241–250 of 359 posts
I love how this starts out by listing “innocent” laws that you can break. Its your job to know the laws of the country and if you break them you should be punished. US people love visiting Japan and talking about how safe it is. Why exactly do you think its so safe?
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> Is it really a crucial detail though? Literally the central trigger point of the story. > For the record, I have not watched any video or read anything else about this individual. Nor do I intend to. Then I can see why you're not interested in the details
> Literally the central trigger point of the story The fact that you and other insist on this really gets at the crux of this whole problem. There are two notable positions on criminality and punishment: yours, which is broadly that the justice system exists, at least in part, to deliver righteous punishment on the deserving, and the position of those appalled by the treatment here, which is that the purpose of the j…
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Ok, that makes sense. I am assuming it is not common to be arrested for possessing this kind of over the counter remedy?
Not for the ones you buy in Japan, since those are legal. But, it's not unheard of to get randomly stopped by the police and searched, especially in touristy areas like train stations. Unless you're a Japanese citizen, you have to show ID, and although the searches are optional, most people agree to them. For customs, usually a few people from each plane are searched. Anecdotally, if you're a tourist, they're usually…
This seems ultimately like a very bad sales pitch for the tourism industry in Japan. I had thought I wanted to go to Japan but if I can accidentally, without malice, be thrown in a prison for 20 days that seems like a bad system.
I can't imagine the international relations of the ruling classes of various countries to the UAE would be trending in a positive direction if they arrested and punished people for walking off a plane with airplane bottles of alcohol.
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What do you do when you have a bad flu or cold if you don't have pseudoephedrine?
Probably the same thing you do in the states if you have high blood pressure: make do with lesser medications, pain killers, lots of liquids, and push through it.
For what it is worth different countries have vastly different recommendations for HBP and these drugs. I recommend discussing with the pharmacists in your country.
In the US I have been told it's a strict "never", in Ireland I was told that it wouldn't have a measurable effect on blood pressure. I've also measured my personal blood pressure (pre-hypertension to stage 1) and have not been able to measure a difference in blood pressure.
For those visiting Japan, I'd like to add one important point. It's true that parts of Japan's judicial system are truly "middle age". https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hideaki-ueda-japan-shut-up-vi... However, fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), you can't bribe officials. Japan is a society where it's difficult to get special treatment by giving money, not just to officials. If you try to use bribes, you'll only be…
Holy shit this is horrible. It really shows the true cost of having a disciplined public society. People love to hate on SF, and the homelessness. But I think it’s a society that prioritizes individual freedom which allows for both this outcome and the entrepreneurial environment we see.
You are not supposed to be in jail, and you are not supposed to enjoy it if you are. It makes sense to optimize society for law obiding people.
So even if the prosecution decides to drop your case, you're already fucked -- this is not how proper justice system should work.
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I understand that, but I would like to note from a human perspective that when seeing an article full of misleading and exaggerated claims bashing your country as a whole and comparing it disfavorably to the author's own, it's hard to react in a perfectly emotionless manner. All the more so when the thread is full of comments piling on even more, taking it all as fact and condemning it as a 'fascist dictatorship'. Th…
Yes. That is super hard from a human perspective and I agree that it would be nice if the comments were less awful. We're not asking you (or anyone) to react in an emotionless manner—quite the opposite. The trick is to express the emotions in a somewhat different way - more sharing, less discharging, if that makes sense. As for the article - I only skimmed it in the most superficial way but I think "what it's like to…
For example, there's a very persistent claim about Chinese culture being so morally corrupt that Chinese people are known to intentionally kill pedestrians after hitting them with a car in order to avoid lawsuits[1]. In reality this was distorted from a sensationalized report of a single video of a car running over a pedestrian again, and then extrapolated as a fundamental truth about a culture of 1.4 billion people, cementing the perceived inferiority of Chinese culture to Western culture in the minds of readers. I could name literally dozens of cases of stories like these about CJK culture/governance that went viral in mainstream Western media.
I feel very strongly that this story fits into that genre. I do apologise for how strongly I reacted, but it's this kind of slander that really pushes my buttons and makes it hard for me to moderate my tone in the heat of the moment.
[1] "In China, drivers would rather kill you than injure you" -- Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.com/in-china-drivers-would-rathe...
Seems like it's not pleasant, and the author says in theory it could be as low of a bar as getting into a heated argument; but the author never discloses his actual charge, which I think is critical context. If he stabbed someone and got this treatment, it would be very different than if he had a loud but normal argument you might see in any big box store in the US. That he doesn't go on to protest why he got locked…
Most of the post explains how she wasn’t allowed to do the things you’re suggesting she do, and at the end it explains how her charges were dropped.