Kurashi - News From Japan

It's not journalism, not fiction, and certainly not your usual travel book. Patrick Sherriff has written an acute account of his recent trip to the coastal areas devastated by the earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Add watercolours and you have a great little book that helped me remember that there is still a world up there, a couple of hours north of the comfort zone that is Tokyo, that hasn't recovered, but the people are doing their very best to cope. Children of the Tsunami is an e-book, easy to order for $0.99 or an oversize paperback at $6.99 from all Amazon sites including here at  Amazon.com .  Amazon.co.jp  and  Amazon.co.uk , or get the paperback directly from  CreateSpace . You can also sign up for Patrick's mailinglist (details below). Background - Patrick drove up in 2011 with emergency supplies, like many of us did, trying to help wherever we had contacts or the need was the greatest. Now, he went back on a more leisurely trip, with wife and tw...

Japan's Environment Ministry has released its annual report and notes that "the release of radioactive materials following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident remains Japan's biggest environmental problem, " according to NHK World . Little surprise there, but good to note that it is put squarely on the agenda and not swept under the carpet... Image from NHK The report says building intermediate storage facilities for contaminated soil and other waste is essential to speed up the decontamination work and promote reconstruction. The government plans to build such facilities near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The report also says determining amounts of radiation exposure is important for managing the health of residents. The report points to the need to provide better information to alleviate their concerns. It notes Fukushima Prefecture's efforts to train personnel for health consultations. The white paper also calls for rapidly moving ah...

What a lot of travels and what everyone here calls the 連休 (renkyuu, consecutive days off) or "Golden Week" but here are some links that I think are important. Andrew DeWit has a great take on Obama's visit and how a US-Japan Green Alliance may be the key to the future. Heavy on military information but why not? The Pentagon apparently is way ahead of whoever-is-in-charge here in Japan when it comes to visions for defense that will not depend on oil. Japan Focus: Could a US-Japan “Green Alliance” Transform the Climate-Energy Equation? There was no emphasis on US-Japan military cooperation on climate change, even though the US military itself has for years identified climate change as the mother of all threats, including fully 8 detailed references to “climate change” and its consequences in its March 4, 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR 2014). Indeed, the American green military-industrial complex is openly calling for NATO to focus even more on climate ch...

February 9 is the date of the vote for a new mayor for Tokyo, and it has been called a "nuclear referendum" but I smell rat. The candidates may be for or against nuclear power. But the reality is that for Tokyo citizens, there is very little possibility of nuclear power plants to provide energy for the city's bright lights. Consumers, who vote, should know that only a handful of nuclear power plants that may provide energy to the metropolis are even candidates for restarts. A reminder: Currently, none of Japan's 48 nuclear power plants are online. Japan has completely gone off the nuclear "heroin" drug. But 16 are applying for restarts as of February 1, 2014 (pdf) . Of those, only two would be in any position to provide Tokyo with electricity. Those are reactors 6 and 7 in Kashiwasaki Kariwa in far away Niigata prefecture. Both were severely shaken by the earthquake back in 2007, so we know they are not yet confirmed to be safe as such. No other...

Big event this weekend - a festival for the future, with Taiko drumming in Tokyo (thus the tataku , hitting theme) Don Don! Do visit www.earth-garden.jp with info about artists, music, food and talk show presentations. Plus the unexpected. We are so lucky to live in a peaceful part of the world. Let's make sure it stays that way. Project Fukushima is attending too, very unhappy with how they are being treated. But this weekend the focus is on bringing the message to people. This is all about people who have been doing a lot to make this happen. https://www.facebook.com/earthgarden.jp (J) http://fes.fukushima.jp/ (J) http://beco-fukushima.com/ (J) Festival for Future connects central Tokyo with Tohoku and Fukushima; this is another great event at Yoyogi Park near Shibuya, Tokyo. Visit the market and  the Stage for the Future. Image of Rina Katahira from Fukushima Fair Mini Performace news. 7/6sat 片平里菜の出演が決定しました！ http:// www.katahirarina.com/

So TEPCO has been getting the equivalent of the GDP of which countries, to stay afloat? Now, this is one of those tricky figures... but I'm not going to get into that. GDP is what it is. Wikipedia has at least three different ways to measure GDP. So, scroll down, and you get to where it gets interesting. Tepco, the main monopoly electricity utility company serving Tokyo has gotten some $38.9 billion to stay afloat after the March 11, 2011 nuclear disaster that was triggered by a completely natural event, an earthquake and a massive tsunami. We, tax payers, and you if you have a pension fund in any country, which has invested in Japanese bonds (do you?) or any such scheme... We are now all paying for not only the cleanup efforts, but also to keep the bright neon lights shining in the Tokyo Metropolis. Looking at the list, the $38.9 billion is about the same as the GDP of countries like Jordan, Latvia, Nepal and Turkmenistan. Just to keep everyone in Tokyo happy :) Wikipedi...

Yesterday, at Yoyogi Stadium in Tokyo, TEPCO held its annual meeting and there were a lot of protests. This is the utility that brought us the nuclear crisis after the earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, with meltdowns at three of its nuclear power plants. Still not under control, still leaking radioactivity, and so far some 3.79 trillion yen ($38.9 billion) by the government spent to settle compensation claims from the nuclear disaster, i. e. have been injected from tax payers to keep TEPCO afloat. At the annual meeting, stock holders got to file motions, including Greenpeace Japan, that tried to raise the issue of the responsibility of companies that supplied parts to the Fukushima Daiich Nuclear Plant, including General Electric, the US company. All such motions were voted down. Bloomberg: Tepco’s Shareholders Decline to Pursue GE for Fukushima Claims “It is very important to find how much GE knew about issues that may lead to accidents and how much GE has tried to rem...

Monday next week of course a very solemn date for all of us here in Japan, as it marks two years since the massive earthquake and tsunami that hit Tohoku, northeast of Tokyo. Polls in the news this week indicate that a lot of people are still suffering and in doubt how to carry on. The Tohoku region, and Fukushima prefecture, has such a long history. It is not easy to abandon one's roots and one's hometown. However, many people in this part of Japan were migrants in earlier eras, going to the US and Hawaii. Fukushima also has that special kind of vibe, with people from Manchuria returning after WW2, to battle against the forces of nature again. No wonder there are a lot of people in Tokyo who want to support and help any effort from Tohoku, like the Nippori March events. You a;so get the inspiration from ladies like the Hula Girls movie, based on a true story. Plus the fierce fishermen and everyone involved in the trade along the coast. I was particularly struck by t...

Strange to observe what is happening in the world. Italy has no nuclear reactors, having abandoned the idea from the start. Germany quickly responded to the call of the general public in the spring of 2011, and decided to stop investing in new nuclear plants, thus basically and fundamentally changing its energy future. Japan - after the Fukushima disaster with three meltdowns and massive hydrogen explosions. Remember at Three Mile Island in Harrisburg, US, they thought it might happen, but it didn't... Imagine if it had? Well, Japan went through three such explosions, all shown live here on television, back in March 2011, just two years ago. Then, in 2012, for two months, all of Japan's 50 or so remaining nuclear reactors went offline. Then, the Oi reactors north of Osaka were restarted, and there were amazing demonstrations and protests, unlike anything you had ever seen in this country. Now, it turns out that possibly no reactors will be restarted in Japan during...

Last July, an interesting report was published by the US energy efficiency watchdog called the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). I had never heard of them before, and mostly they have done stuff on individual states in the US. But the report that came out was a novel attempt to rank 12 major countries in terms of energy efficiency. Then I had a look, and they managed to rank the United Kingdom as No. 1, followed by Germany, Italy and Japan in that order. I thought it is was a bit odd, and forgot about the whole thing (also because the entire point of their exercise seemed to be to shame the United States, that ranked really low compared to others, at No. 9). I also thought it was great that Japan was up tops in a number of categories, if not always No. 1. There are certainly stuff that Japan can and should do better, like building insulation, but why is its super-efficient public train system not more highly appreciated? ACEEE: United Kingdom Tops in Ene...