Masaru Akahane of Sendai Industrial Promotions

Masaru Akahane, of the Sendai Industrial Promotions, government office in the AER building near the Sendai shinkansen station, talks about the economic situation in Sendai City, Japan after the earthquake and tsunami of last year, and what they are doing to improve jobs and businesses. http://www.siip.city.sendai.jp/netu/english.html

Japan bets on overseas ‘Japantowns’ to boost economy

By Kyoko Hasegawa | AFP
Yahoo News!

Japan is hoping to cash in on its rich culture by recreating fashionable districts of Tokyo in foreign cities, determined that enclaves of vibrant shops, cafes and restaurants can find new markets abroad.
For decades, exports have been the driving force behind the world’s third largest economy with brands like Toyota and Sony becoming household names around the globe.
But a key plank in the government’s “Cool Japan” strategy, which launched last year, is to transplant Tokyo’s trendy districts overseas, taking the shops to the customers instead of bringing the customers to the shops. Read More

Fallout from Japan’s Nuclear Energy Crisis is Snowballing

EnergyBiz
Ken Silverstein | Apr 30, 2012

The fallout from Fukushima is starting to snowball. Japan now has to make some decisions, namely whether to restart some of its nuclear plants or to rely more heavily on fossil fuels to cool homes this summer.

It depends on how the issue is framed and who is framing it. But it goes something like this: Proponents of restarting some of the nuclear facilities are saying that parts of the country will experience energy shortfalls, leaving not just homeowners to suffer but also the country’s economy as big businesses potentially compensate and reduce production. And, relying on fossil fuels will not just create more emissions but also increase energy costs for those same businesses and consumers.

Opponents of nuclear power power are saying that the way to avoid another disaster is to move on to cleaner energy. Adding renewables and energy efficiency measures would fulfill the energy promises, they say, and cost effectively. Japan, in fact, showed last summer in the early months following the March nuclear disaster that it could cut its consumption by 15 percent.

“You cannot substitute 30 percent of installed capacity overnight,” counters the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development Secretary General Angel Gurria, in a Kyodo News interview. “As a condition of growth policy, you have to have sufficient sources of energy to fuel the economy, households, companies and infrastructure.”

Read more

Hula Girls, Movie about the rebuilding and renovation of Iwata, Fukushima prefecture

The heartwarming movie about the rebuilding and revitalization of the mining town, Iwata, Fukushima prefecture into the Juban Hawaiian Center.

Music by Jake Shimabukuro

Tomoko, co-organizer, Run for Japan

Tomoko, one of the co-organizers for Run For Japan, March 11, 2012 at Shoreline Park in Mountain View, CA, invites you to run and support the Japan Relief efforts.

More info: http://www.runforjapanusa.com

Run for Japan. March 11, 2012

Tomo, one of the organizers for Run for Japan talks about the March 11, 2012 fundraiser at Shoreline, Mountain View, CA.

Japan’s Nuclear Exclusion Zone Shows Few Signs of Life

By AKIKO FUJITA | Good Morning America
Good Morning America, Yahoo

Japan’s Nuclear Exclusion Zone Shows Few Signs of Life (ABC News)
What’s most striking about Japan’s nuclear exclusion zone, is what you don’t see. There are no people, few cars, no sign of life, aside from the occasional livestock wandering empty roads.
Areas once home to 80,000 people are now ghost towns, frozen in time. Homes ravaged from the powerful earthquake that shook this region nearly a year ago, remain virtually untouched. Collapsed roofs still block narrow streets. Cracked roads, make for a bumpy ride.
In seaside communities, large fishing boats line the side of the road, next to piles of debris. Abandoned cars, dot otherwise empty fields. It’s a scene reminiscent of tsunami-battered prefectures Miyagi and Iwate, last March – except those communities have cleaned up a significant amount of the debris since, in preparation for rebuilding efforts.
We had been trying to get our cameras inside here for months, eager to document the fallout from the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, 11 months on.
While workers of the Fukushima plant are bused in daily, the government has maintained a 12-mile no-go zone around the area for everyone else, only allowing for brief, supervised visits home for residents who still have homes here.
Few Signs of Life in Fukushima Exclusion Zone
“There are police cars patrolling every corner,” we were warned. “As soon as they spot your camera, you will be arrested.”
On Saturday, a local driver with a special permit agreed to sneak my cameraman and I in, so long as we didn’t reveal his identity.
We put on thin, white hazmat suits and masks as a precaution, grabbed a Geiger counter and dosimeter to monitor radiation levels, then slipped past police guarding the exclusion zone entrance, onto the main road running through Japan’s nuclear wasteland.
That road, Highway 6, seemed remarkably, unremarkable. We drove past miles of empty parking lots, barren land, closed storefronts. Something you’d expect in any small town, early on a Saturday morning.
Then, the Geiger counter quickly reminded us of where we were. As we approached the road to the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, the numbers ticked up. Less than a mile out, the counter read “27.62 microsieverts an hour” – not a dangerous dose in the short amount of time we were there, but nearly five times the acceptable limit for U.S. nuclear workers, if consumed over a year.
We passed a bus full of Fukushima plant workers, as we drove further away from the reactors. The numbers started to tick down again.
In the the town of Namie, we met Masami Yoshizawa, a rancher who has defied government orders to euthanize more than 200 of his cows. His cattle, raised for premium wagyu beef, used to fetch $13,000 a head. Now they are contaminated with cesium.
Yoshizawa witnessed the reactor explosions from his farm, located just 9 miles from the plant. Radiation concerns forced he and fellow ranchers to evacuate soon after – his, boss opting to unleash all of the cows, thinking he would never return.
Yoshizawa said he couldn’t abandon the cattle, completely. He obtained a permit to re-enter the exclusion zone, so he could feed the animals. He’s been driving an hour and a half from his temporary home every day since, to look after them.
“The government didn’t even try to save the animals,” he told me. “They just wanted to kill them. I am filled with rage.”
He displays the rage outside his ranch, where he’s handwritten angry messages on large, pieces of plywood. One sign placed near a cow’s remains reads “Stop killing our animals.”
The government has said it will take at least 30 years to decommission the crippled reactors. While Yoshizawa insists he isn’t going anywhere, the reality is, this nuclear wasteland may not be livable for decades.
As we hopped back in our car, to drive out of the exclusion zone, our driver asked if he could take us to the town center in Futaba. There was something he wanted to show us.
We drove past the main train station, past small office buildings, and retail stores, until we saw a sign marking the entrance to the main shopping district.
It read, “Nuclear power – the bright future of energy.”

Quake disaster survivors see bleak future as unemployment benefits run out

The Mainichi Daily News
January 11, 2012

Disaster survivors look for work at a Hello Work employment agency in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, on Jan. 6. (Mainichi)

Survivors of the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami will start losing their unemployment benefits this month as Japan marks 10 months since the disaster, though many of them are struggling to find work.

Unemployment benefits were earlier extended, but marine processing and other important industries in Miyagi and Iwate prefectures have still not recovered, and for many unemployed survivors, there are no immediate prospects of finding another job. In Fukushima Prefecture, meanwhile, people forced to evacuate due to the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant have had to look for jobs without knowing when — or even if — they will be able to return home.

Among those struggling to find work is 35-year-old Takahito Sato, who is supporting a wife and 4-year-old daughter. Sato was previously employed at a marine product processing firm in the Iwate Prefecture city of Ofunato.

“My unemployment benefit runs out at the end of January, but almost all of the work offered is for people with qualifications or experience using heavy machinery, and there’s nothing that suits me,” Sato lamented.

Officials at the Hello Work employment service center in Kamaishi, Iwate Prefecture, said that the job-offers-to-seekers ratio in Kamaishi and the town of Otsuchi stood at 0.20 in April 2011, the month after the disaster. In September, the ratio increased to 0.50, and in November it rose to 0.56, recovering beyond the level prior to the quake (0.48 in November 2010). However, the effective number of job seekers fell from 3,067 in April 2011 to 2,155 in September, and has remained stagnant since then. A mismatch between available jobs and the type of work people want to do has been blamed for this.

By job type, the job-offers-to-seekers ratio stood at 22.17 for security positions, as openings surged after the disaster. For construction work the ratio was 1.75, but for regular office work, and the sales and food processing industries, the ratio ranged between 0.2 and 0.3.

People affected by the Fukushima nuclear crisis have also faced tough employment conditions.

One 41-year-old resident who previously did nuclear power plant-related work in Fukushima Prefecture moved with his wife and child from the coastal town of Namie, to a shelter in the city of Fukushima, which is located inland. His unemployment benefit ends this month, meaning he will have to start digging into his savings to survive.

After the earthquake disaster, he received notification of employment from a recovery-related business in a coastal area of the prefecture, but his daughter has already changed schools twice since the disaster, and is just settling in to her new school. The man tried to look for work that would enable his daughter to attend the same school, but he worried about how soon he would be able to quit if radiation levels decreased and he was able to return to his hometown. He has called for more support from the government.

“My (unemployment) benefit is not something that the government has given me; it’s insurance that I’ve paid for by working. I want the government to further extend the benefit,” he said.

Masaru Hachisuka, who was previously living in a house in Futaba, about five kilometers from the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, is now renting a home in Koriyama with his 50-year-old wife. The 52-year-old will be covered by unemployment insurance until the end of April, but he has still not been able to find work matching his skills.

“The emergency employment measures offered by local bodies provide only interim positions,” he says. To help find work he spent 150,000 yen attending a driving school and obtained a special license allowing him to work at a construction site.

Hachisuka’s wife worries about their situation.

“If we can’t return home, I want the government to clearly tell us that. What are we going to do if our time limit for renting a place to live expires? I’m also worried about my husband operating a vehicle at a construction site when he is past the age of 50,” she says.

Hachisuka’s reply is short.

“It’s all we can do,” he says.

Help still needed after record-breaking year for disasters

CNN
By Natalie Angley, CNN
December 10, 2011

From tornadoes to flooding to paralyzing ice storms, the United States was severely affected by 12 natural disasters in 2011 that cost more than $1 billion each and claimed hundreds of lives, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

 STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• 12 billion-dollar weather related disasters have been recorded in the U.S.
• The total cost of these events exceeds $50 billion
• Relief organizations are providing long-term aid for victims
• If you want to help, donationscan be as simple as sending a text

(CNN) – From the tsunami in Japan to famine in East Africa to the deadly tornado outbreaks in the United States, 2011 has been a historic year for natural disasters.

A dozen weather-related disasters in the United States alone have caused more than $1 billion in damages each, breaking the record of nine billion-dollar disasters set in 2008, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Altogether, the damage from these events exceeds $50 billion.

“In many ways, 2011 rewrote the record books. From crippling snowstorms to the second deadliest tornado year on record to epic floods, drought and heat, and the third busiest hurricane season on record, we’ve witnessed the extreme of nearly every weather category,” said NOAA spokesman Christopher Vaccaro.

Dynamic 2011 events to shape world for years to come

Relief organizations have been working year-round to provide emergency aid when disaster strikes and long-term assistance in the months and years that follow. Oftentimes, help is needed long after the media attention subsides.

“Recovery is a very long process. People are so grateful for that temporary place to stay, that hot meal,” said Jeff Jellets, territorial disaster coordinator for The Salvation Army. “But we really look at how we can restore families back to their predisaster condition.

“Until those communities are rebuilt, the job just isn’t done.”

This year, there have been more than 1,000 weather-related fatalities in the United States, according to NOAA. Many of those occurred when deadly tornadoes ripped through the Southeast and Midwest this spring and summer.

Vote for the top stories of 2011

In late April, an estimated 343 tornadoes ripped through central and Southern states, killing 321 people, 240 of which were in Alabama. Tuscaloosa, Alabama, was particularly devastated. Then, less than a month later, 160 people were killed when a tornado with 200 mph winds struck Joplin, Missouri, making it the deadliest single tornado to strike the United States since modern tornado record-keeping began.

Months later, many of these communities are still in need.

“People are starting the process of rebuilding, so we’re helping them with things like appliances and rebuilding materials so they can get back in their homes,” Jellets said. “But then there are a number of people in places like Hackleburg, Alabama, which was really significantly damaged by a tornado, where people are still in the emergency assistance phase.”

In August, Hurricane Irene made landfall over coastal North Carolina and headed north, killing 45 people and causing torrential rainfall and flooding across the Northeast.

“The real damage was inland flooding, particularly in places like upstate New York and Vermont. The Salvation Army still has distribution centers where we’re handing out cleaning supplies and food boxes,” Jellets said. “But some of those communities were away from the media spotlight. What we can do is going to be very difficult over the long haul unless more donations come in for those events.”

The American Red Cross has responded to 131 disaster relief operations in 44 separate states so far this year.

“We opened more than 1,000 shelters across the nation for disasters such as Hurricane Irene and the tornadoes,” said Laura Howe, American Red Cross spokesperson. “That’s in comparison to 37 shelters that we opened across the nation in 2010.”

Outside the United States, there have been several major disasters, including the massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the ensuing nuclear catastrophe, famine in East Africa and flooding in Thailand.

The American Red Cross and other U.S.-based aid organizations joined international efforts to help Japan after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami killed 15,840 people, according to the most recent death toll, and set off a nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

“A lot of the donations the American Red Cross has provided are supporting the rebuilding of hospitals and medical centers and providing social welfare programs for elderly and children,” Howe said. “Any time you have a large disaster, the recovery process is going to take a number of years.”

The Salvation Army is helping Japanese fishermen get back to work.

“Just recently we provided funding to help many of the fishermen there get their boats and their wares back together so they can get back to the business that they know, which is commercial fishing,” said Salvation Army spokesman Maj. George Hood.

In the Horn of Africa, some regions are slowly recovering five months after the United Nations declared a famine in much of Somalia. The disaster has killed tens of thousands of people and 250,000 are still at risk of starvation.

The World Food Programme is aiming to feed 11 million people in East Africa. The organization is currently reaching almost 8 million.

“It’s crucially important that especially the children and nursing mothers get highly fortified supplementary foods. For $10 you can feed a woman or a child for three weeks,” said WFP spokeswoman Bettina Luescher. “Hunger is the biggest solvable global problem we have. For very little, you really can help change a life.”

Ways to help

As relief organizations continue to provide aid to victims around the world, here are a few ways you can help.

To donate to the American Red Cross, go online or text “REDCROSS” to 90999 in the midst of a disaster or to make a donation to the general disaster relief fund.

During the holiday season, browse the Holiday Giving Catalog to buy a gift in someone’s honor like five blankets for disaster victims at home or emergency water containers for people in other countries.

You can also visit the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ website to donate to a national society in a specific country.

To donate to The Salvation Army, go online, text “GIVE” to 80888, or drop some spare change in one of the red kettles you see around town during the holidays.

When you donate online or through the mail, you can designate your gift to a specific disaster.

To help feed people in the Horn of Africa, donations can be made to the World Food Programme from various countries online or via text.

To donate $10 from the United States, text “AID” to 27722; to donate $5 from Canada, text “RELIEF” to 45678; to donate £3 from the United Kingdom text “AID” to 70303.

Or you can test your knowledge by taking the Horn of Africa quiz. For every person who participates, a child will receive a warm meal thanks to an anonymous donor.

Linkin lid for Kobayashi

CRASH.net

Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi will sport a special helmet livery during this weekend’s Brazilian GP which will be auctioned off after the race to boost funding for the nation of Japan still in devastation after this year’s horrific earthquake and tsunami.

Kamui Kobayashi will once again come to the aid of his fellow Japanese people by sporting a special one-off helmet livery during this weekend’s Brazilian GP.

The helmet in question has personally been designed by Joe Hahn, member and producer of American rock sensation Linkin Park, following an encounter during the Singapore GP which triggered the idea. The singer has also personally signed the helmet.

In conjunction with the charity Music for Relief, a venture headed by Hahn, the helmet worn by the Japanese star will be auctioned off after Sunday’s race in aid of the Japanese relief efforts. Funding remains crucially important as Japan continues to rebuild following the natural disasters which struck the nation earlier this year.

Kobayashi, who has acted as a global ambassador for his home nation since the disaster struck, was only too happy to partake in a scheme so close to his heart. Regardless of what the Japanese driver does, his presence in F1 seems to bring the Japanese people together, and that was no more evident during the Japanese GP.

“I’ve long been a fan of Linkin Park,” he said, “I love their music and I’m impressed by the band’s social commitment. I was thrilled to meet the musicians personally in the paddock when they were giving a concert at the Singapore Grand Prix. We’ve been in touch since then and I’m really pleased that Joe Hahn has designed a helmet for me. I hope that we will be able to raise a lot of money for Music for Relief to help rebuild my country.”

Hahn also noted that it was a ‘fun opportunity’ which could help make a positive difference to the people who need it.

“This was a fun opportunity to create something for Kamui while continuing our efforts to raise funds for Japan,” said the rockstar.

Music for Relief has already donated an incredible $700,000 to the Japanese relief effort, while the organisation has raised a further $5m in previous natural disasters which have devastated nations.

The online auction for Kobnayashi’s helmet has already started and will remain open until Monday 19 December. Interested bidders should click HERE

Kobayashi, however, will not be the only driver sporting a new-look helmet this weekend, as a number of drivers, including Lewis Hamilton, Felipe Massa,Vitantonio Liuzzi and Rubens Barrichello, will also show off alternative colours at this weekend’s helmet frenzy.