A Quick Reminder

If I threw a party and an obnoxious guest said something offensive just to piss people off, I’d kick him out of my house.

The same goes here. My blog, my rules.

Update: mod_access: the internet’s bouncer. Gee, I hope I didn’t just block all of Amsterdam.

Rich Pav

Richard has been living in Japan since 1990 with his wife and two teenage sons, Tony and Andy.

12 thoughts to “A Quick Reminder”

  1. I guess I missed something , just goes to show if you don’t stay tuned , you’re gonna miss something.

    1. Every so often some troll comes along and tries to start a flame war. I don’t want to see that happen here, so I delete their posts and block their IP address.

  2. It looks like you removed the comment from the guy who did not think much of the resolution to groper story- Mr Chikan spends a week in jail, gives up $5000 with an apology, is disgraced at work and home, etc.
    I am not sure if there was more commenting back and forth about that, but I thought he had something of a valid point in his intial comment- objectively, a pretty harsh punishment for a drunken dumbass assault where nobody died.
    On the other hand, all he had to do to avoid the punishment was to sit there in his drunken stupor and keep his hands to himself, and if you don’t mete out significant punishment for this behavior, where does he stop?
    No Slomon-esque solutions here, just thinking about how this would turn out in NYC (where I grew up), which also has subways and presumably, gropers, too- he might wind up with a low-level sex offender record (and that would ruin his life) and you might wind up with a misdemeanor assualt charge on your record, which you would have to disclose on every job application from now until the end of time, thus resulting in drastically reduced employment opportunities.
    But the butterfly didn’t flap its wings at the right moment for that.
    Also, I don’t remember from the story, did your kids see you whaling on this guy? I can’t remember if they were even there or not.

    1. Yes, my kids saw me go off on the guy, and at the time I really wished they hadn’t. That’s one of the reasons I felt so depressed the next day. Neither of them have ever mentioned it, so I guess they’ve forgotten it.

  3. Rich if you would have done what you did to him in The States , he would have OWNED YOU , that’s just the way it is. One friend of mine from Japan told me “Japan is a Country of Justice”, what do you think ?

    1. If it happened in the US, I think there would have been people willing to stick their necks out and help out–offer to be a witness to the police, hold the guy till we got to the station, etc. Like I mentioned, the overwhelming response when there’s an incident on a train in Japan is to pretend it’s not happening. I hardly ever bitch about Japan, but that’s one of the few things that bother me.

      My sister used to be a cop. I’ll ask her if she thinks it would have played out differently in the US.

  4. I don’t mind someone having a different opinion, it’s hostility and personal attacks that I won’t tolerate. There’s enough of that on the rest of the internet.

    OK, so some people think that a drunk person should be forgiven for feeling up a women on a train. Is there any other crime someone can commit that victimizes someone else and get away with becuase they’re drunk?

    First, keep in mind that being groped from a woman’s point of view is a lot different than a man’s. Second, if drunks are allowed to get away with it simply because they’re drunk, then trains will become a free-for-all where women have no choice but to stand there and take it. And guess what, that’s pretty much how it is already. Try to imagine what that’s like from a Japanese woman’s point of view.

    What it all boils down to is I don’t care if anyone disagrees with what I did, or how it would have played out in the US. And if it happens again on a train I’m on, even if not to my wife, I’d do everything the same except bitch slap the guy. Being drunk doesn’t give anyone permission to comit a crime.

    This guy groped a woman on a train when he was drunk. Is that not in itself shameful to his entire family? Even if he didn’t get caught. So to say I’m to blame for the shame is like saying it’s OK to do shameful things as long as you don’t get caught, and if you DO get caught, then you’re the victim. Where does personal responsibility fit into that way of thinking?

    Finally, what would be best for society would be to stop all drunken men from groping women. I wish I could do that. The closest I can come is stopping them one by one.

    I don’t want this to devolve into a flame war. That’s why I deleted the guy’s post. It was just flame bait.

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