Nihon No AIDS Mondai Desu.

a curious sight, originally uploaded by Sluggo.

It's not a secret that AIDS in on the rise in a number of places across the world. But would you have guessed that Japan is one of those places? The Japanese wouldn't have guessed that either.

AIDS has been something many Japanese think of someone else's problem, and a number of factors could lead to a vertiable crisis. To quote an Associated Press story by Natalie Obiko Pearson on Dailybreeze.com:

"The official toll of 10,070 HIV/AIDS sufferers in a nation of 127 million people pales next to some countries. Even if the actual figure is closer to 40,000, that would mean roughly 1 in 3,000 are infected, compared to about 1 in 100 in Thailand or 1 in 1,500 in China, according to estimates by UNAIDS, the U.N. body waging the global war on AIDS.

But many in Japan are alarmed at the dangerous mixture of chronic underreporting of cases, a sexually freewheeling youth culture that's less inclined to use condoms or other protection, and the powerful social stigma of a sexually transmitted disease."

Read the full story here.

PS - The image relates to Japan's Kanamara Festival. Also known as the penis festival. They really do have a penis festival. Learn about it here, on Wikipedia.

PPS - If my Japanese is rusty, forgive me. That posting head is supposed to say something like "Japan's AIDS problem." Please correct me if I'm wrong.