|
Reverend Cheddar posted:Thousands of residents are still displaced, not only are they displaced but their temporary housing two-year contracts are rapidly expiring and many have nowhere to go, Abe has scrapped plans to relieve Japan of nuclear energy despite gigantic protests. (Lots of Japan Times, I know.) A great number of people are rightly pissed off that the government really doesn't seem to care about them at all. And whatever your opinion about nuclear energy -- me, I'm tentatively for it given the lack of alternatives Japan has, seeing as how they won't breach the issue of geothermal power because mai onsens!!1 -- it's like a textbook case of doing the right thing for the wrong reason, particularly as Abe basically refuses to discuss researching other options and is stubbornly concentrating on economics and constitution revision. Despite all of the bureaucracy BS though, it really is impressive to see in the first link above how Tohoku has managed to restore some normalcy to itself all on its own. A new round of class action lawsuits started today as well. 1650 people asking for 5man/month until they can move back. Edit: my translation: quote:1650 people displaced by the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi plant filed a class action suit on Monday against TEPCO and the government, in three separate jurisdictions including Fukushima and Tokyo, requesting compensation. Sheep fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Mar 11, 2013 |
#
?
Mar 11, 2013 12:13
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 16:12 |
|
|
quote:demanding a return to pre-disaster radiation levels
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2013 12:55
|
|
|
Cliff Racer posted:But, correct me if I'm wrong, thats not how radiation works. Have an expert come in and certify that they are are officially back to pre-disaster level, problem solved.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2013 13:47
|
|
|
Sorgrid posted:The foreign students of engineering/hard sciences had MUCH tougher schedules in comparison; Some of my friends had often to spend nights in the lab, they had to deal with insane lab politics and treated pretty much like personal oompa-loompas by professors/native students (Thanks, Kouhai-Sempai relationships!) Yeah I'm a humanities student. The STEM students clearly have it a lot harder than us, I won't lie.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2013 14:03
|
|
|
Reverend Cheddar posted:Abe has scrapped plans to relieve Japan of nuclear energy despite gigantic protests I just realized I never wrote/submitted the reply on this point. This is one of those issues where letting the public try and decide is utterly ridiculous because the public is ignorant as poo poo. Japan trying to move off nuclear power is one of the most laughable things ever. They have no energy reserves to tap in this country to keep up with their use. Right now they are burning fuel they are buying from Russia mainly. They have some renewable energy sources but not much and nowhere near the degree that would allow them to move away from burning natural gas. Practically every developed country on this planet uses nuclear power for one simple reason: Its consistent. When you need more power, you raise the rods, when you need less you drop/cool them. You can control the energy needed and its always there when you need it. Metropolitan cities demand power in varying amounts at different periods in the day and renewable energy isn't anywhere close to be able to meet that changing demand. The other sources add CO2 and other horrible cancer causing substances to the atmosphere as well; you don't even need an accident to cause it to happen. The only bad thing about nuclear power is always the waste and the fact that no one actually wants to build new (safer) plants but instead wants to keep running the same old ones.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2013 14:11
|
|
|
The original Japanese energy plan was to go towards renewable with nuclear plants at about 50/50 by 2030's (I think) and now they want to do that just with Natural Gas and Oil instead of nuclear which is utterly  for them.Also, it's pretty hypocritical for them to demand no nuclear when they're going to treat people near Fukushima like poo poo like they do to the victims of the Nuclear bombs or the burakumin.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2013 17:54
|
|
|
Kenishi posted:I just realized I never wrote/submitted the reply on this point. I'm for nuclear power in Japan right now, given the alternatives they have versus the alternatives they stubbornly refuse to pursue. Like I said, it just strikes me as the right thing being done for the wrong reason and pretty much nothing is being done to reassure people about it in ways that they'll respect. Even their new nuclear regulatory agency, even if a genuinely independent one, isn't going to be effective as long as those actually managing the plants sit on their rear end like they always have.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2013 18:48
|
|
|
LP97S posted:The original Japanese energy plan was to go towards renewable with nuclear plants at about 50/50 by 2030's (I think) and now they want to do that just with Natural Gas and Oil instead of nuclear which is utterly Where was Japan keeping waste before, because as far as I'm concerned that is still a legitimate issue to care and worry about and it's not overblown whatsoever and that's in all nations, except the United States, gently caress Harry Reid.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2013 19:02
|
|
|
Don't get me started about the problems with the way the Japanese run nuclear plants. For one point they have the same issue as the US with the lack of non-site storage and, preferable in my opinion, reprocessing. Secondly, the have a history of shockingly poorly run plants with endless temp workers and people mixing uranium in buckets. Nevertheless, ditching nuclear is absurd especially given how the radiation is now no worse than it was before outside of the damaged reactors themselves.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2013 20:27
|
|
|
Nonsense posted:Where was Japan keeping waste before, because as far as I'm concerned that is still a legitimate issue to care and worry about and it's not overblown whatsoever and that's in all nations, except the United States, gently caress Harry Reid. They keep some waste on-site in used fuel rod pools. I believe on occasion though they will pay the US to take some used fuel and either store it or reprocess it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2013 23:13
|
|
|
Closing down old rear end nuclear plants means decommissioning and dismantling. Nobody wants to pay for newer, safer plants to be built in the first place, let alone spend hundreds of millions on cleaning up old sites. So they just end up extending the life of reactors built in the 60s and 70s with lifetime expectancies of about 30 years instead of decommissioning them like they should. Aside from design safety, if the companies that end up running them like they have been with armies of temps and daylabourers, cutting corners wherever they can, nothing much will improve anyway.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 00:17
|
|
|
The really crazy thing is that the power companies straight up don't care. Japan Atomic Power Company has been trying to go ahead with building a new reactor 300 meters from an active fault despite the fact that that's obviously a really terrible idea and the NRA telling them to stop:quote:Japan Atomic Power Co., which runs the plant, said in a statement that the outcome was “totally unacceptable” and vowed to have a separate investigation conducted on the premises. "gently caress nuclear safety we have a bottom line here" basically. As late as the beginning of February they were still trying to push ahead with the plan. Edit: The NRA seems to be standing up to them at least. But it's clear that Japan Atomic Power is still trying to go ahead with the new reactors. Sheep fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Mar 12, 2013 |
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 00:27
|
|
|
Forgive me if this isn't the right place to ask this question, but do the radiation levels still pose health risks in and around Tokyo? MY WIFE is from Chiba, and she wants to visit her parents with our toddler. It's getting harder for them to travel to the States or meet us halfway in Hawaii since they're both retired and are bginning to deal with health issues, but I'm concerned about the effects on the kiddo. It's also been a point of stress for us since we were thinking about moving to/working in Japan before the quake hit. We defenitly want to go, but I feel like I can't risk his health and development.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 04:28
|
|
|
IT BURNS posted:do the radiation levels still pose health risks in and around Tokyo? There was never any risk to Tokyo.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 04:35
|
|
|
Lemmi Caution posted:There was never any risk to Tokyo.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 04:37
|
|
|
Sheep posted:This was my experience taking undergraduate classes aimed at Japanese students. There's some goon (Lemmi Caution I think?) who is properly enrolled as a 4 year undergrad at Sophia or something and speaks highly of it, but his situation seems to be the exception. This is from a little while back, but that's me, not Lemmi. I also don't think I've ever spoken really highly of it per se; I will say that I got what I expected and what I was looking for, but I'm not in a traditional department; I'm in a specialized English-medium department, and the classes are largely structured to be close to a Western-style college, so it's not really a 'normal' Japanese college experience. I was originally going to just go to a regular mid-level Japanese college knowing that my education would suck, but that through immersion I'd come out of it with pretty drat good Japanese (rather like dtb). But in the end I took a sort of middle path and went to Sophia knowing that I'd get at least some semblance of an education, even if I'd come out of it with less of a Japanese level. I'm pretty glad I did because I'm rather burned out on studying Japanese in an academic capacity at the moment. In fact I think that a lot of the changes in education which they're making to try and attract more foreign students, such as adding more English-language classes and having 9th month admissions, are in many ways a copy of the department I'm in. It's a move in the right step, but it's not going to be immediately effective, that's for sure. My department manages because it's been around for the longest and takes many of the best kikokushijo (w/link because I know Bloodnose will come in and bitch otherwise  ) and international school kids, and also has like 100 or so foreign exchange students every semester. Which is to say, we have the critical mass of people with good English required to have successful English-medium classes. I think that other schools are really going to struggle because there just aren't enough students (and perhaps more importantly teachers) who know English well enough to make classes work.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 04:38
|
|
|
Aside from the 9.0 earthquakes the health risks are quite low.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 04:38
|
|
|
Samurai Sanders posted:There was never any real risk to basically anywhere people lived, as far as I know. It's 99.9% anti-nuclear hysteria and 0.1% actual risk to anyone. Yeah. You'd catch a bigger radiation dose moving somewhere like Cornwall than you ever would have in Tokyo. Other than workers actually inside the plant it's unlikely anyone was affected.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 04:39
|
|
|
LimburgLimbo posted:kikokushijo (w/link because I know Bloodnose will come in and bitch otherwise Not all of us can go to a four year Japanese university course  But that link in itself is kind of an interesting topic. It says these returnee kids were originally seen as like polluted by foreignness and in need of help, but now they're elites at the forefront of globalization. From what I've learned about Japan from SA, I actually find the former less surprising than the latter.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 04:50
|
|
|
Bloodnose posted:Not all of us can go to a four year Japanese university course It is a very interesting topic, and one of the best things I feel I've gained from my education here is a place, in a sense, in the kikokushijo/TCK subculture. Apparently my school's department was originally created because of a request by the government to make a place to put kikokushijo and teach them to be Japanese, in a sense. Of course up until 2006 the department was a separate campus from the rest of the college, which probably made the kikokushijo at my school more insular than they might otherwise have been.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 04:59
|
|
|
LimburgLimbo posted:This is from a little while back, but that's me, not Lemmi Apologies, I always get you two mixed up in my head for some reason.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 05:02
|
|
|
What's with the "jo" in kikokushijo? What about it is especially for girls/women? edit: also, for the purpose of our discussion isn't just saying "repatriate children" easier? Or is it some unique Japanese thing that justifies using a Japanese word in English discourse?
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 05:04
|
|
|
Reading that article led me to the one on Nihonjinron which just makes me angry to read. Here's the best part:Wikipedia posted:
Samurai Sanders posted:What's with the "jo" in kikokushijo? What about it is especially for girls/women?
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 05:11
|
|
|
A distinct branch of primates? Holy poo poo. I know those guys were nuts but that goes beyond anything I had heard before.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 05:13
|
|
|
Samurai Sanders posted:A distinct branch of primates? Holy poo poo. I know those guys were nuts but that goes beyond anything I had heard before. They cite the source for that one as "Watanabe Shōichi, Nihongo no kokoro, Kōsansha Gendai Shinsho, Tokyo 1954.pp.11f (2) Oguma Eiji,Tan'itsu minzoku shinwa no kigen, Shin'yōsha, Tokyo 1995." It might be fun to dig that one up and see what else Mr. Watanabe had to say about his master race!
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 05:15
|
|
|
I've found that kind of stuff to be pretty pervasive too, though from what I've seen at a lower level. A lot of people have been (somehow) seriously surprised to learn that other countries have four distinct seasons, and assume that common things in Japan (like persimmons!) just do not exist elsewhere. I do wonder specific effects this kind of attitude has on the politics here, or how many of the corpses in the diet fully believe in unique Japanese brainwaves, though. Does the whole "wow you're a foreigner, you must fly back to America every day!" from children have anything to do with this too? Or is that another separate dumb issue? Mercury_Storm fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Mar 12, 2013 |
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 05:24
|
|
|
Samurai Sanders posted:What's with the "jo" in kikokushijo? What about it is especially for girls/women? No it refers to to everyone and not just women. I'm not sure why it's that way; probably just an arbitrary thing like how boats are often given feminine pronouns etc. Whether 'returnee' or 'kikokushijo' is a better term when discussing this in English is of course up for debate (the same question we've had over a lot of Japanese terms being used in English). I come down on the side of using kikokushijo for a number of reasons (such as it being used in literature about TCK, etc.), but for me it comes down to the two main points that 1) kikokushijo has a fair amount of baggage and history associated with it that 'returnee' doesn't impart. If you were American and said "I'm an American returnee" after, for example, having lived in France for two years then returning to America, probably no one would know what the hell you were talking about because in the US there's no huge cultural cachet involved in having lived overseas/experienced firsthand a non-US culture (I'm using the US as an example here but I think you can say the same for pretty much any Western culture). I don't think there's really a concept of 'returnee' any western culture, insofar as I'm aware, like there is in Japan. You already have a term that's semantically different when referring to Japanese people, so you might as well use the Japanese term and explain it if necessary, and avoid confusion. Point 2) is that this is a thread about Japan and some level of Japanese terminology should be expected.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 05:26
|
|
|
That kind of stuff is really funny because genetic analysis has shown that people in Japan today share a shitload of characteristics with the Chinese, Koreans, Ainu, Ryukyuans, and everyone else in the region. It's a surprisingly diverse profile for a country that was considered an isolated backwater for much of its recorded history. They're about as unique and special in a genetic sense as say the English.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 05:33
|
|
|
Bloodnose posted:Reading that article led me to the one on Nihonjinron which just makes me angry to read. Here's the best part: Hahahahahahahahaha. Is this stuff actually taken seriously?
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 05:37
|
|
|
Samurai Sanders posted:A distinct branch of primates? Holy poo poo. I know those guys were nuts but that goes beyond anything I had heard before. It starts pretty inconspicuously, some people point out that, like many other peoples in east Asia they have a genetic weakness to alcohol, then some talk about how sitting seiza is perfectly adapted to sturdy Japanese legs and it degenerates into "specialists" saying things like they can't digest beef/pork properly because apparently the Japanese have shorter digestive tracks than other races or that they are much whiter than the Korean and Chinese etc. The saddest part is the fact poo poo that should belong in a 1910's phrenology book is widely believed today. By young people.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 05:37
|
|
|
Mercury_Storm posted:Does the whole "wow you're a foreigner, you must fly back to America every day!" from children have anything to do with this too? Or is that another separate dumb issue? It's separate in that it's being asked by people (kids) who don't know any better and doesn't have anything to do with being Japanese? (My ex was a middle school geography teacher in the USA and one of her students literally asked another the same thing about his Pakistani uncle, except asking if he drove.)
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 06:06
|
|
|
Ah, that I grew up in white conservative suburbia with nary a hint of foreign culture may have something to do with why I never heard that kind of stuff as a kid. It's just a bit jarring hearing that come out of at least one kid in basically every 1st - 3rd grade class in every elementary school I've taught at, though.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 06:22
|
|
|
Protocol 5 posted:That kind of stuff is really funny because genetic analysis has shown that people in Japan today share a shitload of characteristics with the Chinese, Koreans, Ainu, Ryukyuans, and everyone else in the region. It's a surprisingly diverse profile for a country that was considered an isolated backwater for much of its recorded history. They're about as unique and special in a genetic sense as say the English. Wasn't there an incident at the Bejing Olympics where the Emperor Himself said something like "Yeah my family is originally from Korea (like immigrated from there in 800 BC or so)" and Japanese TV went THIS NEVER HAPPENED? What surprises me is that this kind of Japanese exceptionalism can survive in the age of the Internet. At least the more ridiculous claims (4 seasons) could be cleared up with 30 seconds on Google. Hell, even in the process of just watching international news you should pick up that sometimes the EU ministers meet in the snow and sometimes the US president has a press conference in the sunshine, and vice versa about 6 months apart! Do Japanese news only show domestic news or something?
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 06:52
|
|
|
ArchangeI posted:Wasn't there an incident at the Bejing Olympics where the Emperor Himself said something like "Yeah my family is originally from Korea (like immigrated from there in 800 BC or so)" and Japanese TV went THIS NEVER HAPPENED?
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 07:00
|
|
|
ArchangeI posted:What surprises me is that this kind of Japanese exceptionalism can survive in the age of the Internet. At least the more ridiculous claims (4 seasons) could be cleared up with 30 seconds on Google. Hell, even in the process of just watching international news you should pick up that sometimes the EU ministers meet in the snow and sometimes the US president has a press conference in the sunshine, and vice versa about 6 months apart! Do Japanese news only show domestic news or something? Sort of...? They'll put up the big stuff. Actually NHK is pretty good about showing world news, at least, and with a broader range of places covered than the US. Honestly what they have to put up for local news can even worse than your local affiliate in the US sometimes, because Japan is so peaceful that a 'big' news story could be like someone's password getting hacked for an MMORPG. I swear that was the top news story when I was staying in an onsen in Nagano once.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 07:07
|
|
|
I imagine there must be some kind of liberal, internationalist political movement in Japan that wants the country to open up, allow more immigration and generally stop being so isolationist, xenophobic and mercantilist. Right? 
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 07:14
|
|
|
There's the Happiness Realization Party, I guess...  (They are essentially Japanese Scientologists.)
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 07:18
|
|
|
Bloodnose posted:Reading that article led me to the one on Nihonjinron which just makes me angry to read. Here's the best part: Do you average Japanese people actually believe in that kind of thing, or is it just a few nationalist blowhard? This kinda reminds me of the time when I was in China, people there were really up in arms about alleged history revisionism going on in Korea, that Koreans are writing in their school textbooks that ancient Korea was some sort of superpower that dwarfed China. No idea if it was true though! 
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 07:29
|
|
|
Adrastus posted:Do you average Japanese people actually believe in that kind of thing, or is it just a few nationalist blowhard? I want to say it's like the difference between just believing in God and doing nothing else in regards to that, versus clinging to guns and religion. Adrastus posted:This kinda reminds me of the time when I was in China, people there were really up in arms about alleged history revisionism going on in Korea, that Koreans are writing in their school textbooks that ancient Korea was some sort of superpower that dwarfed China. No idea if it was true though! It's stuff like this, though, that had me doing a lot of double-takes years back. I was trying to be pragmatic and fair when it came to Japan v. Korea arguments and I'd get a rash of "no seriously you don't understand they seriously teach this and that in schools over there," which I'd always dismissed at the time as hyperbole. Until I saw pics like this, anyway.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 07:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 16:12 |
|
|
I'm pretty sure China had been a super power for most of history. Amusingly enough though it never gained any of that by running around conquering people, it was just an economic super power and a hub for trading, for centuries. --- I just saw this in the news. Japan extracts gas from methane hydrate offshore, 1st case in world I could be wrong. But this is basically what the gas reserves under the Senkaku islands are expected to be. This is basically the proof of concept for mining the gas. Stuff is going to get worse I think.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2013 07:39
|
|