Aimi Eguchi- as real as you need.

There is an idol group in Japan that is currently very popular ... more obviously vacuous and infantile than even Morning Musume. They are called AKB48, named after a shortened form of 'Akihabara' the electronic goods area of Tokyo now infamous for socially inept nerds, paedophiliac cartoon porn and maid cafes. Even though they are named AKB48, as of this month they have 58 members- which is slightly unnerving, as if they are mutliplying behind your back. They are all young cutish over-sexualised girls wearing short skirts and bikinis and posing as high schoolers - and in fact, many of them are high schoolers.

They travel around Japan putting on stage shows for dull-minded Japanese men unable to forge relationships with real women and desperate to masturbate to schoolgirls dressed like Las Vegas whores. They also sing insanely asinine songs that make you want to kill yourself; indeed their music has congealed into a solid slimy mass that will remain a dead greasy weight upon Japanese culture until the end of time, and at the end of the universe God will weigh it against bushido and kabuki and Japanese literature and find that, due to the vile and soul-destroying emptiness of AKB48, the sum total cultural worth of Japan is a negative.

Their newest member is Aimi Eguichi, supposedly selected out of a recent audition as the representative of the new generation of AKB48. However, it was recently announced that Aimi Eguchi was not selected from anything; she is, in fact, not real at all, being a CG creation. Utilizing 3D rendering tools and motion capture devices, 6 of the top-rated idols of the group had their best features graphed onto Aimi. Thus creating the perfect idol. Oh yeah, she's also 16.

So far she has appeared in several commercials and has also ... appeared in Japanese Playboy. Now that is just creepy, because it raises the question of whether it is okay to jerk off to an underage CG creation. Because, let's face it, Playboy is nothing if not a jerk-off magazine.

However the more I think about it, the fewer objections I can come up with. After all, most of the fan base of AKB48 is well used to jerking off to anime fantasies - the real thing is just too difficult, stressful and imperfect. And who knows, I wouldn't be surprised if Aimi Eguchi had more personality than the rest of AKB48 put together.

More notes from the season of madness

We are in the midst of the rainy season here, and unlike most years in Japan, this one seems to be the real thing, with rain nearly every day, sometimes heavy. The humidity is rising too, which I find quite comfortable, but seems to drive the Japanese crazy with frustration, fear and fungal diseases.

The news is full of speculation about when - not if- Kan will resign. Having narrowly survived a no-confidence vote last month, he appears to be living on borrowed time. The opposition is demanding his immediate resignation. His own party wants him to name the time. Some are saying he will go as early as this month, others suggest August or at the latest sometime in Autumn. Kan himself has said he will work to ensure reconstruction in tsunami-hit areas is on target and the nuclear accident in Fukushima is under control before resigning. This pledge is ironically vague, because post-tsunami reconstruction is proceeding apace - the Japanese can clean up and reconstruct like noone else - and as for the accident at Fukushima Number 1, if it is not under control now it never will be. Kan is trying to leave himself an out.

Nevertheless it is almost certain he will go. We know the who, the how and even the when. The only thing I don't understand is the why. The opposition and many in his own party are saying things along the lines of 'It is impossible to expect the prime minister to put the nation back together; the PM is incapable of leading the country in this time of crisis.' But this is a self-serving line of thought that seems to bear little resemblance to what happened and is what happening.

The truth is, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the prime minister is taking the fall for the natural disaster itself, a Japanese tradition where the guy at the very top must take responsibility for any failure, no matter how remotely removed it is from him. The attitude of the public seems to be 'it cannot be helped'; a fatalistic approach that is also typically Japanese. In my opinion this is a sad loss. Kan didn't cause the tsunami, can't be held responsible for any real (or imagined) failings of TEPCO and didn't start the meltdown in Fukushima.

A meltdown, which, by the way, has killed or injured exactly zero people. It is true that the media has reported that six more workers (to make a total of 8) have been exposed to levels of radiation above that considered 'safe'. The unluckiest is reported to have received 497 millisieverts. However, there have been no adverse effects upon their health reported so far.

As a comparison of the 'twin disasters' as they are sometimes called:

1. Earthquake and disaster: 25,000 killed
2. Nuclear accident in Fukushima: 0 deaths or injuries

Meltdown!

Recently the media has been talking about meltdowns at 1 or more of the reactors at the Fukushima No 1 nuclear power plant. Specifically, a partial or full meltdown of reactor 1 has been confirmed, and partial or full meltdowns at reactors 2 and 3 are suspected. They still don't know because nobody has been inside reactor buildings 2 and 3 yet to have a look. Actually, today for the first time workers ventured into reactor building 2, to be beaten back by high levels of ... steam.

So in any case it looks like damage to the fuel rods in all three reactors has been greater than feared.

Perhaps I am yet again going against the grain of puclic opinion when I express the opinion that this is very good news. There have been meltdowns in all three reactors ... and nobody noticed! The meltdowns happened in the first few hours and days after the tsunami, before cooling had been restored to the plant, and resulted in the relatively high radiation emissions that were recorded at the time. So basically, the worst thing that could possibly have happened happened...yet nobody was harmed by radiation. No injuries, no deaths. And since then things have inexorably improved...

To me, this is yet more evidence that the danger of radiation from the accident at Fukushima has been massively exaggerated.

More Madness from Japan

Some more details came out today about the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka. It turns out that its closure has thrown 2,800 people into unemployment and badly damaged the local economy. Not only that, but it looks like the Tokyo government will compensate Chubu Electric and the local economy with public funds...coming from...who knows where, maybe my pension again!


In more crazy news stuff, the first group of residents of the 20 km exclusion zone outside the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were today allowed to go home temporarily to collect belongings.

Evacuees were outfitted in radiation suits with masks, gloves and footwear designed to protect them from the 'dangers' around the plant. With military precision the evacuees were driven to pre-designated points inside the radius and given exactly two hours to get to their home, retrieve what belonging they could, and return to the buses. Any belongings they managed to get hold of had to be placed in plastic bags measuring 70 centimetres in both length and width. Every person was individually checked for high levels of radiation contamination on return and facilities were set aside to 'cleanse' any people who tested positive for such radiation. In what must have been no surprise, nobody did.

In typical Japanese style, none of these precautions are actually necessary. The area has been perfectly safe for human habitation for weeks, and there is no reason to suspect the situation will change. Workers are sleeping perfectly soundly in dormitories on the actual nuclear plant site. The only dangerous radiation levels are found within a relatively small area around the reactors themselves. Officials know this.

Shizuoka nuclear power plant to close.

Chubu Electric Power company, which owns the Hamaoka power plant in Shizuoka, today bowed to pressure from prime minister Naoto Kan to shut it down.

Over the past few weeks pressure from various sources has mounted to shut down the plant, which is fairly close to the major urban centres of Tokyo and Yokohama, and lies atop a major fault line that could be involved when 'The Big One' finally hits. On Saturday the prime minister officially requested its closure until modifications can be made in order to cope with a major earthquake or tsunami. Although the operators of the plant are under no legal obligation to close it, a Chubu Electric official said, "Although a request, it carries the weight close to an order."

To some extent I can understand the necessity of giving in to public pressure over something like this. But the decision has left Chubu in a serious bind. There is a good chance that available power supplies will not be sufficient to cope with upcoming summer demand, resulting in rolling blackouts over the Tokyo region.

The main concern about electricity supplies will come when summer temperatures reach their highest. This is when air conditioner use goes through the roof. And if this summer is anything like last year's, there will certainly not be enough power. The irony is that last year's heatwave has been blamed on global warming, a trend no one expects to abate in the near future. The nuclear power plant in Shizuoka, like all others in Japan, was doing its part to help Japan reach greenhouse gas emmission reduction targets and thus help to mitigate global warming. Those targets will likely be thrown out the window now, because as part of the attempt to make up the power shortfall, Chubu will utilise heavy oil and liquefied natural gas power plants.

Nor is this decision actually in the interests of public health. One thing that is often forgotten about the Fukushima incident is that everything worked perfectly. The earthquake activated shutdown sytems for all the reactors and all reactors shut down. The problem was in maintaining cooling water for those reactors as they cooled down. What actually happened was that diesel generators designed to do just that failed because of the tsunami. Once that problem is solved (e.g. through an external power source) there is no reason why any nuclear power plant anywhere in Japan should be especially vulnerable to tsunamis.

Meanwhile, because of this decision, efforts to mitigate global warming are adversely affected, the local Shizuoka economy is seriously hurt, Tokyo will likely suffer blackouts, and many people will be out of work.

The more I think about it the more I think I have to go against public opinion and openly support nuclear power. If anything Fukushima has led me to this. If an aging, obselete power plant can get hit by one of the largest quakes on record, be swamped by a 14 metre tsunami, survive a terrible power cut, and still shut down safely without anybody (so far) being affected in any way by radiation, well, let's build more of them. If the bulk of the world's power was supplied with atomic energy, we would have a safe, non-polluting, carbon-neutral, reasonably-priced limitless supply of energy.

Kan to go sooner or later

Prime Minister Naoto Kan is under increasing pressure, from both within his own party and outside, to step down as prime minister and let someone else have a go on Japan's leadership carousel.

Today more than 60 members of his own party, the Democratic Party of Japan, met to discuss ways of ousting their PM.  This is on top of the opposition attacking him for weeks for his 'failure' to bring the nuclear incident under control and otherwise deal with the aftermath of the calamities last Month.

However one of the issuse for his own party is that there is currently no clear alternative to Kan.  The most likely candidate, former foreign minister Seiji Maehara, was forced to resign just before the quake due to an absurd 'only in Japan' money scandal where he unknowingly took donations from a non-Japanese citizen.  It's a real shame he couldn't have hung on for another week, because after the quake everything else was forgotten for a while, and Maehara may have been able to take over by now.  The only other name being thrown around is the old indefatigably corrupt and disingenuous Ichiro Ozawa.  Him becoming PM would be the equivalent of Nixon being elected to the Whitehouse a year after resigning over Watergate.  But hey, it could happen in the Fantasy Land that is Japan.  Rumour has it that he is only interested in becoming PM because as head of state he will be immune from prosecution for all his various scandals.

The weirdest part is that there is no real reason for Kan to go.  I think he's done an extraordinary job.  I want to have his children.  The evacuees are being housed and fed.  Reconstruction is progressing.  Even Tepco has been roundly castigated.  Daily press conferences were held during the worst of the crisis and it was clear even to me that his government was doing the best it could.  The only thing I could disagree with is the passing of the bill to fund compensation and reconstruction using...

... my pension funds.

Cost of disasters to be paid for out of what?!

Japan today widened the evacuation zone to more areas outside of the 20km exclusion zone around Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.  The new areas includes tens of thousands of people and thousands of farmers.  The prime minister explained that cumulative radiation exposure posed a health risk to residents. 

Except that it won't.  That is, unless there is evidence I'm not aware of that radiation levels in those areas are higher than what is safe for humans.  The move is merely precautionary in nature, and will cost millions of dollars.

Tepco president Masataka Shimizu today confronted angry evacuees in a shelter in Fukushima, apologising to them individually in an effort to repair Tepco's tortured public image.  He copped a fair amount of abuse for his efforts; some people blamed him for their homelessness; others demanded compensation, one guy suggested he move the nuclear power plant next to his home in Tokyo.  It's understandable that evacuees were pissed off, but ... really, people.  None of the evacuees offered him thanks for decades of cheap, safe, carbon-neutral energy.  Nobody thrust the plans for a working fusion energy plant into his outthrust hands, and nobody vowed to cut their own personal energy use by 80% so that the whole country could be powered by renewable sources.

The next news announcement really made my day.  The government announced a new supplementary fiscal budget to pay for reconstruction after the quake, tsunami and nuclear emergency.  It will cover rebuilding infrastructure, subsidising the recreation of the fishing industry, evacuation and accommodation for hundreds of thousands of people, compensation for farmers affected by radiation etc etc.  All in all, 4 trillion yen, about 45 billion Australian dollars... to be paid for...out of funds set aside to cover the gap in the pension plan!


And just to top it off, Tokyo Disneyland is now open.

Robots in the nuke plant... fearmongering moves to North Korea

For the last 3 days, U.S.- made robots have been inspecting the conditions inside the nuclear reactor buildings at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.  They have found - wait for it - high levels of radiation, which I found about as shocking as say, detecting high levels of radiation next to a damaged nuclear reactor.  So shocking that I can barely raise the energy to mention it.  The robots couldn't really do much - just roll in, take some video and radiation measurements, and then retreat in the face of scattered debris on the ground.

Meanwhile the centre of world fear-mongering may have moved to that most reliable and objective of medias, state-owned North Korean television.  "The crisis is getting more serious," it was reported yesterday. "Even a month after the accident, we see no prospects of getting radioactive leakages under control."

There you have it, a source you can trust.

In other bad news, more examples of ugly discrimination against perceived radiation victims are popping up.  The so-called 'radiation certificates' are still in wide circulation, and there have been reports that people from Fukushima have been refused entrance to hotels in other prefectures, and that children have been bullied.  There is even the extraordinary case of a an eight-year-old child who lived 20 kms from the nuclear site being refused entry into a Fukushima hosptial as she had no non-radioactivity certification; her father told Japan's Mainichi newspaper that he was shocked that their appointment at the hospital had been cancelled.

Discrimination of different kinds is rife in Japan, but this kind of thing is particularly unsavoury.  Haven't victims of the earthquake and tsunami suffered enough?

So they're evacuating because...?

The media reported today that radiation levels in Namie, 30 km from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, were significantly higher than normal.  The accumulated radiation level stood at 17,000 microsieverts since the March 11 incident.  Namie is one of the areas being considered for evacuation.

But how much is 17,000 microsieverts?  Well, it's 17 millisieverts.  100 millisieverts over the course of a year is barely cause for alarm...current radiation workers at Fukushima have had their acceptable levels raised to 250, though this is because of the emergency situation.  And even that is not...anything that can reliably be linked to danger.

These evacuations are causing extraordinary disruption to the lives of tens of thousands of people, costing millions of dollars in the short-term, tens of millions in the long-term, and damaging the production capacity of one of Japan's largest agricultural areas. 

Is it really worth it?

Another Chernobyl?

The Japanese authorities declared yesterday that Fukushima was a 'Level 7' accident, on the same level as Chernobyl, on the international nuclear incident scale.

I am aware of international paranoia about Fukushima, but I am nevertheless surprised at this.

In the Chernobyl accident, an entire reactor melted down, spewing radioactive material high into the atmosphere where it spread to vast areas around it.  About 30 people died directly from radiation.  The number of long-term deaths caused by Chernobyl depends on what you read, but estimations range from zero to several tens of thousands  Even Wikipedia, which I consider in general the best source of information on the plant, seems unsure, suggesting anywhere from 500 to several thousand.  One issue is that thryoid cancer, the main cancer caused by Chernobyl, has very low incidence rates and a high survivability.  Not only that, but health conditions in the region around the plant are generally not very good in any case, so it's hard to differentiate Chernobyl-induced disease from the usual alcoholism and other health afflictions of the region.  But certainly mainstream experts suggest many people were adversely affected.

In Fukushima nobody at all has died from radiation.  Two people were reported to have been exposed to dangerous levels but it seems like they never got sick.  As for radiation releases, the total amount of radiation released is less than 10% of that released by Chernobyl, and much more localised.  So I am baffled by the decision to place Fukushima in the same band as Chernobyl.  '7' is supposed to be the highest on the scale: what are they going to do in a genuine catastrophe?

It was also announced that a few areas outside the current 30 km exclusion zone will be evacuated, as occupants staying for an entire year will absorb about '20 millisieverts' of radiation, which is substantially greater than background radiation.  Well, okay, you might think.  Sounds dangerous.  But some google searching reveals that 20 millisieverts is well...not very much at all.  More than background, sure.  But the maximum permissable amount of radiation absorbed over the course of a year is set at 50 millisieverts for American nuclear power plant workers.  And the absolute minimum amount that is said to be linked to cancer is 100 millisieverts.  In any words, the amount of radiation accumulated by residents who lived for a year in these areas would be one-fifth of that required to be linked to any cancer.  In addition, as work progresses at the plant, steadily but slowly, radiation levels will decrease so that residents would be absorbing less and less.

Baffling.

The emperor visits an evacuation centre styled by new fashion designer '100 yen'