Amazingly Enough, In Spite of Us Parents, Most Kids Turn Out Alright

I think it is safe to say that pretty much all parents worry about their children's future. Of course we worry about their health and safety, but I'm talking about something else; I'm talking about worrying about their future as in, "Can they get a job after getting out of school?" "Will they be productive members of society?" or, even worse, "Will they straighten out and stay out of jail?"

Some parents might laugh at that last one but I don't. I didn't. When my two older daughters were junior high school students, I seriously worried if they were ever going to straighten out and fly right. In fact, in my oldest daughters case, I was so worried that she'd lead a life of crime, wind up with no family and be homeless, that I didn't care if she married this Yakuza gangster guy she was hanging out with! I actually thought my daughter marrying a Yakuza was probably a good thing. Please refer to and article that I wrote six years ago entitled, "Yakuza: Japanese Modern-Day Cowboys"


My oldest daughter was seriously dating a Yakuza a while back. She still could be, I don't know. I hope she is. I wish she'd settle down with a nice, hard-working guy who makes a decent living. When my ex-wife found out that Diane (not her real name) was dating this Yakuza-guy, everyone on their side of the family freaked out. They called me and told me to do something. "Do something about what?" I asked. I was happy about my daughter dating a Yakuza. I mean, every family needs a doctor, a lawyer, and a gangster in it to keep the family together. What's the problem? Some readers may think I jest here, but I certainly do not.  

Awww. How cute! Who could have know that a few years later they'd be criminal monsters? Here we are celebrating 七五三 (Shichi-go-san) 7-5-3 children's day.

Seriously folks, these two seemingly honest and cute little girls had started growing up and heading for big trouble. 


By 12 years old, my oldest daughter had become "Gaki Taisho" (ガキ大将) "Boss of the kids" at school. By 14 years old, she was constantly in trouble and in danger of being expelled. By 15 she was constantly in trouble with the police and getting arrested for all sorts of dumb things like stealing motorcycles and whatever else wasn't bolted down.


I think when she just turned 17, she did something really bad (for the umpteenth time) and almost had to spend one year of her life in Juvenile Delinquency prison. This would have been a very bad outcome because, as statistics show, once in prison, a huge percentage of those spend the rest of their lives going in and out of prison so the police and court systems are hesitant to send young people into prison in the first place. Thank heaven for that! 


The second daughter, whom I had never imagined to be the terror the first one was, was also guilty of many crimes and, as a 15-year-old, actually the mastermind of a group of minors who were committing grand larceny. So bad were her and her friend's crime escapades that they drew the attention of the  Metropolitan police of Tokyo and, I'd find out later, that a three-month dragnet was set out to catch them. Oh and catch them they did! And, when they did, to my total and utter astonishment, it made the front pages of every major Japanese newspaper in the country!


Now, I'm all for thinking big and when I was 17, I was arrested and made the front pages of the newspaper, but that was only local. My daughter, at 15, made national news! (Kind of reminds me of Richard Branson's teacher telling him that he's, "Either going to prison or going to be a millionaire.")

Former crime syndicate leaders

What made the news so shocking was that this crime syndicate that had been busted by police sting was guilty of devising a brilliant plan whereby they stole in the neighborhood of over $10,000 a day, in broad daylight, right on video camera, and the police had no idea of what they looked like!!! (How's that for the creative mind of children?) 


The police thought they were out to catch old time Yakuza gangsters who had come out with this brilliant plot. But the police were dumbfounded when they arrested the perpetraitors of this devious deal and they were all 15 & 16-year-old girls!


Yeah. 15 & 16-year-old girls with their Hello Kitty bags and designer clothes and stuff. Real desperadoes!


I couldn't believe it either. I think I started off on a three day drunk when this news broke. Thank god my wife handled all of this for me. I was too much of a wreck to do anything...

What I looked like (and felt like) in those days

I wonder if these two girls didn't do these things to make me pay more attention to them? That could be the case. Come to think of it, I was too busy working and too busy being a doofus to be too much of a good father. I blame myself for these incidences. I wrote about these regrets once. I summed all this up in, A Message For Fathers: Most Men Die With Regrets

I have four children. Julie and Sheena were born to my first wife. That wife and I divorced after seven years of marriage and I raised those two girls by myself. I remarried three years later and Wendy was born. When Wendy (17) got sick as a baby and then recovered from cancer, she wasn't able to live with her sisters for at least 6 years due to chemo-therapy treatments so her mother and I divorced and Wendy went away to live with her mother. 

I remarried again for the third time and Wray (8) was born.

Julie and Sheena often had trouble at school and sometimes with the police when they were teenagers. I regret that I didn't spend enough time with them, but with trying to pay to raise them, I didn't have the time I needed. I hired several nannies and they raised them. One nanny was the main one, but she wasn't full-time. I will always regret that I missed their childhood and didn't spend the time with them that I should have.

Yes. I didn't spend the time with them that I should have. That time is now gone. I wish I had paid more attention when they were school kids. But, I think, as the public education system falters in the USA and Japan, I could be a symptom of one of the reasons: Today's parent does not spend enough time with their kids and expects the school and the teachers to raise those kids and teach them in the parent's place. This, folks, doesn't work well and I think we have 40 years of history to prove it.


My I get slightly off the subject for a moment?

The other day, I had a nice exchange with a friend, Andrew, who runs the It's a Wonderful Rife blog. Andrew was a professional teacher in Japan and writes some very interesting stories about his life here. Andrew has asked me why the teacher's in Japan take such a strong parental role in raising the children and why they are reluctant to notify the parents of trouble. He asked me "Mike, are the parents are ever notified of wrongdoings by the children?" 

I responded: 

"Andrew, nowadays I think, the school's are ever reluctant to tell the parents about the hell the kids are raising because of how many useless and incompetent parents we have running around "raising" kids ... My wife was just telling me this morning about a father who was unhappy with some sort of discipline his son's school meted out to his son. So unhappy was this father that he decided to show some parental guidance and express his displeasure by going to the school at night and setting it on fire. Well, as "Mr. Firemountian" (火山) was trying to light the school on fire, someone saw him and he got his butt arrested. Funny that."

I continued; 

"Let me tell you about my girls when they were 14 or so... Terrors, they were. They'd do all sorts of things, pranks, hijinks, felonies... Yes. You read that last one right. I'd get calls from the school... Other times I'd get calls from the police. The oldest daughter got arrested for something and then was put of "juvenile delinquent" parole for a year where she had to appear before a parole officer once a week otherwise she'd have to sit in jail. I was such a useless father that at one time, these calls from the school, the police, and being summoned by both, got to be so much that I finally told both the school and the cops, "Don't call me anymore!" I also told my daughters, "Look, do what you want. Just don't have the police or the principal calling me anymore, alright?" Oh the memories!"

By the way, this little episode shows the troubles the schools and police have with parents. I didn't think I was a bad parent (I realize that I was a terrible one now) but the school and the police (juvenile division) are actually reformers and are trying their best to keep the kids out of future trouble. They are trying to connect with the parents and communicate so that they can work together to keep the kids out of trouble and from falling in with the wrong people. What are they to do when the the kids aren't nearly as screwed up as the parents?


Is it any wonder that the kids are screwed up when they have parents who are people like me?

Let me tell you about another vignette about another girl who was my oldest daughter's friend when they were both 14 years old or so. One day, this girl, I think her name was Yuko, came over to visit. She stayed over night at our home a few nights. I would find out later that she was arrested by the police, put in handcuffs, and taken to the big Shibuya police station. What she was arrested for I never found out.

Shibuya Police Station. Seat of Government power and incompetence.

Anyway, this Shibuya police station is one of the biggest police stations in all of Tokyo. Get this: While she was sitting in handcuffs on the forth floor of this huge police station, with cops crawling around everywhere, this 14-year-old desperado escaped! No kidding! She told me that, when no one was looking,  she just got up and walked into the women's restroom and then walked out of the building like nothing happened. When she told me this, I just couldn't believe it. How incompetent could those dumb police be? 


I never did find out how she got the handcuffs off either but knowing my oldest daughter, that wouldn't be a problem in the world.



As she and my daughter were telling me all this stuff my eyes grew wider. Look, I wasn't an angel when I was a kid either and had been arrested a few times before myself (pranks and raising hell) so what these kids were doing didn't really surprise me. But when she and my daughter told me that Yuko was making good money collecting $400 a pop being a prostitute for businessmen coming up from Osaka, I hit the roof. They told me that Yuko had to go right then and meet this guy for a business transaction. I said, "No!"



I told her to stay there and got a hold of her dad and what a mistake that was! This father was even more useless than me! He didn't care about his 14 year old daughter prostituting herself at all. All he cared about was if she was going to join a motorcycle gang with my daughter or not!!!! Really!



I wanted to slap him. These two girls had drawn pictures in their junior high school class notebooks that showed pink colored 50cc motor scooters and called it something stupid like, "Pink Dragons" and this terrified Yuko's father. "Order them to not make a bike gang!" the father pleaded! 

Yeah. Really scary stuff

What a poor excuse for a dad. And I thought I was bad. The drawings of the "Pink Dragons" motorcycle gang looked vicious and deadly. Yeah. Real deadly. It all looked like something "cute" you'd see in a Japanese comic book like Sailor Moon would have as her evil twin sister; they even had their own colors and cool pink matching jackets and pants and everything!



And this father was worried about their comic book fantasies more than the sick fantasies some pervert was going to have with his child. Get that? HIS OWN CHILD I wanted to strangle him. WHAT PLANET WAS HE LIVING ON? 



Moron! I hope Yuko has turned out okay. Maybe she met a nice guy and got married and, at 21, has three kids, a husband who drinks too much and works very hard in a blue collar job like construction or driving a truck. The typical Japanese blue collar family; they don't have a lot, but they have each other and that's enough. I do wish that she is happy.  



But back to my girls... The few escapades I've described above (and those are just a few) were a long time ago and luckily for me (and my daughters) they straightened out and now have good jobs where they are doing what they like to do... In spite of my poor parenting. The oldest is a professional jazz singer who is signed to one of the most famous agencies in all of Japan and will have her album debut this year and the second one is pursuing her dream to be a world-class lighting director and is now gainfully employed at the most famous concert/dance/event hall in Tokyo. 



As for other kids who had troubles before: Several years ago, I hosted a very popular morning drive time FM radio show in Tokyo and we'd often have events whereby I could meet the listeners and the fans. Sometimes hundreds of them would attend these get-togethers. We became friends. Many of them told me of their own youth; some of them were trouble-makers; in trouble with school and the law. Some of them had spent time in jail. But many of them told me that, one day, they realized on their own that they had to straighten out and stay out of trouble because daddy and mommy aren't going to be there forever to help them. Now, these folks have jobs and families and people (big and little) who depend on them and love them very much.



It is the way it should be.



So parents, I think the times comes for all of us to worry about our kids. But fear not! Be patient and try to understand. I always try to remember the crazy stuff I did when I was young.



It seems, no matter how much we, as parents screwup our kids, it seems to me that, in most cases, somehow they are able to judge what is right and turn their lives out for the best.


If your kids are in school now and get into some sort of trouble; instead of you, the parent, telling them that they need to pay more attention, perhaps you, the parent, should pay more attention to them. 


It couldn't hurt. 



Make sure that your kids know that you love them and care.... If they are having troubles at school or elsewhere, find comfort in the fact that these things usually pass. Try not to be a negative part of this experience.


 

Marijuana Users in Japan Get Free Rent and Meals Paid!

The title of this post should be "Idiot Pot Users in Japan." Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against marijuana or any other drug use for that matter. I think all drugs should be decriminalized... But what I think doesn't matter. If you are in Japan, you'd have to be stupid to do or smoke (possess) marijuana. Because if you're caught, they will throw you in prison.

Mailing marijuana cookies to Japan. Doh! Did anyone ever stop to think, "I guess they might have candies and cookies in Japan! I wonder if sending cookies will look suspicious?" Perhaps this could be proof that marijuana cause brain damage 

Sure, some people will say that marijuana is not bad for you at all and, even though some will disagree, I might agree with them totally that marijuana isn't all that bad for your health. It might even be good for you. I don't know. 


But good or bad, marijuana certainly was lots of fun when I was a university student in the USA. But that was in the USA back in the days when small amounts of marijuana wouldn't land you in jail. 


Is marijuana really all that bad for you? I don't know. But I can guarantee you that, without a shadow of a doubt, getting your ass thrown in jail in Japan for a decade because a little marijuana will certainly be bad for your health. 


The point is that this is not a question of whether or not marijuana is bad for you or not. It is not a question of whether or not marijuana should be illegal or not. The question here is this: Is possession of marijuana in Japan a serious offense in the year 2011? The answer is "Yes. It is! It is a serious crime that holds prison as a penalty."


Interestingly, it is not against the law to smoke marijuana in Japan. The law states that possession of marijuana is a crime. Possession always pre-dates usage. So it is against the law to have any amount of marijuana.


Since it is against the law, if you do possess marijuana in Japan, you take the risk of getting arrested and you face the possibility of a long prison sentence. Once you are caught and arrested, making idiotic claims that, "Marijuana isn't that bad for you!" or "It was only a little bit!" or "I didn't know my friends were going to send it to me in the mail!" Just isn't going to fly. They've heard them all before.


Everyone who gets caught says this kind of stupid thing. The result is always the same: The law will be upheld.


I remember several years ago when an American friend of mine came to Japan to visit her son. She didn't know her way around and the son he was too much of a selfish brat to pick up his mom at the airport so, since she was an old friend, I picked her up.


On the way back in the car, she started asking questions about Japan and telling me all sorts of nonsense that went on between her "Parent of the Year" parenting skills and her dysfunctional kid. She also told me that she sometimes sent her son marijuana in the mail. She said she hid the marijuana, in small amounts, in packages from the USA. I almost hit the roof. I told her to cease that immediately. 


In a typical stupid, ethno-centric, typically American reply, she said to me, 


"Oh. It's OK. I don't use my real address! It's not that much marijuana. Just a little bit. They won't put him into prison for a few grams." 


"No!" I said, "No one here cares about your address. Trust me. It doesn't matter if it's even one little speck. If they catch him with that marijuana, they will put him in prison. No ifs ands or buts."


She wouldn't believe me. 


I had to repeat myself, "No. If they find that marijuana on him or in his home, they will put him in prison!"


She then took the stupidity up a few levels higher by telling me how she so cleverly hid the drugs;


"Oh, they won't find it anyhow. I hide it in ball point pens and cassette tapes."


Jeez! What a fricking stupid woman! Had she never heard of X-ray machines? Didn't she know that they already have ball point pens in Japan? And, incredibly, and as hard as it is going to be to believe, cassette tapes were also plentiful in Japan. In fact Japan manufactured those things!!! I know the genius and technological prowess of the Japanese and, trust me, Japan has had ball pens and cassette tapes for a long time (Pssst! They sell them here at places called, interestingly, "Convenience Stores.") I told her again to stop that practice and also pointed out the obvious that cassette tapes and ball point pens, being mailed from the USA to Japan might look a tiny bit suspicious, no?


I have no doubt that that stupid woman is continuing this foolishness today. 


Well, maybe it's OK, it seems her son is so useless that he can't keep a decent job to feed himself or pay his own rent so maybe it's better for him in prison. What the hell? Free rent and food!


Now, in Japan, today we have another story of another moron coming to Japan from the USA and now facing jail time for marijuana. Now, once again, I am not saying that I agree with Japan's drug laws. I don't. But, the law is the law, and when you go to a foreign country (or even in your own) and you take risks with those laws, you also accept the risk of penalties.


I hope this idiot kid doesn't go to jail, but if he does, I will say, "Just another in a long line of stupid foreigners." Here is the story in yellow with my comments included.


Channel Nine News Reports:


ARVADA - A Colorado School of Mines chemical engineering student remains in a Japanese jail after a friend of his says he mailed the student three cookies and four pieces of candy infused with marijuana.


With friends like this guy, who needs enemies?

Japanese prosecutors appear to be using the country's very strict anti-drug laws to go after 25-year-old Tim Wilson. 

That's their job.

Wilson was attending Tohuku (sic) University in Sendai, Japan, as an exchange student when he was arrested back in August.

He's remained in custody ever since.

"They keep pushing the trial back," his father Jeff Wilson said on Wednesday. "Originally, they told us it would be no later than Oct. 24. Then they told us December, and then two weeks ago we found out it would be in January."

Japanese law says that a person can be arrested and detained for 22 days before charges are brought against them. If the prosecutors go to the judge at the end of the 22 days and ask for an extension, the judge will usually allow it. These extensions cane be repeated twice for a total of 66 days. If Tim never accepted these cookies into his possession, they will probably release him at the end of the 66 days and he will be put on the first plane back to the USA under a deportation ruling. He will never be allowed back into Japan again. If the police and prosecutors find marijuana at Tim's apartment or they find his friends in Japan have some and they got it from Tim then I hope Tim has fun with his new friends in prison.

Tim Wilson's friend agreed to speak with 9NEWS on Wednesday if we agreed not to use his name. He said in May he mailed three peanut butter cookies and four "Cheeba Chews" to Tim Wilson inside a package containing other items such as books and CD's.

Duh! Moron! He doesn't want them to use his name? Why not? he doesn't want the whole world to know how much of an ass he is? Amazingly, but true, Japan is one of the riches countries in the world and we have lots of cookies and candies and cakes... Hasn't it struck "friend" for even a second that mailing $1.00 candies and cookies to Japan is a red flag and might look real suspicious?

That package never made it to Wilson. 

If this is true, and it never made it to Wilson, and Wilson has no marijuana at his residence, he will probably be deported at the end of 66 days.

In June, Japanese customs officials flagged the package and then started an investigation which eventually led to Wilson's arrest on Aug. 3.

Jeff Wilson has been told his son faces up to 10 years in prison.

"We really believed this would be cleared up in the first 10 to 20 days. We thought he'd be released," Jeff Wilson said.

Well, you believed wrong.

Tim Wilson was registered as a medical marijuana patient with the State of Colorado when the marijuana edibles were sent, although federal and state laws prohibit the mailing of such items. He was given a medical marijuana card for pain in his back.

Medical Marijuana patient, eh? That's supposed to means he needs it to survive or live a life without pain. Well, his coming to Japan is a good argument for the people who don't want to allow medical marijuana. If this guy can go to Japan and do without it, it must not be that much of a medical priority. PS: Card or no card, marijuana is illegal in Japan.

Jeff Wilson insists his son never requested the edibles and that the friend took it upon himself to send the package to Japan. The friend told 9NEWS the same thing.

Sure, you can go to any prison in America and every person instituted there will tell you the same thing, "I didn't do anything wrong! They go the wrong guy!"

Some of the confusion may be due to an email exchange between Tim Wilson and his friend in which Wilson wrote, "That would be a good idea," when asked about sending marijuana edibles to Japan.

Jeff Wilson believes his son was simply being sarcastic when he wrote that and that language issues between the two countries was at play at the time.

Oh yeah. Dumb friend goes out and spend his money on marijuana; then spends his time making cookies; then spends his own money again on sending marijuana to Japan and it's all a misunderstanding between friends? Well, that's completely believable, right? Wrong. Bullshit! I believe Tim Wilson's father believes wrong and I don't think for a second he actually believes that cock and bull story.

Tim Wilson was also volunteering with the country's ongoing earthquake relief efforts.

Aha! Playing the sympathy card? Isn't that nice? By the way, volunteering is something that Tim (and every other person) in this country has done. No big deal. Sentimentality, or the lack of it, should not guide decisions concerning whether or not the law has been broken and if actions should be taken.

Tom McNamara is a Denver attorney with Davis, Graham and Stubbs and specializes in international law. He calls Japan's anti-drug laws "some of the most severe in the world."

"The amount [of marijuana] matters not," he said on Wednesday. "We could be talking about one gram or five kilos."

He says Japanese authorities have recently started to concentrate on cases involving drugs mailed into the country.

Finally, someone who says something that makes sense.

Jeff Wilson is now actively trying to bring more attention to his son's case.

"They've got the wrong guy," he insisted.

Bwa! Ha! Ha! Ha! "I'm innocent! Innocent, I tell ya!"

They arrested Paul McCartney for marijuana in Japan. They will most certainly throw your ass in jail for the same. Here, too, McCartney says he "didn't know"!

Tim Wilson has a 3.98 grade point average at Mines and his father showed 9NEWS a letter where faculty members were recommending he consider trying to become a Rhodes Scholar.

Well, with a 3.98 grade point average, Tim sure doesn't seem to be all that bright. 

NOTE: The purpose of this post is not to kick this dimwit kid and his naive father. It's, hopefully, to make sure that someone will read this and make damn sure that they aren't the next Tim Wilson.


Tim is lucky, actually, that this happened in Japan. In some other Asian countries the penalty for what he is involved with is death.


NOTE TWO: I can bet you a donut that the friend that baked these marijuana cookies and sent them to Tim in Japan was high when he did so. Just goes to show that great ideas when you are high are usually not such great ideas later on when you are sober

Tsunami Repercussions and the Court Trials Begin (part two)

In yesterday's post I blogged about some parents who were suing a school for sending the children home by bus only to have those children die in the tsunami as their homes were on the coastline. In Tsunami Repercussions and the Court Trials Begin (part 1) I wrote that I think the parent's are trying to placate their own guilt and ignore their own responsibility for their children's deaths:

Had the earthquake hit an hour later or at dinner time or at night or early morning or some other time of the year, where would these kids have been? At home. At their parent's home that those parent's bought along the coastline... A coastline that was engulfed by a tsunami and destroyed... And not for the first time either.

The parents suing the school will not bring those children back... Nor will it placate their guilt and responsibility in this matter. 

School's need to stick by the book and not allow parent's to shirk their responsibility. Parents need to take a more holistic view on their children's safety.

In fact, today's parents depend on school for far too much so this is why we have so many problems with the family and complaint's about "today's youth".

The parent's might win this court case, but they won't win any money. They can't. Japanese law does not allow for "damages." If they did, it's one more step towards Japan becoming screwed up like the USA with court cases like this popping up everywhere. What I mean by that is people make bad decisions on life and do irresponsible things (like driving with a hot cup of coffee on their lap) and then suing someone else for their lack of common sense.

In the case above, the school does hold some responsibility... But I think the vast majority of the children's health and welfare responsibility is held by the parents. In fact, I think that this is painfully obvious an just plain common sense. 

It is a tragedy that so many children and parents have suffered, but to place blame and try to take money seems shallow to me. According to charities in Japan over 100,000 children have been displaced by this disaster. Who can blame another human for this story of suffering? 

"If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." - John 8:7

Here is an experience that another parent told me about concerning their child's school. In that case, the school wasn't about to allow the children to leave even though the parent had arrived to take that child home!


In our first case, the school is being sued by the parents. The school may have shirked its duties. In the case I will relate to you from now, the school may have way overstepping its authority. Here's the details as told to me. What do you, dear reader, think?


Here's the story related to me by my friend:


"Thirty minutes or so after the big shock ended, I drove the car to pick up our child from school. The children had been evacuated to the school sports field  and the school wasn't allowing any of the children to leave until the "all clear" was issued.

Upon coming to the school gate, a guard man stopped me. He said that the children were not being allowed to leave just yet. 

Even as the guard tried to explain, I smiled at him and politely - but firmly - said that I was there to pickup my child and I walked forward in spite of his protestations. He waved to a young woman who worked in the school office. She quickly approached me and told me that the children weren’t being allowed to leave because the “all clear” has not been given yet. Once again, I firmly told her that I am the child’s father and that I have the right and responsibility to decide if it is all clear for my child or not.

She protested. “Where do you have to go that’s so important?” she asked.

It was none of her business but I replied anyway, “My child has after school lessons.”

She was shocked and insisted that the children must stay where they were. I didn’t get angry at her but responded, “Alright then, who then has the authority to give the permission for children to leave?”

She said that the headmaster of the school did. I then approached him. I said, “Mr. Smith (not his real name) I appreciate everything that you do and I appreciate that you are protecting the children. But now I am here and there is no one who has more responsibility for my child’s safety than I do. Now I must take my child home.”

He politely countered, “But the all clear has not been issued!”

“Who issues the all clear?” I asked.

I didn’t get a straight answer from him. I gathered that it was possible that this had not been well thought-out before and even he didn't have a clear answer to that question. They were "playing it by ear". 

All the while we were having this conversation, there were dozens of parents standing around awaiting directions as to what to do. Another teacher then approached and he and the headmaster explained to me that they couldn’t let the children leave because, if they did let some children leave, they would have no way of knowing which kids were gone and which kids were still under their care. 

I said it wasn’t my problem if they had an accounting system in place for this problem or not.

For one, whether the school has a system to account for these kids or not, is their problem, not mine. And to extrapolate from that then, because they don’t have said system, why are we being held hostage for lack of this sort of paperwork problem? It is the school’s responsibility to hold drills and to make arrangements like this. Not mine. I have made my arrangements at home. 

I thought that this situation was absurd. I am the father. I am there. I am responsible for my child’s safety. I have the right to decide everything. My authority exceeds theirs in every sense of the word.


Of course if the parent’s are not present to take the children home, the school must take responsibility. But once the parent arrives, the school must completely relinquish control over the child to the parent. The school's responsibility to the child can never override the parent's. If necessary, the school needs to prepare some sort of paperwork and chain of responsibility as to who has the right to remove the child from school premises such as grandparents, aunts and uncles, etc. They also need to implement the system so that proof of identity is required to take a child home in an emergency. If the school does not, the parent must arrange such with the school. 

As it was, the school quickly relented for me to take my child out of the school grounds. Upon going to the gate to leave, a young woman stopped me once again and asked for my child's name and class number so she could check a list and let us leave. Embarrassingly for her my child’s name was not listed on the computer print out she had. I told her the name. She wrote it down - incorrectly, I might add. 


Then she failed to ask for my name and ID and we walked out the gate. 

So much for not allowing children to leave because they "can’t keep track of which students have left and which have stayed."  

I explained the entire situation to my wife and child told them that if there ever was a very serious life-threatening situation that I would go to school and even if the school did not allow us to leave, we would find a way to escape. 


We were in Tokyo. The earthquake was nearly 250 kilometers away. We were most definitely not in a life-threatening situation in spite of how much people and the news sensationalize this crisis."


That's what this irate father told me about how his child's school handled the situation. 


Now, my take on this...


In the court case where the school allegedly shirked responsibility by sending children home too quickly and those children died in the tsunami: The children's homes were near the ocean. Is the school guilty of incompetence by sending the children home too soon? Yes. True, perhaps. But it is quite understandable in such a situation that the school would want to get the children back to their parent's custody as soon as possible.


For the school, this seems a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.


In the second example: The school over stepped its authority and wasn't going to release a child into parental custody. In this second case, where the school wasn't going to surrender the child to the parent, had that child died or been injured, then I think the parent would have every right to sue the school and win. The school's reasoning that they are responsible for the child's well-being even after the parent arrives to receive the child is confused policy and out and out wrong in every possible sense.


Seth Godin had a good comment about this on a recent blog. He wrote:

Of course, the hard-working folks doing the detaining feel like they're doing their job. It's easy to measure. It's in the manual. It feels like progress. It's actually a cargo cult, though, the sort of thing an organization does to simulate progress when it's actually distracting itself from the mission at hand.

Fear can be used as a tactic, but it's almost never the end goal of marketing. The problem with using it as a tactic is that it's so easy to do, organizations almost always forget the real point of the exercise.

Absolutely right; "...organizations almost always forget the real point of the exercise." 


The question is: "What is the real point of the exercise?" "What is the point of taking the children to an evacuation area while at school?"


The answer is: "To protect them until they can be delivered into the safety of the parent's custody."

School's should never forget the ultimate purpose of their emergency drills and services. The parent's right are always top priority. Following the rules until the parents relieve the school's of the responsibility of caring for the children is the goal. 


That should never be forgotten. Any other result opens the schools up for being sued in court. Any smart administrator would be wise to consider these cases.

Japan Lets Murderer "Off" Easy?

Just a short - and late - comment on the Lindsay Hawker case that has been motivated by some recent remarks made by readers and some people I have met in Tokyo recently.


First up, the details of the court decision from AP:


CHIBA, Japan, July 21 (Kyodo)—A court sentenced Tatsuya Ichihashi to life imprisonment Thursday over the death of British woman Lindsay Hawker in 2007.



Public prosecutors had demanded life imprisonment with hard labor for Ichihashi, 32, who was charged with raping and murdering the 22-year- old English conversation teacher at his apartment.


Ichihashi has denied murdering her at his apartment in Chiba, east of Tokyo, around March 25, 2007, but has admitted he caused her death. He apologized to Lindsey's family in court for what he did.


In Japan, life imprisonment -- technically termed imprisonment without a fixed period -- is the second-heaviest criminal punishment. It does not necessarily mean the inmate will be incarcerated for the rest of his life. Under the Penal Code, the inmate may be given parole after serving a minimum of 10 years.


The defense team for Ichihashi argued his actions constituted the lesser crime of injury resulting in death and that he had accidentally suffocated Hawker in an attempt to stop her from crying out for help.


The victim's parents, Bill and Julia Hawker, have asked for the death penalty for Ichihashi.


That this poor woman's parents should want the death penalty is understandable. They are filled with emotions. Highly emotional states are usually not conducive to calm, critical analysis of a situation. I feel so sorry for this poor woman, Lindsay, and her parents and pray that they may someday find some peace and solace between themselves and their god.


Besides the immediate family, this case seems to have brought out lots of emotions from unrelated people. That this case involves a Japanese man and a foreign women seems to have touched a button with many people... Especially people from the UK.


But let's look at this logically. Justice and the law should be blind. That means race, creed or color have no place in a civilized society's courtroom. In this case, simply put, a man killed a woman. 


In the UK and Wales, the maximum penalty for manslaughter is life in prison. In the UK and Wales, the maximum penalty for premeditated murder is life in prison. Tatsuya Ichihashi was given life in prison. Life in prison is the maximum penalty for manslaughter in Japan. 


Japan still has the death penalty but this is reserved for premeditated murders and mass murder.


In 95% of all cases the law (in most countries) is pretty much logical. The death penalty is reserved for particularly heinous cases of pre-meditated murder. That is, the prosecution must prove that the murderer had a pre-conceived plan to murder this individual and carried out that plan.


It is obvious that in the case of Lindsay Hawker and Tatsuya Ichihashi, there was no such plan by Ichihashi. It seems sufficently proven that there was a plan to drug and rape this poor woman... And that plan went awfully wrong.... But a plan to rape is not a death penalty level crime in civilized countries. (Whether it should be or not, is not for me to decide. Currently, it is not).


There seems to be a lot of people from the west who think that Tatsuya Ichihashi should have gotten the death penalty for killing Lindsay Hawker. In fact, since this case first began, and Ichihashi was first arrested, I'd say 100% of all foreigners I know and have spoken to about this think he deserves the death penalty.


There's no way he deserves the death penalty for this case.


On one level, as pointed out by reader, Murasaki Shikibu, people from Europe and the UK media condemn Japan for being such a nation of savages that they still have a death penalty, but on the other hand, for this particular case, they want the death penalty. A massive incoherent inconsistency.


She writes about British media:


"....who want the death penalty if a Japanese citizen has murdered a British citizen (and appear to believe that a life imprisonment sentence is way too lenient), but have this habit of condemning the Japanese for human rights infringements periodically and keep telling Japan they are barbaric for still having the death penalty."


For full disclosure, I am against the death penalty in any form and for any crime. Period. That is because I come from a country that is famous for sending people to death, especially so-called "colored people," only to find out later that they executed an innocent person. The death penalty is final and humans are known to err. This is why I am against the death penalty. But my being against the death penalty has nothing to do with my thinking that there is no way that Ichihashi should be given the death penalty in this case.




These people who think he should be given the death penalty are not interested in justice, in my opinion, they are interested in revenge. The Japanese judicial system worked well in this case and life in prison is what Ichihashi deserves.


It has been proven in a court of law that Ichihashi did not murder Lindsay Hawker in a premeditated manner. There was no preconceived plan to do so. He did plan to rape her. 


As I said, that plan went very wrong and he wound up suffocating her in a panic when she began to scream. That he mutilated her body after death is another problem, but mutilating a dead body is also not grounds for the death penalty. 


Ichihashi is a very sick man. Hopefully he will get some help in prison while doing heavy manual labor. Hopefully he will stay in prison doing so for the rest of his life.


In no way is it conceivable that Ichihashi should have been given the death penalty. The law is pretty clear on this case. Ichihashi was given the full penalty under the law of Japan. 


Wishing for more than that is nothing more than revenge. Revenge is savagery.