Posted on 03/17/2011 5:58:15 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
KAMAKURA, JAPAN
To get some perspective on the earthquake that struck the country to which I moved last year, I hiked a mile and a half Wednesday morning from our house to the Great Buddha of Kamakura, the most famous attraction of this town on the southwest outskirts of Tokyo.
Serenity washes over me every time I gaze at the 44-foot, 13th-century bronze statue. I'm not spiritual, much less a Buddhist. But I went to confirm, with my own eyes, that the Buddha looks the same as usual - that he wasn't, say, glowing because of deadly rays emitting from the crippled nuclear plants 200 miles to the north.
Silly? Of course. Not much sillier, though, than many of the reactions I've seen or read about in the past couple of days: the hordes of expats shelling out thousands for flights out of the country; authorities in China, South Korea, Singapore and elsewhere screening Japanese food imports for radioactivity; folks in the States clamoring for potassium iodide pills to protect them against atomic particles wafting across the Pacific. I've been deluged with messages from loved ones, wondering whether we're planning to evacuate. Yet while the concern has been touching, we're staying put.
Particularly because we don't live in the immediate vicinity of the nuclear plants, we're confident that we're as safe here as always - which is to say, extremely safe, the kind of safe that makes us comfortable sending our fourth-grader on a long train and bus commute to school, a fairly common routine here even for much younger children. Aftershocks, power outages, panic food-buying, long gasoline lines - this, too, will pass, and it's hard to pity ourselves much given the misery that people along Japan's northeast coast have endured since March 11.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Yo!
It’s not often that you find more sanity in the Washington Post than you get from some posters on FR.
Bttt.
Interesting that even a Washington Post/Brookings Institute man can see (and publicly share) the truth!
Now now, don't make fun of them.
Okay, nevermind - I can't not make fun of them either.
Go ahead.
I’m glad the people of Japan, even the ones from ‘Murrica, are still keeping to the faith and not freaking out over what CNN has been spewing.
I think the worst is over, they still got an issue or two at Dai Ichi, but the best of the best are on it.
God bless the Fukushima 50 who have stuck to their mission, even if it costs them their lives. The Japanese aren’t any better than we are over here, but they do have the honor of their nation to fight for. I can respect that.
Thank you SeekAndFind. And Dirtboy, isn’t that the truth.
This guy’s comments were good.
Strangely enough, I had this conversation with someone last night, should all U. S. Citizen pack up and leave or not.
Wow, some of the logic was astoundingly bad.
What military plane has:
4 large, loud prop engines
Slow moving
Exageratedly large cockpit area (bulbous)
Medium sized (Larger than private, smaller than commercial)
20 foot protrusion off of it’s tail
???
It just flew over Medford, OR on the border with California, flying South to North.
Is this a radiation detection plane?
I turned Rush on for about five minutes this morning. During that short period he said something that up until now I hadn’t heard.
He stated that the exposed rods that have had the water boil off, were spent rods in storage pools, that hadn’t been removed yet. He stated further, that active rods have not been exposed to the environment.
That sounded rather strange to me, but he must have had some basis for saying it.
If this is true, we’ve essentially been lied to about what dangers we face, and how dire this situation actually is.
What’s your take on this?
Thank you. As noted, this, too, shall pass.
It is such a shame that some will use this difficult time to further their own causes.
The bulbous cockpit sounds like a Mohawk.
P-3 Orion
OV-1 Mohawk
I used to live two train stops from there. Just loved the place. It’s been through worse than this.
I , fortunately , live in southern Japan , far away from the disaster areas . I should interject that I have lived here since 1985 : 10 years in Tokyo and the past 15 here in my wife’s hometown in Kumamoto Prefecture . I’m no John Wayne or Audie Murphy type , but if we were to suffer a similar catastrophe down here I would stay to help the people in every way I possibly could . The least I could do for a country whose people have treated me so very well indeed since I arrived in Tokyo from eastern Long Island all those years ago .
I’m not saying where I work or what I do, but I’ve heard through the grapevine that several coworkers came back from Japan yesterday with internal contamination; from what I hear I-131 and Te-132 (which decays to I-132).
Iodine isotopes concentrate in the thyroid, so if you’re planning on staying I would strongly suggest you start taking iodine supplements.
Things are still precarious though they do seem to be getting better. It seems they have been able to get water into the spent fuel pool at no. 3. The biggest concern is the spent fuel pool with the MOX (uranium/plutonium) spent fuel rods. Spent fuel is smoking hot (radioactive wise) and if the Zircaloy cladding fails with the pool open to the air, you’ve got big problems.
I’ve been to Kamakura, about 10 years ago. One of the engineers on our team has in-laws there, so we went to visit when we were in Japan on business. Nice coastal town, kind of old-timey. We walked up the hill to see the Great Buddha, too.
BTW, for the 2 weeks we were in Japan we felt small earthquakes at least once a day...
Has anyone visited the Buddha lately.?
I was there 50 years ago, and you could go up inside the statue and look out an opening in its back. I wonder if you can still do that? - Tom
Strange, expats are leaving while here stateside people want to travel to Japan to help, and the charities, as charities do, tell them to stay home, we are the experts, you’ll be in the way, we even have trained experts for telling fools like you not to go, just open up your wallet. Wide! And one website, I kid you not, advises one to volunteer instead at your local SPCA instead. That’s the ticket - pick up the dog poop! I’d go (to Japan) on a minute’s notice myself, but I do get the drift - I’d be in the way.
Yikes!
I’m not liking that my husband is headed to Asia on Monday and must fly through Tokyo to get to his destination. Layover there for a few hours — Delta won’t reroute. I guess all their flights use that hub.
I just hate that I don’t trust the information out there. I’m not assuming the worst case by any means, but I have no faith in what TEPCO is professing.
Were you co-workers in high risk areas? I worry about our servicemen on bases there also.
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