I was about to do a post filled with random stuff that happened over the weekend while I was (as usual) away from the blogosphere, with this being one of them, but then I thought the serious nature of it would be completely jarring with the rest of the stuff I want to cover, so it gets a (short) post by itself.

So today, a rather nasty thing happened Akihabara-side that will probably leave a bad mark on the place for some time (hopefully not too long) - and it really has nothing to do with (us) otaku. If you’ve yet to know about it (and I’m sorry if this is going to spoil the rest of your day or anything), you can read it here or here (and here’s a reaction post to with them).

To cut long story short, guy rams truck into crowd of people at an intersection, leaves truck, and goes on a stabbing spree in the vicinity, leaving a bunch (17) of people injured or dead (3 being the latest number I think - edit: It’s rising pretty fast).

First got wind of this news when I woke up this afternoon (it’s a Sunday, so sue me) and turned on the TV and the news was plastered all over the screen. My Japanese comprehension skills still being rather embarrassing for someone who’s supposedly been intensively studying it for 3 months now, all I could gather was that the scene was Akihabara, 2 people were dead (then), and a vehicle and a “nani-nani-naifu” was definitely involved. Same thing was being reported when I came back from grocery shopping and even while I was watching Code Geass. It was only when I returned to the blogosphere that I got a fuller scope of what was happening - and I felt rather imprudent for laughing wildly during Code Geass >.<

Don’t want this post to stray too long so to sum up my current reaction: disgusted, horrified, disturbed, slightly sad, etc. all the usual emotions I usually find myself going through when I ‘read the news here’ (I’ll be honest, I don’t. Except from places like here and here which usually report things that are quintessentially Japanese WTF and/or disturbing such as this incident, which may skew my perception of things a bit). I suppose being perpetually blur is a partial blessing when I walk/cycle the streets around here, otherwise I’ll always have thoughts of “it’s all safe and peaceful now, but you never know when crazy shit is going to happen” haunting my mind and reducing me to some despair-mongering hikikomori.

*A short moment of silence to reflect on this particular incident for a while*

Okay, back to usual blogging, don’t want to let the fucked up things in life bog down said life.