Manufacturers and mothers with young children were quick in reacting Wednesday to news of cesium-tainted baby formula being sold in markets, even though the reported contamination levels were well below the government-set limit.
Although experts stressed that such levels would not harm the health of babies even if they continued drinking the contaminated dry milk product, Meiji Suteppu (Meiji Step), mothers with young children weren't ready to breathe a sigh of relief yet - instead expressing a sense of distrust in dairies. (Japan Times)
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Cesium-laced baby formula sparks concern, but risk low
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9 students sickened by daffodil gyoza
Nine sixth-graders at a primary school in Kamiyamacho, Tokushima Prefecture, suffered food poisoning after eating gyoza containing poisonous daffodil leaves that had been mistakenly put in the dumplings instead of Chinese chives.
The nine suffered symptoms such as vomiting, but are recovering, prefectural officials said Tuesday.
According to the officials, a teacher took some daffodils grown at home to school. Daffodil leaves are long and flat, and look similar to Chinese chives and shallots. (Yomiuri)
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Japan megaquake shifted gravity satellite orbits
The Tohoku earthquake that rattled Japan on 11 March changed Earth's gravitational field enough to affect the orbits of satellites. The satellites' altered courses suggest that the earthquake was stronger and deeper than instruments on Earth indicated.
These weren't just any satellites: they are the twin spacecraft of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), which fly 220 kilometres apart in a polar orbit about 500 kilometres above Earth. GRACE's job is to map the Earth's gravity field, and it does this by monitoring the effect of minute variations in the field on the trajectories of the satellites and the changing distance between them.
Earth's gravity field changes whenever there is a redistribution of mass on its surface. (newscientist.com)
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Japan mulls $12.9 bln capital injection in Tepco
The Japanese government is considering injecting at least 1 trillion yen ($12.9 billion) into Tokyo Electric next year to shore up the depleted capital of the Fukushima nuclear plant operator, the Mainichi newspaper reported on Thursday.
The company faces the growing possibility that it will fall into negative net worth in the financial year ending in March 2013, the paper said.
A government-run bailout fund would buy preferred shares to be issued by Tokyo Electric, but the firm needs to get shareholders' approval at their next annual gathering in June next year to lift the ceiling on the number of total shares, the paper said. (Reuters)
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Smart phone fever takesover Japan
Riding on one of Tokyo's metropolitan subways anytime any day, you are most likely to see a futuristic scene that will be common across Asia pretty soon.
Most passengers are on their mobile gadgets, reading or sending email, watching sports broadcasts, checking the exact spot where their partner is now via GPS (global positioning system), reading newspapers, googling maps, drafting a speech or editing their home video, if not playing games, taking pictures or listening to music -- all on a single gadget.
More than 10 million Japanese -- one out of every 12 Japanese, including babies -- are hooked today on smart phones, as estimated by marketers. Their new life style is fast spreading into every corner of Japanese everyday life. (New Straits Times)
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Japan police search for missing American woman
Police in Japan are searching for an American woman who has been missing for six weeks, they said Wednesday.
Kelli Abad, 27, was last seen October 26, leaving Kadena Air Base, a major U.S. Air Force facility in Japan, local police told CNN.
Her car, a Toyota SUV, was found three days later at Cape Zanpa on the island of Okinawa about 10 miles from the base, with her cell phone and purse inside, the Kadena police department said.
Police, the fire department and coast guard have searched caves and cliffs in the area but have found no trace of her, police said.
Her husband is stationed at the air base, police in Okinawa said. (CNN)
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Huge Japanese earthquake cracked open the seafloor
The March 2011 megaquake off the coast of Japan opened up fissures as wide as 6 feet (3 meters) in the seafloor, a new study finds.
The fissures now scar the seafloor where peaceful clam beds once lay, according to Takeshi Tsuji, a researcher at Kyoto University in Japan. Along with seismic studies, the fissures, revealed by manned submersible vehicles that investigated the seafloor after the quake, show how the crust around the quake's epicenter expanded and cracked.
Tsuji and his colleagues had a unique opportunity to see how the seafloor changed after the magnitude-9.0 quake struck on March 11. Before the quake, the researchers had taken video and photographs of the seafloor on the continental side of the Japan Trench, near where the crust would later rupture, generating an enormous tsunami that killed about 20,000 people.
(MSN)
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Japan plans to expand contaminated rice ban
Japan will extend a ban on rice shipments from a third city in Fukushima prefecture after local authorities found more tainted grain, deepening food-safety concerns nine months after a nuclear disaster.
The ban will likely cover the Shibukawa area of Nihonmatsu City, about 55 kilometers (34 miles) from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, as rice samples from the area contained 780 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium, said Shinji Uchida at the grain division of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. The maximum allowed by the government for human consumption is 500 becquerels. (Bloomberg)
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Japan may see casinos as Diet seeks quake aid
Japan's record earthquake may achieve what Las Vegas magnate Sheldon Adelson has been trying to do for years: Persuade the government to allow casinos.
Adelson, chief executive officer of Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVS), has for at least half a decade sought to reverse a ban on the gambling houses in the world's third-biggest economy, only to be blocked by Japanese legislators arguing casinos would fuel organized crime and provide little benefit. Now, a group of 150 lawmakers plans to introduce a bill by tomorrow that could allow resorts that combine slot machines and gambling tables with hotels, shopping and restaurants.
Japanese casinos could emerge as a 3.4 trillion yen ($44 billion) industry, according to a 2009 study by Ryosaku Sawa, an economics professor at Osaka University of Commerce. That would provide an attractive source of tax revenue for a government facing a 19 trillion yen reconstruction bill from the March 11 earthquake, on top of the world's largest public debt. (Bloomberg)
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Tepco may dump decontaminated water into sea
The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant is considering dumping water it treated for radiation contamination into the ocean as early as March, the firm said on Thursday, prompting protests from fishing groups.
Tokyo Electric Power, (Tepco) the utility operating Fukushima's Daiichi plant, hit by a powerful tsunami in March that caused the world's worst nuclear accident in 25 years, said it was running out of space to store some of the water it treated at the plant, due to an inflow of groundwater.
"We would like to increase the number of tanks to accommodate the water but it will be difficult to do so indefinitely," Tepco spokesman Junichi Matsumoto told reporters.
He said the plant was likely to reach its storage capacity of about 155,000 tons around March. (Reuters)
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Japanese Stocks Drop as Nikkei Futures Expire Amid Europe Woes
Japanese stocks fell, with the Nikkei 225 Stock Average slipping from a one-month high, as investors closed out futures on the last day of a contract ahead of meetings in Europe aimed at resolving the debt crisis.
Nikon Corp., a camera maker that depends on Europe for about a quarter of its sales, fell 2.4 percent. Tokyo Electric Power Co., owner of the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, sank 11 percent after a report it may be taken over by the government. Sumco Corp. slid 4.5 percent after the maker of silicon wafers for semiconducters forecast a loss. Aichi Steel Corp. led declines among large steelmakers after Credit Suisse Group AG cut its rating. (Bloomberg)
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Japan funding whaling hunt with disaster budget
Japan is spending 2.3 billion yen ($29 million) from its supplementary budget for tsunami reconstruction to fund the country's annual whaling hunt in the Antarctic Ocean, a fisheries official confirmed Thursday.
Tatsuya Nakaoku, a Fisheries Agency official in charge of whaling, defended the move, saying the funding helps support Japan's whaling industry as a whole, including some whaling towns along the devastated northeastern coast. One ship on the hunt is based in Ishinomaki, a town hit badly by the March 11 tsunami, he said.
The budget request was made to beef up security and maintain the "stable operation" of Japan's research whaling, he said, which has faced increasingly aggressive interference from boats with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. (AP)
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'Alibi firms' get away with it / Police powerless to zap companies making, selling fake documents
More than 30 firms across Japan are producing and selling false employment and tax documents, but the police are powerless to crack down on the shady business that could be used for criminal purposes, a Yomiuri Shimbun investigation has found.
Police authorities are keeping a strict watch on what are called "alibi companies," but currently there is no law that directly regulates their operations.
The Yomiuri Shimbun tracked down one company, located in a corner of a Tokyo entertainment district, where love hotels, bars and other establishments are packed together.
Operating from a one-room apartment, the company had four personal computers, four fixed-line phones, a copying machine and a printer. (Yomiuri)
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Olympics: Is Japan's 2020 Olympic bid going up in smoke?
Visitors to Japan are often surprised to see the kind of cigarette advertising that has long been outlawed in most countries. Ads at sporting events, in particular, seem especially out of place.
At volleyball matches, which are a big deal in Japan, many of the fans are screaming teenage girls, but one tobacco company's ads are as ubiquitous as the cute mascots, inflatable clappers and TV cameras that broadcast Japan's games in prime time.
Though Japan has won nothing on the world stage since 1976, but finished fourth in women's and 10th in men's events this year, it has hosted the World Cup of Volleyball every four years since 1977, thanks in part to funding from sponsors such as Japan Tobacco.
Arenas are packed for Japan's games, but empty -- sometimes fewer than 100 fans -- for higher-ranked teams from the United States, Italy, Brazil, Russia, China and elsewhere. (CNN)
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Man arrested over hit-and-run that left victim's body in drainage ditch
A 45-year-old man has been arrested over the hit-and-run death of a man whose body was found in a drainage ditch in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki Prefecture, on Nov 29.
According to NTV, the suspect-who is the manager of a restaurant-has been charged with vehicular manslaughter and driving without a license. Police say they believe the victim was struck in the early morning hours of Nov 26 and fell into the ditch where his body was found three days later.
Investigators discovered a vehicle with damage consistent with such an accident near the scene, and determined it belonged to the accused, NTV reported. (Japan Today)
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Baseball: Valentine left his mark on Japanese baseball
From "Bobby Beer" and "Bobby Burgers" to turning a perpetual doormat into a must-watch team, Bobby Valentine certainly left his mark during his time as a manager in Japan's baseball league.
Valentine managed seven seasons in Japan, in 1995 and from 2004 to 2009, and his bold attitude really struck a chord with Japanese baseball fans. He was popular and well-liked nationwide.
"When he was managing there, he was super-popular with fans," says Deanna Rubin, who watched Valentine firsthand and blogged about him on her blog Marinerds, etc., "mostly because he was super-accessible. He'd go out and greet fans and sign stuff for everyone sitting in the stands before pretty much every single game. And he used to ride a bike to the stadium, so people were always saying how they saw him out riding his bike." (boston.com)
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American woman missing in Japan threatened suicide, husband says
The husband of an American woman, who has been missing for six weeks in Japan, said Thursday that she had threatened to kill herself the night she disappeared after the two argued.
Vince Abad, an airman at a major U.S. Air Force facility in Japan, said he and his wife, Kelli, had fought over the phone on the night of October 26 after he had gone to see their pastor, who had helped resolve disputes between them in the past.
When he returned home, his wife was gone and their two children were in bed.
"We'd had arguments before -- it didn't feel too out of place," Abad, 30, said. He said he assumed she had gone to stay with a friend.
But when Kelli Abad, 27, didn't come back by the following morning, he became concerned and raised the alarm. (CNN)
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Japan's huge nuclear cleanup makes returning home a goal
Futaba is a modern-day ghost town - not a boomtown gone bust, not even entirely a victim of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that leveled other parts of Japan's northeast coast.
Its traditional wooden homes have begun to sag and collapse since they were abandoned in March by residents fleeing the nuclear plant on the edge of town that began spiraling toward disaster. Roofs possibly damaged by the earth's shaking have let rain seep in, starting the rot that is eating at the houses from the inside.
The roadway arch at the entrance to the empty town almost seems a taunt. It reads:
"Nuclear energy: a correct understanding brings a prosperous lifestyle."
Those who fled Futaba are among the nearly 90,000 people evacuated from a 12-mile zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant and another area to the northwest contaminated when a plume from the plant scattered radioactive cesium and iodine.
Now, Japan is drawing up plans for a cleanup that is both monumental and unprecedented, in the hopes that those displaced can go home. (staradvertiser.com)
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Japan allegedly pledges to reject North Korean defectors
Japan has allegedly promised in a written document to the Chinese government that it would not take in North Korean defectors at its diplomatic buildings in China.
The government refrained from commenting on the actual substance of the agreement.
"We would prefer not to shed light on the actual contents of the agreement and therefore will withhold comment. Naturally, as before, we will continue to work as appropriate for the advancement of human rights," government spokesman Osamu Fujimura said at a Dec. 8 press conference.
Chinese officials allegedly explained, "Once China allows refugees to leave China, the number of North Koreans will increase in Chinese society. Protection of North Koreans in diplomatic buildings as well as outside them is against Chinese law." (majirox news)
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Many in Japan are again heading for the hills
In the weeks following the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in Japan on March 11, real estate transactions came to a halt across much of the country, including Tokyo.
Especially affected were the residential high-rises that dot the capital's waterfront, known as tower mansions, that became popular around 2000 and made cavernous entrance halls, gyms and swimming pools commonplace for luxury buildings.
Two fears were commonly expressed in the initial days after the disaster: the height of the 40- to 50-story buildings and their proximity to the ocean.
But as time has passed, industry experts say, the persistent concern is location, not altitude.
Historically, the Japanese have shunned living near the sea and, after the recent tsunami devastated the northern regions of Japan's main island, Honshu, people are reverting to that behavior, said Seiji Yoshizaki, a senior real estate consultant at Funai Soken, a business consulting firm. (New York Times)
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