Statistically speaking

I just want to reaffirm to everybody that I am relatively safe in Japan. Japan is not a dangerous country. You are more likely to be scammed than you are to be mugged. In fact, judging from the newspaper that I read every day, the only way you are likely to encounter any sort of violence is if you:

• are a high school student
• are a high school principal
• are living with your family
• are living within a 50-kilometer radius of your family

If you are a high school student then you may suffer from bullying. I don't suspect there is much physical violence involved but it probably has something to do with the self-inflicted violence students put themselves through as student suicides skyrocket in Japan.

If you are a high school principal then you might also be inclined to take matters into your own hands if a) one of your students commits suicide and it was found that the school should have been able to prevent it or b) the school curriculum was screwed up and now all the students in the graduating class can't get into university because they didn't take the appropriate courses.

If you live with your family then you will be killed. I'm not sure which is more frightening-the number of parents who kill their children, or the number of children who kill their parents. It is an extremely rare day when I open the newspaper up to page two (National section) and I don't see some story (written in brief of course) about some family member killing some other family member.

Since I don't fit into any of those categories I tend to feel very safe in my environment. Of course having to bike on a 1.5 lane street everyday doesn't help. It's a little frightening. Traffic can sometimes be ridiculous. Everyday I average approximately 3.2 near misses and statistically speaking, I have a 6% chance of being run over just getting out of bed.