Japan Is Still Evacuating People from Israel & more – 24th Oct 2023

Konnichiwa from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 24th of October twenty twenty-threeA quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

On Thursday the 19th, the Self-Defense Force, or SDF, evacuated eighty-three people from Israel, including sixty Japanese citizens and eighteen South Koreans. It stopped in Jordan before landing in Tokyo on Saturday, the 21st. This was the SDF’s seventh evacuation mission in its history, though before Israel, the last one was in Sudan. There are still two more SDF planes on standby in Jordan and the northeastern African country of Djibouti in case more citizens need to be evacuated since there are still 900 Japanese nationals in Israel and Palestine.

But don’t think being in Japan means you are completely safe. Bear attacks are rising, with news organization NHK reporting that bears have attacked over 150 people across central and northern Japan. Most attacks happened in Akita and Iwate Prefecture, including one attack on Thursday the 19th, where a bear barreled into an urban area and attacked five people. One chestnut farmer said he saw a whole family of bears in his orchard, and with all the eaten produce and damaged property, he might lose half of his harvest.

A task force official said that more bears are coming to lowland areas where more people live because of a food shortage in the highlands. The government has urged people to be careful because bears do the most damage in autumn before hibernating.

Moving on to political news, the Osaka Legal Affairs Bureau determined on Wednesday the 18th that Mio Sugita, a Lower House member of the Liberal Democratic Party, violated human rights with her posts insulting three Korean residents of Japan. Back in twenty sixteen, after a UN conference about women’s rights, Sugita posted online calling participants wearing traditional Korean and Ainu clothing shameful and middle-aged women cosplayers. The Korean women filed a complaint against her in February this year, saying the posts were discriminatory.

In response, Sugita said she deleted the discriminatory comments and apologized last year, but given that she has a history of dishing out the absolute worst takes, once implying that victims of sexual violence are liars, it’s hard to know if the apology is genuine. Other lawmakers and political officials are demanding a formal explanation for her remarks. One said that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, as head of the Liberal Democratic Party, should step in to settle things.

Kishida should have the time since Mitsubishi Electric has already taken one defense-related matter off his plate. On Thursday, the 19th, Mitsubishi Electric signed a contract with the Australian government to create defense equipment together. They plan to make surveillance and monitoring equipment for Australia’s fighter jets and other military vehicles.

It marked the first time a private Japanese company made a contract directly with another country’s government. Usually, the Japanese government makes deals with other countries, after which it will sign a contract with a company to work with. But this particular project has been planned for quite some time, and the government already screened it five years ago. And more recently, the defense ministry talked it over with Australia and gave their approval. Nothing like cutting out the middleman, right?

That’s not the only thing the Mitsubishi Group is up to. Another of the group’s companies, Mitsubishi Motors, might just quit selling and making cars in China, and will likely announce its official decision next week. The company has had a factory in Hunan Province since twenty twelve but stopped making cars there earlier this year. They’re most likely looking to say goodbye to China for good once they’ve finished selling their current inventory. Mitsubishi’s line-up of mostly gas-powered cars isn’t cutting it in China, where everybody wants either electric or hybrid cars. So, the company will shift to Southeast Asia, where many still prefer the combustion engine.

Other Japanese car companies that focus on gas-powered cars are also rethinking their China strategies. There may be more companies making their exit from China in the coming years.

Speaking of China, a ceremony marking the forty-fifth anniversary of the two countries’ friendship treaty took place on Monday, the 23rd. China hosted the event in Beijing, and 200 officials from both countries attended, including the current Chinese Foreign Minister Yi Wang.

Wang talked about how important a mutually-beneficial relationship is and that rocking the boat about the Taiwan situation will only cause problems. It was likely a hint to stop diplomatic relations with Taiwan like they’ve been doing the past year. A Japanese ambassador hit back by saying that any decisions about the ban on Japanese seafood should be based on science and rationality.

Meanwhile, that same day, the Japan Fair Trade Commission said in a press conference that they suspected Google of violating the antimonopoly law. They believe that Google pressured smartphone manufacturers into making devices load the search engine Google Chrome after using the mobile app store Google Play and then making Google the default search engine. Google also allegedly gave ad revenue from the search engine if the smartphone makers blocked other search engine services. The commission said they would investigate to ensure the market is fair and open.

In entertainment news, the famous Kabuki actor Ennosuke Ichikawa stated in court on Friday the 20th that he helped his parents commit suicide before attempting suicide himself. Back in May, the actor’s manager found him and his parents unconscious in his home the same week a magazine exposed Ichikawa for harassing other actors and theater staff. Police did an autopsy and found that the parents died of an overdose of sleeping pills. They then put Ichikawa on trial for assisting his parents’ suicide. Now that the trial has closed, the judge will decide on the ruling on the 17th of November.

On the bright side, inflation in September started slowing down, mostly thanks to government subsidies directed at easing energy costs. It was the first time in over a year that the consumer price index, excluding fresh food, increased by less than three percent. Overall, electricity bills decreased by twenty-five percent and city gas by eighteen percent, the most significant drops since nineteen seventy-one.

Unfortunately, the price of groceries went up by over eight percent. Part of that was expected since fresh food tends to have a lot of ups and downs based on crop, weather, and so on. When you remove fresh food, though, inflation would have been almost four percent last month without the energy subsidies.

But hey, maybe investing in gold might help. Or using algae to collect it yourself, as a batch of researchers from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology did. The team found a high amount of gold in rocks around a deep-sea hydrothermal vent off the coast of Aogashima, a volcanic island south of mainland Japan. The water around the vent is about 270 degrees Celsius, or 518 degrees Fahrenheit, so extracting anything is tricky. They created sheets using a special algae that absorbs gold, then put the sheets near the vent to collect the gold coming out. Over ten months, the sheets collected twenty grams of gold per ton, five times the amount of gold in one ton of ore from major gold mines. The sheets also had 7,000 grams of silver per ton.

Since this collection method is expensive, it doesn’t make sense to use it commercially just yet unless it’s for above-ground hot springs and sewage.

For most people, though, hot springs are better for relaxation - the kind of relaxation you might get while enjoying the changing color of the leaves in autumn. Right now, Lake Chuzenji in the city of Nikko, north of Tokyo, is one of the best places in Japan to see the autumn foliage. It’s a bit late this year, thanks to how warm it’s been, but the leaves are finally changing color into bright reds and yellows. Nikko Natural Science Museum officials said the lake’s peak season will probably end next week, so now is the perfect time to check it out.

And that’s it for this week!

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