Category Archives: japan

New Header Photo: Feet In the Ocean

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After five months with the excellent Alabaster Heads as my header image, I’ve decided to change it. I have to say though, that my photo of Jaume Plensa’s installation at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park got more hits and searches than any other header by a long way. If you haven’t seen them in real life, then seek them out.

The new header image is far less artistic or ambitious – it’s my feet in the clear waters of the Pacific Ocean at Shimoda on a recent visit to Ernest House. I’m wearing my Keen hiking sandals, and it was toward the end of a couple of great days, and it was nice to just stand in the water and watch the waves. I thought it made a nice ‘end of summer’ image, as we go into Autumn 2011.

The Best Way to Meet Japan

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The best way to get the feel of a country a little bit better is to physically travel it.  How a country feels – the people in the place – in it’s capital, or a major city, compared to the farmlands, the mountains, the sea-ports or wherever, can give you a markedly different impression of the country, for better or worse. See any many aspects as you can really increases your appreciation for it.

On a small scale, that’s pot-luck ordering in restaurants. I used to walk into Ramen shops and order whatever the person next to me was having by pointing at it, as even when I could read the menu, I still didn’t always understand what it was. I never got overcharged. In fact, sometimes, I’m sure they undercharged me for even doing this.

We go up the scale, and travel by rail; Japan is a gift for doing this because the rail systems are simply amazing, and it’s a pleasant way to travel, either bimbling long in local trains, hitting the Shinkansen for that faster feeling, or taking your time on one of the long scenic runs like the Cassiopeia.

Some visitors and foreign residents to Japan hire or buy a car and see more of the country that way – and it is a great way – though the traffic jams are sometimes not so fun, and you very quickly understand the fetish for in car entertainment. Sorting that license out, or using an International if that’s legal for you does put some people off.

Somewhere in all that though, there is the motorbike, and I wonder if some people overlook it. Frankly, that’s a mistake – if you truly want to know a country – get on a motorbike.

I should say now that this isn’t a tutorial on getting a license and all that – better people than I have already invented that wheel, so pop on over to GaijinRiders, or SBKJapan, and the enthusiasts there will help you out, and the ‘Motorbiking in Japan‘ blog, if only because he chronicles going from not being a biker, to loving his bike.

For me, I’ve always loved bicycles, so the idea of two wheels has always appealed to me, but I came late to motorbiking; I spent two years on a 50cc Zoomer around Tokyo in my early thirties, and then decided I would do the 400cc licence in 2006 and bought myself the dependable CB400 Super Four, and then did the large licence in late 2007. I really wish I’d done them both sooner. Still, there’s hope – I really enjoy reading the books of Ted Simon, who in his early 40′s went on a four year round the world trip, and chronicled it in the book “Jupiters Travels” and several follow up books which I’ve managed to collect (with the help of my wife!) including the one for his second round the world trip at the age of 70! I’ve quoted him before in this blog, but to repeat this from Mr. Simon, from the travelogue ‘Long Way Round’ , this sums up why I like motorbikes :

“I think the motorcycle is best because it puts you so much in contact with everything. You experience, much more closely, the nature of the terrain, you can almost taste the cultures that you’re riding through. Because it exposes you to the climate, to the wind and rain, it’s a much more complete experience.”

In a more humble context, new family life restricts my riding and where I now live, I can’t commute, but I do love to get out for days, or even just half days and run out on the bike. I’ve written on here a couple of times about some of the places I’ve been, and seen, but perhaps what I haven’t mentioned is that I couldn’t have done any of it without the bike. Some of the weird roads I’ve travelled, some of the very odd tunnels, tea houses I’ve stopped at, accidental off road excursions and so on, none of it would have been possible without the bike. Really, some of the places either aren’t signposted, or aren’t on a map, or you wouldn’t think to take a car down. On a bike, you just turn, when you want to stop, you just stop – parking isn’t much of an issue, and even the rain doesn’t stop the fun.

It’s not just the riding and the environment though, it’s the reaction of people, the more obscure the place you go, the more interesting riding there becomes.

In a forest. Somewhere.

In a forest. Somewhere.

In early January this year, I took a freezing run down the coast road here in Kanagawa; that’s the literal meaning of ‘freezing’ too. I stopped off for some coffee and got into a great conversation with the few other bikers there, as to how completely mad we were, or how truly inspired – we decided on the former. Plodding along at 80Km/h with a cold wind, looking at the beautiful Pacific Ocean, with Mt. Fuji in the clear distance is fantastic, and the frosting of ice on your helmet, and that steady chill on your hands fades away. A bit. Actually, on that trip I remember stopping at a McDonalds at the side of the road for another hot drink, and even the staff asked if I was OK on the bike. I took the coffee outside, walked through a passageway under the coast road, and spent the time it took me to drink the coffee talking to some people fishing off the quayside.  Does this happen if you’re in a car, or does having biker leathers on key into something which means you’re  safe, because you’re out there? My Japanese isn’t great, but I’m fairly outgoing – I’ll talk about anything, so for me , being on the bike has been great to just meet people doing their thing.

Where the wasabi grows.

Where the wasabi grows.

On a different tack, a friend and I were just picking random turns in Izu, and ended up in a valley, where the river seemed to be full of vegetables, with a little rail track in the air with a cart. From a few signs we’d seen on the way for shops, we assumed this was a wasabi ‘field’. It was completely fascinating – I’d heard they prospered in running water, but I’d never seen it, and since the whole area was serviced by the traditional farmer’s vehicles – tiny white Suzuki vans, I suspect many others haven’t either, apart from the more tourist ones, unless you were on a bike.

Meeting up with fellow bikers, just by accident is always interesting – the bike itself is a topic of conversation. I remember talking to a man in his late sixties at a service station, who pulled up on an old Harley Davidson, with his wife on the back. We were just talking about bikes, and I asked him whether he’d thought about getting a Prius as I see a lot of retired people driving them. His response was a hysterical mime of the kicking of cars and the throttling of owners: “Prius drivers are idiots!!”. You see all these old men, maybe former senior businessmen or something when they worked, and imagining them in a Prius, blocking traffic somewhere, and you realise that the cool, interesting ones spurned that, and keep to two wheels, and are enormous fun to be around.

It is a good crowd too, a certain camaraderie; I’m fortunate enough to be on the GaijinRiders forum, and to have been involved with two Toy Runs to benefit children’s homes, because they could. (There’s something beyond culture which means that kids love the sound of a hundred plus motorbikes revving up.)

Down By The Beach

Down By The Beach

Anyway, I think you get the idea – I love biking. Not for speed or to talk specs or anything like that, just because I like being out there, plodding along, feeling the environment around me, and hoping I remembered to put my rain gear back under the seat.

The Baker and the Bromate

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Chances are if you go to buy bread in Japan, the vast majority of it in most supermarkets comes from the Yamazaki Baking Co. and in general, it tastes pretty good. (TSE Ticker code: 2212 Equity GP)

I was surprised then, to read in a few news articles about their usage of a fairly suspect ingredient:

From Wikipedia:
“They are the only Japanese baked goods company who use potassium bromate in their bread; all Japanese baking industry companies voluntarily ceased using it in 1980 due to suspicions of carcinogenicity, but Yamazaki resumed in 2005.”

I have to say that just reading that, and confirming it across several relatively respectable news stories and agencies, we effectively stopped buying Yamazaki bread and most of their other products – not actually through any fear of getting cancer from the bread, but just because it seemed irrational to continue using a suspect ingredient, when other ‘safe’ flour / dough enhancers were available.

Generally, we now buy Pasco when we do buy bread, but I did wonder whether or not this practice had crept in in other parts of the Japanese market – from Pasco’s website though, apparently not – it’s interesting they have that page devoted to it (and nicely, it’s in a URL link called ‘feeling’).

“Pasco eliminated the use of potassium bromate in 1980, and we continue to strongly stand against the use of it. We have no plans to start using it in the future. Pasco continues to observe the self-imposed control measures established by the Japan Baking Industry Association Corp. in 1992.Pasco uses vitamin C (L-ascorbic acid) as a safe alternative to potassium bromate. “

Potassium Bromate is indeed a fairly controversial chemical – broadly used historically to improve various attributes of bread dough as a flour enhancer, though through the 1970′s a body of evidence grew that it may be carcinogenic, or at least made the mutation of cells more likely.

In the European Union, it goes by the descriptive alternate name of E924. Those of us from Europe will be fairly familiar with the ‘E’ number system, which symbolically held the meaning that a food was more made of chemicals, than real ingredients, if you know what I mean. Nowadays I wonder if the E number system was to distract us from what these things actually were.

Interestingly, in the UK’s Food Standards Authority database, E924 is only listed under revocations – [link] , so apparently, it’s not allowed in the UK either – specifically having been revoked in 1990 – bakers can’t use it – the same goes for Canada (1994) and China (2005). In the US many companies were still using it in the 1990s, and it’s still legal and apparently well used today.

So why would Yamazaki Baking – and seemingly only Yamazaki Baking in Japan – start re-using this chemical since it, and many other companies stopped in 1980? Yes, they did actually stop, and only restarted in 2005.

Well, it seems there may be two reasons.

Firstly, they believe they’ve found a method of getting the chemical’s benefits, yet only using a minute amount, which wont cause health concerns as it shouldn’t end up in the final product on the shelf, as it is only used in the production process.

Secondly, but slightly more troubling, a blog article, from a fairly well regarded blog, suggested it was more interested in sticking to it’s founding family’s traditional recipe- [link].

However, to take the first concept – a quick Google through Yamazaki’s website threw up two real hits on potassium bromate – one a gnarly white paper from 2004 entitled “The study of bromate residues in bread Part1 – Effect of Reducing Agents and Baking Procedure on the Residual Bromate in Bread“,  and the second in their investor guide.

From the whitepaper, the English summary states:

“Potassium bromate, which contributes to the formation of disulfide bonds in wheat protein in dough and increased gas-retaining capacity, has been used as a bread improver since the 1910s.  However, it has been reported that potassium bromate has a mutagenicity based on experiments with rats. Thereby, the regulations in Japan stated that in the case of bread, residual bromate must be reduced or removed from the final products.”

So that essentially lays out the ground rules as Yamazaki saw them, in their own words – the key point seems to be final products. The summary goes on:

“Residual contents of potassium bromate in bread extracts prepared by the improved method were measured by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with post-column reaction for the coloring of bromate. No residual bromate was detected in Pullman-type breads with +- or +/mg potassium bromate added per kg of flour.”

As a note of explanation, a Pullman loaf is one baked in a long narrow tin, with a lid – that is, pretty much all of the square sliced bread in Japan. The summary goes on to note that:

“On the other hand, the residual bromate determined in open-top type bread with 9-30 mg potassium bromate added per kg of flour, was found localized on the top of crust put out of the baking pan.    Reducing agents such as L- ascorbic acid (AsA), cysteine and glutathione and ferrous sulfate were added to the open-top type bread to reduce the residual bromate. Adding both AsA and ferrous sulfate accelerated the decrease in the residual bromate in the open top-type bread.”

I’m not a scientist but, what they’re saying is, they have to do this to say there shouldn’t be any Potassium Bromate in the bread after they’ve added even more chemicals. In 2005, the FDA in America noted as a post (co-authored by Yamazaki) detection techniques for Potassium Bromate which is an important requirement if something is only legal up to minute quantities in a baked product.

This seems to be a lot of trouble to go to to keep using a chemical largely frowned upon internationally, and which according to their competitors, there are acceptable alternatives available to, which suggests that the second point – because it’s a tradition – starts to seem all the more plausible?

Well, for another angle, let’s look at that second hit, the 2008 investor guide, from the section “Fiscal 2008 in Review” which generally paints a dismal economic picture :

“To maintain top levels of product safety and quality, despite the soaring cost of ingredients, particularly flour, we had to execute another round of price increases. Even though we had only just increased prices on some of our breads and Japanese- and Western-style confectionery in December 2007, we had to push through more increases in May 2008. Hoping to make the new prices more palatable to consumers, we emphasized the quality aspect of our products by applying a new technology to Pullman – type bread using an aqueous solution of potassium bromate as an oxidizing agent, and then, the technology were applied to Open-top bread and sweet buns.”

So there’s an economic justification too? I appreciate investor guides are dry tomes intended to attract funds and other interested parties into buying shares, bonds, whatever, but this is an interesting tack to take on what is I would have thought, a sensitive subject.

For a ‘defence’ of the use of Potassium Bromate, I had to go to The American Institute of Baking (AIB), (which also has a Japanese site amateurishly done in Adobe GoLive 5) and their paper “Commercial Baking Industry Guide For The Safe Use Of Potassium Bromate” [2008] but even they don’t seem overly confident. Though this is obviously a bit of a weak stance as an opener in the paper:

“Potassium bromate (KBrO3) has been used in limited ways and amounts by the baking industry for almost a century with no known health concern. It has been used in baking since at least 1914 …”

I’m not sure I put a lot of faith in something being safe since before penicillin, and decent analysis methods. However, they do go on:

“Concern about the potential harmful effects of potassium bromate was raised by Japanese researchers in the mid-1980s. While the research was inconclusive, some countries adopted a precautionary-principle response and removed potassium bromate from the approved list of dough conditioners. More recent research in Japan casts doubt on this level of concern, at least as it refers to the amounts of potassium bromate used in the baking industry, concluding that there is a threshold below which no adverse effects can be detected.”

I’m wondering if the more recent research was by Yamazaki Bakery. The paper does immediately point out though, and with it’s own bold emphasis:

“It is recognized that it is inappropriate to use potassium bromate in any product or production method which cannot be formulated without residues below the level of 20 ppb in the finished product.”

That’s not really a huge endorsement to me. However, the paper does a decent job, in basic terms explaining the reason why Potassium Bromate is used, and for that, the PDF is worth a download, and at 15 pages of text, worth a read.

So what we have is a chemical known to cause renal cancer in rats, at least, and which is controlled by amount in foods, or outright banned in many countries, and yet Yamazaki Bakery here in Japan have gone to a lot of effort to use it in their production system – again, I’m not saying it’s in the bread – it shouldn’t be – but why even use it? Is it really because old man Iijima did? Then the question becomes, if he were alive today, would he still use it?

Iwate Tsunami Zone Footage

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Volunteering in Iwate from Nanikore on Vimeo.

Just to accompany the last post about Iwate Prefecture, here is a short video we shot from the buses around the tsunami zone. You can broadly see where much of the larger debris has been piled up into enormous mountains, and that many of the roads have been cleared. It’s also tragically apparent how total the devastation was.

Note that the audio is mainly just engine noise, so better to keep the volume down.

[Update: As of April 2012 for at least 12 month, I've paid for Vimeo Plus, so this should look a little nicer on this site!]

Volunteering in Iwate Prefecture

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Last weekend, fully three months after the triple disaster stuck Japan’s east coast, I was part of a team of 15 from our company to join some of the volunteer cleanup efforts in Iwate prefecture, one of the three prefectures which bore the brunt of the tsunami. It was coordinated with Tonomagokoro.net based out of Tono City, Iwate prefecture.

There was a few things we needed to sort out first, volunteer insurance, and where required, a tetanus booster. The insurance cost 1,400 for a year, and just involved filling some forms in, paying at the post office, then getting it checked and stamped at a volunteer centre in Tokyo before we left. Most volunteer organisations wont take people without this insurance. I also got myself a tetanus booster, since I hadn’t had one for a long time – they cost about 3,500 yen in Tokyo, and you need to ask for ‘hashoufuu tokisoido’ (破傷風トキソイド) and get it about two weeks before you go for the best coverage. Also, if you just say ‘Touhoku Volunteer’, that seems to work too.

Due to our schedule, we left Tokyo on a mini-bus at 10pm on Friday night, and stopped a few times en route, before arriving in a wet and relatively chilly Tono City just before 5am, giving us time to unload some things, before the official morning wake-up call at 6am. The facility was a community sport centre, which now gave it’s sports hall and most of the building space to the volunteer efforts.

Once we we allowed in, we changed into the work gear, got our name patches, which had to be displayed at all times, and got our documentation checked, before the morning exercises and announcements got under way just after 7am. Since it was raining fairly heavily, this happened in the sports hall once all the sleeping mats and such were cleared away.

The announcements introduced the key members of the facility, many of whom would be point people at the sites. It was easy looking at them to believe that many, just four months ago, were likely just average paunchy bureaucrats, working in Japan’s huge local government machine. Now, here they looked focused and weather beaten.

Explaining the Situation

The main speaker was a wiry, hard spoken man, who looked almost military. Perhaps poignantly, as he went through his safety preparations section, the building was hit by an earthquake rated at 5.1, shaking the sports hall for about 15 seconds, which sort of underlined why we are here – it’s far from over in Iwate.

Safety is definitely the number one word here – everyone must have at least the basics before they’re even allowed on a bus to a cleanup site: face mask for at least dust (must bring several if basic), a helmet, some eye protection, and a safety insert sole for boots – basically a 0.75mm steel foot inset in case your step on something, to stop it going through your foot – and some hard wearing rubber gloves. Everyone was also told to take plenty of liquids and lunch, since as they’d be in the tsunami zone, there aren’t any supplies there. It’s this drive for safety which seemed to irritate some volunteers, but from speaking to the supervisors, they were very worried that even one volunteer could get hurt.

Because of this, our first day perhaps didn’t give us the impact we were hoping for; despite the lack of sleep on the bus up, surrounded by probably 150 other volunteers, and others arriving in cars and on coaches for the day, we were raring to go. The Tono facility, whilst being a volunteer sleeping area is also a main staging and organisational post for a lot of the volunteer efforts in the region.

There’s a lot of team spirit building – doing warm up exercises together – even giving each other a quick should massage, and all holding hands, and it really works – it builds on what is a shared purpose.

They do make one point which is to not take photos unless you ask permission on site, and then only quickly and without setup or anything. They discouraged SLRs and larger kit. Photos from the buses were OK, but on site to be respectful of those still living nearby, and of course the sad fact that the whole tsunami area witnessed the deaths of over 15,000 people, with 8,000 still missing. Truthfully, in 2 days I think I took 8 photos on site, and some video from the bus. It’s just numbing, and looking at the footage doesn’t really capture the scale.

The team leaders then divided volunteers into groups and assign work tasks for the day; sometimes they let groups choose, depending on the preference, or the capabilities of the group. People alone in groups can just latch on to other groups, and the atmosphere was very inclusive. I can’t cant the number of people who came over for a chat, to talk in English or trusting on my (not great) Japanese for a few words. Sometimes it was about why we were there, sometimes it was about why they were there, and sometimes it was about a random subject. I spent fifteen minutes talking to sixty year old man from Kobe in Japanese and English, partly about the clean up, but mainly about rugby; on the Saturday night I spoke at length to a few people about motorbikes, and the challenges of riding from Osaka to Tono – and the answer is ‘it’s very challenging’.

Once we were ready to go, we gathered some food and water in some plastic bags, and in the now heavy rain, got onto a 20 seat bus for our first assignment. It’s vital to say you must take your own food and water – there’s not really any available at the centre, and obviously none on site, so make sure to bring some, or to go to one of the local convenience stores.

The bus journey took over an hour, out to the coast. We stopped in a beautiful valley for a quick break, and had some of the best omochi (sweet rice paste) I’ve ever had, before getting on the bus again; this is one of the most beautiful parts of the world.

A Broken Coast

Then we drive on, and around a corner, and there it is. Or rather, there it isn’t. There’s some surreal invisible line between a house still standing and looking relatively untouched, and then, twenty metres on, there’s just debris, overturned cars burnt out and just mud. Everything was coated in a sick looking grey mud. There were some tops of houses, smashed rice fields, and more of the mud. The bus bounced along, the roads relatively  clear for most of the journey, but somewhat buckled in places. Much of the area we passed had been addressed so that much of the debris was piled up, awaiting the massive cranes and earth movers to put it on trucks to take it somewhere. It’s hard to describe.

We pulled up on a hillside, and as the rain came down the smokers got out for a quick smoke, and a few more of us got out despite the rain to stretch our legs, and looked out over what was once fields and houses, to the ocean perhaps a kilometer away. Due to the heavy rain, the team leader was wary of letting us work around here, even just to pick up the smaller debris as it was all rice fields and the tsunami mud. After a short time we got back on the bus and he announced we’d work at another site higher up, on an old railway line.

As we moved across this landscape, we could see the railway track by the side of the road, or rather, some of it. It disappeared under mud and debris for tens of metres at a time, and when we could see it, the erosion under the rails made the rails sag. One positive note though was a shining row of new power lines which crossed the valley, a reminder that things are moving forwards, albeit slowly against the scale of the tsunami.

We stopped on the slope of a hill and all got out, to join a group of about fifty others, the job: clean all the detritus off the remaining railway line, and the embankment, and stack it all up for trucks to gather later. We also discovered that it would mean digging out the drainage trench which runs with the line, jammed as it was with mud, stone and debris.

In the rain, we found it at least cool, but as the sun came out and the temperature moved over 25degrees, it’s important to keep water available.

Sometimes you lose track of the situation, clearing anonymous bits of rock, twisted wood and such, but then you find those human things in the slurry: a bottle of pills, some smashed green tea cups, a ramen spoon, a roof tile, and inevitably sadder, a children’s toy, or a book. We also found quite a few shellfish, a reminder of how this happened. Everything seems to be a part of something – a house missing a roof, steel stairs leading to a bridge which has been ripped away, a steel frame for a three storey building with all the concrete removed and smashed down on a house hundreds of metres away.

Just some of the damage

After a couple of hours we stopped for lunch, the groups all mingling and chatting, then another hour or so before the team leader announced that we’d stop at 2.46pm for a minutes silence. 2.46pm is the time of the Magnitude 9.0 quake which began this tragedy and I think quite a few of us had forgotten that today was the 11th, marking three months since that day; for me, three months since being rolled around in Tokyo on the 20th floor of the office building, and walking home for hours that night and the next day, and you realise that it was nothing compared to the three months people here have lived with, amongst the rubble. I remember a news report from that first weekend saying that coastal towns had been ‘erased’, but that’s not entirely true – erasure implied to me some kind of clean sweep, but this place looks like it had been repeatedly beaten into the ground, with plenty of evidence left to see.

After some further clean up, it was back on the bus, and back to normality, through that jarring line, where the destruction stops, and normal geography begins.

Back at the centre, we got changed, and though the place has some showers, we shared a taxi and went to a local sento about 15 minutes away, and paid 630 yen for 40 minutes cleaning and soaking. A sento is like an onsen, in that it’s a communal bathing place, but it’s generally not a hot spring source, so more like a wash house. It was a good place to just relax and think – we only did maybe four or five hour’s work, and maybe three hours on buses. We met quite a few jieitai (Self Defence Force – Japan’s army) members there, and I have to say, they were polite, and some even managed a ‘hello’s, though they generally kept to themselves in the tatami room within the building. We’d seen quite a few patrols around the tsunami zone, probably less about looting, and more for safety, visibility, and moving on people who we saw in their cars.

After the sento, we went to a restaurant for yakiniku, and you’re reminded that even an hour away from the tsunami area, things are normal – food, power, business as usual.

There’s a strict lights out at 10pm policy, and though we sat outside and spoke to people till just before 10, we made it inside, put down our sleeping bags, and prepared for sleep. I should mention, the sports hall was for the men, and there were over 120 of us probably, so there was a fair amount of snoring; the ladies had the tatami room, which I’m told was much quieter.

A floor for the night.

Just for note, I would say about 30% of the volunteers were women, and their ages pretty much mirrored the men, from late teens to over 60.

Morning wake-up bell is at 6am, tidy up the bedding, then it’s briefing at 7am, though since the weather was much better, we did it outside – it’s essentially the same one every day, so everyone gets the safety drill, exercise, and that shoulder massage.

This time our bus took us somewhere else – to place called Sakuragicho, where we spent a few hours with spades and wheel barrows removing that grey, smelling clay from around a nice old lady’s house, before throwing more of the anti-bacterial powder down, and then a few hundred metres away, to a river bank, cleaning up more debris, and finding some photos, DVDs, video tapes, and placing them in a separate bucket, perhaps so that at some point family memories can be retrieved for those who survived, but lost others, or their homes and possessions.

Another Car.

Around the river were signs of the tsunami still – a toilet ripped off from a house, angled into a ditch, the house itself in a car park; there were some upturned cars, stripped of wheels and fuel and oil, but left resting on their roofs until they can be removed. There are good signs though, and not just the few square metres of river bank we were able to clean up, a children day care centre which a couple of the team had worked on on a visit during golden week a month earlier when they were still digging sludge out from it, was now ready to be re-opened – all clean, with new lights and electrics – had it not been for the damage around it, it would look like any other children’s facility.

After a couple of hours of putting rubbish into bags, it was back on the bus to the centre, and for us, another cleanup in the sento, a quick meal at a local sushi place, then back on the bus in the rain to Tokyo overnight, reaching our drop off at 5am.

The Value

One thing that many of the volunteers I spoke to said, that was whilst the organisation was impressive, the goal wasn’t always defined – the ratio of hours on the bus  and rest time to work seems disproportionate, and some felt that it would be better just to get professionals to do it. I think the sheer scale makes progress and goals difficult to see.

The thing about the volunteering is quite layered: On a practical front, what volunteers can do really is a miniscule amount compared the the scale of devastation in the region; however, I think every little bit can help, and along with the keeping the problem in people’s minds, it can only be a good thing, and slowly but surely the region can be rebuilt, and hopefully be as beautiful as it no doubt once was, even just clearing a small stretch is one small piece if Iwate that doesn’t look ‘destroyed’ any more.

Secondly, it enables those who just feel like they want to be here and do something to actually do just that, it also means they can go back and tell people what the situation is in Iwate, and the other tsunami hit prefectures. It also shows many of the locals that they aren’t forgotten three months on, and people care enough to come up and help. Against the international fear of radiation, and the Fukushima Daiichi plant in the media, the state and plight of the tsunami zones really don’t carry as much weight as they might across the country – volunteers might in some way be able to spread that news.

I was struck by how friendly people were throughout the whole period – from people in the volunteer centre from all over Japan, some of whom were volunteering for a couple of weeks, and every night in that sports hall – to people at the sento, the restaurants, and out on site, everyone will to talk to anyone, and exchange ideas, options and commentary on the events, often asking the inevitable ‘Where were you on March 11th?” and whilst around the world the answer “Tokyo” might get raised eye brows, stood ankle deep in mud trying to get a roofing shingle out of that grey mess, it seems to have been one of the safest places to be.

Ganbare Tohoku!

Practical Things

This is just for those looking to volunteer – and it is worth it – it’s important to remember that save for a place to sleep if you call in advance, you have to provide everything yourself within reason – organisations do try to help, but ultimately it’s your responsibility.:

Gear – The real essentials:

- Clothes – So you’re going to want some clothes! Some went for overalls, but as I have a problem fitting in the available overalls, I went for some old cotton trousers from my airsoft days, and a long sleeve shirt from Workman which did fit. I’d recommend something long sleeved, for general protection.
- Eye protection – basic goggles should be fine – get ones designed for glasses if you wear them. Sometimes there’s a lot of dust.
- Breathing mask – the bare minimum is the normal cold/hayfever ones sold everywhere, but bring quite a few. I went for a proper facemask with swappable filters. Also note, better masks also help with the smell – there’s a lot of sewage and dead sea life still around in places.
- Boots – Rubber boots (wellingtons) were the most common footwear. After rain there’s a lot of mud, so you want something to keep your feet dry.
- Safety sole inserts – you must also get a pair of safety sole inserts which look like normal inner soles for boots, but have a sheet of steel in there. This is to protect you against standing on something very sharp. They made a keep point of these in the presentations.
- Waterproofs – We went in rainy season, so no surprise there was rain – they’re also good to have on your legs anyway to help keep you dry if you kneel down. Note though that cheap ones wont let sweat out, so on a very hot day, you may want to remove them.
- Gloves – you’ll want some of the thick, usually blue rubber gloves – a pair of the general white ones may work, but it’s often wet and dirty, so the white ones don’t last long or offer much protection.
- Helmet – a basic earthquake helmet from your kit is enough – the rounded plastic ones available in most home DIY shows nowadays. It’s just there to protect from dirt and items being moved around really, but it is beneficial to have with you.

I got most of the above which I didn’t already own, from the local home center and Workman. Even with the things I did have, the cost was less than 10,000yen – for example: waterproofs: 600yen, face mask 2,500yen and so on.

The volunteer station will have some spares, donated by previous volunteers, but please don’t rely on it – take your own.

Additional things you should bring:
- sun cream/block – there’s little shade, and if you’re a bit pale like me, it’s easy to get sunburnt out the SPF50+++
- bring some towels – to dry off and also to use at the showers / sento. I don’t think any are provided.
- plastic bags – to carry your stuff around in on site, and for rubbish, dirty gear and so on.
- food & water – the only thing available at the center is hot water for cup ramen, and that’s it, and nothing on site, though there are several 24hr convenience stores near the facility.
- sleeping bag and ground mat – again, get cheap simple Coleman ones unless it’s winter. Sports hall floors are very hard and flat.

Having food and liquid with you is essential – when it was hot, and you’re losing a lot of liquid, that 500ml PET bottle wont last long; I took my CamelBack and was pretty much getting through the 2 litres on site each date.

Oddest Quake Story: City of Ghosts

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When I was in the UK, a common topic of conversation was the reliability, objectivity and sheer accuracy of the foreign press during and after the major quakes, and other major incidents by extension, compared to the local whose goals are obviously different.

To me, many of the foreign media outlets were somewhat over-the-top in their reporting, possibly frustrated at their lack of people on the ground in Japan, their understanding of the local systems and training procedures and the fact that the bigger the story, the more people stay tuned, and the same is true for papers.

It’s not easy to say what was the ‘worst’ story, or the most sensationalist, but if pushed, I’d probably the say the most bizarre ‘on the scene’ account was published on The Sun newspaper’s website  – so yes, we’re not starting too far up the journalistic ladder.

It was allegedly  written by a British woman married to a Japanese national (‘Ryu Fujiyama’), living in Tokyo with two small children, about five days after the quake on the 11th. There’s a lot of debate if this woman even exists.

It’s obviously link bait – just look at the number of video links in the story, but in the effort of deconstruction, here’s a look, so pull up the story in another tab:

The Sun – City of Ghosts

Where to start? Firstly, there are a lot of contradictions and factual errors, which I would suggest means it was written by someone who’d either never been to Tokyo, or had been there for a couple of weeks – not the ten years the lady claims.

Just as some background, when this went out, radiation levels had increased in Fukushima where the damaged reactors are (and a couple of hundred kilometres from Tokyo) – in Tokyo levels barely moved, and when they did it was minimally, and well within most definitions of safe.

“…she slammed the British Embassy for failing to help expats desperate to escape – after radiation levels from Japan’s stricken nuclear reactors reached ten times normal.
The mum of two said: “They fled and left us here to fry. I’m ashamed to call myself British.”"

All I can say to this is that I had been in regular contact with the Embassy since the 11th – they were fine and helpful. The people I spoke to were indeed located outside of Japan, because the people inside Japan were trying to set up a collection point for UK nationals in Sendai.  Also, that “ten times” bit sounds great – except it’s not Tokyo, it’s in Fukushima, at the plant at that point.

“But I look outside now and they’re completely deserted. It’s like London in the zombie movie 28 Days Later.”

Right, so we’ve got our obligatory film reference in. The streets were quiet, but I don’t think out of panic – people were waiting for what would happen next, and there were still a number of aftershocks.

There was food in the shops on the day she reported this, though bottled water was getting low, but the mains water, gas and electricity were all on because most of Tokyo was never on a blackout list and still isn’t. As a friend pointed out – why didn’t she order pizza? They were still delivering.

“I’m scared, and shaky with hunger and really, really tired. I’ve got two hungry children and just a few crisps, oranges and a can of tuna.”

This sounds tragic but I’m just finding it hard to believe. I live just outside Tokyo (I got home on the Saturday lunch time from my job in truly central Tokyo) but no one I know who lives in the centre of Tokyo said there was NO food.

“On Tuesday, the radiation levels in Tokyo were ten times above normal and people started to panic.
“What if, every day, radiation continues to double?

Well, I couldn’t find any statistics to back that up. Also, I never (and still haven’t) seen any Japanese panic.

“My children are already starving. I found three riceballs and some seaweed this morning in a local convenience store and took the last couple of water canisters.”

Water canisters? I can’t say I’ve ever heard that phrase used in Japan. I’ll allow the use of ‘rice balls’ instead of onigiri since she’s allegedly telling a UK newspaper, but that’s a bit odd, especially for someone of ten years tenure.

Then there’s her location, first she says she’s in central Tokyo, then more accurately says Nerima-ku is a suburb – it is – it is not central Tokyo by any local definition.

“The TV news has told us to take a shower when we’ve been outside, because of radiation worries.”

I think the shower advice was again for people much further north? She contradicts herself in the next part:

“[Regarding TV] There’s sometimes a live feed on TV from the nuclear plant.  But mostly there’s just a test card with gentle music and children making origami dragons.”

Sorry, but – total crap – every channel was full of news, press conferences, tsunami footage and analysis – for that first weekend there weren’t even adverts. We went looking for this mythical channel, but no one had ever seen it. Also, NO ONE says ‘origami dragons’ in Japan – in times of strife the Japanese make origami cranes as a symbol of hope.

The car anecdote is also rubbish as far as everyone I’ve spoken to can tell – whats the point in a car with ‘no petrol’ anyway? We had no petrol from March 13th for a few days, then it was rationed to 20litres per vehicle, but by the 27th was back to normal.

She points out her husband went to work – true, most Japanese went to work as best they could – it was business as normal – a bit odd for a City of Ghosts?

“You never know when there is going to be power or not.”.

What?  They were announced repeatedly on TV, were on the front page of Facebook, and every other Japanese related tweet for days. They even had trucks driving around explaining the groupings they were using
Perhaps she never knew because again, most of Tokyo did not have any blackouts whatsoever – we did, and people handled them calmly and in a civilised manner. More than that, all of the information was made available in English, Chinese, Korean almost immediately, and the languages increased almost daily.

“The Japanese news tells us radiation in Tokyo isn’t at harmful levels. But why would they tell us to wear masks otherwise?”

Er…because it’s peak hayfever season here – and by all accounts it was a big one. Again, perhaps advice for people hundreds of kilometers further north?

“The first to flee Tokyo have been British Embassy staff. I repeatedly rang the Tokyo number for our embassy – but there’s just a recorded message saying, ‘We are not taking calls’.”

As above – rubbish – they called me several times over the next week to update me on warning levels, and when I called, I got through to a Brit, often in London. I spoke personally to Consulate General in Osaka just over a week after the quake and he said they were in Sendai (near the tsunami zone) setting up an emergency response centre over that initial weekend.

“I rang the US embassy and immediately a human voice asked, ‘How can I help?’”

Really? As most US citizen friends tell me, if you call their embassy they wont even talk to you without submitting your credit card number first. And they wont/cant help non US citizens. I’ve called the number once a couple of years ago with a visa question, and that was my experience. I hope it is now as open as Keeley claims.

“If I get out of Tokyo I want to go to America, Australia, anywhere. I have no faith in Britain any more. I don’t want to see my country ever again.”

Well, if you exist Keeley, as a fellow Brit I’ll be sad to see you go.

This woman – if she exists – in some ways makes me want to laugh, but if she’s real, if that’s real, I kind of feel sorry for her – obviously a real lack of friends, either foreign or Japanese.

My money is on it being a bait link site by The Sun, written in house,  or a hoax from this woman in Japan to make some money, or from someone who had been to Japan at some point.

Either way, it’s just an odd ‘on the scene’ personal account to have so many contradictions and factual inaccuracies, which is why I rate it the oddest. Given the poor number of comments, it seems like whatever it was, it failed.

Facebook updates

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As a follow up to my compendium of Quake related tweets last week, here are just a few of the Facebook updates from the week after March 11th. I haven’t included most of the threads which some of these spawned, or were a part of.

March 11 at 7:19pm
Wow. Massive earthquakes earlier today. I’m making my way to a friend’s place and home from there soon as I can. Trains stopped till tomorrow it seems. Family OK. Scariest . Thing. Ever.

March 11 at 7:44pm
40 quakes over 6.0 today. Unbelievable – looked out of the office window earlier to see a gas/oil refinery explode with a huge fireball into the sky in the distance as the building shook. Looking at photos now it feels unreal.

March 12 at 5:40am
Ohayo. Another dawn and it feels good. Goal #1 is still getting home to the family.

March 12 at 7:16am
Yesterday earthquakes tossed Japan around like a rag doll, and it continues today – I don’t see Japan backing down. Good luck to all the emergency teams working the Fukushima nuclear reactor.
Continue reading →

Quake Tweets

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I know I haven’t posted much in the last month; the quake for several weeks was the centre of everything, and pretty much any time I had online was on Twitter, and to a lesser extent Facebook. Between the two, Twitter was certainly focused on those of us in the country, whilst Facebook seemed to be for discussion with friends outside of Japan for some reason. Anyway, I do have some minor notes on especially the first week after the quake which I’m editing into a readable format for the blog, mainly for my own reference. They’ll go up in a day or two.

In this post though, I’d just like to pick a few per day for each of those first key days; tweets which remind me of the event, inside of the hundreds of tweets I send confirming, questioning and just pinging people.

March 11th

8.34pm
Proud to be with the calm and patient people of Tokyo tonight. Everyone is helping and talking. No panic. I hope others are well.

11.43pm
Earlier, looking out my office window whilst we hid under desks and shook and seeing that fireball from the refinery – unforgettable.

March 12th

00:04am
March 11 & 12 2011 may be the days which re-define Japan. Given this almost constant seismic attack, people are bearing up well.

00.51am
It’s a never ending seismic siege here in Japan. I’m trying to get to family; aftershocks just never end.

11.03am
Home! My wife looks even more beautiful than yesterday. My kids are great!

8.43pm
@gen It’s bad, we know it’s bad, he just can’t decide how bad to tell us it is.

March 13th

8.34am
ohayou gozaimasu. So, we’re at 288 earthquakes in a week, a faulty nuke plant and things not getting much better. Sho ga nai? :)

9.24am
Wife was laughing as I was having my required morning tea, saying everything was OK, whilst checking the kids clothes in the emergency bag.

11.30am
Damn forgot – right wingers said foreigners would loot in an earthquake. Sry guys, I was too busy.

11.13pm
@norishikata Proud to be here with you, everyone has been great. Don’t doubt yourselves!

March 14th

11.56am
@norishikata when this is over, i’ll buy you a beer.

12.21pm
Amongst all this, my 4month old son decided now was the time to roll over for the first time :)

1.16pm
Wife says my upgrade of my goatee to real beard is an improvement.

9.03pm
Oops. forgot it was White Day today…

10.08pm
#edano_nero Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano Yukio – take a break.

10.46pm [3000th tweet]
People of Japan – you’re doing what many could not, standing when others maybe couldn’t. You can do this. Proud to be here with you all.

March 15th

10.05am
@sandrajapandra Is there a Hitchhikers reference coming? Know where your towel is people…or it’s BELGIUM man, BELGIUM!!

4.44pm
@rowhoop Rowan Hooper
Ishihara – gov of Tokyo, known for offensive remarks – apologises for saying the earthquake was ”divine punishment” http://bit.ly/i6FXHY

7.36pm
Off all the things which have happened in the last 5 days, the ups, the downs, that clown Ishihara is the only one which has made me angry.

10.36pm
I think I set a new record for baby out of cot, down stairs and under table.

11.09pm
Only 1Km down? “@quakemonitor: #earthquake M 6.1, eastern Honshu, Japan Depth: 1.00 km Mar 15 13:31:46 2011 UTC http://t.co/V8U6W1G”

March 16th 1.01am
@bl0ke it’s world service so audio only and no, wont be shaving. It’s my survivor beard. Might not happen.

Snow Trip Hakuba 2011

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We just got back from our second and final 2011 snow trip with the family. I’m not going to go over the prep and such as I think I over adequately did that in the Shiga post. I only blog this one as it added a few different angles.

Instead of a hotel, we stayed in a self catered chalet for two nights, and quite nice it was too. The benefits of the chalet were space – two bedrooms and a living room diner on two levels, which meant everyone had a bit more space to breathe – useful for four of you. It also means you can eat out of step with the often rigorous schedules Japanese hotels allow for eating. The Alpine Chalets are run by the Panorama hotel and so you can send and receive takkyubin from there, and they’ll drive you and your gear to the chalet if need be. The chalet itself had a usual cooking range, microwave, kettle and fridge, as well as a washing machine, TV and even a decent internet link, which puts it ahead of even many hotels.

Those plastic chains

Those plastic chains

To get the food and drink for those snacks and meals, you can easily walk to the nearest konbini, or take on of the fairly frequent busses – the chalets are a few mins from the slope and conveniences, but since we had the car we went down to the local ‘A Coop’ supermarket, which seemed to be enticing people to buy bacon in wholesale sizes, and who are we to decline an offer.

Hakuba is just full of places to eat as well though. For the two nights we were there, we went to TakoTaco, a Tex/Mex – Japanese restaurant which served big portions of takoyaki, and fantastic tacos and nachos, in a very relaxed environment. It was one of the few places where the background music was actually listenable, and fairly well rounded – you don’t hear Brewer & Shipley’s “One Toke Over the Line” in many places. The food was great, and worth a walk into the town – from the chalet it was probably ten minutes, though we drove, and were surprised just how close it was.

takotaco

takotaco - call them

To finish the restaurant list, for the last night we went to Amazing Diner Avalanche. Checking it was open wasn’t as easy as it sounds – the phone number on the dining leaflet we’d been given was wrong, and believe me, searching for “Hakuba” and “Avalanche” will get you plenty of snow links before any restaurant; in the end we found another leaflet which had the correct phone number, but no location, and we already knew the location on the original leaflet was wrong. Like many places in snow resorts, if you do call them up, there’s a decent chance they’ll come and pick you up. By the way, even though it was a Friday night, we did call the Italian place and was told that it was closed on Fridays (at least someone answered).

So why be closed on a Friday night? Well, to be honest, the place was empty, pretty much. I’ve been to Hakuba a few times, and this was like a ghost town by comparison, with the obligatory groupings of Australians, and at least on Saturday morning a few more Japanese, but really, nothing compared to years past. I do kind of wonder where the Japanese are skiing nowadays if at all.

 

So is the last weekend of February now the end of the season? It used to be late March some years. There was plenty of snow though, not really that much artificial and though it was a bit wet, it was perfectly boardable.

Hakuba on a sunny day!

Hakuba on a sunny day!

Tips from the trip would definitely be to get a GPS Map location of your hotel/chalet. Unlike the Prince Hotels in Shiga, Hakuba has a lot of pensions and hotels in a fairly tight space, so if you’re hunting by address, post code or phone number, you’re not going to hit it with your average car navi. Most of the access pages definitely assume people are coming by mass transit, but really, it a Google Map link so much work.

Sun over Hakuba

Sun over Hakuba

Sakakibara and the Pelago Theory

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Many years ago, in fact in around 1997, I somehow stumbled upon a website called pelago.com, a play on ‘archipelago’, being based around stories and events in Japan.  Don’t go there now – it’s currently a software company site, unless you want that instead. I vaguely remember reading a few of its issues whilst I was on the JET Programme at that time.

However, in 1997, it was purported to be written by former reporters of various papers (such as the Japan Times Weekly) who were let go or similar for trying to publish the truth as they saw it, or at least, unpopular ideas or takes on that truth.

I remember looking for the site again a few years ago but it was long gone, though I was able to gather a few bits from the WayBack machine, which had entries from April and December 1997.

Hang on, why am I even looking at this now in 2011? The name Jun Hase to be exact; someone mentioned the name at work a few weeks ago and it reminded me that that was one of the stories the original Pelago team had laboured over in its original incarnation, and was the biggest story at the time, which happened shortly after I came over to Japan the first time.

The crime itself was particularly grisly, with an 11 year old child’s head, that of Jun Hase,  found at the school gates, a note inserted into the mouth – a crime not often seen anywhere in the world and certainly not in Japan before or since. It outraged and scared the whole nation, placing a brief focus on the stressed world of some school children. The  name ‘Seito Sakakibara’ became a national watchword for this new type of evil in Japan, as the alias of the apparent killer used in the note, a 14 year old. (‘Sakakibara’ also apparently killed another child – a 10 year old girl).

Pelago’s contention was that the (then) child convicted couldn’t possibly have done it, or at least certainly not alone. They wondered why an accomplice wasn’t being sought, despite a person having been seen by witnesses. What happened to him/her? From Pelago’s piece:

“…the police report was met with skepticism from many journalists, for several reasons. The suspect could not have driven any of the three vehicles linked to the crime. Therefore, the police concluded he lured Hase into the telecommunications complex, where he strangled and decapitated him. But no blood was found on Hase’s body, head, clothes or in the ground — Hase had to be killed elsewhere and his body was carried uphill to the complex. Yet there were no signs of the body being dragged along the ground. Plus, Hase was strangled with one hand — quite a feat for a teenager. Plus, several witnesses recalled seeing a large man, about 160 lbs, between the ages of 20 and 40. Finally, the complex kanji and grammar in the letter were too advanced for a junior high student.”

They covered a lot of other stories too, forwarding theories which I remember at the time were considered a bit outside the mainstream such as their coverage of the Aum Shinrikyo – and these weren’t that far out there either – Aum’s links in Russia and to the Japanese government were well known, if not widely reported.

The about page for the old pelago.com lists three main contributors/editors: Yoichi Clark Shimatsu, Masanori Tabata and Philip Cunningham. I wonder if the Philip Cunningham is this one.  I should really e-mail him and find out. A quick search on the others reveals a fairly extensive resumes for journalism.

So I wonder, what happened to Pelago? Did anything come out of any of the pieces they wrote after the fact, and was anything done about them? Were they really journalists forced out of a journalistic requirement in Japan which prefers regurgitating the edicts of press clubs, or were they disgruntled former employees, pushed out for being crackpots?

Oddly the more I think about it, the more interested I am myself, given how contrarian their views were. I’ll update if I find anything.