Message from Fukushima

Hi

Today I went to the awards ceremony for the essay competition 'Message from Fukushima' organised by the Fukushima Minpo newspaper. I translated the three winning essays into English as best I could and the text is below. The experiences of these three young people are very moving. What shines through is a love of Fukushima and a determination to see the recovery through. They get to visit London from 23 July where they'll plant rhododendrons (the prefecture's flower) in the Japanese garden in Holland Park and take part in some Japan related events around the Olympics. If you get a chance to join in any of the events, please do support them. 

The Oi nuclear plant began operation tonight. The words of these three young people is a stark reminder of what is at stake. 

Anyway, here are the essays.

Anne

Junior High School Category – First Prize

Title:  Grandad’s Peaches

Written by: Miyu MATSUBARA

Grandad’s Peaches

Me, my family, and Grandad always work hard picking peaches in the bright summer sun. Peaches are very delicate. You pick them off the branches carefully and you have to be so gentle, like touching a baby’s cheek. There’s a lovely sweet smell of peaches in the air  –  but you get drenched in sweat.

It’s like that every year. But last year was a bit different. After the nuclear accident following the Great East Japan Earthquake, we were afraid that peaches might not go on sale. My first thought, amongst all the talk after the accident about the effects of radiation and damage to consumer confidence, was, ‘Would Grandad’s peaches be alright?’.

Grandad grows peaches and apples on his own. Even after the accident he quietly got on with his work as usual. His peaches are like children to him. I’d been watching him all the while but one day as we were working together in the orchard, I came out with it, ‘Grandad, what about the radiation?’.

‘What? The council’s done tests and they’re fine! Don’t you worry!’  Grandad retorted in a loud voice, as if to dispel my fears.

But I heard on the news that some weren’t selling simply because they came from Fukushima. I was sad and frustrated when I thought of all the work Grandad put into growing his peaches.

But then I heard that some people were buying produce from Fukushima on purpose. This filled my heart with a warm glow. When Grandad’s peaches did go to market I hoped someone would buy them.

This year Grandad’s peach orchards are covered in a carpet of pink blossom. And, in their midst, Grandad carefully, and lovingly, pollinates each flower – just as he always does.

 ‘Peaches this year gonna be nice an’ sweet.’  Grandad says this every year and I’m sure he’ll say it again this year as we work. I’m going to try extra hard to help him.

High School Category  –  First Prize

Title:  To me, when I’m grown up

Written by: Kanami AJIMA

To me, when I’m grown up

Hello, grown up me! Where are you now? What are you doing?  Do you have a smile on your face every day?  I hope so.

March 11^th,  2:46 in the afternoon. The events of that day will have faded with time but somewhere in an unseen part of your heart I bet they’ve left a deep scar.

I know it’s frightening to recall the events of that day. If you hadn’t gone shopping then…  If you hadn’t met your relatives then…  Just thinking about it sends a shiver down your spine. You would certainly have been caught up in the tsunami. Only because so many chance events coincided, can you get on with your life today.

For about a week after the earthquake you took shelter in the gymnasium. Do you remember? It was cold at night and every time there was an aftershock, everyone would wake up and there would be a communal murmur of fear. Do you remember when we first went back to the house? It wasn’t where it was supposed to be. It was so sad. Your friend’s house was full of mud, the windows and everything gone. The place we’d all lived was changed out of all recognition.

The day the house was demolished, you noticed Mum was crying as she videoed the scene and that made you cry too. It was hard, wasn’t it, watching the house we’d grown up in, being pulled down piece by piece. If only this had never happened …  How many times did that thought run through your head?

Even after you went back to school, you were still anxious and you’d be overwhelmed with sadness and burst into tears. Every time that happened, your teachers and friends would listen to you. People went to a lot of trouble over you, you know. Hope you’ve paid them back.

Never forget that on March 11th a lot of people who wanted to live lost their lives. I want you to live for them, every day, with a smile. I know it's hard remembering, but don't let memories of that day fade away. Pass it on to the next generation. Please. 

Open Category  – First Prize

Title:  I’ll farm in Fukushima

Written by:  Koshi FUJITA

I’ll farm in Fukushima.

 ‘Murderer!’  In all my thirty odd years, never did I think anyone would call me that. I’m a farmer, eighth generation. No one actually said that to my face but that’s what certain individuals called farmers in Fukushima.

The earthquake and tsunami were a nightmare. Then the nuclear accident. That first week was utter chaos: we didn’t know whether we would be able to stay in our homes, let alone whether we’d be able to go on farming. Then just when it looked as if we could carry on with the farm and just as I’d made the decision that it would be better to make a go of it rather than do nothing and regret it later, my world turned upside down when I saw those words on the internet. That first month I was under a lot of pressure.

But some people had kind things to say.  ‘We like the rice and vegetables you grow and we’ll keep eating them.’ ‘We’ll do anything we can to help.’ Things like that really cheered me up. And one person made the comment:  ‘Seven billion people in the world – can’t please everyone.’

One thing I do know. Radioactive materials rained down on Fukushima. That’s a fact and we can’t change it. But what we see in that, what we make of that – well, the possibilities are infinite.

To those who say farm produce from Fukushima is too dangerous to eat, I say Fukushima should aim to have the best safety certification of any agricultural produce in the world.

To those who say they won’t let their children live in such a place, I say I’ll make my family a happy one so my kids will be glad they were born in Fukushima.

Some may stigmatize ‘Fukushima’ and look on us with anger, pity or despair. But to me, Fukushima is beautiful, and I look on it with thanks, joy and hope.

Who’s going to get Fukushima farming back on its feet? The government? The local authorities? No. It’s up to us, the farmers of Fukushima.

Are we to pass on this image of ‘Fukushima’ the tragic victim? You must be joking. No way. I want people to admire the way Fukushima, which suffered so much as a result of the nuclear accident, became an even better place. We have the chance to participate in such a project. Surely this is something worth spending your life on?

Leave Fukushima and break new ground? That would be such a waste. Me, I’ll farm in Fukushima. 

My Day

Hi

Walking to work this morning amazed to see a London bus in Koriyama. A Routemaster, emblazoned with an advert for whisky. Come to think of it, this town’s gone London mad. Several of the hotels have a ‘London fair’ – fish and chips, sausages, roast beef!

It’s Saturday and a working day. Some weekends are free but the two companies I'm involved with only have 105 days off a year.

In the car, listen to a Tokyo University professor on the local radio, an expert on whole body counters. A year ago the experts wouldn’t give an opinion regarding our health as there was no data. But the whole body counters in Minami Soma Hospital now have results for 16,000 people and the machine in Hirata-mura has tested 20,000 people. What can he say from the results? First, that levels are going down. This time last year 60 out of 100 people tested positive, now the figure is down to 0.8 in a 100. 

Asked why people in the same family eating the same food showed different results, he said that young children excrete caesium fastest. So a nine year old may have a higher reading than his younger sibling. Moreover, women seem to excrete it faster than men, probably because it collects in the muscle. So it’s common, apparently, for the wiry old grandad to register highest.

To those mothers panicking when they heard their child had 200 bq in the body, he pointed out that 200 bq is very low and on the margin of detectablilty for the machines. If a 60 kg person was exposed to 1mSv/year they would show 20-30,000 bq and the average in Japan in the 1960s, when everyone was exposed to fallout from American and Soviet nuclear tests was 500-600 bq.

Every day I drive about 20 minutes out of town to the Tohoku Kogyo box factory. Have an honorary position, not a lot to do, but I make sure I show up every day. Today took a walk round the factory. Weather warmed up at last so boxes for veg, particularly cucumbers, in production.

Then on to one of our copy shops. It specialises in plans for the construction industry so business has been slack since the disaster. But very busy today: surge in demand for private housing, particularly in Iwaki and Fukushima. I’m there to do the books and not much help.

Then back into town and my real office. But before that, I pop into the Big Eye building just opposite. There’s a seminar on radiation organized by the Japanese Society of Radiation Safety Management. About 80 people there, lots of spare seats. It’s quite technical. Conclusion seems to be that there’s now lots of monitoring equipment in place (for air, food and for people) so no need to worry. Seminars like this being held everywhere. But most people there seemed to be headed for the  ‘Tanabata’ event in the planetarium on the 23^rd Floor. Beautiful day. Rainy season but no rain and quite dry. Definitely a much better way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Nationally, the Friday night anti-nuclear demo outside the PM's residence was bigger than ever. First popular movement for 50 years, they say. Electric companies' shareholders' meetings held last week. TEPCO meeting attended by Vice-Governor of Tokyo and Kanden meeting by Osaka Mayor Hashimoto. Both proposed motions for moving away from nuclear and for deeper cuts but all rejected. However, TEPCO has said it is withdrawing from a consortium to build nuclear plants in Vietnam. 

Shall resist the temptation to try Koriyama's fish and chips. I'm going to England myself next week and can have the real McCoy.

Good night

Anne

Shoots of Recovery?

Hi

Not all the news is bad. Fishing's getting going again, although in a small way. Two kinds of octopus and one kind of shellfish caught 50 km off the Soma coast tested clear. The local supermarket chain York Benimaru tested them all over again and put them on sale in two of their supermarkets in Soma. All sold out today by early afternoon. The next catch to go on sale in Tokyo. Not all fish is clear but it's a start. People are beginning to see they might get their livelihoods back after all.

Plans to re-zone Iitate on 1 July going ahead. This is that rural area northwest of the reactor (230 sq km, original population 6,000) where everyone was evacuated in a hurry on 11 April last year. People will be able to return to areas up to 20 mSv/yr (if they're willing to that is) and details of the 'restricted residence zone' (20-50 mSv/yr, no staying overnight) into which most of the village falls, have just been announced. In actual fact, some businesses have  kept going all this time but now they can only stay if levels are 'not much over' 3.8 μSv/hr. Even so workers have to stay indoors and commute by car. Only those businesses essential for the recovery will be allowed: construction, decontamination, banks, petrol stations. No hospitals, schools, restaurants or shops. Workers in areas over 2.5 μSv/hr will be monitored.

Iwaki is doing really well. The grants offered by the government and the prefecture seem to be stimulating new business and there is a shortage (and some competition) for land on industrial estates.

Yesterday the results of the local paper's essay competition. The three prizewinners are to be 'ambassadors for the recovery' and get to go to London to take part in events to do with the Olympics and relay a 'message from Fukushima'. The winner in the Junior High section, a 14 year old girl, writes about how her grandad just carries on and tends his peach fields regardless. The winner in the high school section, a 17 year old girl, had a narrow escape from the tsunami and writes a letter to herself 'when she's grown up', reminding herself to pass on her experiences to the next generation for the sake of all those who didn't get to live. The winner in the adult section is one Koshi Fujita, a young farmer from Koriyama who's been active locally putting information about his produce on the internet at an early stage. He writes passionately about how he's going to stay in Fukushima and make it a place to be proud to farm.

Yours truly has the job of translating the essays into English. Struck by all the winners' love of the place and determination to put it to rights. Though my immediate problem is how to translate フクシマ　(Fukushima written in katakana, hints of  Hiroshima, victim of a nuclear accident) and 福島 (Fukushima in characters) which is what it should be.
Unseasonally cold here. Not good for our packing business if the summer fruit and vegetables are held back.
Goodnight to you all.
Anne

Home and Away

Hi

Weather settled after the typhoon but still rainy. It is after all the rainy season. But not hot and sticky like in Tokyo. Momentous day for me. Completion of the sale of my old house. It's a big house, where we raised our kids, surrounded by woods, pine and maple. I've been renting it out for 8 years but it's still a wrench to see it go. I'd been thinking of doing the house up and offering it for sale on the internet, perhaps to someone who wanted a retirement home in the country. But the disaster put paid to that idea. The person who was renting it found the buyer, someone who loves the place, and I'm just glad the sale went through. Cleaned the house last weekend and enjoyed the rainy season there. The bark of the pine trees shine red in the wet and the fresh new green leaves are gloriously rich.

Big things happening nationally. Bill to set up a new Nuclear Standards Agency to replace the discredited NISA (Hoanin) finally got passed. The agency will work under a Committee of five experts who would take charge in an emergency. The opposition got their way and the chair of that committee would have ultimate responsibility so there won't be a repeat of the spectacle we saw last March when PM Kan, infuriated at Tepco went by helicopter to Fukushima Daiichi to find out for himself what was going on. The new agency is to be set up by September.

Tepco published its final report on the company's response to the accident. Blamed the PM for causing confusion. Said that the radioactive materials that travelled to the north west emanated from Reactor 2. Odd. There was no hydgrogen explosion in Reactor 2. Radiation still extremely high there (880mSv/hr) so no further details on the cause. Seems a bit premature to issue a 'final report' when they still don't know what's happening inside the reactors. The report got a bad press. No answers to the basic question, 'What lessons can be learned?' and too much putting the blame on other people.


According to Asahi News this evening, anti-nuclear demonstrations have been taking place every Friday night around the PM's office. Starting in March, and going out on Twitter, the demos have been growing in size every week. Tonight there were reportedly 45,000 people there. This and the 7 million signatories to an anti-nuclear petition organised by novelist Oe Kenzaburo would suggest a major popular movement. The government hint at reducing Japan's reliance on nuclear power but then go and re-start the Oi plant. As yet there's no clear indication of the direction Japan's energy policy will take in future so all hell's let loose. I heard someone say they thought restarting the Oi plant was part of a deal: give industry the electricity they need - in exchange for agreement to a raise in sales tax (VAT). Typical. No clear policy. 


Back at home I now need to persuade the buyer of the house to get the necessary qualifications to buy the two remaining fields. Not just anyone can buy agricultural land. To get the qualification, you have to farm 5 tanbu (about 5,000 sq metres) - and be under 65. Radiation is low round there so it should be OK to farm. Endo-san, neighbouring farmer, has had all his produce tested at the new testing centres and says all his produce is safe - except for the shiitake mushrooms he'd just got going after four years work. He was really upset about that.
Sorry this post jumps around a bit.
Goodnight.
Anne

Rivers

Hi all,

Interesting programme on NHK last Sunday (10 June). I guess a follow up to the one about the sea in January (see The Sea), this time about the effects of the nuclear accident on rivers.

There are two main rivers flowing out of Fukushima. The Abukuma River which flows through Koriyama and Fukushima and into the Pacific in neighbouring Miyagi prefecture, south of Sendai. Then the Agano River, the confluence of many tributaries collecting rain and snow melt from Mount Bandai and south Aizu, which flows into the Japan Sea in Niigata prefecture.

Tests show that the water is clean. So drinking water is safe. The problem is in the muddy deposits on the river bed. It turns out there are two kinds of 'hotspots'. First, caesium has been dumped along with sand where tributaries meet the main river. The other main deposits are at the mouth of the rivers but in this case caesium has bonded with vermiculite in the clay and has been carried long distances before settling.

The mystery of high radiation in Ikenodai, a top residential area of Koriyama, is solved. Though radiation in the air in most of Koriyama is about 0.5 μSv/hr, there it sticks stubbornly at 1.9. It turns out that the two ponds there, Sakubuta Pond and Arai Pond are situated where some small rivers meet and became a dumping ground for caesium. Sakubuta Pond has been drained of water for some reason (I can't find out why) and according to an expert on the programme (Kimura-sensei who I've mentioned before) the pond is beaming out radiation and the only way to reduce levels is to scrape up all the mud and put it into sealed concrete containers in the middle of the pond.

Similarly the rivers in Aizu Bange are another 'hotspot'. The Aizu area itself has very low radiation, but Bange is situated where many small rivers come together.

Problems too for the people at the mouth of these two rivers far away from Fukushima. Fish poke about in the mud, eat little worms and things and get contaminated. So these poor people, who thought they were spared the agonies of Fukushima, find that they have to do the same as producers here: test, test, test.

On a brighter note, fishing has re-started in Soma on the Pacific Coast for three kinds of fish. Well, not fish exactly: one kind of octopus and two kinds of shellfish. But it's a start and again with lots of testing, maybe people can start to get back their living.
We're in the middle of a typhoon. Very unusual for June. Heavy rain and winds. Due to hit here early tomorrow morning. Poor people in Ishimaki and other disaster areas evacuated yet again.
Anne

One Year 3 Months On

Hi everybody,

It's one year and three months since the accident. Life here is back to normal but lots of big issues remain unresolved.

On Friday evening the Prime Minister addressed the nation and explained why he'd decided to restart the Oi plant on the Japan Sea coast in Fukui: Osaka faces a 15% electricity shortage this summer so vulnerable people may die and businesses already suffering from the appreciation of the yen may move abroad; and for reasons of national security more imports of oil and LNG will increase our dependence on the volatile Middle East. Sound reasoning I'm sure but that guy really does lack charisma. The way he was talking you'd think Fukushima had never happened. 

Talks continue on the reorganisation of the areas around Fukushima Daiichi. The government wants to abolish the local authority boundaries and reorganize according to contamination levels. So there would be areas over 50 mSv/yr which would be 'difficult to return to' (kinan konnan kuiki 帰還困難区域), areas of 20 to 50 mSv/yr where residence would be restricted  (kyoju seigen kuiki 居住制限区域), and areas below 20 mSv/yr which in time would have restrictions removed (hinan shiji kaijo junbi kuiki 避難指示解除準備区域). Compensation for land, property and household goods would be attributed accordingly. Iidate-mura, north-west of the reactor is to be divided into 3 such areas and plans seem to be moving towards a settlement next month but the other authorities, nearer the plant, are digging their heels in. You could be cynical and say they're only trying to protect their jobs on the council but they maintain that all residents in the same district should get equal compensation.

Currently 85,900 people are evacuated. New government estimates forecast that about a third, 27,500 people, will not be able to return in five years time and they will be fully compensated. Even in 20 years time, 32% of residents of Okuma-machi (where Fukushima Daiichi is) and 18% of those in neighbouring Futaba-machi will not be able to go back.

The evacuees have been receiving 100,000 yen per head per month in compensation for 'stress' but this runs out in August. So far TEPCO has promised to continue payments for those under 15.

Parliamentary debate on the the long-awaited bill to set up a new safety watchdog for the nuclear industry started last week. A new Standards Agency (Kiseicho 規制庁) to replace the much maligned Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (Hoanin 保安院) was supposed to be up and running in April. The government plan is to have the new body under the Ministry of the Environment, with the PM having the final say. The opposition are calling for a more independent commission, something like the Monopolies Commission and want politicians out of it. Already it seems the original bill is being watered down.

Here it's one of the best seasons of the year. The rice fields are flooded, the water reflecting the colours of the sky, and the rice seedlings pricked out in thin lines. The trees and undergrowth in the hills are lush and green. But orders in the box factory, though slightly above last year, are well below pre-disaster levels. Those businesses not part of the recovery boom, are struggling.
Goodnight
Anne

Good stress, bad stress

Hi folks

It's a beautiful time of year. The azaleas and roses are in full bloom. Passing the time of day with some other ladies in the jacuzzi at the gym I go to, we were saying how lovely the flowers were, how we didn't notice them last year, or if we did, we didn't feel anything. Yes, life is back to normal and we can smell the roses.

And yet ... I drove up to our office in Sendai the other day and recalled my visit last autumn when I waxed lyrical in the blog about the last of the autumn colours and the oncoming winter. Then it was exhilarating, all my senses on high alert. This time it was a boring journey on the motorway, something to be endured. Then, I could write the blog until 1 o'clock in the morning, have five hours sleep, and work and never feel tired.  Now I'm tired and ready for bed by 11. Then, we were living on adrenaline and the memories are stark. Now life is back to normal and one day merges into another. I guess the trick is to have a modicum of stress to get the most out of every day - but take time to smell the roses too. Easy to say, hard to do.

Some stress though we can do without. Fukushima University this week published the results of a survey on stress levels among parents and children under 12. Over 2,000 parents in the city of Fukushima were surveyed in January and the results compared with a similar survey carried out last June in Koriyama and Fukushima. 50% still didn't hang the washing outside (down from 60% last year) and 54% didn't let their children play outside (down from 67% last year). 71% of parents are 'very careful about food', and 23% are 'slightly careful about food'. So there's hardly a parent in Fukushima who's not careful about what they feed their children.  (Fukushima University, Faculty of Symbiotic Systems Science research team.)

On the face of it life is back to normal. Koriyama is a bustling city. But you're careful. And you do get used to it. But it's still stressful, I think.
There is good news. The pools and poolsides at the schools have been cleaned and the kids will be able to swim outside this summer.
Bye for now
Anne
P.S. Picture in the local paper of mating frogs in Kawauchi (see post Kawauchi-mura).
Kaeru Kawauchi

Oi Plant to Re-open

Hi

It looks as if the Oi nuclear plant is to be re-opened after an abrupt U-turn on the part of the authorities in the Kansai area. Mayor of Osaka, Hashimoto, who was saying only last week that it isn't safe has changed his tune and the governor of Fukui prefecture Kada Yukiko (who incidentally always wears green, perhaps to show her green credentials) has bowed to the 'inevitable'. I don't know who said what to whom but the government was going to push it through anyway. There'd been a lot of pressure from small businesses and Kanden (Kansai Electric) had been warning of a 15% shortage in Osaka this summer and preparing for 'planned' power cuts. 

Hashimoto covered himself by getting the government to say the plant is to be opened for a limited period only (genteiteki 限定的). But on one TV programme this morning someone suggested he's setting himself up to fight in a general election in the autumn on a platform of whether to keep the Oi plant open or not. All this political posturing is pathetic. There's still no roadmap for the country's energy policy. Germany announced it would get rid of nuclear by 2020. Kan, the former PM, said Japan would get rid of nuclear but Noda has been careful not to say anything too clear cut. Up to now the discussion centred on safety but this seems to have been thrown out the window and the plant is to be opened for the simple, but pressing, reason that there isn't enough electricity.

The people have lost faith in the government and the nuclear industry. Why can't we have a simple explanation that the Oi plant will be able to cope with a tsunami like at Fukushima and needs to be re-opened just this summer? There's been a real shift in popular opinion since Fukushima. People are re-thinking their lifestyles. All the nuclear plants in the country have been stopped for a year. It could have been a golden opportunity to re-think this country's future. Not just in energy, but in everything. This country's been badly battered since the bubble burst in the early 1990s. But people are feeling let down by the government. There's a feeling that nothing's changed. 

This hasn't been helped by revelations that nuclear industry insiders on the Japan Atomic Energy Commission studying the future role of nuclear in a new energy policy had been holding numerous secret  meetings. The 'atomic village' mentality seems to be alive and well. 

It's going to take 6 weeks to get two reactors at Oi going. Do you know how a nuclear reactor works? At the moment control rods are lowered completely into bundles of uranium submerged in water in the reactor. These control rods will be slowly raised causing nuclear fission in the fuel. The heat generated makes the water in the pressure vessel boil, then water in a connected chamber boils creating steam which turns the turbines. A boiler is used to heat water for the preliminary testing of pipes etc and there's only one of these at Oi so Reactor 3 will be started first taking three weeks, then Reactor 4, total six weeks. (I'm no expert, the Nikkei did an article on this yesterday.) Reactor 3 has been closed down since March 2011 and Reactor 4 since July last year. Let's hope everything goes according to plan.

I wish I was in England. Looks like it's going to be a fun long weekend for the Queen's Jubilee.
Thinking of you all. Have fun!
Anne

Kawauchi-mura

Hi,

Adventure on Sunday. A young Japanese man, a comic artist living in Edinburgh, contacted me wanting to see round Fukushima for material for a book. He particularly wanted to check out the frogs of Kawauchi. Now, Kawauchi is a  remote hilly area just outside the 20 km exclusion zone. Official population: 2,826 - though most of the inhabitants are evacuated elsewhere. The eastern edge remains in the exclusion zone but most of Kawauchi was in the 20 to 30 km zone where on 15 March last year people were ordered to stay indoors. On 22 April it was re-designated a 'voluntary evacuation area'. In effect everyone left. Then on 30 September last year this was revoked. The village mayor, a Mr Endo, immediately pledged to get schools and a clinic opened by the spring and moved back with his staff in March this year.

But first my new friend wanted to see the barrier into the No-entry zone, so pre-armed with a dosimeter borrowed from a friend, we set off along Route 288 to see how far we could get. Through the towns of Miharu and Tokiwa, and past Insect Land (ムシムシランド). Gradually the landscape began to look run down. Some houses seemed to be inhabited, others not, then we noticed that the ricefields were not cultivated, and overgrown. The village of Miyakoji, at the bottom of the hill leading up to the barrier, seemed prosperous enough. There were schools, even a nursery with swings and slides in the yard, and newish buildings we'd been told housed workers for Fukushima Daiichi. Half way up the hill and a couple of miles out of Miyakoji, we were stopped and asked (very politely) to turn around. A few signs, a policeman waving his arms signalling us to stop. No barrier. (Cars coming the other way, out of the exclusion zone, have to have their tyres washed.) The checkpoint was manned by three men. A quiet country road, birds singing, frogs croaking, no barrier, just a very polite policeman who asked us to turn around.

A few hundred yards down the road we stopped the car and measured the radiation. 0.6 μSv/hr, not much more than in my local park in Koriyama which is 0.414. The reality is nothing like the drama you see on the news. 

Back in Kawauchi village itself we met a lady and her young daughter leaving their house. They'd visited to check it out but live in emergency housing in Koriyama. The woman said each house and 20 meters around was to be decontaminated. But her house is surrounded by trees so the radioactive materials would just blow back again.  She's not planning to return to live just yet.

It was Sunday so all was quiet at the town hall and there was hardly anyone around. We drove on. What was most upsetting was the untidiness of it all. At this time of year, the ricefields are flooded and planted with rice seedlings in a six inch grid and dead straight rows. The paths around the paddies are mowed to keep the weeds down and everything is incredibly neat and tidy. To see fields not flooded and overgrown was heartbreaking. And the silence. Nightingales echoing in song, frogs croaking. The fresh green leaves, wild wysteria, wild azaleas. Incredibly beautiful. But just not right.

There isn't much to Kawauchi-mura. Two hundred square kilometres, 80% of which is thick forest. It really is remote. Its main claim to fame is the moriaogaeru, a rare tree frog, and the modern poet Kusano Shinpei who made them famous. We set off to track them down. We travelled many miles along a single track road, alongside a beautiful gurgling river, up and up, racing against the fading light (it gets dark here about 6 pm). We reached the pond. Exquisitiely beautiful. We saw lots and lots of tadpoles but not sure what kind they were. 

I've never been to this area before and was stunned by the beauty of the place. But the more I felt the beauty, the more angry I became that this had been spoiled. 

Anne

Police roadblock about two miles before the barrier to the exclusion zone.

Dump of waste materials in Kawauchi village.

Banner at Kawauchi town hall: 'Kaeru Kawauchi' - Come back to Kawauchi.
(Play on the word 'kaeru' which means both 'frog' and 'to return'. )

Overgrown paddy fields.

The pond. (平伏沼 Hirafusenuma)

Wild azalea

The river - drove alongside it for miles and miles.

Tokyo Skytree and the Eclipse

Hi

It's been a week of media frenzy here. First the eclipse of the sun on Monday morning and then on Tuesday the opening of Tokyo Skytree. The eclipse was an annular solar eclipse, a rare phenomenon when the moon blocks all but a ring of the sun's light. The Japanese 'kinkan nisshoku' (金環日食）literally 'band of gold eclipse' is much more romantic than the English and captured the public's imagination. Skytree at 634 metres is the tallest tower in the world and the technology that gets the lift up to the first observation deck at 350 metres in less than 50 seconds is amazing. But why did NHK think it worth spending the whole of the morning news - from 7:00 am to 7:23 am on that topic alone? Weren't there more important things going on in the world? Neither event lived up to the hype as the weather was bad on both occasions. Here in Koriyama it got dark as I walked to work on Monday but the cloud was too thick to to see anything.

So for a couple of days these two events eclipsed (sorry) the more pressing issue of what is to happen to the nuclear plants and how the country is to deal with the upcoming electricity shortage. Up here in the Tohoku region we're going to have enough electricity and Tokyo (which has got old thermal power stations going again) should have enough, but in Osaka a request has gone out for a 15% cut (compared with the hot summer of 2010). Restaurants serving the local specialities, 'konomiyaki' cabbage pancakes and noodles cooked on a hotplate, are complaining that without air conditioning temperatures will rise to 40 or 45'C. I remember those days when I first came to Japan. Boy, was it hot.

In a separate development, the local authority has voted in favour of opening the Oi nuclear plant in Fukui. It doesn't really have much choice as it can't function without the tax income from the plant. The whole system is skewed this way and without changing the system it's hard to see how Japan will actually abandon nuclear - which is what most people want. And Hashimoto, Mayor of Osaka, came up with the bizarre suggestion that the Oi plant could be opened 'just for the summer'. What happened to the idea that they couldn't be re-opened until their safety was assured?

Good news is that today big government handouts for the recovery have been decided. The first slew of money in February was only 65% of what had been requested prompting the governor of Miyagi to comment that the Recovery Agency was not trying to help but was a censor. This time 1.5 times the amount requested was granted so the Recovery Agency seems to have got its act together and the recovery can get going at last.
So that's a round up of this week's news.
Bye for now
Anne