Regarding Debito Arudou's July 8 Zeit Gist article, "Beware the foreigner as guinea pig": I couldn't help but notice the curious order in which opinions about the article were placed in Views From the Street (at the bottom of the page). The first opinion not only is a biased and bigoted viewpoint of foreigners -- as if they are the only people in Japan who fail to behave lawfully -- but also has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
The view states: "Gaijin are the only ones who sometimes try to not pay, or don't respect the system like Japanese do."
Exactly what are foreigners failing to pay? And what does that have to do with the police planting drug evidence in foreigners' luggage at Narita airport (to train sniffer dogs)?
I can't fathom why this opinion was included at all unless it was simply to place an anti-gaijin view at the top of the list and imprint the notion in readers' minds, first and foremost, that foreigners are not to be trusted.
The inclusion and placement of this opinion seems to imply that The Japan Times is promoting the idea that foreigners deserve to have drugs planted in their luggage because they are untrustworthy on the whole. Either that or The Japan Times makes incredibly poor editorial choices.
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