Job Discussion Forums

[taikibansei]

[Sweetsee]

I meant, that in my personal experiences, police here are way cool compared to the ones where I grew up in California. It does not mean that I think police here are leniant in regards to narcotics. It does mean that when you are caught with something there, they will likely be doing it up themselves.
Is that clear to you misterbusybody?

[Gordon]

[Sweetsee]

No. Not generally.

[sethness]

I can understand why many people are saying "well, weed is bad engouh, but coke..!"

The simple fact of the matter is that compared even to alcohol, marijuana is less addictive, affects one's physical coordination less, and has fewer long-term effects.

Further, in many countries marijuana use is tolerated, legal, or barely legal.

Cocaine, on the other hand, is to marijuana or alcohol as a grenade is to a firecracker.

I've met many, many high-functioning intelligent, career-oriented people who smoke marijuana regularly, but met only one person who was recovering from cocaine addiction. That person described a cocaine fix as "the best feeling in the world, a lift for which you'd easily disregard any other concerns, and compared to which life's natural highs simply pale into insignificance".
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As for Nova, I believe that this is not their first problem with drug-using/drug-selling teachers. Not surprising, considering the volume of teachers, the long history of the company, and, to be frank, their low standards.

The previoius case, I've heard, involved teachers selling drugs to students. This might merely be rumor, but was told to me as the justification for Nova's rather strict policy forbidding any social contact between teachers and students, outside the school.

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As for police or jailer brutality, I've personally been incarcerated in Japan, and can say that there is no police nor jailer brutality. On the other hand, sentences are ridiculously harsh, and one's legal rights are both pitifully low and regularly ignored by the police and the prosecutor...but not by the jailers.

For example, one can't (as in America) require that a lawyer and a recording device be present during questioning. Police may simply imagine or embellish freely on anything that you might say, to the point of their records being a loose fiction. The record of their questioning is written by them, and so it has no real value as an impartial accurate record of the proceedings, though the courts will treat it as such. Court-appointed free attorneys are, in fact, worse than useless. They mayb actively disbelieve you, refuse to share information with you, and proceed in directions that are in direct conflict with your best interests. (Mine, for example, caused at least two month-long delays in my court case, simply because she was having a little tug-of-war with the court about who would find and pay for a translator.) Privately hired attorneys, on the other hand, are insanely expensive-- a few court apearances & prep-time may cost as much as 100,000 yen.

It should be noted that I was jailed for the trivial offense of taking down and disposing of an illegally placed, rather dangerously positioned posterboard. (It was loosely tied to a public utility pole, at an intersection.) For this, I was kept in a pre-trial jail for 4 months.

Frankly, Japan's legal system is f**ked.

The jails, however, are surprisingly decent, as are the guards. With only one small exception, I found the circumstances and guards far more decent people than my exposure to Hollywood movie jails led me to expect. For example, in pre-trial jails, one can buy things from a rather long list of items, from food to newspapers to needle-and-thread to books...roughly half the items in a typical convenience store. One can also order books straight from publishers, C.O.D.

Feel free to ask additional questions, if you're interested in hearing more specifics.

[Sweetsee]

Did you get to order out Chinese every other day and get a soda on Sundays?

[furiousmilksheikali]

[Alberta605]

[callmesim]

Off the topic of NOVA but regarding prison, I was told by a student, and the other two students present agreed, that in the winter time some people steal from shops so they get put in gaol and receive free accommodation, free heating and free food for the winter.

While the majority of my brain told me this sounded like a prime example of the "people in gaol aren't like us. They like it there. And homeless people like it too" mentality, was this wrong? Is this happening or was the logical part of my brain right on this occasion?

[Sweetsee]

That's probably because there are no fines here. Just leave the key in your cell.

[fluffyhamster]

Maybe all the puking up of whatever else you'd eaten beforehand is why eating nattou makes you thinner?

[movinaround]

[bluefrog]

[osakajojo]

Feb 6, AM PM had at least 6 copies, Feb 8, only one out. Looks like they are being bought, though I wonder if by the NOVA, Aeon, and other English school teachers that surround the station it is at.

[osakajojo]

[quote]Privately hired attorneys, on the other hand, are insanely expensive-- a few court apearances & prep-time may cost as much as 100,000 yen. [quote]
100,000 yen is expensive? Did you mean 1,000,000 yen? Because 100,000 yen is not insanely expensive at all in the U.S. Try atleast 5 times that for a decent lawyer.
[quote]A Sunday evening program explicitly stated that eating natto makes you thinner. The next day, despite the obviously absurd nature of this claim, sales of natto rose to fanatical levels. [quote]
And now that show is canceled and the natto makers made too much in response to the high sales that fell after the story was said to be false and they have all this left over natto, kawaiiso.