If you like YouTube and such, Democracy Player is totally awesome. Like a TiVo without the flaws and DRM and such. Total “coo” factor. It’s available for linux/mac/windows. If you haven’t tried it out, do so!

This is probably a little one-sided as I only really read Mainichi (english translation) but there’re so many things I feel I want to comment on that I decided to start posting some News from Japan when I find them noteworthy. I personally disagree with classifying people based on their origin (aka racism), but I see some trends in the news items I read that I haven’t seen anywhere else. It may be the way in which Japanese news papers decide what is newsworthy, or it may simply be that trends differ in different places. That said;

• Private group to set up signs to halt suicides in forest near Mt. Fuji
  The trend of accumulating so much debt that one runs out of options, and commits suicide.
• 17-year-old girl hangs self at her high school
  The trend of committing suicide for other reasons, and the victims are often very young, sometimes as young as 12, and there seems to be a general trend of bullying in school being the claimed triggering factor. This kind of news item appears basically every day, sometimes several times a day.
• High school boy under arrest for murdering mom says she was ‘annoying’
  The trend of killing one’s family, the trend of the killer being very young, the trend of doing so for absolutely absurd reasons.
• In a rare move, prosecutors appeal death sentence
  And not a trend, but the epitome of why death penalties are wrong — utterly wrong. And the fact death penalties exist in Japan.