{"id":6948,"date":"2009-06-17T17:23:01","date_gmt":"2009-06-17T21:23:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=6948"},"modified":"2009-06-17T19:26:49","modified_gmt":"2009-06-17T23:26:49","slug":"wit-life-43-%e3%81%b2%e3%81%a3%e3%81%9f%e3%81%8f%e3%82%8a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2009\/06\/17\/wit-life-43-%e3%81%b2%e3%81%a3%e3%81%9f%e3%81%8f%e3%82%8a\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #43: \u3072\u3063\u305f\u304f\u308a"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>WITLife<\/a> <\/strong>is a periodic series written by professional Interpreter\/Translator\/Writer Stacy Smith<\/a><\/strong> (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03).\u00a0 Recently she\u2019s been watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends together <\/em>w<\/em>ith her own observat<\/em>ions.<\/em><\/p>\n

Japan’s status as a crime free haven is being further tarnished by an increase in a kind of petty thievery known as \u3072\u3063\u305f\u304f\u308a (hittakuri<\/em>) or bag snatching.\u00a0\u00a0 The culprits make their moves while on motorbikes, bicycles or even on foot, and many times their distracted victims do not notice them until it is too late.\u00a0 According to a policeman, as they are often arrested holding little or no money of their own, it is thought that these crimes are committed out of economic need.<\/p>\n

Hittakuri<\/em> has a comparatively low arrest rate, primarily because it often takes place at night which makes it hard to identify the perpetrator.\u00a0 Out of Tokyo’s 961 cases 542 arrests were made, which comes out to a low 56.4%.\u00a0 From January to May of this year there were 1,140 cases overall, compared to the same time last year when there were only 738.\u00a0 A survey of those who had committed hittakuri<\/em> found that slightly more than half had used motorbikes and a large part of the remainder were on bicycles.\u00a0 However, even walking toward your target seems to prove successful, the reason being our multitasking tendencies in this day and age.<\/p>\n

Hittakuri<\/em> victims are usually marked from the second they exit a train station, as they are likely to focus on their phone or music player at this time.\u00a0 Most people are already texting, beginning to call someone or are into their tunes so their guards are down.\u00a0 With this scenario it is not difficult for an enterprising thief to take advantage of the situation.\u00a0 Considering the way most Japanese women hang their bags loosely from their arms, snatching them is not too challenging provided one is not noticed during his approach.<\/p>\n

Evidently this crime is growing as warnings of hittakuri <\/em>are now seen in various forms of media.\u00a0 Here’s a fun flier (courtesy of Japan Newbie<\/a>) written in Kansai-ben which says “Be careful!\u00a0 This is about you!\u00a0 Make sure to protect your bag from hittakuri<\/em>!” (In the one above also in Kansai-ben, the angry obaasan is telling the rather scared looking thief, “I’m not giving this to you!!” under the title of “Hittakuri<\/em> eradication!”)<\/p>\n

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\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Interpreter\/Translator\/Writer Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03).\u00a0 Recently she\u2019s been watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations. Japan’s status as a crime free haven is being further tarnished by an increase in a kind of petty thievery […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,30,18,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articlejournalism","category-japan-trends","category-translatinginterpreting","category-wit-life"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-1O4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6948"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6961,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6948\/revisions\/6961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}