Kurashi - News From Japan

...and I was not invited, again. LOL, I went to visit the new one in Tachikawa, western Tokyo, that just blew me away. What a culture shock. The best and the worst, of two worlds! First, it is HUGE unlike anything I have seen in Japan. Yes, there are other Home Centers and some are rather big, but IKEA is humongous and like a maze, once you get inside. You will get lost among the Älmhult designs with names like Tönt or Skvallerkärring and Kullerbytta. Well, not the first two, but maybe the last one, say for a cozy armchair made in Malaysia. Funny thing, at IKEA, next to nothing sold is actually Made in Sweden. Dazed amongst all the blue and yellow, I walked and walked, lost among plastic window cleaners at 200 Yen or pretty classy paper lamps at 2000 Yen. Oh, they have expensive items too, but I wasn't in the mood. Weird plastic Christmas decorations and mass produced Almoge curtains. Not an Organic cotton cushion in sight, but that might change, I suppose, if people here sta...

During a demonstration today outside Toshiba's headquarters in Tokyo, anti-nuclear activists pointed out that they had "politely" asked for a meeting with the Japanese company, but were refused without any explanations. Toshiba was selected in October, 2012 to build a new nuclear power plant in northern Finland. However, after protests intensified, E.On, the largest stakeholder in energy utility Fennovoima pulled out of the project. Prohanhikivi activists photographed by Fredrik Oskarsson. The German energy company E.On intends to pull out of the project aimed at building a nuclear power plant in Pyhäjoki on Finland’s west coast. As E.On would have been the largest single investor with a 34 per cent holding in Fennovoima, the company that plans to build the reactor, the whole project is in serious jeopardy. Two other companies, the meat processing company Atria and the S-Group retail chain announced earlier that they were divesting from Fennovoima. E.On'...

Activists from northern Finland are in Japan to convey the message that Finnish people do not want a Toshiba nuclear reactor in their neighborhood. Hanna Halmeenpää from Pro Hanhikivi has visited Fukushima Prefecture and is now in Tokyo to talk to anti-nuclear activists and I had the pleasure of meeting her and help interpret for her team. A mother of three, she was rudely awoken by a newspaper article that there would be a nuclear plant in the Baltic Sea nature reserve called Hanhikivi - on her doorstep, literally. This is a beautiful cape that turns out to be host to a large number of migratory birds, a location for breeding birds, and unique natural beauty. E.On, the German energy giant soon found out that they had dropped this project on the wrong doorstep. Through lawsuits, going to Brussels and arguing the case that this is a protected Natura 2000 area, and by an amazing amount of enthusiasm, Hanna and others managed to at least bring the project to a temporary halt. E.On ha...