What a Day

I got stuck in the rain this morning on the way to work. My pants were all wet and I was cursing the situation a bit as I huffed and puffed into work. I turned on my computer to check out the morning news and then my wet pants didn't seem like such a bad deal after all. Everyone I'm sure knows about the horrible situation in West Virginia; it was a big story on the news here as well.
But that was only the first course in the morbid feast I had today. When I arrived at the gym this evening I noticed a table set up with pictures of one of the gym's employees, and hand written notes on big cards. I didn't know this girl at all but saw her often at the gym, and she always greeted me with a smile and very genki good afternoon/evening. I imagine she was in her twenties. I'm couldn't decipher what exactly happened, but she is gone now as well.
The biggest shocker of the day though was turning on the news tonight and seeing that the mayor of Nagasaki is on the verge of death after being shot this evening. SHOT. People don't get shot in Japan. They get stabbed, strangled, pummeled with things. They jump in front of trains and out of buildings or off bridges. But they don't get shot. Let alone the fact that this was a major public figure in one of Japan's largest cities.

Violent crime in Japan is different than in the US. In the US we just shoot people; it's quick and it's EASY for someone to do. It requires no physical effort other than moving your finger. In Japan, if you want to kill someone you have to really want to kill them, because chances are unless you are Yakuza, you can't get your hands on a gun. So when people get murdered here, to me it seems so much more twisted and violent than in the States. People here get stabbed into a pulp, they get dismembered and wash up on riverbanks in trashbags and refrigerators. They get beaten to death and stuck in bathtubs full of sand. It's a lot of work to kill someone in Japan, and it's relatively rare, which is a good thing. Japan is much less violent than the States, but it's not the Eden that people a lot of people think it is either. A lot of twisted stuff happens here too.

So what a day. Life is fickle and it is precious, that's for sure. Makes you think. Kanazawa was pretty today, despite the rain. There were patches of blue, and cloudy bamboo mountains.