Japan Law Geek

• Fukushima residents forced to evacuate after the 11 March Nuclear Incident/Accident/Meltdown (I have no idea what we’re supposed to be calling it) have finally decided to bring a suit against TEPCO and the Japanese government for damages (mental anguish, etc) with compensation totals apparently reach JPY100 million for some households. Interesting, but by no means unexpected.
• I am intentionally not commenting on the deterioration in Chinese/Japanese relations, so I will just link to the Japan Times article – Jet roars as Japan, U.S., Australia hold drill – and ask, “Boys and girls – is this really helpful?”
  
• Did anyone else notice that the MOJ released the 2012 White Paper on Crime (２０１２年犯罪白書)? I know what I’m reading this weekend! How about you?
• The LDP are preparing to remove the ban on the use of the internet in election campaigns. ABOUT TIME! The JCP, predictably, are in favor of this.

• The National Police Agency has released the monthly suicide rates for 2012 (up to the end of August)… just one problem… the data table is empty… completely empty… I’m not too blindly optimistic to think that there haven’t been any suicides nationally thus far this year.
• The Public Prosecutors Office has released its 2011 statistics and by contrast to the NPA suicide data, there is way too much information here for me to digest right now. Let me know if there is anything interesting.
• The Ministry of Justice is considering proposing an amendment to the Juvenile Law such that the maximum possible sentence is five years longer. Why?
  

We’re back! And we brought a penguin with us!

That’s right – the reason that we’ve taken such a long hiatus is that we’ve been on the hunt for “Humbie” the Humboldt Penguin since it escaped from the Tokyo Sea Life Park in early March. Fortunately, we caught it the other day, and can now return to (semi) regular blog posts!

Apologies for the delay in posts. A combination of overwork and illness has kept me off the grid. I hope to get back into the groove soon.