On: Why no looting in Japan?

[staunch]

This actually happened. When we were living in Tokyo my wife lost her wallet. A day later she found that it was sitting in the basket of her bicycle outside our building. This was a busy street in a business district (Nihonbashi) with hundreds of people going past it and it was a large new coach wallet with at least a few hundred in cash.

Not that someone wouldn't have eventually stolen it though.

[kmfrk → staunch]

>Not that someone wouldn't have eventually stolen it though. Japan is only nearly Utopian.

Let's be careful with the orientalism. The suicide rate[1][2] is one thing that personally bothers me.

Japan is fundamentally different from the West, and this has its advantages and disadvantages.

[1]: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_count...

[2]: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_OECD_...

[nivertech → kmfrk]

Clear trends:

* Southern Europe/Mediterranean/Levantine countries - low suicide rates.

* English-speaking/Northern countries/former Communist block in Eastern Europe/Developed Asian countries - high suicide rates.

Seems to be related to amount of daylight, climate, stress and competition.

[jules → nivertech]

Has anybody else noticed the magical effect of sunlight? A few days ago was the first sunny day of the year. Everyone was very happy.

[defen → jules]

Magic, or a surge of vitamin D3 in their bloodstreams.

[staunch → kmfrk]

I deleted that line, so we don't have to have the world's most boring discussion on HN.

[angus77 → kmfrk]

If you follow the "more information" link on Japan, you'll find that the high suicide rate is a recent thing that's happened since the Bubble burst.