Reply #5: Oh, I have no sympathy for the idiots that commit crimes of this nature

[MADem]

The only reason that there aren't more simple 'drunk and disorderly' charges is because the Japanese police are very effective at stopping that crap in the bar districts frequented by Americans--they have these mini-batons, and they can put a guy twice their size and in peak physical condition on his knees in twenty seconds with a few well-placed thwacks. The problems arise when the drunken jerks roam outside the "usual haunts" and away from the watchful eyes of the cops, or get involved with local nationals and take advantage of their cultural propensity towards politeness.

It just seems that, in Japan, when the crime is violent, it more often than not has a real heinousness attached to it. Raping little kids, killing a middle aged woman for just enough yen for a half night out, slicing the neck of a cabbie from ear to ear for the little change money he had...it's humiliating to the rest of the people who go over there and try to be pleasant guests of the nation.

I've seen the inside of a Japanese prison--not as an inmate, mind you, but as a command visitor. It's rather fierce, to put it mildly. It's the sort of place that you WOULD like to see your worst enemy in.