestly, I'm sure there's plenty of crime in Kagoshima that you just don't hear about -- namely rapes, assaults, and 'suicides' or 'accidents' that really aren't. While I understand the feeling that Japan is safe (and it generally is), I think that people overestimate the safety because of the lack of accurate crime reporting in many instances.