Another typical case of substance abuse in a Japanese family. A stale tragicomedy rather.

She was a young (36) hard-working mother of six, always hardpressed for money and time to keep her large family afloat somehow. Trouble started when her eldest daughter (15) turned out to be an addict, firmly hooked on the stuff.

Believe me, she tried everything, absolutely every single thing to stop her material abuse. She shouted, threatened, slapped, cajoled, bribed... to no avail. She consulted with school teacher, urged her useless hubby to do something, and again to no avail. Unfortunately, she did not report to the law. Daughter is daughter, how could a mother inform on her own daughter?

During these times, daughter's habit grew more and more serious. Finally, she wasted more than 120,000 yen (US$1,090!) from family cashbox to pacify her addiction. That was the last straw. The amount was far more than the family could afford for their monthly expenditure.

Mom searched and found the daughter's stash, and hid it. Of course, the daughter found it again, and kept her habit going as though nothing had happened.

Mom snapped, at last. Midnight of November 13, she caught the daughter by her hair and pulled her down. She beat up her daughter soundly in desperation and anger.

So soundly that the daughter somehow fled from her beating and ran into the nearby Koban for refuge. Your friendly local police constable had to intervene. So the mother was arrested for battery. The daughter? Substance abuse is a serious offence in Japan. You think she, too, was firmly behind bars. Wrong. She is free as a bird, and nobody can check her bad habit anymore.

If the stuff had been regular chemical substance, like coke, speed, horse or ecstacy, things could have gone entirely different way. But daughter's addiction was to K-tai, the lowly mobile terminal! Addiction to K-tai does not constitute any crime in this world, including Japan.

As you can imagine, all Japanese sympathy went to the mom. This kind of tragedy could have occurred to any Japanese family, you know.

Of course, it'd be easy to blame her for her ignorance. She could have resorted to damage control mode in many ways, no less than going cold turkey promptly. Flat-rate packet charge, setting a maximum usage ceiling, subscribing to filter service, warning by email and the likes. Everything is clearly being explained in the bulky user's manual of K-tai.

But, did you expect a busy mother of large family to read through the huge manual that is thicker than the Tokyo Yellow Pages? Besides, those things are printed in extremely fineprint because they depress the ARU (average revenue per user) of mobile operator.

So, everybody is feeling bleak and crossing their fingers that their kid be somehow less stupid than the daughter in the news.

I'm afraid things will deteriorate further in Japan. Soon, we'll need another end of K-tai business derivatives. Like K-tai addiction rehab camp, K-tai abuse detox ranch, and so on. This could become an extremely lucrative business chance, along with treating Web addiction and online game dependency. Such a bleak future this could be.

P.S.

How could a girl of 15 manage to pile up an enormous sum of 120,000 yen on her K-tai bill? She did not place a single voice call, domestic or overseas. Did not call those sex talk numbers in far Ukraine or Moldva, either. The police station that handled the case was totally baffled and consulted with public relations guys at NTT DoCoMo and KDDI/au, the mobile operators.

Conclusion: It's impossible to accumulate the sum with voice call or email alone. Must be IP packet charge. Like downloading K-tai games everyday. Massive full music, movie clips, pictures, too, over and over. Of course, heavy users usually subscribe to flat-rate packet charge. Around 4,000 yen a month, you can send/receive as many packets as possible. No problem. But the daughter obviously failed to do it. The sky was the ceiling for her!

All operators can set the usage ceiling (upto 15,000 yen a month). For this, user or parents have to apply beforehand! Mom did not apply, though.

 

cheewee
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kaisei1
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