A Japanese news report about a group of 15 Chinese “trainee” workers who survived the March 11th tsunami, went back to China, and are now coming back to Tohoku to once again work in factories:
Among the group are five workers whose lives were saved by Sato Mitsuru, who was commissioner with the Sato Fisheries Corporation on March 11th. After leading Chinese trainee workers to safety, Sato went searching for his family and was swept away by the tsunami. The story of Sato’s death was major news in China, where he was hailed as a hero.
According to the Yomiuri, the number of Chinese trainee workers in Japan dropped dramatically after March 11th. Thousands fled the Tohoku and Kanto regions due to radiation fears. Although numbers are slowly increasing, some are apparently steering clear of Tohoku.
If you watch Nihon TV’s Zip! morning show, you probably recognize the dog in the picture above. It’s Zippei (ジッペイ), a cute and fluffy Samoyed dog that travels around Japan as the television show’s mascot.
Every day, Zippei visits a different area, interacting with locals and spreading awareness about the show. The clip below shows a typical Zippei segment:
As you can see, Zippei is extremely well-behaved and never seems to make any noise. This bizarrely unnatural lack of barking gave rise to internet rumors that the Zippei had undergone surgery to remove his vocal cords. Some netizens who claim to have attended Zippei events said they saw the dog trying to bark, but not making any actual bark sounds.
The Asahi Shimbun is now reporting that the internet rumors were true: Zippei had a vocal cordectomy. The procedure took place before Zippei appeared on TV. It was supposedly not a pre-condition for the dog’s participation on the program. NTV is not commenting on whether it approves or disapproves of such surgical procedures .
According to Wikipedia, some people in the United States and Europe consider it cruel. It has even been outlawed in some areas:
The procedure is outlawed as a form of mutilation in the United Kingdom and all countries that have signed the European Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals. In the United States, devocalization is illegal by state law in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and by city ordinance in Warwick, Rhode Island. Efforts to ban devocalization are underway in other states.
If the 2channel comments picked up by Itai News are any indication, it seems that quite a few Japanese people also strongly disapprove of de-barking surgery and are disgusted by NTV [むごい話だ / 動物虐待じゃん / ひどいね / 日テレは動物をオモチャにするのが好きだな ] .
The Chairman of the UNSCEAR has announced that the health effects from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster will be relatively small because radiation was leaked into the sea instead of the air, and because evacuations of residents were carried out promptly:
The fact that some radioactive releases spread over the ocean instead of populated areas also contributed to limiting the consequences, said Wolfgang Weiss of the U.N. Scientific Committee on the effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR).
“As far as the doses we have seen from the screening of the population … they are very low,” Weiss told Reuters. This was partly “due to the rapid evacuation and this worked very well.”
[...]
Asked whether he was optimistic that the overall health effects would be quite small, Weiss said: “If we find out that what we know now is representing the situation, then the answer would be yes … the health impact would be low.”
(Weiss) remarked that the situation in Fukushima was not at all comparable to Chernobyl — the nuclear reactor whose specter has created unduly fearful expectations in many people.
ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan remarked on the U.N.’s sound approach to its assessment. “When you’re looking for effect,” she says, “you look first at the high exposure groups to see if you can determine any impact. Not even right there, in Japan, have they discovered any kind of health impact from the wrecked plant.”
ACSH’s Dr. Josh Bloom is not surprised by UNSCEAR’s initial findings. He recently addressed the wildly disproportionate health fears of the American public following the nuclear plant damage in Japan. Much of that concern stems from an uninformed, outdated reaction to the entire concept of nuclear radiation, he says.
For the last several years, South Korean ultra-nationalists have been lobbying publishing companies and governments around the world, demanding that “East Sea” replace or be written alongside “Sea of Japan” in maps and books. They are angry about how people in other countries call the sea to the east of Korea by a
“pro-Japanese” name.
Although there are mountains of historical evidence that show widespread international use of the name predates Japan’s opening to the world in the 1850′s, these Korean ultra-nationalists insist that Japanese imperialists are responsible for the name.
As an alternative, they suggest that the entire world adopt the translation of their Korea-centric term for the sea: “East Sea.”
Their misinformation campaign appears to have gained some ground in areas of the United States with large ethnic Korean populations. Several days ago, they tried to trick the state of Virginia into requiring the use of “East Sea” in its textbooks. Luckily, the State Senate rejected their plan.
The Senate’s Education and Health Committee voted down the legislation 7 to 8, brought to a vote by Democrat Dave Marsden representing a constituency with a large Korean-American community.
The bill was strongly opposed by Republicans who called the measure “micromanagement” and raised concerns over possible strife and disorder that could arise from the legislation.
Korea argues that historically the more common name for the body of water between Korea and Japan is “East Sea” and NOT the “Sea of Japan.”
If you live in Virginia and would like to express your displeasure with Senator David Marsden’s blatant pandering to foreign ultra-nationalists, contact him via Twitter, Facebook, or his website.
A photo of a school lunch served at public schools in Tokushima city (bread, one weiner, milk, and corn soup):
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)
Somebody hacked the YouTube account of LDP lawmaker Shoji Nishida and put up ads for Russian camgirls:
The video has already been taken down, but caused much consternation when it was discovered early in the morning on Jan. 30.
According to Nishida’s representatives, it is believed that someone hacked into Nishida’s YouTube account — which the Diet member uses to post videos related to his political activities on his website — and posted the obscene material.
Screencaps and backup videos are available via 2channelaggregateblogs (maybe NSFW – although women appear to be fully-clothed).
