Last April, two brothers in their 50s were found dead in a house in Nishiyodogawa Ward, Osaka City. The younger brother (56 years old at the time) had a severe intellectual disability, and the elder brother (57 years old at the time) was the sole caregiver.
Of the 175 railroad companies in Japan, including streetcars and monorails, only 97, or more than half, offer discounted fares for the ‘mentally disabled’, according to an internal document of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) has released internal documents.
According to Japan’s health ministry, the combined total of COVID-19 patients with severe symptoms announced by local governments across Japan stood at 51 on Jan. 1. The figure climbed to 89 in a week, to 233 in two weeks and topped 400 on Friday for the first time in about three months, in line with the increase of new infection cases.
An experiment is being carried out in Tsukuba City, Ibaraki Prefecture, to demonstrate a service that would allow users to use a single app to make cab reservations and arrange for vehicles to be automatically driven around hospitals so that elderly people and people with disabilities who have difficulty getting around can visit medical institutions smoothly.
During an investigation where a female employee was arrested for assaulting a child with a disability at a welfare facility in Kurume City, Fukuoka Prefecture, it was discovered that several other employees were suspected of abusing the child.
Hyogo Prefecture has become the first prefecture in Japan to use a new guidance system for the blind and visually impaired whereby the colour of traffic lights can be detected via a smartphone.
According to the city, in June 2020 and June 2009, a staff member at the school abused a user who had gone into someone else’s rice field by making him stand for four hours with a 5 kg bag of sand in both hands with the consent of the facility director. In response to the city’s investigation, he said:
“I thought that if I didn’t let them understand their problematic behavior, they would have trouble when they go out into the world. I didn’t think it was abuse.”
PM Kishida pledged to boost medical treatments for people recovering at home or at lodging facilities, and to accelerate booster vaccinations, noting that he plans to “calmly advance responses (against the omicron variant) based on the latest information, without excessive fear.”
“When the police analyzed the smartphone of the deceased suspect, Morio Tanimoto, they found that there were zero entries in the phone book and no call history indicating friendship.”
The Iwate Prefecture city of Morioka’s general rule is to remove snow when over 10 centimeters of it has accumulated on streets, but it has been tightened to 5 centimeters on a trial basis on city roads around the prefectural Morioka School for the Blind.
Barrier Free Japan