Kurashi - News From Japan

I'd say avoid meat altogether because it is so unhealthy and difficult to know what is in your sausage. What a word, "sausage" it really sums it up, like "ham" which also is just letters to advertise a strange product. I was reading recently about tape worm infections that happen to be related to pork production. Seems there is a link to brain damage. Speaking of which, I looked up tape worm and associated diseases, and found this gem - a study about a patient who worked in a meat factory... Ouch. Also reveals that the diseases are not "reportable diseases" which means most cases probably go undetected and don't enter into the statistics. 221 deaths in the US during 1990-2002 may not sound like a lot but my guess is that a lot of cases go unreported. http://archie.kumc.edu/bitstream/handle/2271/867/Neurocysticercosis.pdf?sequence=1 Now, Robert Kenner who visited Japan earlier this year, has stepped up his figh...

There is always a song that is appropriate... Here is Bing Crosby, 1944, Don't Fence Me In with the Andrew Sisters. Roy Rodgers also recorded it, and it was on the Red Hot and Blue Aids CD released, with Debbie Harry and Iggy Pop. Loved it then, glad to find it again. Anyway, it was a tune that stuck in my mind over the past few days, what with all the nonsense about tiny islands... Lost Laowai has the latest (and a good map): Explaining the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands “dispute” Which links to Kyle, aka The Manchurian Candidate: The Senkaku/Diaoyu Island “dispute”: So rather than arguing this way or that, Kurashi will stay neutral, and propose that the islands and the oceans nearby are set aside as Eco reserves, call them Biosphere safety zones or Don't fence me in-zones, or just to stay sane, call them Stay sane-zones. Maps, of course can be altered. The View from Taiwan has some images: Paper on Parade More photos from the Kabuki act between Japan Coast Gu...

The Japan Times has a good piece on the food here, which is being continuously tested for radioactivity. There are some concerns about fish, chestnuts and "food sourced from forests, rivers and lakes in the Tohoku and northern Kanto regions and from the Pacific Ocean. This includes mushrooms, mountain vegetables, wild game, freshwater fish and bottom fish." The Japan Times: Cesium contamination in food appears to be on wane However, most people do not eat any of these items, and certainly not in any great quantities. As Takashi Ishimaru, a professor of ocean sciences at Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, points out to The Japan Times, when waste and plankton carcasses tainted with radiation sink to the seabed, they are eaten by the bottom-feeding organisms, which in turn are eaten by bottom fish. Commercial fishing near Fukushima Prefecture has been voluntarily banned so there is little chance of getting any of this on our plates. But Ishimaru also...

I had the great privilege to meet Swedish peace activist and writer Linda Åkerström who is visiting Japan on a project. She was just back from Okinawa where she had been interviewing activists, and also venturing all the way to Henoko beach with its amazing resilience to the proposed new naval construction. We met in Waseda and talked a lot about human rights, how we in Sweden used to be dragged by police to military conscription. Linda has worked for an organization that helped conscientious objectors who refused to participate in Sweden's military draft, the värnplikt, a curious word that means "duty to protect" but of course was a call to arms in a country that was "neutral" yet clearly taking sides in conflicts that mattered... Linda is more interested in Japan's Article 9 and what it means on the ground, today. Is it a constitutional way to avoid belligerence, as it says, or a cop-out to not deal with reality as neighbors (China, North Korea) have n...

This seems to be a good time to talk about an important lesson from the Cold War era, when superpowers battled mindlessly with arms build up and comments by politicians that took no regard of ordinary people and their desire for peace. Détente emerged as a response to that, as a way for diplomats to quietly go about their business, which is negotiations and building trust, leading up to agreements. A French term, détente basically means "relaxation" or "chill out" in American, not sure what they say in Russian, google gives Детант or Разря́дка  (Perestroika). In the heat of the moment, media also gets carried away and forgets that it has responsibilities not only to its paying readers in the nation but also to global peace... With blogs and the Internet, things have gotten even more complex. But in the 1960s the main achievement was to install a direct communication link between the White House in Washington and the Kremlin in Moscow. That way, at least in the...

沖縄国際映画祭出品作品「ニライの丘」のテーマソング。 「see you tomorrow」作詞作曲　Nayuta From the 2010 film that has received almost zero notice, although it looks like it should be rather good. Nirai no oka (にライの丘） or A Song of Gondola nice tune by Nayuta. Literally, the Japanese title means "Bitter Height" which I think may have been a better English title. It was shown at the Okinawa International Movie Festival in March, 2010 , and introduced as such. For all the talk about J-pop or K-pop and bands that show a lot of leg and what not, here is a young lady with integrity and a huge amount of talent. Do check her music out! Here is her live performance of a sweet melody, Happy Daddy and Mommy:

I just want to promote a really good idea that some people are working on: they call it Greenheart, a way to "bring economic resilience to marginalized coastal communities around the world while combating the pollution of the shipping industry by putting a ship in the hands of the community thus eliminating the need to depend on polluting port towns and middle men who drive up prices for goods." It is all about shipping. In a better way. Well, best of luck to them! Jen over at Ten Thousand Things says: ...we are working hard to launch our first zero-emissions, environmentally low-impact, solar/sail container-ready ship for a global pilot voyage in 2013. To this effect, we have kickstarted our first major grassroots campaign here: http://www.indiegogo.com/greenheart We have an ambitious goal of $120,000 and we need to get the word out. The Greenheart idea is to create a new type of low-cost, zero-emissions small cargo ships that use environmentally clean...