★ The murder trial for the man who killed and injured a crowd of people in the June 2008 “Akihabara Attack” began today.
He entered in a “guilty” plea and apologized for his crimes in court today. Admitting guilt and showing remorse often helps defendants in their trials in Japan.
The likely verdicts in this case will either be the death sentence (which is done by hanging in Japan) or a life sentence.
Please click here to read my post from last summer about the one-year anniversary of this attack.
★ The iconic Seibu Department Store will close their large store in 有楽町 (Yurakucho, Tokyo) near 銀座 (Ginza, Tokyo) on 2010 December 25th.
This store has been a landmark in Tokyo since it opened in 1984.
But due to the bad economic times recently, not enough people have been shopping there these days for the Seibu group to afford the rent in Ginza.
The plot of land that this store’s building is on is the most expensive real estate in the world!
The Seibu Department Store pays ¥1 million (about US$10,000) in rent for this spot.
Tokyo Five 
BTW: Slightly off-topic, but where did you get the “average hits per day” widget?
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I saw another WordPress blog that had it on their site…and I wanted one.
But it seems that WordPress only has a “Total Hits” counter (which I have on this site)…so I figured that that other blog just figured out their daily average and wrote it in.
So that’s what I did too.
It’s too much work to figure out the daily average on a regular basis, so I may just remove it…but once I get over 1,440 hits a day average that’ll be more than one visitor every minute of the day.
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That’s just… overly clever. Stop being so smart! 😛
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It’s a pity Japan still has and uses the death penalty. I’d thought they were a bit more civilized than that. Then again, I keep hoping we end up more civilized than that.
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Yes, Japan has the death penalty…and it’s difficult to decide whether I support it or not.
Of course, innocent people wrongly convicted shouldn’t be executed…but victims and their families sometimes want the criminal to face the “ultimate” penalty.
Anyways, I guess the majority of the voters in both America and Japan support the death penalty…otherwise it’d be abolished.
Japan is pretty hardcore with the method of execution…the hangman’s noose is the only option.
And the convicted (nor their lawyers or relatives) aren’t told the date of execution until the morning of.
By the way, one thing I don’t agree with regarding Japan’s penal system is the “statute of limitations” for murder here.
In America, there is no statute of limitations on those cases…but here it’s 15 years for manslaughter and 25 years for murder.
But, it was reported today that Japan will be eliminating the statute of limitations on murder and manslaughter cases.
That’s good.
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