News story of the day

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

Learn as much about them as you can, folks, because we will be at war with robots in no time!

[Meath_Villan]

Aww hell no. I've seen that film before...

Pentagon-funded Atlas robot refuses to be knocked over

Meet Atlas, a humanoid robot capable of crossing rough terrain and maintaining its balance on one leg even when hit from the side.

And WildCat, the four-legged robot that can gallop untethered at up to 16mph (26km/h).

These are the latest creations of Boston Dynamics, a US robotics company part-funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).

The robots are part of Darpa's Maximum Mobility and Manipulation programme.

Darpa says such robots "hold great promise for amplifying human effectiveness in defence operations".

Referring to Atlas's ability to remain balanced despite being hit by a lateral weight, Noel Sharkey, professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at the University of Sheffield, told the BBC: "This is an astonishing achievement... quite a remarkable feat."

This version of Atlas is one of seven humanoid robots Boston Dynamics is developing in response to the Darpa Robotics Challenge.

In December, competing robots will be set eight tasks to test their potential for use in emergency-response situations, including crossing uneven ground, using power tools and driving a rescue vehicle.

Darpa wants to improve the manoeuvrability and controllability of such robots while reducing manufacturing costs.

WildCat can bound, gallop and turn, mimicking the movements of quadruped animals. It is powered by an internal combustion engine.

"It is a shame that such technology is not being developed with other research funding," said Prof Sharkey, who is also chair of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control.

"We do not know what military purpose it will serve but certainly it is a step towards a high-speed ground robot that could be weaponised to hunt and kill."

The video shows WildCat performing on a flat surface, but Prof Sharkey said: "It would be good to see how well it could perform in a muddy field."

Last year, Boston Dynamics' Cheetah robot reached a sprint speed of 28.3mph tethered to a treadmill.

Geoff Pegman, managing director of RURobots, told the BBC: "Robotics has been making important strides in recent years, and these are a couple of demonstrations of the technology moving forward.

"However, their application may be limited to areas such as defence and, maybe specialised construction or demolition tasks.

"In other applications there are more efficient ways of achieving the mobility more cost effectively."

 

[maqroll]

Goodbye, Chopper

 

Click

 

 

Not since Ned Kelly has an Australian criminal enjoyed such public adulation as Mark “Chopper” Read. Unlike Kelly, Read lived to enjoy his infamy, becoming a bestselling author and the subject of a hit film. The heavily tattooed, garrulous Read, who has died aged 58, blended the swaggering Australian “good bloke” persona with a belief in righteous violence.

A street thug who claimed to have spent only 13 months out of prison between the ages of 20 and 38, Read learned to read and write in jail and in 1990 began corresponding with a Melbourne journalist, John Silvester. He and his colleague Andrew Rule edited the letters to create a book, Chopper, From the Inside: The Confessions of Mark Brandon Read (1991), about Read’s exploits. Silvester, now crime reporter at the Age in Melbourne, has written: “There is no doubt some of Read’s stories are embellished, polished or, in some cases, stolen, but there is also no doubt that through the 1970s and 80s he was one of the most dangerous men in Australia.”

Chopper was an instant success, going on to sell more than 200,000 copies, and Read followed it with Hits and Memories (1992) and How to Shoot Friends and Influence People (1993). He went on to produce books at a rate of roughly one a year for more than a decade: initially, he wrote autobiographical tales, but then turned to crime fiction and even children’s books.

He became internationally famous mainly due to the success of the 2000 film Chopper, based on his autobiography. A critical and box office hit, Chopper catapulted its director, Andrew Dominik, and star, Eric Bana, on to Hollywood’s A-list. Bana, a comedian who had been recommended by Read for the part, brilliantly captured the mix of violence and wry naivety the role demanded. The film’s success led to Read developing a cult following, and he began writing columns for the British men’s magazines FHM and Nuts. Read donated all his earnings from the film to Melbourne’s Royal Children’s hospital.

The son of an ex-army father and a fervently religious mother, Read was born and raised in the suburbs of Melbourne. He spent his first five years in a children’s home. He was reunited with his parents, but things were difficult, and he was bullied at school. Made a ward of the state at 14, he was placed in psychiatric institutions and subjected to electro-shock treatment. His brutal childhood led Read to develop his “hard man” persona, and his skills at dishing out violence and enduring pain saw him become a street gang leader by his mid-teens.

Read quickly realised that stealing from drug dealers was much more profitable than preying on ordinary citizens: not only do dealers possess large sums of cash, he reasoned, but they cannot complain about their losses to the police. He would later use these activities to promote himself as the scourge of Melbourne’s underground, a criminal who stole from criminals and (supposedly) never harmed an innocent person.

Read was regularly arrested and in the mid-70s was sentenced to 17 years in Pentridge prison, Melbourne, for kidnapping a judge (in an attempt to get a member of his gang freed). Inside, Read became involved in prison gang wars. With matters getting out of hand, Read requested a transfer to another wing of the prison. When he was refused, Read asked a fellow inmate to cut both his ears off. He wrote: “They said there was no way I would be getting a transfer, so I made the simple decision that ears off = transfer. Believe me, it works.” According to some accounts, the name “Chopper” stemmed from this episode, though others attributed it to his habit of cutting off his victims’ toes using boltcutters. Others said it was an earlier, childhood nickname.

Not long after this, Read was stabbed repeatedly by members of his own gang, who wanted to kill him because they feared his thirst for a prison gang war was becoming uncontrollable. Read survived, but lost several feet of bowel and intestine in the attack.

Read was still being held under maximum security when his books became popular. He began to receive prison visits from Mary-Ann Hodge, who had read one of them, and the couple married in 1995. Three years later, he was released from jail, and the couple moved to a farmhouse in Tasmania. After a son, Charlie, was born, Read wrote: “Fatherhood changed me. I reckon I became a human being at 45, when I saw my first boy born … That’s the moment I joined the human race.”

The marriage ended in 2001, Read finding farm life in Tasmania boring. He married Margaret Casser in 2003 and their son, Roy, was born the following year. “When I was 50 and I saw my second boy born, I became a fully paid-up member of the human race,” wrote Read. “I have no regrets, but those moments told me what I should have been – a good human being.”

Read was by now a fully fledged Australian icon, his total book sales having passed 500,000 and his live performances, in which he showed a gift for comedy, selling out theatres. He began exhibiting paintings and in 2006 released a rap album, Interview with a Madman. He appeared in public service advertisements warning against drink driving and domestic violence. He liked to boast that he had killed 19 people and attempted the murder of 11 others, but also said he would “never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn”.

Declaring himself bankrupt – due to a gambling addiction – in 2007, he also announced that he had hepatitis C, but would not be applying for the liver transplant that might save him. He had recently received treatment for liver cancer.

He is survived by Margaret and his sons.

Edited October 10, 2013 by maqroll

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

survived by

 

Never liked this phrase.

[tonyh29]

Villatalk's very own Rob gets to star alongside Peter Crouch in a TV advert for virgin media

[BOF]

Everyone loves a happy ending, especially when it involves a scumbag getting shot.

 

Biker jacked at gunpoint before thief shot by cop - caught on helmet cam

Video here (NSFW - Someone does actually get shot)

A rider on his motorbike was caught a very scary moment when he was suddenly held at gunpoint while a thief attempted to steal his ride. What he probably didn't expect, was a nearby undercover policeman who almost immediately shot him before he could get away.

The incident happened at an unknown location in Brazil and was caught on the biker's helmet cam which is available for you to watch in full.

The biker was casually arriving at a junction when another motorbike appeared out of nowhere with the passenger on the back already pointing a gun in the victims face. He naturally hands over his motorbike before the undercover cop arrives on the scene.

[coda]

^ I like how he called 'Tio' afterwards. Clearly part of the Salamanca cartel.

[villaajax]

Villatalk's very own Rob gets to star alongside Peter Crouch in a TV advert for virgin media

 

Rob isn't black

[Eames]

Toothless Penis Biter Jailed
 
 
The trial judge told Jason Martin, 41, he had carried out the attack to humiliate his former pal Richard Henderson who had accused him of “being back on the drugs”.
The father-of-one had told a jury: “I didn’t do that..I am not a gay man in any way. 
"The thought of putting a man’s penis in my mouth..well it’s not for me. Not in a million years would I do it!”
But he was found guilty of wounding with intent to cause serious injury by grabbing Mr Henderson’s penis and testicles during the bust-up near their homes in Folkestone Road, Dover.
Judge Adele Williams said his victim said he had “never felt such excruciating pain like that before in his life”.
She added: “These were horrendous injuries but you have shown not one flicker of remorse... in fact, you regard yourself as the victim.
“I have no doubt that when you lost your temper on this occasion you were determined to inflict as much pain and injury upon your victim as possible.
“You also set out to humiliate him by taking hold of his penis and testicles and gnawing at them.”
 


 
The prosecution at Canterbury Crown Court had told how Martin attacked his neighbour, who was dressed in his pyjamas and no shoes, after receiving a text to turn down his music.
As the two argued, Mr Henderson made a jibe about Martin’s alleged drug abuse and a fight broke out.
Heroin-addict Martin, who had denied the offence, claimed he was punched first and then held in a headlock before being kicked.
“You also set out to humiliate him by taking hold of his penis and testicles and gnawing at them..." - Judge Adele Williams
Mr Henderson, who was covered in blood from the alleged attack, was taken to hospital where surgeons had to stitch his penis.
He told the jury that his penis had been bitten “like it was a sandwich”, causing him “excruciating pain.”
He was asked what it was like and replied: “My willy was not attached to the rest of my body...I have never experienced that kind of pain to this day and I don’t want to experience it ever again.”
Photographs of the injury were later shown to the six man-six woman jury panel after being told “they don’t make pleasant viewing!”
The court heard that when police officers interviewed Martin after the bust-up he still had blood around his mouth.
Martin claimed that was from a “fat lip” he received from a punch and not from biting the penis, telling the jury: “I have only got a couple of teeth in the lower part of my mouth...I can’t even bite into a hard-boiled egg!”
 
 
He was asked to show the jury his lack of teeth, saying he had dentures but only used them "for cosmetic reasons".
He added: “I accept that I did grab his testicles, not maliciously or to hurt him badly.”
Martin said that he had had a text from Mr Henderson’s partner, Michelle Hilton, about how loud the music was on his XBox.
He said he went to the neighbour’s flat because he thought the complaint was unfair and was grabbed by Mr Henderson who then tried to “ram my head into a metal staircase”.
Martin broke down in the witness box during his trial and wept after admitting he had told police officers “I have not done anything to him”
He said: “I had just grabbed around him (Mr Henderson), I didn’t realise at the time that I had done anything to him. It was just a rat bite. I just grabbed into an area, I didn’t realise at the time it was his testicles.”
 

Judge Williams asked: “You must have felt his penis and testicles in your hand?”
Martin replied: “I didn’t know if it was his penis or his testicles or his upper leg or arm. I didn’t know what it was. I was just getting beaten up and I was scared.”
After being arrested for the assault he was released on bail and was stopped again by police driving dangerously through the town – while children were on their way home from school.
He was jailed for seven years for the wounding and the judge added another year for the dangerous driving.
Martin, who also admitted a string of other driving offences –has a criminal record which included six offences of driving while disqualified, four for drink driving and seven for driving without insurance.
He was also banned from driving for five years.

[StigVillan]

Everyone loves a happy ending, especially when it involves a scumbag getting shot. 

Biker jacked at gunpoint before thief shot by cop - caught on helmet camVideo here (NSFW - Someone does actually get shot)A rider on his motorbike was caught a very scary moment when he was suddenly held at gunpoint while a thief attempted to steal his ride. What he probably didn't expect, was a nearby undercover policeman who almost immediately shot him before he could get away.The incident happened at an unknown location in Brazil and was caught on the biker's helmet cam which is available for you to watch in full.The biker was casually arriving at a junction when another motorbike appeared out of nowhere with the passenger on the back already pointing a gun in the victims face. He naturally hands over his motorbike before the undercover cop arrives on the scene.

I highly approve.

Instant justice. The best kind d

[tonyh29]

StigVillan, on 17 Oct 2013 - 12:32 PM, said:

 

BOF, on 16 Oct 2013 - 10:32 AM, said:

Everyone loves a happy ending, especially when it involves a scumbag getting shot. 

Quote

Biker jacked at gunpoint before thief shot by cop - caught on helmet camVideo here (NSFW - Someone does actually get shot)A rider on his motorbike was caught a very scary moment when he was suddenly held at gunpoint while a thief attempted to steal his ride. What he probably didn't expect, was a nearby undercover policeman who almost immediately shot him before he could get away.The incident happened at an unknown location in Brazil and was caught on the biker's helmet cam which is available for you to watch in full.The biker was casually arriving at a junction when another motorbike appeared out of nowhere with the passenger on the back already pointing a gun in the victims face. He naturally hands over his motorbike before the undercover cop arrives on the scene.

I highly approve.

Instant justice. The best kind d

 

 

 

really !!

 

should we arm everybody so they can go about dishing out instant justice  ?

[StigVillan]

No. Just the proper authorities, trained enough to administer and apply justice that is decided on by the majority in conjunction with the law of a nation, built on a shared understanding of morality.

[BOF]

really !!

should we arm everybody so they can go about dishing out instant justice ?

May aswell trial it :-P It was a cop that shot the scummer y'know.

[tonyh29]

BOF, on 17 Oct 2013 - 3:22 PM, said:

 

tonyh29, on 17 Oct 2013 - 12:41 PM, said:

really !!

should we arm everybody so they can go about dishing out instant justice ?

May aswell trial it :-P It was a cop that shot the scummer y'know.

 

 

Yeah I know  .. it was the comment of "instant Justice , the best kind"  I was commenting on  but the OP has clarified that

 

you could argue though that the bloke had put his gun away (tucks it in his belt around 50 secs) before the rozzer shot him and nor did he ( the shooter)  issue any warning  , so it was like an execution  ....  mind you publicly executing Brazilian's seems to be fair game even in London ( ducks)

 

 

more importantly though where the f**k did that copper appear from , the camera pans away for a nano second and he's just there , all the cars have closed doors 

[leviramsey]

No. Just the proper authorities, trained enough to administer and apply justice that is decided on by the majority in conjunction with the law of a nation, built on a shared understanding of morality.

I'd trust the average man in the street more than I'd trust the proper authorities, tbh.

[choffer]

Oops!

Panicked groom who staged BOMB scare to cover up forgetting to book wedding venue is jailed

A flustered groom was today jailed for 12 months for staging a bomb hoax at his OWN WEDDING after forgetting to book the venue.

Bungling Neil McArdle telephoned the listing building where he was due to wed to warn of an impending explosion, in a plot which ‘had all the makings of a comedy’, Liverpool Crown Court heard.

The 36-year-old realised he had not filled out the correct forms and rang in the emergency threat on the morning of the ceremony.

McArdle did not have the heart to inform his bride-to-be Amy Williams of his mistake after seeing her ‘looking amazing’ on her wedding day on April 24, the court was told.

As his unsuspecting fiancee got ready for her big day, McArdle left his home in Kirkby, Merseyside, and disguised his voice in a phone box to tell an astonished receptionist: “This is not a hoax call. There’s a bomb in St George’s Hall and it will go off in 45 minutes.”

His happy fiancee arrived at the venue in Liverpool, in her wedding dress, in full expectation she was about to tie the knot.

But police quickly converged on the city centre building in response to the bomb threat and evacuated staff, meaning the wedding was cancelled.

The court heard how the bride's sister suspected her soon-to-be brother-in-law outside the venue, as she raged at him: “You’ve probably done the bomb hoax yourself!”

After his call was traced and he was arrested, McArdle, who had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to a single charge of communicating false information with intent, told cops he had only realised his booking mistake on the eve of the wedding.

He said he felt ‘embarrassed’ and ‘panicked’, and set up the bomb threat to buy himself more time.

Judge Norman Wright said the scare was aggravated by the Boston marathon explosions just 11 days earlier which had ‘killed and maimed people and must have been at the forefront of people’s minds at the time.’

McArdle wept in the dock as his barrister Charles Lander revealed the couple were still together despite the ‘betrayal of trust'.

He said: “This has all the making of a comedy, but this is not a laughing matter.”

Judge Wright told McArdle: “What you did was to perpertre a bomb hoax at St George’s Hall, of neo-classical design, a world landmark, and a public building used for many different purposes.

“It has a coroner’s court, births and deaths are registered there and public tours take place.

“The business of the building was disrupted by your call. This must have struck sheer terror in the heart of the person who received the call.

“Having realised you hadn’t booked the wedding, you did nothing, and nothing and nothing and buried your head in the sand.

“You are an intelligent man, you’ve got a degree and as a result of your last conviction yoi did a thinking skills programme to analyse situations if you needed that.

“Only you know, looking into your heart of hearts know why {you rang in the bomb hoax.}

“Maybe there was some ambivalence in your mind about the wedding, but you did nothing.

“You didn't say we need to talk and level with her. You tried to weasal your way out by creating a bomb hoax to give you more time.”

Mr Lander, defending, said: “He was going to tell Ms Williams, but having gone to sleep, he woke up and she looked amazing, and he couldn’t get out the words to her and tell her what he hadn’t done.

“The wedding was never going to take place, he was always going to be found out by Ms Williams and her family."

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/groom-neil-mcardle-bomb-scare-2479051

Edited October 22, 2013 by choffer

[mjmooney]

This one is some strange food for thought...

 

 

Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

 

What happens to a country when its young people stop having sex? Japan is finding out… Abigail Haworth investigates

 

Arm’s length: 45% of Japanese women aged 16-24 are ‘not interested in or despise sexual contact’. More than a quarter of men feel the same way. Photograph: Eric Rechsteiner

 

Ai Aoyama is a sex and relationship counsellor who works out of her narrow three-storey home on a Tokyo back street. Her first name means "love" in Japanese, and is a keepsake from her earlier days as a professional dominatrix. Back then, about 15 years ago, she was Queen Ai, or Queen Love, and she did "all the usual things" like tying people up and dripping hot wax on their nipples. Her work today, she says, is far more challenging. Aoyama, 52, is trying to cure what Japan's media calls sekkusu shinai shokogun, or "celibacy syndrome".

 

Japan's under-40s appear to be losing interest in conventional relationships. Millions aren't even dating, and increasing numbers can't be bothered with sex. For their government, "celibacy syndrome" is part of a looming national catastrophe. Japan already has one of the world's lowest birth rates. Its population of 126 million, which has been shrinking for the past decade, is projected to plunge a further one-third by 2060. Aoyama believes the country is experiencing "a flight from human intimacy" – and it's partly the government's fault.

 

The sign outside her building says "Clinic". She greets me in yoga pants and fluffy animal slippers, cradling a Pekingese dog whom she introduces as Marilyn Monroe. In her business pamphlet, she offers up the gloriously random confidence that she visited North Korea in the 1990s and squeezed the testicles of a top army general. It doesn't say whether she was invited there specifically for that purpose, but the message to her clients is clear: she doesn't judge.

 

Inside, she takes me upstairs to her "relaxation room" – a bedroom with no furniture except a double futon. "It will be quiet in here," she says. Aoyama's first task with most of her clients is encouraging them "to stop apologising for their own physical existence".

 

The number of single people has reached a record high. A survey in 2011 found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of romantic relationship, a rise of almost 10% from five years earlier. Another study found that a third of people under 30 had never dated at all. (There are no figures for same-sex relationships.) Although there has long been a pragmatic separation of love and sex in Japan – a country mostly free of religious morals – sex fares no better. A survey earlier this year by the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA) found that 45% of women aged 16-24 "were not interested in or despised sexual contact". More than a quarter of men felt the same way.

 

Learning to love: sex counsellor Ai Aoyama, with one of her clients and her dog Marilyn. Photograph: Eric Rechsteiner/Panos Picture

 

Many people who seek her out, says Aoyama, are deeply confused. "Some want a partner, some prefer being single, but few relate to normal love and marriage." However, the pressure to conform to Japan's anachronistic family model of salaryman husband and stay-at-home wife remains. "People don't know where to turn. They're coming to me because they think that, by wanting something different, there's something wrong with them."

 

Official alarmism doesn't help. Fewer babies were born here in 2012 than any year on record. (This was also the year, as the number of elderly people shoots up, that adult incontinence pants outsold baby nappies in Japan for the first time.) Kunio Kitamura, head of the JFPA, claims the demographic crisis is so serious that Japan "might eventually perish into extinction".

Japan's under-40s won't go forth and multiply out of duty, as postwar generations did. The country is undergoing major social transition after 20 years of economic stagnation. It is also battling against the effects on its already nuclear-destruction-scarred psyche of 2011's earthquake, tsunami and radioactive meltdown. There is no going back. "Both men and women say to me they don't see the point of love. They don't believe it can lead anywhere," says Aoyama. "Relationships have become too hard."

 

Marriage has become a minefield of unattractive choices. Japanese men have become less career-driven, and less solvent, as lifetime job security has waned. Japanese women have become more independent and ambitious. Yet conservative attitudes in the home and workplace persist. Japan's punishing corporate world makes it almost impossible for women to combine a career and family, while children are unaffordable unless both parents work. Cohabiting or unmarried parenthood is still unusual, dogged by bureaucratic disapproval.

 

Aoyama says the sexes, especially in Japan's giant cities, are "spiralling away from each other". Lacking long-term shared goals, many are turning to what she terms "Pot Noodle love" – easy or instant gratification, in the form of casual sex, short-term trysts and the usual technological suspects: online porn, virtual-reality "girlfriends", anime cartoons. Or else they're opting out altogether and replacing love and sex with other urban pastimes.

 

Some of Aoyama's clients are among the small minority who have taken social withdrawal to a pathological extreme. They are recovering hikikomori ("shut-ins" or recluses) taking the first steps to rejoining the outside world, otaku (geeks), and long-term parasaito shingurus (parasite singles) who have reached their mid-30s without managing to move out of home. (Of the estimated 13 million unmarried people in Japan who currently live with their parents, around three million are over the age of 35.) "A few people can't relate to the opposite sex physically or in any other way. They flinch if I touch them," she says. "Most are men, but I'm starting to see more women."

 

No sex in the city: (from left) friends Emi Kuwahata, 23, and Eri Asada, 22, shopping in Tokyo. Photograph: Eric Rechsteiner/Panos Pictures

 

Aoyama cites one man in his early 30s, a virgin, who can't get sexually aroused unless he watches female robots on a game similar to Power Rangers. "I use therapies, such as yoga and hypnosis, to relax him and help him to understand the way that real human bodies work." Sometimes, for an extra fee, she gets naked with her male clients – "strictly no intercourse" – to physically guide them around the female form. Keen to see her nation thrive, she likens her role in these cases to that of the Edo period courtesans, or oiran, who used to initiate samurai sons into the art of erotic pleasure.

 

Aversion to marriage and intimacy in modern life is not unique to Japan. Nor is growing preoccupation with digital technology. But what endless Japanese committees have failed to grasp when they stew over the country's procreation-shy youth is that, thanks to official shortsightedness, the decision to stay single often makes perfect sense. This is true for both sexes, but it's especially true for women. "Marriage is a woman's grave," goes an old Japanese saying that refers to wives being ignored in favour of mistresses. For Japanese women today, marriage is the grave of their hard-won careers.

 

I meet Eri Tomita, 32, over Saturday morning coffee in the smart Tokyo district of Ebisu. Tomita has a job she loves in the human resources department of a French-owned bank. A fluent French speaker with two university degrees, she avoids romantic attachments so she can focus on work. "A boyfriend proposed to me three years ago. I turned him down when I realised I cared more about my job. After that, I lost interest in dating. It became awkward when the question of the future came up."

 

Tomita says a woman's chances of promotion in Japan stop dead as soon as she marries. "The bosses assume you will get pregnant." Once a woman does have a child, she adds, the long, inflexible hours become unmanageable. "You have to resign. You end up being a housewife with no independent income. It's not an option for women like me."

 

Around 70% of Japanese women leave their jobs after their first child. The World Economic Forum consistently ranks Japan as one of the world's worst nations for gender equality at work. Social attitudes don't help. Married working women are sometimes demonised as oniyome, or "devil wives". In a telling Japanese ballet production of Bizet's Carmen a few years ago, Carmen was portrayed as a career woman who stole company secrets to get ahead and then framed her lowly security-guard lover José. Her end was not pretty.

 

Prime minister Shinzo Abe recently trumpeted long-overdue plans to increase female economic participation by improving conditions and daycare, but Tomita says things would have to improve "dramatically" to compel her to become a working wife and mother. "I have a great life. I go out with my girl friends – career women like me – to French and Italian restaurants. I buy stylish clothes and go on nice holidays. I love my independence."

 

Tomita sometimes has one-night stands with men she meets in bars, but she says sex is not a priority, either. "I often get asked out by married men in the office who want an affair. They assume I'm desperate because I'm single." She grimaces, then shrugs. "Mendokusai."

 

Mendokusai translates loosely as "Too troublesome" or "I can't be bothered". It's the word I hear both sexes use most often when they talk about their relationship phobia. Romantic commitment seems to represent burden and drudgery, from the exorbitant costs of buying property in Japan to the uncertain expectations of a spouse and in-laws. And the centuries-old belief that the purpose of marriage is to produce children endures. Japan's Institute of Population and Social Security reports an astonishing 90% of young women believe that staying single is "preferable to what they imagine marriage to be like".

 

'I often get asked out by married men in the office who want an affair as I am single. But I can’t be bothered': Eri Tomita, 32. Photograph: Eric Rechsteiner/Panos Pictures

 

The sense of crushing obligation affects men just as much. Satoru Kishino, 31, belongs to a large tribe of men under 40 who are engaging in a kind of passive rebellion against traditional Japanese masculinity. Amid the recession and unsteady wages, men like Kishino feel that the pressure on them to be breadwinning economic warriors for a wife and family is unrealistic. They are rejecting the pursuit of both career and romantic success.

 

"It's too troublesome," says Kishino, when I ask why he's not interested in having a girlfriend. "I don't earn a huge salary to go on dates and I don't want the responsibility of a woman hoping it might lead to marriage." Japan's media, which has a name for every social kink, refers to men like Kishino as "herbivores" or soshoku danshi (literally, "grass-eating men"). Kishino says he doesn't mind the label because it's become so commonplace. He defines it as "a heterosexual man for whom relationships and sex are unimportant".

 

The phenomenon emerged a few years ago with the airing of a Japanese manga-turned-TV show. The lead character in Otomen ("Girly Men") was a tall martial arts champion, the king of tough-guy cool. Secretly, he loved baking cakes, collecting "pink sparkly things" and knitting clothes for his stuffed animals. To the tooth-sucking horror of Japan's corporate elders, the show struck a powerful chord with the generation they spawned.

 

‘I find women attractive but I’ve learned to live without sex. Emotional entanglements are too complicated’: Satoru Kishino, 31. Photograph: Eric Rechsteiner/Panos Pictures

 

Kishino, who works at a fashion accessories company as a designer and manager, doesn't knit. But he does like cooking and cycling, and platonic friendships. "I find some of my female friends attractive but I've learned to live without sex. Emotional entanglements are too complicated," he says. "I can't be bothered."

 

Romantic apathy aside, Kishino, like Tomita, says he enjoys his active single life. Ironically, the salaryman system that produced such segregated marital roles – wives inside the home, husbands at work for 20 hours a day – also created an ideal environment for solo living. Japan's cities are full of conveniences made for one, from stand-up noodle bars to capsule hotels to the ubiquitous konbini (convenience stores), with their shelves of individually wrapped rice balls and disposable underwear. These things originally evolved for salarymen on the go, but there are now female-only cafés, hotel floors and even the odd apartment block. And Japan's cities are extraordinarily crime-free.

 

Some experts believe the flight from marriage is not merely a rejection of outdated norms and gender roles. It could be a long-term state of affairs. "Remaining single was once the ultimate personal failure," says Tomomi Yamaguchi, a Japanese-born assistant professor of anthropology at Montana State University in America. "But more people are finding they prefer it." Being single by choice is becoming, she believes, "a new reality".

 

Is Japan providing a glimpse of all our futures? Many of the shifts there are occurring in other advanced nations, too. Across urban Asia, Europe and America, people are marrying later or not at all, birth rates are falling, single-occupant households are on the rise and, in countries where economic recession is worst, young people are living at home. But demographer Nicholas Eberstadt argues that a distinctive set of factors is accelerating these trends in Japan. These factors include the lack of a religious authority that ordains marriage and family, the country's precarious earthquake-prone ecology that engenders feelings of futility, and the high cost of living and raising children.

 

"Gradually but relentlessly, Japan is evolving into a type of society whose contours and workings have only been contemplated in science fiction," Eberstadt wrote last year. With a vast army of older people and an ever-dwindling younger generation, Japan may become a "pioneer people" where individuals who never marry exist in significant numbers, he said.

 

Japan's 20-somethings are the age group to watch. Most are still too young to have concrete future plans, but projections for them are already laid out. According to the government's population institute, women in their early 20s today have a one-in-four chance of never marrying. Their chances of remaining childless are even higher: almost 40%.

 

They don't seem concerned. Emi Kuwahata, 23, and her friend, Eri Asada, 22, meet me in the shopping district of Shibuya. The café they choose is beneath an art gallery near the train station, wedged in an alley between pachinko pinball parlours and adult video shops. Kuwahata, a fashion graduate, is in a casual relationship with a man 13 years her senior. "We meet once a week to go clubbing," she says. "I don't have time for a regular boyfriend. I'm trying to become a fashion designer." Asada, who studied economics, has no interest in love. "I gave up dating three years ago. I don't miss boyfriends or sex. I don't even like holding hands."

 

Asada insists nothing happened to put her off physical contact. She just doesn't want a relationship and casual sex is not a good option, she says, because "girls can't have flings without being judged". Although Japan is sexually permissive, the current fantasy ideal for women under 25 is impossibly cute and virginal. Double standards abound.

 

In the Japan Family Planning Association's 2013 study on sex among young people, there was far more data on men than women. I asked the association's head, Kunio Kitamura, why. "Sexual drive comes from males," said the man who advises the government. "Females do not experience the same levels of desire."

 

Over iced tea served by skinny-jeaned boys with meticulously tousled hair, Asada and Kuwahata say they share the usual singleton passions of clothes, music and shopping, and have hectic social lives. But, smart phones in hand, they also admit they spend far more time communicating with their friends via online social networks than seeing them in the flesh. Asada adds she's spent "the past two years" obsessed with a virtual game that lets her act as a manager of a sweet shop.

 

Japanese-American author Roland Kelts, who writes about Japan's youth, says it's inevitable that the future of Japanese relationships will be largely technology driven. "Japan has developed incredibly sophisticated virtual worlds and online communication systems. Its smart phone apps are the world's most imaginative." Kelts says the need to escape into private, virtual worlds in Japan stems from the fact that it's an overcrowded nation with limited physical space. But he also believes the rest of the world is not far behind.

 

Getting back to basics, former dominatrix Ai Aoyama – Queen Love – is determined to educate her clients on the value of "skin-to-skin, heart-to-heart" intimacy. She accepts that technology will shape the future, but says society must ensure it doesn't take over. "It's not healthy that people are becoming so physically disconnected from each other," she says. "Sex with another person is a human need that produces feel-good hormones and helps people to function better in their daily lives."

 

Aoyama says she sees daily that people crave human warmth, even if they don't want the hassle of marriage or a long-term relationship. She berates the government for "making it hard for single people to live however they want" and for "whipping up fear about the falling birth rate". Whipping up fear in people, she says, doesn't help anyone. And that's from a woman who knows a bit about whipping.

• 
• • Abigail Haworth
  • The Observer, Sunday 20 October 2013
  •  

Edited October 22, 2013 by mjmooney

[AVFCforever1991]

Interesting 15 min documentary on Vice about the Japanese love industry... 

 

http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-japanese-love-industry

Edited October 22, 2013 by AVFCforever1991

[legov]

Interesting.

 

Hmm, Japanese guy in class.

[coda]

Interesting 15 min documentary on Vice about the Japanese love industry... 

 

http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-japanese-love-industry

Interesting 15 min documentary on Vice about the Japanese love industry... 

 

http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-japanese-love-industry

I can't access this at the moment. Does it involve poo at the end?