Tokyo: The oldest woman is lost! (or rotting in a bedroom somewhere)

[Ketou]

what is an asian indian? south asian? and doesn't cover Pakistani or Bangladesh too?

Asian Indian as in similar to American Indian I would think.

[Mike Oxlong]

Bloody hell! Those scamming FGs...

At least 13 of the more than 70 centenarians whose whereabouts have been found to be unknown are foreign nationals, indicating flaws in the country's resident registry system, according to a Kyodo News tally based on inquiries to local governments.

http://home.kyodo.co.jp/modules/fstStory/index.php?storyid=516163

[rooboy]

The University of Washington's application:

Poms (English for you Nth Americans) call Indians and Pakistanis 'Asians'.

In Oz nearly all non Asians think Asians are Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Koreans etc. We say 'Indians' like in people from India, only people I ever heard in Australia say 'Indians are Asian' were Poms.

Re the uni of Washington's category - definition of race can reasonably be broad. Then come the sub groups - ethnicity. Don't see why that's a problem.

Just look at the term 'Taiwanese'. The Chinese Nationalists who went there aint a Taiwanese 'race', they're Chinese from mainland China who settle there. Generally people think Chinese when they think Taiwanese.

Koreans can talk til theyre blue in the face about how they're a 'race' but that just is fucking myth. The name Korea comes from Goryeo and that came from one of the ethnic groups that got power in Korea and established a long dynasty.

That dynasty was ethnically Chinese, there's a reason why Korea's so called culture was mostly Chinese culture for decades.

Same logic goes for Japan, you just have to see certain types of Japanese. There's definitely a stock South East Asian look to some of em, then there's the very Korean look if you've been to Korea on trips you'll recognise it, then there's the Japanese who you'd never tell apart from some Chinese if you took photos of them without letting them speak.

The 19th century English race never was - descendants of the oldest British tribes, Celts, Picts, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Normans (not really French, descendants of Vikings who settled in Normandy).

[Taro Toporific]

[Mock Cockpit]

Seems like they're checking the whereabouts of everyone over 65. They came from the city office looking for the old man today and despite assurances he was very much alive they insisted on confirming with their own eyes. Your taxes at work.

[Ganma]

Seems like they're checking the whereabouts of everyone over 65. They came from the city office looking for the old man today and despite assurances he was very much alive they insisted on confirming with their own eyes. Your taxes at work.

Typical Japan ove-reaction to a hyped up news story. Still it'll be interesting to see how deep the scamming goes.

[GomiGirl]

:rofl:
Typical Japan ove-reaction to a hyped up news story. Still it'll be interesting to see how deep the scamming goes.

Perhaps but as I suggested before, it is possibly a way for the govt to clean house to prop up the nenkin system for a bit longer before having to invite the unwashed masses of FG's.

I would imagine that they are looking for lots of rebated/confiscated nenkin yens to be put back into the coffers along with some hefty fines for those found to be scamming the system.

It is probably multiple billions of yen we are talking about here either through deliberate scamming or just "oversights" like the original story.

[TennoChinko]

Yes, but the instructions say to choose a race and don't mention ethnicity do they? Besides, Asian American wouldn't really be a race either would it since that would mean all non-American Asians are a different race. By the way, the typical less detailed applications also include Hispanic without multiple categories. Is an Argentinian with pure Italian roots the same race as a 100% native Mexican? Do you think Saudi Arabians consider themselves to be the same race as Anglo Saxons? Arabs are usually calssified as White on the race section of college applications.

You seem to think that race is some sort of objective classification. It's not. Race is determined by the culture and time that you live in. The West divided the world into three races (black, white and yellow) initially. Then they decided to add some more categories later. If Japanese and Korean people consider themselves to be a seperate race they are within the context of their cultures. The Pan Asian identity was the result of Western colonization and immigration to Western countries.

Did you ever see the US trailer for the first Harold & Kumar movie?

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"That Asian guy from American Pie and that Indian guy from Van Wilder". That wouldn't work in the UK would it? If you say Asian there most people would think of Kumar first. In the US it's the opposite. A lot of Americans don't even consider Indians, Pakistanis, etc. to be Asian.

I remember when I was on JET they had a workshop at Tokyo Orientation on being Asian in Japan. Not being Asian I didn't attend but my Chinese-American friend did. She was shocked to see so many South Asians there. The Asian Americans who made the workshop aparently were too because it was obviously aimed at people from East Asia who could be mistaken for Japanese. This aparently pissed off some of the British Asians who were expecting something very different. Even in English speaking Western countries racial identity is not consistent.

NINJA SAY WHAT?

[YT]5Ns-kXeQCMk[/YT]

[Samurai_Jerk]

NINJA SAY WHAT?

[YT]5Ns-kXeQCMk[/YT]

Great find!

[dimwit]

The centenarian fraud total is up to 281 now including the 125 year old whose address has been a Kobe park since 1981.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/latest-toll-of-missing-centenarians-in-japan-totals-281

I think this should be a wake up call to all those who fret about what Japan is doing with all the personal imformation it wants from us.

[maraboutslim]

My "honseki" address in Japan (since '93) is a park, too. No big deal.

[Russell]

I read somewhere that out of 800 of so centenarians in Kobe, more than 100 are unaccounted for. That is more than 10%. Don't know whether this can be extrapolated to the rest of the country. Some say that the Kobe earthquake may have made matters worse. Kind of like some of those people burning to death without anyone noticing?

[Ganma]

My "honseki" address in Japan (since '93) is a park, too. No big deal.

Homeless?:D

[Christoff]

although I cant find it now, there was an article in JT about a majority of those people believed to be living at ages over 100 in jp are unaccounted for or missing.

[dimwit]

Homeless?:D

Joking aside this is likely at least part of the problem as Asahi reported.

According to a tally by The Asahi Shimbun, as of Thursday, at least 279 people aged 100 or older have been confirmed as missing by local authorities across the nation. The figure includes those who have been listed for police searches by kin or others.

Of the total, 112 were reported in Hyogo Prefecture, 88 in Osaka Prefecture, 21 in Kyoto Prefecture and 13 in Tokyo, reflecting the alienation facing many elderly people in large urban areas.

By contrast, no missing senior citizens were reported in 26 prefectures in the Tohoku or Hokuriku regions of the main Honshu island, where traditional community ties remain relatively strong.

[Ganma]

I remember hearing of a similar case in Germany several years back. I wonder how common a problem this is across developed nations (pensions being payed out without checking).

[Yokohammer]

There was the case a few years ago of a couple of guys who wheeled their dead friend into the pension office on an office chair, saying that the guy was "feeling ill and just sleeping" in an attempt to withdraw his pension money.

I'm pretty sure this actually happened, and that I'm not just imagining it.

[CrankyBastard]

It ain't such a bad deal.
I've been drawing Greji's pension since the 60's.
He was drawing my Great War benefits, so I reciprocated.

[Christoff]

There was the case a few years ago of a couple of guys who wheeled their dead friend into the pension office on an office chair, saying that the guy was "feeling ill and just sleeping" in an attempt to withdraw his pension money.

I'm pretty sure this actually happened, and that I'm not just imagining it.

I would loved to have been present when they were sitting around the kotatsu hatching their plan.

[Yokohammer]

I would loved to have been present when they were sitting around the kotatsu hatching their plan.

It turns out this particular case happened in New York, so there probably wasn't a kotatsu involved.

I finally found a reference ... here ...

[Russell]

It turns out this particular case happened in New York, so there probably wasn't a kotatsu involved.

I finally found a reference ... here ...

That's a hilarious story. Could be an episode of Monty Python.

[Taro Toporific]

Skeleton of woman thought to be alive and well at 104 found in Tokyo apartment
2010 Aug 20 - The Mainichi Daily News
The skeletal remains of a woman who was thought to be alive at 104 years old have been found in an apartment in Tokyo's Ota Ward, police said.
The woman is believed to be Kikue Mitsuishi, who, according to her 64-year-old son, died of disease nine years ago at her home in Bunkyo Ward. Police suspect that the man continued to receive pension payments on behalf of his dead mother until May 2004, and are investigating the case on suspicion of fraud.
According to investigators, a worker from the Ota Ward Office visited the woman's apartment on Aug. 18, after a large number of elderly people were discovered missing nationwide. Her son was at home and reportedly told the city employee, "My mother died of illness at our home in Bunkyo Ward in June 2001. I crushed her remains into pieces and brought them here in a backpack."
On the following morning, ward officials and police visited the apartment again and opened the backpack to find the skeletal remains in a plastic bag...more...

[Ganma]

"I crushed her remains into pieces and brought them here in a backpack."

What a thoughtful son.

[Ketou]

What a thoughtful son.

Pretty standard practice with the bones after the cremation here......

[Ganma]

Pretty standard practice with the bones after the cremation here......

True, but before cremation??? How did he crush her? In a meat grinder?:shakeh:

[Samurai_Jerk]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100823/lf_nm_life/us_japan_elderly

A Japanese media frenzy over missing centenarians has cast a spotlight on the isolation and loneliness potentially faced by millions of elderly as the government struggles to cope with a rapidly graying population.

The panic - and guilt - was sparked by the discovery that a man believed Tokyo's oldest male at 111 had actually been dead for over 30 years with his remains found mummified at his home. His family is under investigation for fraud.

Since then authorities have been unable to locate over 250 elderly people and reports have emerged of many old people dying alone, or of relatives running scams to get their pensions amid broken communities and overworked public volunteers. ....

[IparryU]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100823/lf_nm_life/us_japan_elderly

silver police box... this is going to turn out to be the "hang out" for all the centenarian who are bored and want to talk to some one... that or centenarian-gokon lol

i bet that the gov will not even make the appropriate measures to announce the silver police box to them!

for future reference, red flag goes up for anyone 80 years old and onwards requiring medical check ups annually and meetings at the city office annually.

[Greji]

What a thoughtful son.

Absolutely! He could have just left her bag leaning up against a tree somewhere....

[Taro Toporific]

149-year-old man among 228 people over 120 listed among living in Osaka city
Mainichi.jp 2010-08-25 | HIGASHI-OSAKA, Osaka -- A total of 228 individuals who would be over 120 years old are listed as still "alive" on family registers here, it has emerged.
According to officials, the oldest listed centenarian was born in 1861, close to the end of the Edo period, meaning the person would be 149 years old....
...<big snip>....

...In the Osaka Prefecture city of Yao, a total of 18 people born over 120 years ago remain listed in its family registration system as still alive, with the oldest of them being 137. The resident registry data of these individuals have already been deleted, and their family registry will also be canceled soon.
In Hashima, Gifu Prefecture, a 99-year-old man whose whereabouts had not been heard of for about 16 years was found still listed on the local resident registration. Furthermore, his family has reportedly received pension payments on his behalf totaling some 7 million yen, as well as a 10,000-yen cash gift to celebrate his longevity....more....

[dimwit]

They got a 186 year old from Shiga today. What are the bet of someone topping 200?