What good luck - or perhaps good karma...

I've been lamenting the increase in littering lately.  Behind the old pachinko parlor where I often park in a grey zone of legality it has been getting very very dirty.   So working on the assumption that I can't complain about the grottiness if I don't make active efforts to improve it, I took a pair of  gunte  - litterally army gloves but there actually coarse woven cotton gloves that are cheap enough to be disposable if need be -  to the station with a garbage bag this morning to clean up the area.  And if I do say so myself, it looked much better.

Fast forward to this evening.

Hiro & I caught the same train home.  Often he calls as he finishes work, if I am still in the uni library I can make the same train as he does quite easily.  Carriage 4.   When we arrived I showed him the improvement in the appearance of the area.  By chance the local govt. had been out tagging bikes for removal, which was actually quite reasonable since it seems like some have been dumped there, and bike infringement notices had been carelessly dropped, like  losing betting slips on race day.  I picked them up & left them in the garbage bag from the morning....

Fast forward 20 mins...

Wandering around the supermarket to find something to go with the morning's soba noodles....the checkout....AAAAARGHGHGHHHHH my wallet.  I had it as I came out of the subway.  Gone...  Only yesterday I had had a clear sensation that this would be the first time ever I would wear a wallet out before losing it....  Aaaarghhhhh.... back to the station... look... look... back to the rubbish bag.... back to the bike parking area - quite dark.... arrrghh.... Hiro not very impressed.... understandable since I lose things so often it might be considered a hobby rather than a habit..... to the subway ... nothing.... back to the bikes.... the rubbish bags....arrghh... the police box....aaarghhhh

Hiro calmly fills out the form.... $250 dollars (thank goodness I paid the phone bill yesterday... what a pity I didn't extend my commuter pass today as I'd planned)  1 credit card (hoping my Australian one isn't there...), 1 ATM card, (hoping my Australian one isn't there....) 1 train pass (phew I registered it) I foreigners card (thank goodness they are still being processed at the local office), 1 student card, (can't get into the library without it....) 1 staff card (is that a sackable offence?)   the plethora of supermarket and electronic store loyalty cards aren't important enough to go on the policeman's list (lucky experience has guided me to always use the points rather than save them....).  The policeman tells Hiro to write on the form he is filling in that it's proxy because I can't "do" Japanese...I ask Hiro to fill out because I can't write kanji neatly... I didn't check  to see what he wrote... 

Home via the places we've been.  Nothing at the bike stand area.  Toss the leaves with my shoe.. karma... please ....St Anthony..... arrghhhh.....  Payback for  being sanctimonious about littering?  arghhh.... Hiro marvels at the irony of dropping a wallet while being indignant about littering....

Walked the length and back. Asked a girl talking on a mobile phone if she'd seen it.  No....she'd just arrived...

arghhh...

One last kick of the leaves.....YATTTAAAAAAAA..... found it... still there,, in the shadowed part of the shadows, behind a witches hat (triange shaped road marker thing).... oh my goodness... what a relief.... 

Home two hours later than anticipated but I'll sleep well tonight, once the adrenalin stops...

Pictorial records of tsunami clean up progress from Kyodo

http://blogs.sacbee.com/photos/2011/09/japan-marks-6-months-since-ear.html

This is a link to a website with amazing pictorial records of the tsunami from Kyodo.

There are three photos of each site. The first the immediate damage of the tsunami, the second taken in June and the third in September.  Rikuzen Takata, where I spent a week, is among the photos.  It's a great testament to the effort that has been made by locals, the self defence force, the US military, three levels of government, and tens if not hundreds of thousands of volunteers. 

Reconstruction has barely begun - plenty of places still don't have electricity -  but the progress has been phenomenal.  

Akebi - a cooking challenge

Inside the box of goodies was akebi - I have no idea what it is in English. It's a Tohoku food apparently, Yamagata people are thought particularly savage, even from their fellow Tohoku-ites because they eat the bitter skin.  According to kyoto foodie it's considered a fruit - the fleshy inside part is like a rambutan or lychee in taste but has fleshy seeds like a pomegranate (only much softer and fleshier).   Also according to kyoto foodie the wild ones split open naturally whereas the cultivated ones need a bit of help from a knife.  I guess these were wild ones.

Hiro's suggestion was cooking like miso eggplant, which I did.  Very tasty. I cooked two  - peeled one and left the other as is.  I liked the skin on.  Definitely not the food of a savage!

Akebi

Cooked Akebi

A feast from Akita

Akita's signature dish - Kiritanpo.

On Sunday out of the blue Hiro's mother sent a food parcel (since we can't buy food in Tokyo).  Some vegies and chestnuts from the vegie patch, some local apples, oldest uncle's new season rice and.... kiritampo.  Kiritampo is the signature dish of Akita prefecture & Hiro's mother cooks it to perfection.  It's a chicken hot pot with mushrooms - mostly maitake and shiitake but some shimeji as well - gobo, naganegi (leek?), and seri (a relative of cress I guess).    It came in five parts.  The stock, in a 2 litre pet bottle, the cooked mushrooms, gobo and chicken together in a plastic bag, the kiritampo rice sticks in their supermarket packet, and the negi and seri in different bags.   She would have simmered the chicken for hours... very tasty.  It took all of 5 minutes to compile and 5 minutes to heat up.   Delicious, and very hard to find in Tokyo.

Next time I will take the camera off macro and wipe the table properly....

A Japan picture quiz

I will post the answers in a few days.
Actually more truthfully it's a Honshu Island picture quiz - the warm up activity for class on Mon.

I have a couple of other quizes on here if you're into quizes.
http://ponkanchan.blogspot.com/2011/05/japan-food-quiz.html
http://ponkanchan.blogspot.com/2011/05/kyoto-quiz.html
http://ponkanchan.blogspot.com/2011/05/tokyo-quiz.html

Japan, History & Culture

Japan and science & technology

Japan and food

I can't say it's the most representative food, but it's from the collection I have.

Japan and nature

I've been putting together a few photo collages to go with an essay writing unit I am making.

This is the first, Japan and nature.

Radiation 4

A map of caesium levels from today's Japan times-
the headline of the article was "Okutama cesium
levels seen spiking" Okutama is in the far west of
tokyo.  It's a pity Gunma, Ibaragi, Saitama,
Chiba, Miyagi  & Tochigi as well as fukushima
get lost in  Tokyo's quest to preserve itself....

I had planned to write a radiation 4 because radiation 3 ends with the sense that I am not concerned.

That's not  actually true. I am concerned, my concern though is less about the food as it pertains to my health but more about 
1) the regions that are most affected - the risks Tokyoites face pale into significance against the situation in Fukushima and   
 2) vested interests corrupting and distorting information, and so few checks on whether people are endangering others in efforts to profiteer.   The incentives for selling goods suspected to be contaminated are high, the ability to police people doing so are very low.

I'd really like altruism to shine through, but it's not going to happen. Perhaps some on a small scale, but not systemically.  It's not the way the world works, despite my naive hopes to the contrary.

I have too many things I have to write for uni at the moment to be able to take the time to do justice to the thought bubble though....

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20111008a1.html

Have you seen this person? subway signs - the cat

The new subway poster.
Doing your makeup maybe bothersome to others.
The whole notion of doing makeup in public kind of defeats the whole purpose of makeup - artifice but never mind.  I am always impressed by the skill with which people attach false eye lashes on the train... talk about a steady hand.

Summer of 2011 - radiation (3)

There isn’t a lot of faith in the food chain security. Given the repeated history of foodsubstitution scandals, it’s not surprising.[i] While I was in Akita, Hiro’s parents’ neighbour was saying that contaminated rice would be mixed with non contaminated rice and sold as safe.   She had no evidence that it was actually happening, just based on previous experience of food safety cover ups it was a foregone conclusion. My guess is her sentiments are typical.  But she also didn’t feel empowered to take any kind of action against it. It’s not surprising since contaminated soil was being shipped in on railway trucks… Assuming this is true, and it seems to be, the stupidity of the powers that be in staggering…. Why settle for one area with contamination when you can spread it across the country….  In the supermarkets, though vegetables are mostly clearly identified by origin, meat is now simply labelled as “kokusan”   - domestic.  The decision isn’t coming from the government level.  People can’t have faith in food chain if information is obviously being withheld. People have the right to make their own decisions.   It seems like a great pity for farmers from southern prefectures whose meat is being lumped in with the rest of Japan.  The lack of information pushes many people to buy imported – despite the fact that US beef will almost certainly have been fed  Hormone Growth Promotants… but that’s not on people’s radar.

Concern about radiation is quite rational but there is a lot of inconsistency in people’s concern about perceived risks.  Peter Sandman has written extensively on the way that people perceive risk. His arguments hold true for Fukushima.[ii] On the one hand you get people fastidious about avoiding food from contaminated areas notably Fukushima, Miyagi, Iwate, Tochigi,  Gunma, Ibaragi. Some people go as far as excluding Saitama and all of Tohoku.   But at the same time people are still buying pre-cooked food from the supermarket and eating out where there are usually no labels for identifying where food comes from.  People engage willingly in many kinds of risky habits – but as Peter Sandman would say – the fact that it’s voluntary makes a big difference.  People smoke, eat tuna that hasn’t been tested for heavy metal residue,  ride without bicycle helmets,  talk on mobile phones, (do both at the same time), rush to get on the doors closing on trains, go rock fishing without life jackets, opt out of polio and other vaccinations,  go skiing, allow themselves to become obese, don’t wash their hands after going to the toilet, drive cars, drink bicycle-ride ad infinitum.    Obviously none of this changes the danger of radiation, but the point is people don’t act with the same attitude to risk, even with radiation.

Hiro & I are actually taking a pretty relaxed attitude to radiation and we haven’t changed our consumption habits at all. (something that will get approving nods of agreement from some and incredulous shaking of heads from others)  Since I’ve lived in Japan I’ve had a preference for rice from Akita (Hiro's home prefecture which is one of the major rice producing areas), vegies from Tohoku – where possible (because Tohoku is by and large poor and needs the support),  Japanese pork, Australian or Japanese beef (almost always Australian because of the price, never US beef which has hormone growth promotants in it).  None of this has changed.  It’s something I can justify with no sense that I am playing Russian roulette.  The rationalisation is essentially twofold: I don’t see the risk as being particularly dangerous, and I want to support the local economies.

Summer of 2011 - radiation (2)

Anxiety surged when Tokyo water was listed as too contaminated for children to drink. Over the summer doubts regained momentum and anxiety levels intensified.  Contaminated beef reached the market. Food that had been declared “safe” was found in fact to be contaminated; the cattle had eaten contaminated feed.  The cattle had been tested for external radiation, but not internal radiation and the meat, sold in supermarkets and butchers made its way to the consumer. There has been an outcry, understandably,  that checking feedstuffs for radiation was not on the radar of agricultural co-ops, or the government.  Interestingly the criticism has focused almost exclusively on the safety of the food chain – a very legitimate concern – but if the feed stuffs in the area had been contaminated by atmospheric radiation to the point where it made radiation levels in feedstuff unacceptably high… what about the people living in the area? The amount of radiation a consumer will get from eating beef that has eaten contaminated feedstuffs, is presumably a tiny fraction of the level of exposure that local people have received. At the same time people in the region are victims of radiation, there is also suspicion of them being expressed – are the farmers victims or are “they” complicit in “our” irradiation?  Are the victims also the enemy?

Information often conflicts. Academic studies about the extent of damage are contradicted in other papers. It’s hard to know what or who to believe, which is part of the reason people are so sceptical.  It seems that people are talking about it less and have little stomach for argument, not because the situation has changed much, but ultimately because people  have to come to their own understandings and develop their own framework to slot in new information. The “authoritative” sources have got it wrong too many times – why would people believe them. Ultimately people have to reach their own understanding of the situation, abut who to believe and what constitutes acceptable risk. People seem to gravitate to others with a similar perspective and become defensive if their opinion is challenged. It’s understandable.

Personally I don’t ascribe to the view that the government is all lies.   There have been some noble efforts among major government failings. Former PM Kan’s unilateral decision to order Hamaoka nuclear plant to close was brave, defying the power nuclear lobby who also judged Fukushima to be safe.   Hamaoka, like Fukushima, is built on a fault line next to the ocean in a place overdue for a major earthquake.  I  can’t say I trust the government, but I also don’t really know what people mean when they accuse the government of major covering up and not telling the full story.  General accusations are harder to prove or disprove than specific examples.  In a way this point of view reminds me of being in China when people would not believe that the US could have made a mistake with the coordinates  when they bombed the Chinese embassy.  Science makes mistakes and is full of uncertainties.  Any attempt to arrive at a definitive safe level of radioactive elements is just guessing.

Comparisons are sometimes made with the government's cover up of  Minimata mecury poisoning in the 1950s and 60s. But times have changed...there are so many individuals and groups out with radiation measures, there is simply not the capacity to lie for any length of time about information that can be scrutinised by outsiders.   It’s ironic that positive tests for caesium in beef make people more suspicious of beef rather than more willing to accept that the food chain is being monitored effectively. But given the history of food scandals, assurances are being given to a sceptical audience.

Summer of 2011 - radiation (1)

The typhoon season has started and the summer recedes a little further with each down pour of rain. The 6pm chime that rings out around the neighbourhood to remind children to go home is now chiming in the darkness, and soon will begin ringing at 5pm for the winter.  Along with electricity and power savings, the summer   of 2011 has been characterized by fear and uncertainty.  With the approach of autumn the energy crisis is waning, JR will resume ordinary train schedules soon, the "setsuden" power saving measures are also winding down.  The matter of radiation however is a problem that is not going away.   

It's a difficult topic to write about, high stress and easily emotive and I have waxed and waned about writing about it for the past few months.  I don't  have an agenda on the matter,  though for transparency I should say Hiro is involved in subsidy payments to beef farmers in Fukushima, Miyagi, Iwate and Tochigi prefectures who have been affected by radiation. It probably doesn't alter my perspective though it may heighten consciousness about / empathy for their situation.

After the quake,many people who didn't flee Tokyo and surrounds took smug comfort in not being "flyjin" (a pejorative for foreigners who escaped the threat of nuclear catastrophe).  Foreigners slunk back to Tokyo attempting to justify to the smug why they left in the first place. Both sets took comfort in being 200km from Fukushima - even if we rejected the Japanese govt's 30km exclusion zone, the US 80km was still somewhere up in Ibaragi - far from Tokyoites.  Assurances from the UK nuclear experts that there was no possible way that it could be worse than Chernobyl comforted the doubters.  People took comfort in the fact that food was being tested and the commonsensical rationale that radioactive discharges into the water would be dispersed, the way that the British dumping of radioactive waste water in the Irish Sea dispersed, though I don’t recall British dumping into the Irish Sea ever making it into the news. No wonder the British government was so eager to stand beside the Japanese govt. and TEPCO…

The cover of the New Yorker magazine that co-incided with the cherry blossom season.