JAPAN: Discussing with China & more – 26th Mar 2024

Konnichiwa from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 26th of March twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

On Wednesday the 20th, Japanese diplomats met with their Chinese counterparts in Guangzhou, China, to discuss different issues between the two countries, such as China's ban on Japanese seafood imports. One of Japan's diplomats, Hiroyuki Namazu, urged China to lift the ban, saying that Japan’s release of treated water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is in line with the World Health Organization’s safety regulations. In addition, Namazu raised concerns about Japanese nationals detained in China and asked when the country planned to remove the buoys they placed in Japan's exclusive economic zone.

The diplomats didn’t say what the outcome of the meeting was, except that both sides agreed to stay in touch.

That same day, a South Korean tanker capsized off the coast of western Japan. Because of the rough weather, they sent out a distress signal near Mutsurejima, an island in Yamaguchi Prefecture. The tanker had eleven crew members: eight from Indonesia, two South Koreans, and one person from China. The Coast Guard found the tanker and ten of the crew members, but unfortunately, eight died on the way to the hospital. The condition of the two surviving crew members is unknown, and the Coast Guard is still searching for the missing member.

The tanker was carrying 980 tons of acrylic acid, which is used for coatings and plastics, but luckily there was no leakage.

Meanwhile, you might want to take a second look at the health food you’re buying. Osaka-based Kobayashi Pharmaceutical recently recalled all products containing red yeast rice, or beni-koji, after customers reported getting sick after taking a health food product called Beni-koji Choleste-Help. The company first released the product in twenty twenty-one to help lower cholesterol and blood pressure and has since sold over a million packages.

However, this past January, at least thirteen people who had been using the product told the pharmaceutical company that they ended up having health issues, particularly kidney diseases. Six had to check into a hospital and one needed dialysis.

The company analyzed the product and found that it may have had some unintended ingredients. To be safe, they are now recalling all their products with red yeast rice. They also urged consumers to stop using these products.

Moving on, on Friday the 22nd, Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako visited Wajima City in Ishikawa Prefecture, one of the areas the Noto Peninsula earthquake affected severely. It was their second visit to areas hit by natural disasters since the Emperor came to the throne in twenty nineteen.

Both the earthquake and the massive fire that followed did a lot of damage to Wajima and ended up killing 102 people. The Imperial couple toured the city, passing collapsed buildings and visiting the site of the fire. They also met with quake survivors taking shelter in a nearby public facility and thanked police officers and firefighters involved in the disaster response efforts. Locals lined the streets to welcome the Emperor and Empress, expressing hope for the area's reconstruction.

Shortly after the visit, on Monday the 25th, the Imperial Household Agency created an Instagram account to put out updates about the Imperial family. It will be the first time that the agency is using social media for public relations.

They will post images and videos of the Emperor and Empress starting on the 1st of April and plan to gradually expand their content over time. However, they won’t allow any comments on the account, and will instead link to the official website and ask people to direct any comments or messages there. The agency hopes that by using social media, they’ll be able to forge a stronger connection with younger generations.

The Imperial family isn’t the only one trying to get with the times. In an effort to make Japan more eco-friendly, the Organization for Cross-regional Coordination of Transmission Operators developed a power grid expansion plan to make it easier to connect solar and wind power to major cities across the country.

The most notable part of the plan is to build an undersea cable to link Tokyo with the northern island of Hokkaido. This will likely cost around 1.8 trillion yen, or twelve billion dollars. The cable should more than triple the energy transmission capacity between the two regions by twenty thirty.

The organization also plans to invest almost three billion dollars to expand the power grid between the western regions of Kyushu and Chugoku. They said Japan needs the grid expansions to reach the government’s decarbonization goals.

It’s been a busy week in the world of sports, with three big stories hitting headlines.

The first had to do with the World Cup. Japan was scheduled to compete against North Korea in Pyeongyang on Tuesday the 26th. However, soon after North Korea’s team lost to Japan in the qualifier in Tokyo on Thursday the 21st, North Korea told the organization in charge of the World Cup, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association or FIFA, that they could no longer host the match in Pyeongyang. As such, FIFA announced on Saturday the 23rd that they had to cancel the game.

Despite the cancellation, Japan is still set to compete against Myanmar and Syria in June.

Next, the LA Dodgers fired Ippei Mizuhara, Shohei Ohtani's interpreter, after their opening game in Seoul, allegedly for illegal gambling. The US government had been investigating a bookmaker and found that someone wired at least 4.5 million dollars to that bookmaker’s associate. Ohtani’s lawyers said that Mizuhara had made that transfer, committing a massive theft in the process.

During a locker room meeting, Mizuhara confessed to having a gambling addiction and said that the bank transfer was to pay off his gambling debts. He initially said that Ohtani offered to pay off his debts, but later took it back and said Ohtani hadn’t been involved. On social media, fans questioned how much Ohtani knew about the gambling.

Mizuhara had been Ohtani’s interpreter since he joined the Los Angeles Angels in twenty eighteen and followed him when he joined the Dodgers.

Thankfully, the third sports story is more positive, as it involves a historic victory by sumo wrestler Takerufuji. On Sunday the 24th, he won his first championship and became the first top-division newcomer to win a tournament in 110 years.

At a press conference on Monday the 25th, the wrestler said winning like that was “beyond his wildest dreams.” He had almost skipped the last day of the fifteen-day tournament after hurting his right ankle on the fourteenth day, but said he was glad he pushed on since it led to his win.

In travel news, the Japan National Tourism Organization reported a record-high number of foreign visitors in February. The organization said that nearly three million travelers came to the country, mostly for the Lunar New Year Holidays. This was eighty-nine percent higher compared to twenty twenty-three, and was the highest number of visitors in a month since February twenty twenty, before the pandemic.

On the flip side, the number of Japanese people traveling abroad was just under a million, thirty-six percent less compared to February twenty nineteen. The tourism organization said it was probably because the weak yen makes overseas travel too expensive for most residents.

And to close this edition, the promising uptick in incoming travelers is probably one of the reasons why Japan Airlines decided to buy some new planes. They said they would buy forty-two planes in total, thirty-two from European company Airbus and ten from US manufacturer Boeing, in a deal that would cost nearly thirteen billion dollars.

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Mata Ne!