Kiddie suicide

Yesterday turned out to be a bit of a waste of a day off for me. I went to the bank to transfer money home but couldn't because I didn't know the address of my credit union at home, I went to the doctors and sat in the waiting room for an hour and a half before deciding if I wasted any more of my day off there I might well be truly sick and I didn't find a birthday present for my friend, nor go to the post office! Nice work. I did, however, see a movie. I ended up seeing The Lake House since there were no Japanese films worth struggling through screening. It was an ok film, the dialogue was a bit stilted I thought but they got their general message across. They ruined it (CAUTION SPOILER AHEAD) by making the ending happy. I came home and did a bit of study, ate a bunch of mixed nuts for dinner and choofed off to bed. I have just recently discovered cashews. I have always hated them and picked them out of mixed fruit and nut bags, but now I have decided that I quite like them! So now my nut eating has spread to peanuts, almonds, pistachios and cashews. Still not a fan of walnuts or macadamias though.

This morning on the news they were talking about a grade 6 primary school student who killed herself in her classroom. I didn't hear the story from the start, only when they were discussing it afterwards so I am not sure where it was, I think up north somewhere. Anyway, they had this girls suicide note all blown up and on a massive screen so that Minomonta could read it out word for word and comment upon it. I don't take much notice of these kind of things at home, perhaps because it doesn't make the news as much, but do they usually publish the suicide note? Anyway, she said that she had been a victim of bullying since grade 3 and had just gotten sick of it so decided to top herself in the classroom. The note is addressed to "everyone at school" but I wonder how many of them will actually feel any guilt about what she did. It seems a bit crazy to me that she could have been picked on for so long and no one saw it or did anything about it, but I guess there are schools where that happens in Australia too - just fewer kids are likely to tops themselves over it for some reason. Pretty big issue though when you have 12 year olds killing themselves - didn't anyone tell her that there's more to life than school? While I feel sad that she was a subject of bullying for so long - the bullying she describes is nothing worse than what I and I am sure others have experienced at school, mainly name calling. Why do these kids let it get to them? Obviously the kids who end up killing themselves have a different personality from me so it makes it hard for me to be fully sympathetic to their plight - why do they believe what they are told by these idiot bullies? If someone calls me disgusting I think, "according to you, and what do you matter?" Not that it doesn't make school life a bit tricky, but it's no reason to go removing yourself from the world - then the bullies have won.

I am interested to know what approach Japan takes to bullies - if it just concentrates on eradicating them - or if it puts efforts into toughening up the victims too. I reckon the kids here could do with a boost in self confidence, especially the girls.