Thursday, December 23, 2010

Tow days before Christmas

Hi there, what are you doing? In Japan it is a holiday. So many family have a Christmas party today, or go shopping for Christmas.
I'm stay home and relaxing. Yuki went to work. From the evening I have usual lessons with having Christmas snacks.
Today it is really warm day, I can't believe it is in December.

For these three months I have been absent from Toast Master's meeting because of my schedule of going to TOKYO.
Without a housewife (who?) the topics seemed to be political or worldwide.

The last meeting, the topics of short speech were 、"Lay judge System","TPP(Trans Pacific Partnership)" and "Domestically bound". If I had been there, I would have not been offered to make a short speech on any topics.
Actually I'm really week at political topics, though it might mean I'm not so interested in the political even if I were a carrier woman.
So I try to think about it.
About two years passed since Lay judge System was introduced in Japan.
If I had a letter to come to a court as a citizen judge, I would accept the role.
But if I should decide whether it would be death sentence or not , what would I do???
Actually some citizen judges who decided death sentence asked some mental care after the trial.
I know Lay judge system is good, but for usual citizen who don't have enough experience, or don't know morals it is a hard task.On the other hand the closed judge system, it means the world is apart from usual common world, has to hear the usual opinions, common sense.
TPP, I know the word, and this word is really important for farmers. What I know about TPP is we can import farm products in cheap terrify, and we can export our farm products in cheap tariff. On the newspaper, the Ministry of Agriculture says, if we accepted TPP, our agriculture would have a big damage. I'm not sure it's true or not. I live in country, so I can buy domestic rice. I can buy cheap Thai rice, but seldom I can't. But probably fast-food industry use cheaper rice, so our agriculture might have a big damage, on the other hand I hear Japanese rice is really popular for its quality and taste. So if they can export in cheap tariff, our agriculture that is said to be weaken, might be active.
Domestically bound-- what does it mean? When I hear this word, I recall a woman who bounded her neighbors. She is a farmer with big farms, around her there are many big farmers, but they lived on each way. She tried to make and sell YUZU -KOSYOU as a product of their area. She made domestically bound, didn't she?
I hope these sentenses make sense.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your discription of Lay Judges is very interesting. Here in the US, some places have citizen mediators for minor cases (such as determining child visitations for parents who are divorcing). This is done for non-criminal issues. But, basically judges must know the law and therefore very few "Lay" citizens would be capable...certainly never to determine prison or death sentences. Our Constitution grants a trial by jury of peers (fellow citizens) and they determine the guilt or innocence, but a judge oversees the trial and makes certain the law is followed. Jan

Mieko said...

Yes, the system is "importated" from foreign countreis. In our country we accept death sentences so far. I'm not sure we will keep it or not. And I'm not sure whether it is good or not that citizne judges participate to decide death sentences. --- just I'm watching.