June 3, 2022

I had my first visit with the “wound care” doctor at Akishima Tokushukai Hospital on Tuesday, May 31. At first, they did many tests to check my blood circulation. It was good. The very young doctor is very nice and seems very knowledgeable about my problem.  I will see a specialist for making shoe inserts on June 15. The inserts will help prevent my foot problem from happening again. My foot is still healing but is getting better week by week. I am planning to start walking and golfing by the end of this month. The best news is that I don’t have to drive to Yokosuka anymore. Any future problems will be taken care of at Tokushukai Hospital. Hopefully this foot saga will end shortly.

The town of Abu in Yamaguchi Prefecture accidentally sent 46.3 million yen in COVID-19 relief money to a single resident, Sho Taguchi. He blew it all on online casinos in a few weeks.

He was finally an arrest for fraudulent use of a computer. The biggest shock came in the morning of 24 May. Abu mayor Norihiko Hanada held a press conference announcing that approximately 43 million yen of that money had already been recovered by the town.

Online gambling is illegal in Japan, so banks and credit cards won’t transfer money to foreign casinos. Taguchi had to first put the money into a Japanese company that handles online payments and then send it overseas. A lawyer helped him transfer money into three payment companies.

The payment companies decided to refund the entire amount of money that Taguchi deposited. They did this so that the police would not investigate their companies. They could refund the money only directly to Taguchi’s bank account. Luckily, Taguchi owed the government for taxes that he didn’t pay. Because of that, the government was able to take all the money from his bank account.

“Blew it all” means “he wasted the money.”

“Fraudulent” means “dishonest, cheating, illegal, etc.”