Somebody has translated an Japanese TV documentary about Sea Shepherd’s activities in Taiji and uploaded the video to youtube:

Part 1

The documentary mentions how “The Cove” won the Academy Award for best documentary “last year,” so this probably aired on Japanese TV some time in 2011.

The network that created the documentary, Asahi TV, is considered politically liberal/left. However, even a liberal network has great difficulty feeling any sympathy for the SS members, who harass both fishermen and documentary filmmakers.

The fishermen are pleased to receive attention from legitimate journalists, and even tell the TV crew about a hill where they can film the dolphin hunt. In the early days of the filming, SS members were also willing to be interviewed, but they later decided to sop doing so. ( It’s probably not good PR to have your people make asses of themselves on Japanese TV by talking about how “fun” it is to harass fishermen. )

They also interview Peter Bethune, a former member of Sea Shepherd who resigned after he was arrested and jailed for illegally boarding a Japanese ship. Bethune thinks that Paul Watson and other leaders of Sea Shepherd are dishonest and do more harm than good. Examples of this dishonest include scuttling a ship and claiming that the Japanese whalers “sunk” it, as well as Watson’s infamous “I’ve been shot” episode.

We are also shown activists who oppose the dolphin hunt but do not support Sea Shepherd’s tactics. One is Ady Gil, a former donor to Sea Shepherd who thinks that people should help Taiji develop and eco tourism business. And there is a Japanese woman (formerly a member of the Sea Shepherd anti-whaling crew) and a group of foreign activists who are protesting without hatred towards the people of Taiji.

Here are a few links to additional information about this issue:

• Researchers Find Taiji Residents Have No Mercury-related Health Problems
• Sea Shepherd’s Paul Watson: Tsunami That Killed Thousands of Japanese Was Divine Punishment
• Peter Bethune: Sea Shepherd is Dishonest & Morally Bankrupt
• Remember World War II: Sea Shepherd Depicts Japanese As Uniquely Cruel & Dishonest
• “Divine Wind” – Sea Shepherd Leader Praises Typhoon That Killed Over 45 People
• Anti-Whaling Groups Display “Open Prejudice” Towards Japanese
• Profitable Activism: Sea Shepherd’s Skyrocketing Income
• Sea Shepherd’s Paul Watson – Interview With an Eco-Terrorist
• Japanese Professor Denounces “The Cove”

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It’s supposedly due to mismanagement of funds. The bread in the photo is made from rice flour, making it significantly more expensive than typical bread. It’s basically a subsidy for rice farmers. The leftover money is spent on very simple foods.

Over at Itai News, we can see that Japanese netizens were pretty surprised by the sad-looking school lunch, which looks far worse than meals served in Japanese prison cafeterias. Adult males require more calories than little kids, but the prison food still looks a lot nicer.

Note: The photo does not show a typical Japanese school lunch. It’s received a lot of attention in Japan because Japanese people think it looks abnormally meager. As a former ALT, I can tell you that Japanese school lunches tend to be very nice. Schools usually have monthly menus with new and healthy foods every single day. (No nasty frozen pizza)

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The limits are meant to be extremely cautious, assuming that almost all foods will contain some level of contamination. The goal is to avoid a cumulative exposure of one millisievert of radiation a year – 1/100th of the amount of exposure that is known to increase cancer risk:

The new limits were calculated by working backward from the figure of 1 millisievert of radioactive cesium, which is the maximum allowable annual dietary intake for an ordinary person, according to the ministry.

The 1-millisievert annual limit was set by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, a body linked to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization and the World Health Organization, which is responsible for setting international food safety standards.

The Codex’s highest permissible level of radioactive cesium for general foodstuffs is 1,000 becquerels per kilogram, or 10 times the level now proposed by the health ministry.

This is because the ministry has assumed the “contamination ratios” of food, or the ratios of radiation-contaminated food compared to all food on the market, to be significantly higher than the ratios adopted by food-related international organizations, ministry officials said.

So far, tests have found in most parts of Japan does not contain detectable levels of cesium. But if somebody were to eat only food containing 100 Bq/kg of cesium, here’s the dosage information:

If a person keeps eating for one year food items containing maximum amounts of cesium allowed under the proposed limits, the total radiation exposure during that period is estimated by the ministry at 0.7 millisievert, below the 1-millisievert ceiling.

Some local governments have expressed concerns about the rule change, which would require some to replace existing testing equipment with more expensive devices that can detect lower amounts. It also looks like the government will also give 6 month grace periods for compliance to products like beef and rice.

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I got to hand it to Greenpeace Japan. They’ve come up with a really great idea on how to publicize the results of some of their radiation tests of fish from Japanese supermarket shelves. A fake advertisement flier, listing the amounts of cesium instead of prices:

And the message it sends is very clear: Greenpeace could not find any fish that contained radiation exceeding legal safety limits. The legal limit for Japan is 500 becquerels per kilogram. The highest amount of radiation they found in one fish was 47.3 Bq/kg, or less than one tenth the limit.

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A Japanese TV report about snack companies in South Korea that have been blatantly copying some of Japan’s most famous products:

Since there was just a scandal involving bugs in Pepero, a Korean copy of Japan’s famous Pocky snack, this news report aired to remind Japanese viewers about the ongoing existence of Korean copies.

After taking a look at several of these copies, they ask random people on the street in Japan and Korea to comment. Both Japanese and Korean people think the copying is blatant and it is not a good thing. Few of the Koreans seem aware that so many popular Korean products are copies of popular Japanese products. One Korean guy notes how people in his country always speak ill of China for copying products, but Korea has been doing the same thing!

[The report ends with the older news anchor laughing about how it is similar to Japan during the immediate postwar period, when there were many Coca-cola knock-offs. His example, however, may not be exactly relevant because the term "cola" had already been recognized as a generic term at that point in history. Companies like Pepsi-Cola had been using "cola" in their name for years.]

Here are some of the examples shown in the report:

The Japanese vitamin/energy drink Ripobitan D has been sold since 1962. South Korea’s Bacchus D energy drink, which has the same label design and similar ingredients, has been sold since 1963. When asked about the striking similarities, the company claimed it was just a coincidence.

Kinoko no Yama snacks have been sold in Japan since 1975. A similar product popped up years later in Korea. When reporters called the Korean manufacturer and asked why the products were so similar, the company spokesman refused to comment.

There have also been more recent examples, such as Korea’s “17 Tea,” which has been sold since 2005. The manufacturer denies copying Japan’s much older and much more famous “16 Tea” and says its ingredients are totally different.

There is at least one case of a Japanese company taking legal action against Korean manufacturers who are violating trademarks. In 2004, Morinaga sued the Korean company that makes “My Chew” – a copy of its “Hi Chew” snacks. This TV report mentions that the two companies reached a settlement. [I am not sure of the details. The Japanese Wikipedia entry for trademark infringement states that the lawsuit was rejected by a Korean court in 2005.]

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Hundreds of thousands of containers of Meiji Step Formula have been recalled after a citizens’ group ignited a radiation scare by detecting trace amounts of radioactive cesium in the product.

The amount of cesium in the formula was 22 to 31 becquerels per kilogram, far below the legal limit of 200 becquerels per kilogram. Since it is powered formula, it would be mixed with water before consumption, a process that would further dilute the cesium and probably make it undetectable low when in liquid form.

For comparative purposes, here is the amount of natural occurring radiation that can be found in commonly consumed foods:

• Bananas – 130 bq/kg of radioactive potassium (about 15bq per banana)
• Brazil Nuts – 44 bq/kg of radioactive potassium
• Carrots – 126 Bq/kg of radioactive potassium
• Lima Beans – 170 bq/kg of radioactive potassium

According to the CDC, the human body treats radioactive potassium-40 and cesium in a similar manner. Both exit the body quickly via urine and feces.

Although the amount of radiation in the formula is far below a level that can be reasonably considered dangerous, its manufacturer was forced to recall its products because fearful consumers believe that any amount of radiation in food is dangerous.

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The graph, using the latest data from 2010, shows that Sea Shepherd’s income has sharply risen since the non-profit organization escalated its violent actions against Japanese whaling ships. The airing of the “Whale Wars” TV series has had an especially profitable influence.

In February, Sea Shepherd claimed victory over whalers when its aggressive and dangerous attacks forced an early end to a hunting expedition. Japan has responded by dispatching a Fisheries Agency patrol boat to provide security to its latest hunt. As usual, almost all of the 900 whales on this year’s quota will be unendangered minke whales.

Western media reports about this year’s hunt have predictably followed anti-whaling talking points about the alleged misuse of government disaster relief funds to aid the whaling program, downplaying or ignoring the fact that an important whaling community was destroyed by the March 11th tsunami. One Television New Zealand has included this quote from Sea Shepherd leader Paul Watson:

“I think that its totally disgraceful. People from around the world sending money to help the victims of the Tsunami-earthquake were not expecting their money to be used to fund killing whales in the Southern Ocean.”

Like so many of Watson’s past statements, it is a lie. The whaling program is subsidized by the Japanese government, not by international charity donations for tsunami relief. The Japanese government does not have authority over the millions of dollars of international charity donations, which are being handled by non-profit relief organizations. Television New Zealand’s failure to fact-check is lending credibility to a very ugly falsehood.

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Yoda has joined forces with Nissin in this new Cup Noodle commercial:

The previous commercial in the “Boil Japan” series featured a Gundam:

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Last month, the anti-nuclear activists at Greenpeace announced the results of independent radiation testing of Japanese seafood. Tests on 60 different fish products from four major supermarket chains found that nothing exceeded safety standards. Many products contained no detectable radiation, and the highest recorded amount was 88 becquerels per kilogram (in “wakasagi” lake smelt from Ibaraki Prefecture). The test results should be reassuring, since the highest amount was much lower than the 500 bequerels per kilogram safety limit set by the government. It was even less than the amount of natural radioactivity found in bananas(130 Bq/kg) or brazil nuts (444 Bq/kg).

Nevertheless, consumer fear about radiation remains, and some organizations are conducting their own radiation tests. Here are a few recent examples:

Authorities in Tokyo began their own program aimed at testing the safety of food being sold in the city:

The 500 items will include processed foods that regular households consume almost daily, such as tofu, boiled beans, juice and jam. Fresh food subject to inspection will include meat–except beef, because the metropolitan government is already conducting blanket testing on cows–milk, eggs, vegetables and fish.

Among other food items, the inspections will focus on items regularly consumed by children, according to the officials.

Metropolitan government officials will visit supermarkets and other retailers to seek their cooperation, buying 20 to 30 items per week from stores that will then be checked with handheld geiger counters.

If any of the foodstuffs are found to contain 50 becquerels per kilogram or more of radioactive substances, they will go through additional tests using germanium detectors.

The test results will be displayed on the Web site of the Tokyo metropolitan government, which also will release the names of products found to contain radioactive substances above provisional standards set by the central government.

Rice farmers in Fukushima are banding together to enforce a “near-zero limit” on cesium in rice (as opposed to the 500 becquerels/kg safety limit set by the national government):

A self-imposed, near-zero limit on radiation in rice may help spur sales from Fukushima, which was the fourth-largest producer in Japan last year, representing about 5 percent of the total harvest. The prefectural office of Zen-Noh, Japan’s biggest farmers group, plans to only ship cesium-free rice to address safety concerns, as does the National Confederation of Farmers Movements, which includes about 30,000 producers nationwide.
“We advise our members to test their rice for radiation and sell only if results show no cesium is detected,” said Yoshitaka Mashima, vice chairman of the confederation. The government has tried to “hide inconvenient information, which is deepening consumer distrust.”
The near-zero limit was set as very low levels of cesium are hard to detect. Testing equipment in Japan is unable to verify levels of cesium in food below 5 becquerels a kilogram, according to Mashima.

AEON, Japan’s largest retail chain, is enacting its own “near-zero” radiation policy for food sold in its supermarkets:

…it is moving to zero radiation contamination of its food products. This includes all seafood – which is a central part of the Japanese diet – sold by AEON.

To achieve this, AEON is strengthening its radiation screening, releasing the results to the public, and stopping sales of products they find to contain any amount of radioactive contamination, not just those that are below official government safety levels.

It doesn’t look like they will be applying the “zero radiation” rule to foods that contain radioactive potassium (bananas, nuts, potatoes, beer, etc.). It’s a good thing that there will be more tests for radiation, but it is very misleading for stores to market themselves as radiation-free when selling foods that contain natural radiation.

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Every year, Japan’s royal family receives a gift of dried persimmons (anpo gaki) from the Date district of Fukushima prefecture. However, that will not be happening this year because tests have found that the persimmon crop from that area contains relatively high levels of cesium.

The farmers cannot give them the gift, so they won’t be receiving it:

Shipments from the area have been banned. As you can see from the video, farmers are dumping thousands of persimmons into fields, where the fruit will rot.

One farmer tells the reporters that he is angry because he’s received no apology from Tepco or the national government. Local farmers are taking photos of the piles of fruit to use as evidence for the financial compensation that they will be demanding from Tepco.

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Some of the food that the Japanese government sends to poor countries as foreign aid might come from Fukushima prefecture, and anti-nuclear activists are angry about it:

The activists don’t care if the food passes safety inspections. They seem to have already concluded that “Fukushima = “deadly radiation,” so any food from that prefecture is dangerous. One of the women in the video is so scared of radiation that she sent her children away from Tokyo. Forget about whether there is any credible threat to human health: just think about all the children who are in danger!!!!!!!1!!

It is a sad situation for the farmers of Fukushima. They’ve worked so hard to grow their crops, and thankfully, most of the prefecture’s agricultural products have been found to be safe. It was feared that rice would be heavily contaminated, but that a majority of Fukushima rice has passed tests. Despite this, there is still great ignorance and fear about radiation, and an anti-nuclear lobby that is more that happy to spread sensational (and groundless) claims about about the dangers of Fukushima produce. A lot of farmers will be losing money because people wrongly believe that their crops are dangerous.

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The Yukiguni Maitake company has started airing commercials that inform consumers about its strict in-house safety tests, the results of which can be easily found on its website:

Singer Hiromi Go has been hired as a spokesman for the new advertising campaign. In the video, we are shown a clip of the TV commercial and a demonstration of how to check radiation test results.

Because mushrooms are particularly vulnerable to environmental pollution, the company has been conducting strict safety testing for years. The recent nuclear accident in Fukushima has heightened public fears about food contamination, so the company is conducting radiation tests on every “lot” of mushrooms that it ships and is making the test result data accessible on its homepage.

Every package of Yukiguni Maitake mushrooms has the following label:

Using a mobile phone, anyone can access safety testing data by reading the QR code. Alternatively, they can go to the company’s homepage and enter the lot number or the production date printed on the label (found in the red box in the example pic).

Downloadable data includes the amount of radioactive cesium detected, as well as the test results for a large number of other potentially dangerous substances, such as pesticides and heavy metals.

The ability to scan a package and see its radiation data before buying it is a stroke of marketing brilliance. Even if other companies are selling mushrooms from areas that have passed government mandated radiation tests, worried consumers will probably feel more comfortable buying Yukiguni’s products.

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Months have passed since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear incident. The worst of the crisis has been over for some time, but people are still very concerned about contamination of the food supply. It is a serious issue, and one that deserves attention. Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation out there. Many people seem to be operating under the assumption that food safety tests aren’t being conducted, or that test data is being hidden from the public.

It’s a view that is reflected in this quote from a Japanese restaurant owner, which appeared in a recent article on Slate.com:

“The government of Japan has to step up and declare what the real situation is. They need to tell everyone—Japanese, and the international community—the truth about what food is contaminated, and what the real dangers are. Then we need to stop selling Japanese food outside of the country. We need to sell our food only to ourselves, for three to five years.”

The article’s author, Daisann McLane, made no attempt to verify the statement. She just included the quote and left readers to guess about whether the Japanese government was really hiding “the truth” about radiation. Since there are few English language articles that adequately explain the food testing system, many readers may have assumed the Japanese government wasn’t releasing food safety data.

In fact, the Japanese government is releasing food safety data. Hundreds of tests are conducted each day and results are released to the general public. At the time of this posting, dozens of cases of contamination had been reported to the public. There are still no known cases of the government knowingly hiding data about food the failed the tests, nor is there evidence that authorities have deliberately avoided testing food that would likely be contaminated.

Here is a Japanese TV news report that provides a detailed explanation of the situation. I have written an English language summary of its main points (for those who don’t want to sit through 17 minutes of video):

The TV network conducts a survey of 80 people and finds that a lot of them are concerned about the safety of the food they are eating. They are especially worried about the long term health risks of eating food that might be contaminated.

They provide an example of how many food safety tests are being conducted. Between August 25th to August 31st, 2121 radiation tests were conducted (about 300 each day). Only 18 of the tests found levels of cesium that exceeded safety standards.

The national government has ordered 17 prefectures to test levels of Tests are conducted by authorities in each prefecture, and data is sent to the Ministry of Agriculture, which makes all of the data public. They also include the results from tests conducted by National Institute of Health Sciences. Daily results can be found on this web site. PDF files include information on the localities where food was produced, as well as the names of the laboratories that conducted the tests. The data is not presented in a Pass/Fail format: even if radiation is measured at a level far below safety limits, the amount of radiation is reported to the public.

Their reporter visits Ibaraki prefecture for a firsthand look at how fish is tested for radiation. Ibaraki has been conducting regular tests on 63 different varieties of seafood. Authorities try to spread out the locations from which test fish are taken, to get a wider view of the situation. When fish from a certain area passes a safety check, authorities issue certificates of safety, which can be displayed to potential buyers. The certificates are only valid for a limited time, and must be re-issued whenever a new test is conducted.

Tests are conducted in a uniform manner, following strict regulations. The rules state that the test must be conducted on the meat portion of the fish. The scales and bones need to be removed from the sample. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the rules reflect the fact that the meat part of the fish is the most easily contaminated.

The testing system’s main limitation is the lack of equipment. There are only a handful of labs that have machinery that can conduct the tests, and they’re all running on emergency 24/hour testing schedules. The same labs must conduct daily tests of the water supply. The one lab they visited had used its four machines to conduct about four tests a day prior to March 11th. Now it has to conduct about a hundred tests a day. Each test takes about an hour.

Fishermen and fishery companies are frustrated with the current testing system. The limited availability of testing equipment means that tests on certain types of fish can only be conducted two, three, or just one time each week. They would prefer daily tests at every location so they can reassure consumers about the safety of their fish. Because demand is low for shipments that haven’t been tested, some fishermen have scaled back their catches, only bringing them in for sale on days when they know that tests can be conducted.　(On the day the reported visited a fish market in Chiba, fish from their haul of Japanese sardines was found to contain 12.1 becquerels per kilogram of cesium, far below the safety limit of 500.)

After discussing seafood, the report moves on to beef and milk. As many of you know, beef shipments from parts of Tohoku were banned earlier this summer after tests found levels of cesium that exceeded safety standards. Milk shipments from some of the same areas were not banned. This is because the milk did not contain high levels of cesium. Dairy farmers had been feeding their cows using straw that had been stored indoors, whereas meat farms had been feeding their cows straw that had been stacked outdoors.

In Ibaraki prefecture, radiation tests on milk are conducted on a biweekly basis. Milk is trucked from various farms to cooler stations. Samples are taken from every truck and mixed together. If the mixed samples fails the safety test, shipments from the entire region will be banned. On the day that the TV crew visited one cooler station, no radioactive contamination was detected in the milk. ( The safety limit for cesium in milk is 200 becquerels per liter – the testing machinery is capable of detecting cesium if it exceeds 20 becquerels per liter.)

After the report, the anchors discuss the issue in their news studio. They mention how prefectural governments have been frustrated by the national government’s instructions, which do not go into minute detail about the types of food that need to be tested and how often the tests need to be conducted. Consumers would obviously prefer that every shipment of every type of food be tested, but that is not realistic. Many of the machines used to test radiation are imported, and there is now a huge worldwide demand for the equipment. Japan may want to buy many more testing machines, but it won’t be able to get them soon.

Dr. Minoru Kamata, an expert on Chernobyl, recommends that agricultural cooperatives do more to develop testing at a local level. He says that Ukrainians who lived near the Chernobyl area can easily get vegetables from their gardens tested for contamination, and he hopes that Japan could achieve something similar.

tl;dr summary: Food is being tested for radiation in Japan. The government posts all the results online. Producers and consumers would like more tests, but limited availability of testing machines means that it’s impossible to test everything.

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A Japanese TV show visits the Tokyo Sushi Academy to watch a specialist as he creates beautiful and edible works of kazari-zushi artwork:

At about the 2:22 mark in the video, he creates a very awesome sushi Mt. Fuji, snow-capped by white squid.

The last minute of the clip shows a couple TV announcers tasting double-sided sushi art. The female announcer encounters some trouble!

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Video of a sushi restaurant in Aichi prefecture that is famous for its ridiculously oversized sushi:

It’s mega sushi roll has 20 different foods wrapped inside 2 meters of seaweed and rice. It costs 15,000 yen and requires a reservation 2 days in advance.

For the same price, you can also order a giant set of nigiri sushi (together with a super tiny set). The slab of tuna on top of one blob of rice could make about 40 normal-sized maguro nigiri-zushis.

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Japanese beef bowl chain Yoshinoya is preparing to return to Bangkok.

Thai people have been without Yoshiyo beef bowls since 1999. However, it seems that those who don’t want to wait a few more months can try the next best thing – beef bowls from Gyunoya:

Gyunoya looks and feels like a Yoshinoya – it’s name, logo, menu, and even the designs on its bowls are all clearly meant to copy the famous chain. Apparently it’s owned by a Japanese person, and it was recently re-done so it would look less like a blatant copy of Yoshinoya.

For the moment, it seems that the real Yoshinoya is most concerned about preparing its first new restaurant in Bangkok, and won’t be taking legal action against Gyunoya.

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The tuna auctions at Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market have re-opened to tourists:

They apparently closed the auctions to tourists on March 14th because of safety concerns raised by frequent aftershocks. Now that there are far fewer aftershocks, they’ve decided it is safer.

About 80 tourists came to see the 5:30 AM auction. There were no reports of trouble, and the foreign tourists interviewed seemed to have enjoyed the experience.

The second half of the video reports that seafood prices are rising because Tohoku’s fishing industry was heavily damaged by the March 11th tsunami.

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For the last couple weeks, Japan has been gripped by a scare over radioactive beef, after it came to light that the existing system for testing beef allowed some contaminated cows to be slaughtered and sold to stores across the country. The situation has caused prices of domestic beef to plummet, and many consumers are turning to imported meat instead.

While contaminated food is a cause for concern, it is no where near as scary as some people are making it out to be. The beef contains radioactive cesium that exceeds Japanese safety standards, but the level of contamination is so low that eating one, two, or even ten contaminated steaks would not be dangerous.

To help put the situation in perspective, here are several different estimates for the amount of radiation exposure one is likely to face from contaminated beef, plus some information about how cesium is expelled from the human body.

Estimates of Radiation Exposure

The Japan Times has a Q&A article that provides some basic facts about the risks of contaminated meat. Its estimate for radiation exposure from eating “highly” contaminated beef is particularly noteworthy:

As of Thursday, the most highly contaminated beef found contained radioactive cesium of 4,350 becquerels per kilogram, according to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry. The meat did not reach the market.

Eating 1 kg of the meat is roughly equal to a radiation dose of 82.65 microsieverts (0.08265 millisieverts) for a period during which radioactive cesium remains in one’s body. If a person eats food with radioactive cesium, half the amount remains in the body for nine days for a baby younger than 1. But the duration gets longer as people age, and it takes 90 days for those aged 50.

The 82.65 microsieverts compares with the 100 microsieverts (0.00065 millisieverts) of radiation a person would be exposed to during a one-way flight from Tokyo to New York.

Mainichi’s News Navigator has an estimate for those who have eaten the same contaminated beef every day for a month or a year:

Let’s calculate the amount on the assumption that all the cesium contained in 1 kilogram of beef tainted with 4,350 becquerels per kilogram is cesium 137. If a person eats 100 grams of the meat every day for a month, they will be exposed to about 0.17 millisieverts, and if they eat the same amount of meat for a year, they will be exposed to some 2 millisieverts, according to a calculation method employed by the National Institute of Radiological Sciences. The International Commission on Radiological Protection sets the upper limit on an individual’s exposure to radiation at 1 millisievert a year.

An Asahi Shimbun article has some estimates for beef containing 500 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium. Eating 100 grams of contaminated meat would yield an estimated exposure of 0.65 microsieverts (0.00065 millisieverts). Eating 100 grams of contaminated meat a day for an entire year would yield an estimated exposure of 237 microsieverts (0.237 millisieverts).

A Sankei Shimbun article contains an estimate from Ikuro Anzai of Ritsumeikan University. For beef containing 3,200 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium, eating 200 grams a day for a year would result in a total exposure of 0.01 millisieverts. Although he feels the beef contamination is a serious problem, he nonetheless points out that there is already naturally occurring radiation in the food we eat. Each year, you are likely to be exposed to 0.2 millisieverts of radiation from food containing potassium-40.

A Mainichi Shimbun article has some estimates for beef containing 3,240 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium. It doesn’t contain a single meal estimate, but it does not that one would need to eat 500 grams of contaminated beef a day for an entire year to reach an exposure level that exceeds the official annual exposure limit (1 millisievert?).

[Note: 100 millisieverts a year of radiation exposure is the lowest level at which any long-term increase in cancer risk is clearly evident (1% increase in cancer in a population).]

Expelling Radioactive Cesium From Your Body

From the EPA:

Compared to some other radionuclides, cesium-137 remains in the body for a relatively short time. It is eliminated through the urine.

From the CDC:

Once cesium enters your body, your kidneys begin to remove it from the blood; some cesium is quickly released from your body in the urine. A small portion is also released in the feces. Some of the cesium that your body absorbs can remain in your body for weeks or months, but is slowly eliminated from your body through the urine and feces.

And a quote from the Mainichi, on how eating fruit and vegetables is important:

The structure of cesium 137 is similar that of potassium — which is contained in vegetables and fruits. If you are not following a nutritious diet, you tend to absorb cesium 137 in place of potassium.

The good thing about this scare is that it is pushing the government to expand and improve food testing. Measures are being taken to prevent it from happening again, and the government is facing enormous scrutiny from the media and consumers. The government has already announced that farmers will be paid compensation, and it may even purchase and destroy all beef that exceeds radiation limits.

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Al Jazeera English reports on a 10-year-old girl who is officially certified as an expert sake connoisseur :

Akane Niikura passed the Sake Service Institute of Japan’s test after earning her expertise on the ancient Japanese tradition solely through her sense of smell rather than palate.

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A group of chefs from some of New York’s top restaurants visited Iwate prefecture over the weekend to cook for earthquake and tsunami survivors:

An excerpt from the press release that announced their visit:

Early on the morning of Sunday, July 3, the chefs and the food they have prepared with fine Japanese ingredients, will travel to Kamaishi and then on to the local community facility where they will serve a lunch to 1,000 people. Each of the visiting chefs will personally serve his own signature dish, food that they believe will offer the simple pleasure of a good meal. For example, Chef Daniel Boulud’s tender braised beef is intended as a soul satisfying, Western style comfort food, and a dish that will appeal to the Japanese lunch guests. The menu may also include specialties such as Chef Tadashi Ono’s chilled seaweed soup with sea scallop and sea urchin; Chef Bill Telepan’s miso stir fry vegetables with grilled Kuruma shrimp and seared tuna; and Pastry Chef François Payard’s rolled chocolate cake with chocolate tofu pudding, matcha green tea macarons, black sesame macarons and milk chocolate yuzu macarons – to name but a few.

The Japanese TV news report shows the chefs preparing some of the dishes in advance at the Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay hotel. To support farmers and promote the safety of Japanese food, the chefs made sure that most of their ingredients had been produced in Japan.

Special focus is put on Tadashi Ono, the only Japanese chef in the group (probably because he can give interviews in the native language of the TV viewers). Ono says that he and the other chefs volunteered because they wanted to brighten the lives and give hope to disaster survivors.

Most of the people served seemed very happy to eat dishes prepared by internationally-renown chefs.

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When it’s hot and humid, few people feel like eating warm donuts. To survive during this scorching summer, Mister Donut is claiming that some of its donuts and pastries taste great when cooled down:

If you buy these donuts and place them in a refrigerator for a couple hours, they apparently taste quite good.

In addition to donuts, they are also offering crushed ice drinks and donut-shaped gelatin.

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“Nanikore” visits a mom-and-pop steak restaurant in Tokyo where the main attraction isn’t steak:

The restaurant is called Steak Fuji. It’s a very short walk from Tobu-Nerima station on the Tobu Tojo line.

If you order a steak & rice meal from the menu, you’ll find yourself overwhelmed with all kinds of extra dishes!

Why do they give away so much extra food? Apparently they didn’t want customers to feel bored or impatient while waiting for their steak to cook, so they started serving free side dishes. Over the years, the number of side dishes increased. Now every customer who orders a steak gets a huge number of side dishes.

Obviously, many customers cannot finish all of the food in one sitting. The restaurant is kind enough to help them pack up the leftovers in doggy bags.

Are they losing money? The restaurant owner says he doesn’t care. He’s just pleased to see so many happy customers.

Note to those interested in eating there: According to photos on Tabelog, it looks like they have a somewhat complicated menu. If you can’t speak or read any Japanese, ordering could be difficult.

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A news crew follows a family of sake brewers as they return to Futaba, a town within the Fukushima Daiichi exclusion zone:

Their ancestors started the business in the Edo Period. But now that business has been suspended because their home and brewery is 3.6 kilometers from the nuclear plant.

They were close enough to hear the hydrogen explosion that took place on March 12th. Although they had no electricity at the time and did not know that an evacuation had been ordered, they left anyway.

It now seems that they will never be able to move back into their home and re-open that brewery, but they still want to revive their family sake business. To maintain the unique traditional flavor of their sake, they needed some of the yeast from their brewery. Authorities gave them special permission to enter the restricted area and retrieve the yeast. Although the brewery had suffered some damage from aftershocks, the yeast was safe!

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Over at the Huffington Post, Anneli Rufus writes that ramen is racist because it was once called shina soba (“It’s not racist in substance but in context — if you go back far enough.“):

As Japan’s most popular Chinese dish, shina soba symbolized the expanding Japanese empire, according to Katarzyna Joanna Cwiertka, author of Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power, and National Identity. By the early 20th century, this empire included Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, eastern Siberia, parts of China, and many South Pacific islands. Giddy totalitarianism spawned “a China boom” in Japan, Cwiertka asserts:

“Chinese-style decorations, costumes, and products were eagerly consumed by the Japanese public as they translated colonialism into a concrete experience. By physically interacting with China through the ingestion of Chinese food and drink, the Japanese masses were brought closer to the idea of empire.”

In other words, to eat shina soba in those years was to symbolically gobble up China itself. As China represented the empire’s biggest prize, a bowl of shina soba represented nothing less than world domination.

After Japan lost its empire in World War II, the word shina came under fire. Deplored by many as a symbol of imperialist aggression and Japanese wartime atrocities in China and beyond, shina was now seen as a horrific ethnic slur, embodying imperialist xenophobia: in other words, racist. Shina soba was briefly renamed chuka soba; chuka is a less politically incorrect Japanese term for “Chinese-style.” But in 1958, Nissin Foods introduced the first-ever packaged instant version of the dish. As its broth was chicken-flavored, the product was called Chikin Ramen.

As you can see from the photos at the top of this post, there are still quite a few ramen restaurants that use the term “shina soba” in their names or advertisements, and nobody seems to be lining up with protest signs to condemn them. Google Blog Search also shows plenty of blog posts about people who have enjoyed a bowl of shina soba. While it is true that using shina to refer to China or Chinese people has a pretty negative connotation in today’s Japan, it seems like a stretch to say that ramen’s old name is racist.

[hat tip to Steve]

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Saving electricity is the hip thing to do in Japan these days, so House Foods is marketing “Summer Curry” packs that don’t need to be heated up:

They say that they’ve changed the recipe to make the curry easier to eat at room temperature, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they just took their normal curry and slapped “summer” label on it.

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YouTube Vlogger PropagandaBuster [real name: Tony Marano] is has visited Japan.

If you are unfamiliar with him, here’s an excerpt from a 2010 post about his Japanese book deal:

….after his discovery by Japanese netizens, PropagandaBuster seemed to transform into a cheerleader for Japanese nationalism. When he’s not busy uploading videos defending Glenn Beck and loony rants about Obama’s attempts to turn America into a Muslim nation, he’s been parroting support for whatever cause his Japanese viewers seemed to be angry about. He’s made a video ranting in support of Japanese businesses that put up “no foreigners allowed” signs, a video about the DPJ’s anti-Japan/pro-China agenda, a video laughing about how Koreans eat dog meat, a video attacking Japan’s leftist education system, and a video defending Emobile’s Obama Monkey commercial. Right-leaning Japanese bloggers and 2-channelers seem oblivious to the fact that PropagandaBuster often comes off as a loon that likes to hear the sound of his own voice, and his Japan-related videos have received thousands of views. To spread his message, loyal followers subtitled some of his videos in Japanese and re-uploaded them on other YouTube accounts.

Earlier this month, Tony the Texas Daddy flew to Japan for a 10-day trip. He met with fans of his book and videos, visited the Yasukuni Shrine, went to a Japanese baseball game, and generally had a good time.

Here’s his video about visiting Taiji, the dolphin hunting village that has become the target of foreign animal rights activists:

Because Tony was a pro-whaling vlogger, he was given VIP treatment. He met with the mayor and was given a delicious meal that consisted of several dolphin and whale dishes. The mayor arranged for Tony to take a special tour of the Taiji whaling museum and aquarium.

The visit to Taiji also included a press conference. Articles about Tony’s visit have appeared in the Sankei Shimbun, Zakzak, the Chunichi Shimbun, and the Yomiuri Shimbun. (After th press conference, he made a new friend: the driver of a right wing sound truck.)

Related Link: In the video he mentions that Sea Shepherd are up in Tohoku harassing people in the disaster area. It seems he is correct. The Japan Times recently ran an article about how fishermen in Iwate were enraged to see Sea Shepherd members walking around the ruins of their community.

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NTV news reports on how four fast food chains are rolling out new burgers for the summer:

• Kentucky Fried Chicken is offering a new Roast Chicken Sandwich. It has a big piece of chicken covered with BBQ sauce. (See a commercial for it here.)
• McDonald’s is bringing back its Mega Mac (double Big Mac) for a limited time run.
• Mos Burger has a new BLT Tobikiri Hamburger, using 100% domestic meat and veggies.
• Lotteria has a new Butter/soy Sauce Chicken Burger.

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A report from FTV about radiation in tea, fish, and grass:

The report shows radiation tests being conducted on ayu in Ibaraki prefecture. The fishing season for ayu will begin soon, and there are concerns that radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident may have contaminated rivers.

The radiation has already created a major problem for livestock farms. Many farms throughout Tohoku and Kanto have discovered that their pastures contain grass with levels of radioactive cesium that exceed government safety standards. They will now have to spend a considerable amount of money buying tons of grass.

Radioactive contamination of tea leaves has been found as far south as Kanagawa prefecture. However, there is considerable debate over how one should judge the health risk of radiation in tea. Up until recently, tea leaves were judged the same as any other food, with a cesium limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram. There are a couple problems with such a system:

• Tea leaves had been tested before they were dried and processed. When dried and processed into aracha, the amount of radiation per kilogram increases.
• Tea is a drink. People do not directly eat tea leaves or dried tea, yet the government safety standards treat it as if it was a vegetable. Even if tea leaves or dried and processed tea contain radiation over the safety limit for food, when it is brewed into tea, the drink itself would very likely be within government safety standards for radiation in drinks.

Earlier this week, the Japanese government asked local governments throughout the Tohoku and Kanto regions to start conducting radiation tests on dried and processed tea leaves. However, because of the above mentioned issues, the governments of Shizuoka and Kanagawa voiced opposition to the measure. On May 19, Shizuoka Gov. Heita Kawakatsu declared that his prefecture would not comply with the request:

“Checking (the radioactivity levels in) raw tea leaves and tea for drinking is enough,” said Kawakatsu.

Aracha weighs about one-fifth normal tea due to water evaporation and tends to have a higher level of radioactive substances than raw green tea leaves.

Alarmed by the recent detection of high levels of radioactive cesium in tea leaves, the ministry has ordered Tokyo and more than a dozen other prefectures in the Tohoku, Kanto and other regions to check Aracha, instructing them to ban distribution of Aracha if cesium tops the national provisional limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram.

There has been a conflict of opinions within the central government over the issue, with the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare insisting that a uniform limit be strictly applied for Aracha while the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries arguing that the application of the limit should be flexible.

“By confusing consumers, the central government could heighten public distrust in the state,” said Gov. Kawakatsu.

Kanagawa, Saitama, and Ibaraki have followed Shizuoka’s example, and have rejected the request to conduct tests on aracha.

Here’s a video clip of Gov. Kawakatsu drinking cups of Shizuoka tea and declaring to the press that it is perfectly safe to drink:

It’s a good thing that the national government is trying to be strict about preventing contaminated food from reaching consumers, but it safety standards should be sensible. If tea is being sold for drinks and not as a vegetable, it makes sense for farmers and the governors of tea-producing prefectures to demand that the national government judge the tea using standards for drinks instead of standards for food.

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Here’s a very interesting art event that took place the other day in Kagawa prefecture:

The dress in the video is made from 30 kilograms of udon (wheat-flour noodles). Visitors to the event were invited to break off pieces of the dress and eat them. Apparently it tasted pretty good.

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Time.com’s Ecocentric blogger Krista Mahr has written a post explaining some “good news” that came about because the the March 11th earthquake and tsunami. It would seem that Iceland has postponed its fin whale hunt because the tsunami destroyed the town in Japan that had processed the meat:

Japan is the biggest consumer of Iceland’s fin whale meat, and three of the facilities that process Icelandic whale meat were destroyed in the March 11 disasters, according to the owner of Iceland’s primary whaling company, Hvalur. According to Iceland Review, Kristjan Loftsson recently went to Japan to assess the situation, and returned saying because of the destroyed facilities and the general mood of austerity in Japan, his company’s fin whale hunt would not begin in June as it normally does. He said it may start later in the summer. Hvalur employs up to 150 people in the summer during whaling season. Fin whales can grow to be nearly 90 feet long and are listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

One reader left the following comment on her blog post:

What kind of horrid person celebrates people losing their jobs because of a massive natural disaster… You need to get out, and think about life on earth a little.

However, most of the other comments have generally agreed with Mahr’s anti-whaling slant.

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They’ve now upgraded their production facilities to a point where they can start delivering new Gopan machines to stores:

The Gopan takes rice, sugar, and yeast and turns it into bread through an automated process that takes about 4 hours.

In the above TV clip, a famous chef shows their reporter some creative ways to eat the rice bread. Since it’s made from rice, it is apparently goes well with natto, soy sauce, and other Japanese food. You can even make bread sushi:

At the end of the report, they show us an alternative to the Gopan. The Kome-Pan is a cooking kit that lets children turn leftover rice into dough, which can be put into an oven and turned into bread. It may not be automated, but it is many times cheaper than the Gopan.

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Two children have died and many people have suffered from food poisoning after eating at Yakiniku-zakaya Ebisu, an ultra-cheap barbeque chain:

The Toyama Prefectural Government determined the same day that a raw beef dish served at one of the chain’s outlets in Tonami, where the first boy dined on April 21, was inedible. The dish is suspected as being the cause of the food-poisonings.

The boy in Fukui, meanwhile, was found to be infected with a highly toxic strain of E. coli bacteria known as O-111. This strain was also found in the boy in Toyama, who began vomiting April 24 and died Friday at a hospital, the officials said.

The tally of food-poisoning complaints tied to the chain is at 38, including people who ate at another of the chain’s outlets in the Toyama city of Takaoka, the prefectural government said late Saturday.

The kids had apparently eaten Yukhoe, a Korean dish made from raw beef.

One of the most-viewed videos on YouTube Japan today is a clip from an NTV program that praised and recommended Yakiniku-zakaya Ebisu to viewers:

The restaurant chain is described as serving high quality meat for a very low price. After hearing the description of the restaurant chain, a panel of celebrities unanimously decided that it sounded good.

At the end of the clip, Shinsuke Shimada, the host of the program, makes a remark implying that the meat served at the restaurant is low quality. He quickly retracts his remark, telling viewers he didn’t really mean to say that.

A few user comments from YouTube, with some rough translations:

へ～、こんなに安いんだ。お店もスタイリッシュだし、
何より日テレがこれだけプッシュしてるんだからいい店なんだろう­な！
日テレが嘘をつくわけないもんね！
今度子供を連れて行ってくるよ！

Wow, it’s so cheap. And the restaurant is stylish! If NTV is recommending it, it’s gotta be good! NTV wouldn’t lie! Let’s take the kids to that restaurant!

この放送見て食べに行ってたとしたら可哀想だなぁ

I feel sorry for those who saw this and then went out to eat there.

最近番組内で宣伝しすぎだろ、制作者いくらもらってんだよ。

TV shows these days are too much like advertisements. I wonder how much money the producers were paid to make this.

ペイドパブリシティーは規制しろ
日本のテレビはもう駄目だ

Let’s put some restrictions on this kind of paid publicity. Japanese TV is crap!

ふざけんなよ…ただの宣伝。
これは日テレの責任もあるよ。

What the hell is this! It’s just like an advertisement!
NTV is responsible for this.

4月18日にこの放送があって、食中毒の発生は21日～23日で­すから、
当然この番組にも責任があるんじゃないですかね・・・
これは完全に番組を使った宣伝ですからね。

This aired on April 18th. The food poisoning incident took place between the 21st and 23rd. Because the show was nothing more than an advertisement for the restaurant, the TV program should be held responsible.


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NTV news visits the cafeteria at Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries:

The cafeteria is holding a special “Support Fukushima” event, using meat and vegetables that come from Fukushima prefecture. The very bureaucrats who have been telling consumers that it is safe to eat non-restricted foods from Fukushima prefecture are following their own advice on a daily basis.

The video mentions that most of the ingredients come from Aizu-Wakamatsu, an area of Fukushima that is relatively far away from the Daiichi nuclear plant.

Meanwhile, it has become apparent that there are some serious problems with the enforcement of restrictions on food that may be contaminated with radiation. Earlier this month, hundreds of at-risk vegetables were delivered to customers after some Chiba prefecture farmers did not follow a suggestion to voluntarily refrain from shipping out their products. An even bigger screw-up is being reported today: between April 1st and April 22nd, farmers in the city of Katori in Chiba prefecture shipped out thousands of packs of restricted spinach. It is not yet clear where all the spinach was sold, but it is almost certain that many consumers have probably already eaten it.

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American Ambassador John Roos made a public display of support for Fukushima products by visiting a shop in Tokyo and buying Fukushima sake:

A prefectural official showed him several goods such as a tofu product, and a brand of sake which won a top prize in a national competition last year.

Roos, who is a sake fan, tested 3 different brands, and bought one of them as a present for his wife.

A senior prefectural official says he deeply appreciates the ambassador’s visit and hopes the visit will help consumers realize the safety of Fukushima products.

Any liquor on sale now was probably brewed before March 11th, so it’s not exactly a direct statement of confidence in the safety of products harvested after the nuclear accident. Nevertheless, it was a very nice show of support for the economic recovery of Fukushima.

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Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano backs up his statements about the safety of food from Fukushima by attending a farmers market in Tokyo and eating a strawberry grown in Iwaki, about 50 kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant:

‘This is food that people who are going through great pain devoted all of their energy to produce,’ Mr Edano said. ‘Only safe produce is being distributed. Please eat it,’ he added, saying the government planned to organise other events to promote produce from the disaster zone

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The Japanese government has determined that levels of radiation in some milk and vegetables from Fukushima prefecture have returned to safe levels, so restrictions on their shipment and sale will now be eased:

Restrictions on milk produced in Fukushima prefecture would be lifted, along with those placed on spinach and kakina, a leafy green vegetable, top government spokesman Yukio Edano said.

“The government has received requests for lifting shipping bans on milk produced (in seven municipalities) in Fukushima prefecture and spinach and kakina vegetables from Gunma prefecture,” Edano said.

The government said weekly tests on produce from Fukushima had shown that milk and the two varieties of vegetable had levels of radiation well below the legal threshold.

The eased restrictions do not include all of Fukushima. Areas that are very close to the nuclear plant, such as Minamisoma, remain on the restricted list.

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Farmers from Fukushima brought their products down to Tokyo over the weekend and held a market in Yurakucho. They were making a public appeal about the safety of their agricultural products and calling on consumers to support the economic recovery of the region:

“It is not justifiable that products from Fukushima, which haven’t been banned from the market, are being affected” by the crisis, said JA Touzai Shirakawa’s Masaichi Mimura, executive director of the agricultural cooperative in southern Fukushima.

In an attempt to prove the safety of their products, Mimura used a Geiger counter in front of the crowd and tested the buckets of rice, strawberries, cucumbers and tomatoes that were being sold.

“See? The counter shows no irregularities. Everything is safe,” Mimura said.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan on March 21 placed an indefinite ban on sales of spinach and “kakina” from Fukushima and neighboring prefectures after samples were found to be abnormally radioactive. Milk produced in the region is also prohibited from being sold for human consumption.

Judging from the video, it looks like a lot of people tried the samples and bought some of the products.

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I wish this were a joke, but it’s seems to be true:

The South China Morning Report said the Yaegiku Japanese Cuisine restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui closed Friday after reporting a 70 per cent drop in business since the earthquake and tsunami triggered the nuclear crisis at Fukushima.

Simon Wong, president of the Hong Kong Federation of Restaurants and Related Trades, predicted that as many as one-fourth of the city’s 600 Japanese restaurants could be forced out of business.

The industry is pressing Tokyo to help the restaurants by issuing safety certificates to assure customers that food is free of radiation, or by granting loans to help sustain them while they attempt to regain customer confidence.

Hong Kong has been performing radiation scans on food imports from Japan since March 14th, so it is quite absurd for consumers to think that radioactive food is being freely served at restaurants in their city.

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Most of the post-earthquake panic buying has come to an end in Japan, so shelves at supermarkets in the Kanto region are returning to normal. However, there are some products that remain rare. One of them is yogurt.

Here is a short report explaining why there is a shortage of yogurt (from ATV news):

They visit a factory in Kanagawa prefecture, which halted all production of yogurt. The main cause of the halt is the unreliability of electricity.

The factory is still producing milk, but yogurt takes longer to make and requires an uninterrupted supply of electricity. If any stage of the production or refrigeration process is interrupted by a blackout, it would ruin the whole batch of yogurt for the day. Because of this, the company has decided that yogurt production cannot take place when there is a possibility of a blackout. Up until a day or two ago, TEPCO had only given a few hours or a day’s notice before announcing cancellations of blackouts.

The report also mentions shortages of natto. One large factory in Ibaraki prefecture was damaged in the earthquake and had top stop production. Some repairs have been made, and they are now producing natto at 80% of their normal rate.

Now that blackouts have been put on hold, production can probably resume. However, because demand for remains high, shortages will probably continue.

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FTV reports on how Subway restaurants in Japan are proudly using vegetables from Ibaraki prefecture, despite radiation fears from consumers:

Ten days ago, the Japanese government placed restrictions on the sale and shipment of spinach and a few other vegetables from the areas near Fukushima after radiation tests found amounts that exceeded safety standards. Ibaraki spinach was included in the list of banned items.

Subway apparently does not use much spinach, but it does buy another leafy vegetable from Ibaraki: lettuce. They’ve decided to honor their contracts with farms in Ibaraki and use that lettuce in their subs. The lettuce is, of course, double-tested for radiation before it is shipped out. So far, tests have found amounts that are well within safe background levels.

While some consumers might be worried about buying vegetables from Ibaraki, Tochigi, and the Tohuku region, businesses like subway seem to be betting that the positive PR they get from their support of local farmers will outweigh any concerns about radiation. I’ve seen several other restaurants and shops that have put up signs proudly proclaiming that they sell or use vegetables from Tohoku. A lot of shoppers will probably be happy buying and eating those vegetables, since their actions will contribute to the economic recovery of the region.

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A sushi restaurant in Taiwan is getting some attention from the media after it bought a Geiger counter to reassure customers about the safety of its food:

“When the disaster struck Japan, our owner was very concerned about the subsequent problems. After we were briefed about the Geiger counter, we purchased it right away. This way our customers can put their minds at ease, and I think it is necessary to safeguard them.”

The restaurant’s owner says offering the gauge is as much about reassurance as checking food. Japanese food offered at the restaurant has already been inspected by authorities, and it does not come from the radiation-affected areas of Japan.

Looks like a clever ploy to get some easy publicity by taking advantage of the media’s radiation obsession.

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Taiwanese authorities are claiming that they’ve detected trace amounts of radiation in a shipment of fava beans imported from Japan to Taiwan:

Taiwan’s Cabinet-level Atomic Energy Council Radiation Monitoring Center said in a statement that a small amount of iodine and cesium had been found on a batch of Japanese fava beans imported to the island on Friday. The center said 11 becquerels of iodine and 1 becquerel of cesium were detected.

The amount of radiation was well below Taiwan’s legal limit and not harmful to human health, an official from the center told The Associated Press.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to deal with the media.

The radiation was detected on the surface of the beans in one batch, the official said. He did not know where in Japan the beans originated.

The article is extremely vague. It does not specify what it means by “becquerels.” It only says that the radiation level was well below the Taiwanese legal limit. Is it becquerel per kilogram, or something else? In Japan, news agencies have been reporting radiation using becquerel per kilogram, with the legal limit for iodine-131 in spinach at 2,000 becquerel per kilogram.

It’s quite possible that beans from Fukushima or Ibaraki would have some contamination, but it seems unlikely that beans harvested after the nuclear accident would already be making their way to Taiwan.

Update: The shipment of beans has been destroyed, so nobody will eat them. The beans were apparently from Kagoshima.

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Radioactivity tests have found that milk from Fukushima and spinach from Ibaraki contain levels of iodine-131 that exceed safety standards:

In raw milk samples collected from a farm in the town of Kawamata in Fukushima prefecture, up to 1,510 becquerel per kilogram of iodine-131 were detected, about five times the limit of 300 becquerel per kilogram set by law.

“This will be a huge blow to dairy farms all over Fukushima,” said Yukimitsu Sato, a spokesman for the prefecture’s dairy farm cooperative, which represents about 60% of local dairy farms, including the one in Kawamata.

The prefecture had not shipped milk for consumption since the earthquake, and the health ministry’s announcement came just as the cooperative was preparing to begin shipping again.

“We were just starting to see a ray of hope,” said Mr. Sato, adding that the cooperative was not told about the radioactivity tests.

According to the cooperative, Fukushima prefecture’s 516 dairy farms usually ship 254 tons of milk every day, with annual sales of about ¥10 billion (about $125 million). About 1.3% of dairy cows in Japan were in Fukushima as of 2008, according to the prefecture.

The health ministry also detected higher-than-normal levels of iodine-131 from spinach samples collected Saturday from farms in six locations in Ibaraki prefecture, south of Fukushima.

One spinach sample collected from the city of Hitachinaka, located about 120 kilometers south of the plant, contained 8,420 becquerel per kilogram of iodine-131, according to the health ministry. The normal amount set by Japanese law is 2,000 becquerel per kilogram.

Another spinach sample from Takahagi, a city closer to Fukushima, recorded 15,020 becquerel per kilogram, more than seven times the normal amount. From that sample, radioactive caesium 134 and caesium 137 were also detected in slightly larger amounts than the limits set by law.

The Ibaraki prefectural government has asked farmers to suspend shipments of spinach, according to the Ibaraki branch of the National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations.

An official in Ibaraki prefecture said that he couldn’t deny the possibility that some spinach from the prefecture has already reached consumers. The prefecture produces about 14,000 tons of spinach a year, about 5% of overall production in Japan.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said at a press conference Saturday that it was prepared to offer compensation to farmers.

It is also being reported that tap water in the Kanto region has been found to contain trace amounts of iodine-131, but the levels do not exceed safety standards:

Radiation was detected in water in Tokyo and the prefectures of Tochigi, Gunma, Saitama, Chiba and Niigata, Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology said today in a faxed statement.

Tochigi Prefecture’s reading of radioactive iodine-131 was 77 Becquerel per kilogram, the highest among the prefectures, while the level of iodine found in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district was 1.5. All the numbers were within the 300 Bq/kg limit, the ministry said.

This is not an unexpected development, nor is it a sign of a new radiation leak. The explosions at the Fukushima plant earlier in the week caused higher-than-normal radiation readings throughout Tokyo (which have since dropped considerably). At such levels, direct exposure would not harm human health, but it could build up to unhealthy levels in crops and livestock that feeds on local vegetation.

To summarize:

Iodine-131 in Vegetables

• Japanese legal limit on radiation in spinach (and other vegetables): 2,000 per kilogram
• Amount of radiation detected in spinach from Takahagi, Ibaraki prefecture: 15,020 becquerel per kilogram (plus caesium 134 and caesium 137)
• Amount of radiation detected in spinach from Hitachinaka, Ibaraki prefecture: 8,420 becquerel per kilogram.

Iodine-131 in Milk & Water

• Japan’s legal safety limit on radiation in water / milk: 300 becquerel per kilogram
• Amount of radiation detected in milk from Kawamata, Fukushima prefecture: 1,510 becquerel per kilogram
• Amount of radiation detected in Tochigi tap water: 77 becquerel per kilogram
• Amount of radiation detected in Tokyo tap water (Shinjuku): 1.5 becquerel per kilogram

Experts have said that the greatest health impact from Chernobyl came from the consumption of contaminated food. In that case, authorities did not properly warn people about radiation in crops, milk, meat, and water. In this case, Japanese authorities appear to be restricting the sale of contaminated food.

Even if future tests find that radiation levels have dropped, this will still probably kill the agriculture business in Ibaraki and Fukushima. One can expect that consumers will be checking the packages of vegetables at supermarkets, and avoiding anything from that region.

Although this only seems to be effecting a small region of Japan, the New York Times is speculating that this will probably make people stop buying Kobe beef and Japanese sushi.

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This year’s crop of goya (bitter melon) is particularly bad, as this FTV news report shows:

It’s not because Okinawans are “too lazy” to grow the fruit. The crop failure is a result of this year’s abnormally cold and cloudy weather.

A visit to an Okinawan goya farm reveals a lot of tiny and misshapen fruit, none of which will grow to proper maturity. The harvest will only be about 10% of the amount harvested last year. As a result, goya prices have skyrocketed, making the fruit “more expensive than steak.” This means that many Okinawan restaurants will have to raise their prices or drop goya dishes from their menus.

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Last week, animal rights activists mailed free copies of “The Cove” were mailed to every household Taiji, Japan. Here’s a short report about Taiji’s reaction, from Sunday evening’s “Bankisha” news program:

Louie Psihoyos, director of “The Cove” and founder of Oceanic Preservation Society, said, “The people in Taiji deserve to know what millions of others around the world have learned about their town by seeing ‘The Cove.’ ”

“The Cove” was released in summer 2009 in the U.S., Europe and other countries. Theaters in Japan began showing the movie, edited specially for the Japanese market to hide the identities of Taiji fishermen to protect their privacy, last July.

The couple Taiji residents interview say that they won’t be watching the DVD. One woman says she wasn’t interested, so she threw it away.

The packages had no person’s name listed as the sender, something that is apparently quite odd in Japan. The distribution was supposedly the work of an anonymous group that calls itself “Umi o kangaeru gurupu” (a group that thinks about the ocean).

A few days ago, it was also announced that the Japanese dub of “The Cove” was being distributed for free via the film’s official homepage. It isn’t mentioned in the above report, and there’s a good reason for that. If you try to access the download page from a Japanese internet connection, you will receive the following message:

Our systems detect that you are based in Japan. We cannot allow viewing or download at this time.

The Cove DVD is available for purchase and rental in Japan from Medallion Media.

So, there you have it: they’ll distribute their movie for free in Japanese, but not to Japan. Great activism…

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The above-pictured bag contains Peppato, a pepper-flavored rice cracker developed as part of a collaborative project between Iwatsuki Confectionary Company and junior high school girls at Shinagawa Joshi Gakuin. Here’s a short video clip of the press conference announcing the product:

The snack will go on sale at convenience stores across Japan on March 7th.

A reporter tries out the snack, noting that it tastes good and the red, white, and black pepper flavor would match well with beer.

A close-up of the package, showing the name of their high school:

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Animal rights activists are now targeting Yahoo! Japan over the sale of whale meat on its auction and shopping sites:

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a non-profit environmental group based in Washington DC and London UK, released new results of eight whale products purchased recently from Yahoo! Japan Store sites and tested by a laboratory in Japan earlier this month.

Five of the products exceeded the Government of Japan’s safety guidelines for mercury contamination in seafood for human consumption. The average concentration of mercury in the eight products was 1.78 parts per million (ppm), more than four times higher than the ‘safe’ level of 0.4ppm set by the Government.

One whale meat sample was more than 16 times the limit for mercury at 6.5ppm. The sample was sold as “dried whale from Taiji”. Taiji is the town where the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove documented mass killing of dolphins in the nearby bay.

Clare Perry, EIA’s senior campaigner who released the mercury results today in Tokyo, said today: “Yahoo! Japan has a responsibility to end the sale of whale, dolphin and porpoise products to ensure that mercury-contaminated products are no longer sold to their internet customers. Thousands of dolphins, porpoises and small whales continued to be killed around the coast of Japan, posing a threat to the health of anyone who consumes such products.”

Kitty Block, Vice President of the Humane Society International, said today: “Yahoo! Japan is the biggest internet retailer in Japan and we appeal to it to help protect both the people of Japan, who may eat these contaminated products, and also the whales, dolphins and porpoises that are killed in their thousands around the coast.”

Yahoo! Japan is not actually running a whale meat business. The sales are being conducted by third parties that pay fees to Yahoo! to conduct sales via its auction and shop services.

The meat that activists found and purchased came from Minke Whales, Pilot Whales, and Baird’s Beaked Whales – none of which are classified as endangered species. Minke Whales have been hunted as part of Japan’s IWC-approved whaling program, while the other two species are small and/or common enough not to fall under the IWC’s commercial whaling restrictions.

Despite the best efforts of animal rights activists to stir up fear about “poison” and “toxic” whale meat in Japan, they have yet to produce evidence of Japanese people suffering from mercury poisoning as a result of eating whale meat. A 2010 study of over 1,000 residents of Taiji, a Japanese town known for its consumption of whale meat, found that only a handful of people had high levels of mercury in their hair, but nobody was found to have mercury-related health problems. Animal rights activists continue to claim that Taiji is “poisoning” its citizens and the study must have been part of the vast Japanese conspiracy to hide the truth about dangerous dolphin and wheal meat.

Related stories:

• Some people in Japan are criticizing the “spineless” decision to suspend this year’s Antarctic whale hunt.

• A special meeting to discuss whaling is being held at the Tsukiji Market in Tokyo this weekend.
• The director of “The Cove” has mailed free DVD’s of his documentary to every resident of the town of Taiji. (The Guardian deserves special recognition for its bloody photo and sensational headline that manages to include the words “slaughter” and “handful of thugs” to describe the dolphin hunt. )

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White Rabbit Press has created the video in which they take the Popin’ Cookin’ candy sushi (as seen in a famous viral video) and serve it on naked body of a woman:

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Barely a month has passed since Groupon took a beating in the Japanese media over one of its New Year’s food deals. Now they’re making headlines again, this time for a deal that was cancelled before most of the customers could use their coupons:

Groupon was offering a deal through which one could purchase 1000 yen worth of taiyaki for 500 yen. The taiyaki store set a limit at 1,700 coupons, but concerns about losing money made it cancel the deal and only accept 400 of the coupons. The remaining 1,300 coupons, which were supposed to be valid until June, are now worthless.

The store claims that Groupon was very aggressive in making them agree to a very high number of coupons, arguing that it would really help their business. Apparently the deal was set up so Groupon would take 250 yen “handling charge” out of every 500 yen sale, meaning that the store only received 250 yen for what would normally be sold for 1,000 yen. The store agreed, believing that new customers who used the Groupon deal would buy extra stuff. Instead, the Groupon customers were supposedly quite stingy and most limited their shopping to the coupon deal. The store says it had to cancel the deal because the survival of the business was more important than honoring the coupon.

Customers who were unable to use the coupons will receive refunds from Groupon.

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FTV follows around some foreigners who love Japanese snacks:

The limited edition flavors exist for several reasons. Some are sold on a seasonal basis, using flavors that Japanese people might associate with a specific season. Others are regional souvenirs, only sold in certain areas of Japan using the flavor of famous local foods. There are also special edition flavors and packages for entrance exam season, which are supposed to be lucky for students.

Towards the end of the video, they take a few Australian girls to fugashi, wheat glutten puffs that look a lot like poop. (They don’t include subtitles when a girl says, “it looks awful.”) The girls are taken to a fugashi factory, where they learn how it is produced.

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A family in Nara prefecture found this person-shaped daikon radish growing in their garden:

They even gave the daikon a name: Daisuke. After making a face for Daisuke and putting a pink ribbon on his head (because he’s transsexual?), they slice up his body and feast on it!

Afterwards, they pray to the spirit of Daisuke the daikon:

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Japan’s whaling fleet has temporarily halted its activities, apparently because of the violent and dangerous tactics used by Sea Shepherd:

“Putting safety as a priority, the fleet has halted scientific whaling for now. We are currently considering what to do hereafter,” said Tatsuya Nakaoku, an official at the Fisheries Agency.

When asked if Japan was considering bringing back the fleet earlier than planned, he said this remained an option and added that Japan’s whaling plans were not going smoothly.

Sea Shepherd had been using their usual tactics of maneuvering their boats dangerously close to whaling ships while throwing bottles of acid at the whalers. They also tried to use ropes to damage the screws of whaling ships.

The halt may actually be caused by Sea Shepherd, or it could have have another reason. Here are three possibilities:

• By halting the hunt for a year or two, it could kill Sea Shepherd’s sensational reality TV show. Without crazy new video footage of “activists” attacking Japanese ships, donations to Sea Shepherd would decrease.
• Japan has been pushing for the IWC to allow limited coastal whaling in Japanese territorial waters. Japanese representatives have made statements implying that Japan would reduce or cancel its Antarctic program if the coastal whaling program was approved. By preemptively halting its Antarctic hunt, Japan could be trying to improve its chances of being allowed to conduct coastal hunts.
• The whalers could be attempting to gain sympathy from the Japanese public, which could lead to an increase in government support for the whaling program.

Here’s a news report about this story from Japan’s TBS:

They talk to a chef who runs a restaurant in Asakusa that specializes in whale meat. He is outraged that the whaling program seems to have given up because of Sea Shepherd’s attacks.

An official says that existing stockpiles of whale meat should last through this year and next year. If the next hunt is able to take place, there probably shouldn’t be any major impact on the price of whale meat.

Yoshimasa Hayashi of the opposition Liberal Democratic Party is shown criticizing the decision to halt the hunt. He does not think that it is right to cave in to the demands of law-breaking activists who behave like pirates.

A few selected comments from Reddit:

A few points about the whaling:

• The whaling takes place in International waters. The “Australian Whale Sanctuary” is recognised only by Australia and New Zealand — Internationally recognised national borders extend nowhere near this. The “Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary” is an area defined by the IWC, and no commercial whaling is allowed there by agreement — although whaling for scientific research is allowed (see below).
• The whaling is not illegal by any measure of the word. The IWC passed a moratorium banning commercial whaling in 1986, but they specifically allowed whaling for scientific purposes to continue.
• They purposefully did not define what “scientific” meant so as to allow countries (like Japan) to continue Whaling. It also allows the selling of meat gained through this method. Without this ‘loophole’, the moratorium never would have passed since it didn’t have the support.
• Passing a moratorium with the ‘loophole’ had many practical benefits. It allowed a wide-reaching ban on commercial whaling to come into effect while setting strict limitations on what the whaling countries were allowed to catch — that’s the quota mentioned in the articles. Before the moratorium, Japanese whaling was roughly ten-fold higher, so its hard to argue against this.

“On the current situation:

• What the protest vessels are doing is not only incredibly dangerous, but it is downright illegal. Attacking a ship in international waters, or forcibly boarding one, are amoung the most serious offences in maritime law.
• Throwing ropes under a ship in order to foul a propeller is equally serious. They’re attempting to disable a ship in one of the most dangerous environments on Earth.
• One of the protest vessels has large metal blade on the side (which they call the ‘can opener’) which is designed to cut into a ship when they side-swipe it. That’s not exactly the hallmark of peaceful law-abiding protesters.

I could go on but the point I’m trying to make is that the Japanese, regardless of whether their actions are morally reprehensible or not, are acting legally, whereas the protest vessels are not. We shouldn’t be supporting a group of vigilantes sailing down with the express purpose of attacking law-abiding vessels in international waters.

As a side note, if they were attacking oil vessels in the gulf they’d be called terrorists.” – nambio

“I am a licensed merchant mariner and spend most of my year being at sea. Let me enlighten you on the tactics used of sea shepard. They knowingly and willing ram other vessels, intentionally try to disable their propulsion or steering, board other vessels and storm their bridge. But what they are doing can kill people. It is only by sheer luck they have not done so yet.

If planned parenthood workers had chains thrown at their tires, and their cars were rammed in an effort to impede them from getting to work we would not call it non-violent protest as long as no one died. It is malicious acts that put human life at extreme risks in order to justify a belief.

I dont care if someone is for or against whaling; some deck hand is not responsible for that decision, and he or she should not receive capital punishment for a perceived crime that a vigilante feels they committed.” – zackatzert

“As a Norwegian I eat both Minke whale and pork, and the pork gives me the bigger moral qualms. Yes, really.

Not only is the Minke whale probably less advanced in the cognitive department – as least as far as we know – but it also lived a free and natural life roaming the seas until its unlikely capture, while the pig suffered for its whole life in some cramped confinement as a slave of the agro-industry before being killed with no chance of escape.” – zap

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FTV news reports on a recent article the Guardian that attacks Japan for allowing the hunting of sharks. The author of the piece, Justin McCurry, refers to the shark fin trade as a “messy, blood-spattered business” that apparently threatens to wipe out certain species of sharks (“the genocide of a species”).

The reporters visit Kesennuma, a city in Miyagi prefecture that is the center of Japan’s shark meat industry:

A scholar interviewed by FTV says that Japan’s international image has been damaged by its official position regarding bluefin tuna, making it an easy target for such campaigns.

The report contains various scenes of delicious-looking shark fin dishes. At one point, a reporter visits a restaurant in Yokohama’s Chinatown and eats some shark fin. The restaurant uses shark fin from Kesennuma. It is noted that China’s growing economic prosperity has lead to a huge increase in international orders for Kesennuma shark fin, which has a reputation for high quality.

An employee of a fishing company in Kesennuma says that it is important to carry out shark catches in a sustainable manner, and his statements imply that measures are being taken to do just that. A fisherman interviewed point out that the non-fin parts of the sharks are not wasted. Meat is used in kamaboko and skin is used for bags and other products.

A spokesman for another fishing company says that to discuss this issue in a rational manner, one must lay aside emotional arguments about how sad or pathetic it is to see so many dead sharks. He seems very confident that things are being done in a sustainable manner.

Note: McCurry states in his article that 80% of the sharks targeted by Kesennuma fishermen are blue sharks. According to the IUCN, blue sharks are not an endangered species. However, some professional environmentalists quoted in his piece speculate that the blue shark might possibly maybe be facing a serious threat of extinction.

Update: Justin McCurry saw this post and tweeted a short response.

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A news report about an event in Tokyo in which people turned fruit peels into works of art:

The event was led by Yoshihiro Okada, the author of the book “New Ways of Peeling a Tangerine” (available on Amazon.co.jp).

A few of his fruit peel art tutorials can be found on Youtube:

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According to custom, you are supposed to face towards this year’s lucky direction and eat the whole sushi roll without stopping. You are not allowed to talk until you’ve finished eating it.

2011′s lucky direction is South-Southeast (南南東). If you live in Japan and don’t feel like making your own Eho-maki, just head down to your local supermarket: they usually have plenty of pre-made rolls available.

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