NTT Docomo’s Real Time Translation Service
A reporter gives a demo of NTT Docomo’s upcoming Cloud Automatic Translation Service:
They plan to offer real time translation of Japanese to and from English, Mandarin Chinese, or Korean. Right now, it’s only ready for English and Japanese – 80% recognition, as opposed to the 20% recognition that it could do back in May. According to the Nikkei, they are recruiting 400 smart phone users to test the service. NTT hopes to fully launch it some time next year.
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Categories: Technology
More Radioactive Radium Found in Tokyo [Not From Fukushima]
A couple days ago, Japanese authorities fenced-off part of a parking lot in Tokyo’s Setagaya ward after a concerned citizen detected higher than normal levels of radiation (up to 170 microsieverts per hour). Like the other recent radioactive “hot spot” found in Setagaya, it was revealed to be unrelated to the Fukushima nuclear plant:
An investigation by the ministry detected a high radiation level of around 40 millisieverts per hour near a bottle found 40 centimeters deep in the ground near the supermarket in Setagaya Ward.
If a person were continually exposed to such a level of radiation for two and a half hours, the risk of dying from cancer would increase by 0.5 percent, the officials said.
Although the source of the radiation has not been determined, lead and bismuth, released when radium-226 decays, were detected after workers dug into the ground, they said.
Radium is not among the radioactive substances released by the Fukushima plant since it was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology said earlier.
Radium-226 used to be commonly used for medical treatments and industrial
According to the Japan Times, radium was not heavily regulated in Japan until after 1957. There is a very real possibility that quite a lot of this material was thrown away or buried in parts of Tokyo before 1957, and there is even a chance of careless businesses that illegally disposed of it after the regulations were in place.
Today the media is reporting the government will be checking another 15 abnormal spots in Setagaya.
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Categories: General Japan
Is China Trying to Strengthen the Yen?
Yesterday, the Japanese government intervened in the currency market in an attempt to stop the yen’s continuing rise versus the dollar. The intervention managed to push the value from about 75 yen to the dollar to about 79 yen to the dollar. If the value of the dollar doesn’t drop again, this will be good news for Japanese exporters.
Finance Minister Jun Azumi said in Tokyo he will “continue to intervene until I am satisfied,” after yen sales yesterday that Credit Suisse Group AG analysts estimated may have exceeded $50 billion. The intervention was the first since August, when Japan spent 4.51 trillion yen ($57 billion) seeking to stem the currency’s surge to a postwar high against the dollar.
However, it may not be enough. There are outside forces that can cancel out the billions that Japan spent in this latest intervention. One of these forces is the Chinese government, and it seems that some people suspect that China is deliberately trying to drive up the value of the yen (article is from September):
As the yen hovered near a 15-year high against the US dollar yesterday, Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda called for talks with China over its recent yen buying spree, which has helped drive the Japanese currency higher, making Japanese goods less competitive with China’s.
“I don’t know the true intention” of China regarding its growing appetite for yen-denominated bonds, Mr Noda said before parliament’s upper house. He promised that Tokyo would “closely co-operate,” with Beijing on the subject. “We are paying close attention” Mr Noda said.
As this news report from ANN shows, Japan’s intervention in August was canceled out within a single day. If yesterday’s intervention is to have lasting results, the Japanese government may have to repeatedly intervene and purchase billions of dollars, especially if it has to counteract large Chinese purchases of yen.
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Categories: Anti-Japan, Politics