Tsunami Warning & more–10th Oct 2023

Konnichiwa from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 10th of October twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

On Monday the 9th, the Meteorological Agency issued a tsunami warning for the Izu and Ogasawara Islands, and Kochi, Chiba, Miyazaki, and Kagoshima Prefectures - all of which are located in Okinawa or along the southeastern coast of Japan’s main island. A tsunami of sixty centimeters hit Hachijojima, an island about 180 miles south of Tokyo. Weather officials said that tsunamis could hit repeatedly and urged people to stay away from the shores.

The tsunamis seemed to be caused by an earthquake near the Izu Islands, but experts said that the waves were unusually large for such a small quake. They don’t know what exactly caused the earthquake or even where it happened, but that the tectonic plates moving or an eruption of an undersea volcano could have been the culprit.

Moving on to earlier in the week, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant started the second round of releasing treated water into the ocean on Thursday the 5th. For this round, they plan to release seventy-eight hundred tons of treated water until the 22nd of October.

They used the water back in twenty eleven to cool the nuclear plant after the earthquake-induced triple meltdown. They have since removed all radiation from the water except tritium, which they can’t get rid of. So, they diluted the water to meet the World Health Organization’s safety standards for drinking water. The first round of treated water release lasted from the 24th of August until the 11th of September. That’s also when China began banning seafood imports from Japan.

Since China continues to stonewall Japanese seafood, the fisheries minister has started looking elsewhere to export. On Wednesday the 4th, the minister attended a tasting event in Malaysia, where he promoted the safety of Japanese seafood to food companies and social media influencers. He reassured people that Japan is taking the utmost care in releasing the treated water and that both the ocean water and marine life are safe.

This positive exchange reflects the majority of Japan’s international trade lately. The Finance Ministry said that August was the seventh month in a row where Japan had a current account surplus. Or, in other words, Japan was making more money from exports than it was losing on imports so the country basically had a net profit of two trillion yen or fifteen billion dollars. Two of the main reasons for this were that energy imports were cheaper and foreign travel was booming. Energy imports got dirt cheap - only five billion dollars, compared to sixteen billion last year. Meanwhile, foreign tourists came to Japan in droves, driving total profit across the industry to just under two billion dollars, which is the highest since nineteen ninety-six when the finance ministry started recording this data.

In domestic news, the central government is having a bit of a tiff with Okinawa Prefecture's local government. The central government wants to relocate a US military base from Ginowan City to the Henoko District in Nago City, which is a bit further north. However, the land is too soft, so they need the governor's approval for a landfill project to make the area usable. The governor had until Wednesday the 4th to grant his approval, but he refused to give it.

Soon after the deadline passed, the central government filed a lawsuit with the Fukuoka High Court to order Okinawa to give the landfill project the green light. If that fails, they might try to bypass the prefecture altogether and ask the minister of land and infrastructure to approve the project.

That’s not the only thing the government is pushing for, the other has to do with truck drivers. Japan has had a shortage of truck drivers for a while now. To combat this, the government is now encouraging companies to use ships and trains over trucks for cargo transport. They want sea and rail freight to double in the next ten years. One company in Shizuoka Prefecture started using ships designed to carry cargo with wheels that can be easily rolled on and off the ships and make deliveries go a lot faster. This method helped to increase their sea freight by ten percent over the past year.

Shifting to political news, on Sunday the 8th, after Hamas launched rockets at Israel, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and the foreign minister chimed in to condemn Hamas and the other Palestinian militants. Kishida posted on Twitter that he’d heard reports of them kidnapping people, and called on Hamas to let them go immediately. In a second tweet, he also stated his concern about the many innocent civilians dying in the Gaza Strip, and that everyone involved should exercise restraint. The foreign minister added in a conference that Japan wants to work with both Israel and Palestine to help calm the situation.

In an update to a previous story, the talent agency Johnny & Associates can’t seem to keep itself out of hot water. Earlier this year, several former members came forward to accuse the agency’s late founder of sexually assaulting them when they were minors. The agency eventually admitted to the abuse, after which the then-president, the founder’s niece, resigned. On Monday the 1st, the agency held a press conference where they allowed each media outlet to ask one question. An anonymous source said that the consulting firm that the agency hired to help with the conference gave the host a list of at least six journalists to avoid. Basically, a custom-made blacklist, complete with names and photos.

On Wednesday the 3rd, the talent agency said that they didn’t put anyone on that blacklist, and protested against blacklisting anyone outright. They said that they argued with the consulting firm in favor of giving everyone a fair chance to ask questions.

Just a few days later, on Friday the 6th, the host who spoke at the news conference gave his take. He said that someone from the consulting firm handed him a blacklist before the press conference, but he didn’t use it. He said that he did his best to be as unbiased and objective as possible.

Four people tragically lost their lives while climbing the two thousand-meter-tall or sixty-five hundred-foot-tall Mount Asahi in Tochigi Prefecture. It was extremely cold and windy. One of the climbers called emergency services on Friday the 6th and said that his climbing partner had hypothermia. Another climber called to report someone lying on the ground, unconscious. However, because of the strong winds, the police and fire department couldn’t send out a search party until the next day. When they did, they found four bodies, all roughly in their sixties and seventies.

However, the dangers of mountain climbing doesn’t mean you should avoid mountains altogether. One mountain resort in Nagano Prefecture, in hopes of attracting tourists, put up a giant swing and threw a celebration for its opening on Friday the 6th. The swing is ten meters or thirty-two feet long and hangs over a cliff eleven hundred meters or thirty-six hundred feet in the air. It offers a phenomenal view of the mountains and city below, which looks especially nice in autumn with the changing colors and in winter when everything is draped in snow. Several travelers went to the resort just for the new swing’s opening and said the view was beautiful.

Finally, we have a new fun fact for the day. On Friday the 6th, Guinness World Records sent a Japanese TV program called Today’s Cooking or Kyo no Ryori a certificate for being the longest-running TV cooking show in the world. The show has been around since nineteen fifty-seven. Through its run, it has shown roughly 46,000 recipes. One thing that kept it going is that it’s stayed tuned to the times, adjusting its approach to budget or meal prep to account for changing family sizes, lifestyles, and budgets. They’ve also always done their best to use healthy recipes during their sixty-five-year run.

Aaaaand that’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us!

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Mata Ne!