FMD, the next stage

As of midnight yesterday, all restrictions on stock movement in Miyazaki prefecture  ended.  Three months after the first signs of foot and mouth disease and after the slaughter of 290,000 pigs and cattle, there are no signs of the the disease remaining.  Through the coming months and years,  monitoring will be vigilant.  Not enough is known at this stage about why the outbreak occurred, and a further outbreak is possible; however if it occurs again,  a lot has been learned about how to contain it.

Now that the disease is contained, the effort will shift to helping farmers get back on their feet. It's likely to take years, but it has begun.

A rare blooming

The pictures above may not strike you immediately as being particularly significant,  which is perhaps a way of saying when I saw the flower above I was not overwhelmed by its significance.   

 The picture is of an Indonesian titan arum - the flower that famously smells of rotting meat.  Hiro & I biked to Koishikawa Shokubutsuen (Koishikawa Botanical Gardens), in Hongo,  which is easy biking distance from here with plans for a lazy afternoon. We took a tarpaulin to sit on,   brought a book each,  (my book of the moment is on the construction of St Peter's Basilica, Hiro's is about soba noodles).  Buying a cold noodle picnic lunch on the way there, we were set for the afternoon.  

We were puzzled to find massive roped areas  for queue making.  But it it turned out that this titan arum, had started blooming on the Thursday, three days previous.  It was the first time it bloomed since 1991.  It was total coincidence being there. We hadn't realised that the day before there were so many people queued to see it that by late afternoon, they were turning people away.   For some reason when we got there in the middle of the day on Sunday, there were few people around. I guess people assumed it would be too crowded.

   The first photo I took was as we went in.  The second I took about an hour later to email to a friend.   In the hour spent eating our lunch, the centre part of the flower collapsed, the leaves opened later in the day, apparently emitting the foul meat smell, though we were not there to see it. Had I know it would have been such a short time frame, I might have stuck around to smell it.   But what a stroke of good fortune to see it at all :).

Happy Marine Day

The weekend that just passed was Marine Day.  Marine day is a new holiday but the date was chosen because it marks the first time that an emperor of Japan travelled on a civilian steamship.
We took the opportunity to go biking to Chiba, the coastal prefecture east of Tokyo.
The wind was strong and the water not really suited to swimming - there has been extensive flooding and the water quality was less than it usually is here.   But it was a pleasant day.  And it's so nice to see sunshine.



Fishing boats in port

Fishing nets to go with the fishing boats

Looking north from the Choshi light house on Inobosaki Cape

Looking down from in front of the lighthouse

The Lighthouse

Fishing on Kujukuri Beach

Kujukuri beach... I really dont get it why the carpark needs to be built on the beach, same for the steps. According to Hiro it's because it's Asia and Asian people are very practical - I guess lugging picnic baskets 70 metres more takes a lot of energy.... My theory is more like the concrete companies had good connections with local govt....cynical I know...

Behind the beach very wide nature strips - no tsunami washing out houses here.

People take off their shoes as they leave the concrete path and start walking on the sand.  It's endearing but the effort to keep the sand clean strikes me as a little odd when there was litter (admittedly not a lot) left on the beach.... 

Heat wave

Much of Japan is in heatwave.
Last night the official temperature was 28 at 11pm in Tokyo.
It didn't get cooler through the night.
The day time temperature was above 38 degrees in places.

Thank goodness we have NHK to let us know that this is above body temperature.
Fully 15 minutes was spent on last night's news informing people how to prevent heat stress....
Drink water, stay out of the sun, wear a hat.... amazing the things you learn.

The Burmese women in my Japanese class say it's easier to endure 40 degrees in Yangon than it is to endure 34 degrees in Tokyo.  But it is easier to endure 36 in Tokyo than it is to endure winter. :)

Temperatures across Japan at 4am this morning  (22nd July)

Most of  Kanto (Tokyo), Kansai (Osaka) and Fukuoka were above 25 overnight.

Temperatures across Japan at mid day today. Most of Honshu above 30 - Tokyo's average is 27 in July.  It might be time to the Japanese meteorological agency added  35 + to the scale.