Posted in: Vegetarian diets not always the most climate-friendly, researchers say See in context
Could not a Reuters correspondent connect with more scientific data to support what is claimed? Also, it is no good to propose a vegan diet if people do not know how to get full nutrition from such a menu. Yet, to reject dairy products as a protein support to a vegetarian diet undertaken without a tradition of what is needed for health, is to encourage either experimental diets that end when one has to take iron pills according to a doctor or the spread of gross inertia against pleas for less meat-centered programs. Finding out how to eat crustaceans and tiny fish (let alone insects!) would not be easy for most Americans in the homeland. Yet, one or two vegan main meals a week would make quite a difference in the environment if universally adopted.
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Posted in: Rugby World Cup fanzones closed as powerful typhoon nears Japan See in context
Whether or not it IS true that "Japan is one of the most natural-disaster prone countries in the world", the claim that we get "hundreds of earthquakes of various sizes" is obscure and threatens to exceed the facts. Does the archipelago of Japan really receive 100s of earthquakes a year? If you do not mean every year, why did you write as if that were the case? Indeed, the only significant earthquakes in the THIRTY-FOUR YEARS I have lived in Japan were at most HALF A DOZEN. That means about one every six years. This is during a period when the Pacific Rim is subject to an unusual degree of activity of volcanoes (such as Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines) and quakes. After this period (when, I wonder will it end?), we will suffer fewer.
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Posted in: Japanese firms put capital investment plans on hold as trade risks grow See in context
The worst aspect of the Sino-American trade war is its frantic speed, giving neither country's manufacturing sectors time to adjust to the new situation. Other countries caught in the global interdependency are similarly in a pickle: for example, I ran across tie-shoes (made south of China) without any grommets to enable the shoe laces to slide through the holes. Someone--in this case a middle-person, it seems--failed to get across the design needed in time for production and attempted sale. Simultaneously, American firms are said to be complaining that they had no warning to prepare factories and systems to replace what has been lost through Draconian customs tax hikes. Elected to put America in "first" place through business savvy, one can perhaps excuse Mr. Trump's lack of military planning experience. Yet this business problem could have been prevented by common sense, could it not? Where is the fire? Why not plan the customs' hikes as slowly as TPP?
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Posted in: Skirmishes break out in Hong Kong mall amid counter rallies See in context
It is too bad there is no "Mohandas Gandhi" to set the framework for the least amount of violence possible. True, the revolution that will be celebrated October 1st involved a far-greater number of "casualties," but this student-age group's attempt to preserve/build up some democracy also has fallen into unnecessary and degrading violent acts. Even others' property if protected in a spirit of "come join us" can work for the good. Preserving a person's livelihood and life can be a sort of hospitality aiming at "converting" all and sundry to one's cause. In the case that one CANNOT win by warfare, such a non-violent alternative may be the only other viable way. (Violence in general is a form of despair: like Billy Budd in the novel "Moby Dick" [HAWTHORNE], the violent person indicates that s/he has given up all hope of communicating by words and body language.)
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Posted in: Learning from a half-century of economic development in Asia See in context
Very interesting opinion expression backed-up by study for "half-a-century"! The only interesting response I can make is: WHY is "development" still the goal you propose for all of Asia? Questioning the lemming-like rush to "develop" has a long history (to least from the late 1970s). How popular this querulous attitude is I wonder. I would also like to ask the questioners why they protested? One can guess that (e.g.) developing the Amazon River basin by slash-and-burn agriculture is suffocating the atmosphere, but it is insignificant compared with rushing towards immediate financial gain by riding rough-shod over the facts of climate change, as in homeland America. "The young" . . ."will not forgive what we forgave" (Yevtushenko).
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Posted in: Anger mounts in Japan over 'outdated' rape laws See in context
In response to "Yubaru," who actually read what I had written, the "age" is one of male menopause in most of the marriages the intimate details of which I have been privileged to learn. The Sei Tai [the characters are "put in order" "body"] Master NOGUCHI Haruchika seems to opine that humans are all better off health-wise to renounce sexual coupling at a reasonable age {still seeking the source}. Thus, contrary to English-newspaper-human-interest stories about sex after menopause, not EVERYBODY wants as a matter of course to continue without end. As for menopause meaning safety from unexpected birthing, a Nagasaki A-bomb survivor conceived a child at age 47 and successfully birthed him. It had seemed to her that she had passed menopause, but .... in fact she had not! To put this in some context, I have repeated elsewhere that a New York City police woman of the year (around 1970-75?) defined "rape" as "not a sexual act, but an act of violence against women"--this point wives who "feel raped" must take into their vocabularies. Painful intercourse is not rape. Legal definitions that try to protect those tricked by an overpowering coupling person (generally [but theoretically not only] male) use the matter of "consent"--the problem then becomes: how to read the heart of the victim as to consenting or not. In a Japan where AIMAI (ambivalence) is cool, I have no idea how to construct a good law. If the event is with a minor, the USA defines it as rape; but in Japan, it seems that a sort of shared self-sex is not condemned always and everywhere. I do not have any data at all, but the "virgin-mother" model for all relatives (as an "ideal type" and a goal) is rather replaced by the Bodhisattva or goddess Kannon who embodies compassion as "suffering with" the other. Which model produces more purity in real life remains beyond the supercomputers' listing as it requires input no one has. A sacrament "touches our senses lightly" conveying meaning and comfort; the family is a very central sacrament in contemporary Japan, I think. What do you call it? Sublimation? has many facets here these days.
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Posted in: Anger mounts in Japan over 'outdated' rape laws See in context
The absence of just laws also works against some men (it is not, therefore, merely "sexist"): For example, I have heard of a married man who became of the age when sexual activity must be renounced (because the religion of his partner forbid any but a chancy way to space or prevent conceptions). He was unable, at least at first, to comply (and his wife experienced something close to rape from her point of view). Sadly, as the couple saw a counsellor, the male told of planning suicide. "Praying for him" the counsellor nevertheless seemed to me not to comprehend his point of view. Asked to come to his apt. {separate from his wife for a while}, she delayed only to find him dead of his own hand. (Stricken with self-criticism, she told us all her story.) This "rape within marriage" often happens around that age. Isolated persons have even greater negative feelings about such events compared with those who compare their lives with other people's stories.
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Posted in: Nagasaki marks 73rd anniversary of U.S. atomic bombing See in context
I am not sure, but I think I heard that the statue made for the Nagasaki Peace Park's central symbol is made that way to show (after reflecting on what Hiroshima residents had to do) the human effort needed to clean up and begin again after the bomb. Focussing on the human strength to call upon for the task, the statue is to leave the past behind like a typhoon or quake and get on with the tasks of restoring human living conditions. (As for its appearing similar to western or European art, I do not know whether that is relevant or just happened because humans are human.) Some religious or even secular folks claim memory of one's past wrongdoing may prevent recurrence, but some say that the very memory may incite to repetition (besides those cited below, see the S.E. Asian Buddhist Scriptures on repenting during the rainy season) ! These latter opine that the best method is "not to recall one's sins in detail, but to suffer their results with patience" (Kadloubovsky and Palmer's trans. of "Early Fathers from the Philokalia"). This would perhaps fit as well with various American (not convicted and not punished) war crimes as well as with those of other countries such as Japan, if any. We might consider the subdued resentment of victim countries as a consequence of our American habit of violence (from the beginning of our country) and endure it patiently, trying to listen. Then we may find (e.g.) that people may not "ask for forgiveness" (since that moment may be gone or a figment of only OUR version of the history) but do indeed keep minds and hearts free from hatred!
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Posted in: Japan, home of the high-tech loo, hopes basic toilet can save lives See in context
Can we use this toilet in Japan, should there be (which heaven forbid!) an earthquake or other disaster that knocks out running water? Does this require running water?
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Posted in: Saudi Arabia bans 'Yo-Kai Watch,' 'Okami,' 45 other video games following child suicides See in context
My husband banned ALL games and manga and many TV shows in our home. Not knowing anything, I simply consented. This all paid off (so to speak) in sanity and success in more mentally challenging activities (such as mastering Morse Code just for fun or memorizing PI to the umpteenth digit). It DOES seem suspicious however (if ANYONE can play any games on SAUDI ARABIA) that the religiously very different ones were also banned. Muslims might mistake those references to mythology for "idolatry" if they were not better educated in world religions' phenomenology and theology.
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Posted in: Why the Summer Olympics are held in July, August despite heat See in context
A quick look at the average temperatures to date for Tokyo (https://www.holiday-weather.com/tokyo/averages/) indicates that even September would probably (even with climate change) be cooler than JUNE IS! Why should Tokyo be prevented from taking a similar exception to the rule about media coverage seasons and using a later date foe the summer Olympics 2020 just as Sydney, Australia is reported in this article to have done? Unless Tokyo applies to do so, will even early morning practice be of use to the athletes? Compare Tokyo's current AM temperatures with Madrid's for example.
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Posted in: Disaster-hit Japan braces for powerful typhoon See in context
This article, understandably, is not specific about predictions now. Tokyo is expecting some rain and wind until around 6AM tomorrow (29th) JT. The main force of the typhoon (No. 12 to us) will however pass south of us, we hope. Watching the predictions, we are encouraged that the weak side of the greater Tokyo area will not prove our downfall this time (speaking only of the capital--we remain concerned for the victims of the recent water disasters who MAY be in the path, which is so difficult to predict). This dangerous typhoon was born in a sea very nearby--a phenomenon that occurs nowadays but NEVER was reported in the times before we became concerned with climate change.
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Posted in: Ruling party lawmaker says LGBT couples lack 'productivity' See in context
Having read the article and all comments so far, I miss the essential point of devising the abbreviation LGBT and discussing their human rights: these persons are discriminated in a very severe way. Is there no humane concern over this fact? Have you read the book "Black like me"? Should you choose (in a similar way) not to dye your skin but to risk joining these sexual minorities as a friend--risking losing your own identity and sharing in their humiliation and their being bullied without moral or social meaning (just done as a show of contempt)--you might think differently about rejecting their model of partnership. It is not just tax breaks, but societal permission and even support that makes up a marriage as seen from outside by the law-makers, is it not? If so, these persons may find in such a program assistance to bear the virtual hate-speech. Perhaps one should be willing to grant the outspoken conservative LDP person the idea of distinguishing "marriage" from "partnership" in the two cases? This might be a support for such persons valuing of the potentially reproductive aspect of heterosexual marriages. Beyond taxes, there are issues of inheritance of what the partner has come to think of as home, special visiting privileges in hospitals and so forth and so on connected with marriage. Traditionally there is even a sense of joining the male spouse's family in lieu of one's own. To what degree would this be applicable to same-sex partnerships? A loving person would want to visit the partner in hospital (or even jail, which Heaven forbid their entering!). Are we, however, asking families to willy-nilly accept gay or lesbian partners? How difficult would that be? The task of being humane in this case is complicated as well as new and so difficult indeed like many problems of ethics nowadays.
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Posted in: Crime in Japan at lowest postwar level in 1st half of 2018 See in context
The proliferation (compared with say USA TV reporting) of crimes reported on the news in Japan is really a sign that these crimes are exceptional to daily life. Time was--I cannot speak for the US nowadays--when that country [the only other one I know] DID NOT PUT CRIMES ON THE NEWS BECAUSE THEY WERE TOO MANY.
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Posted in: Japan, U.S. renew nuclear pact amid plutonium stock concern See in context
Interesting that the "news" after saying the the Hokkaido plant will soon open to "reprocess" the potentially agreement-offending plutonium adds a final act of truth: "experts say ..." [see above]. Who gave us the "news" prior to the declaration of the "experts" which is in flat contradiction to it? Are these experts scientists? Merely "those in the know"--viz., their report concerns government (one or two together) plans to build up a "defense" (aimed at No. Korea) by threat of nuke stockpiles?
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Posted in: Japan probing abuse of health insurance system by foreign residents See in context
My spouse had told me that we "had" to get a form of private insurance, when we arrived in Japan. This article is the first to inform me that I MAY apply for the regular National Health Insurance if I wish! It has (for example) the advantage of low-cost health check-ups in each city for insurance holders. (The current private insurance, rather, has refused my request for a change of place so that I might get "Ningen Dock" [Health check]. They insist that all their insured persons must go to their designated place, which is so far away as to be impossible for me to go to when leaving stomach empty not only of food and drink, but of medicine as well. )
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Posted in: Free housing to be offered to impoverished LGBTs in Tokyo See in context
I forgot to mention the minority-sex-specific matter: Even false rumors of being Transsexual or Lesbian can cause one to search in vain for a female roommate (necessary for less expensive housing than living alone). Fortunately, in Japan, there is some effort to extend the mercy of curiosity to determine the reality of such distinctions. This may preserve one from lynchings such as today's Japan Times reports occurring sometimes by human error in India. Lesser discriminations--such as "needle-pricks"--are of course similar in origin and difficulty of removal. I can imagine if one were really of such a minority, an unsympathetic family or neighborhood could be quite hard to endure--such significant others would lead to self-contempt and the consequences of that might become legion (along with the difficulty of living at a polite distance from a roommate of the same sex--the reason given in the above article for the special housing). Especially for the young, it might be like living with a regular HETERO- spouse under circumstances of hyped-up hormonal activity during the post-active phase of the spouse's sexual life--something many of Japan's "sexless marriages" participants can understand!! Mohandas Gandhi and Kasturbai (his wife) were not the only spouses who opted for celibacy in their elder years.
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Posted in: Free housing to be offered to impoverished LGBTs in Tokyo See in context
"Expat," you are right there IS a stinginess suspected. One reason is fraud--organized "groups" sign up confused homeless (it is reported) for public benefits and then take a cut of those. Another reason is the tight welfare expenditure budget of the current, rapidly greying period of Japan's population. The baby-boom here is similar to Euro-USA in years, but the rate of "greying" (increasing in population disproportionately in the higher age-groups) is said to be numerically higher. Yet, after this hump (the end of which I will not see, but you the reader??) , there may be a whole different story.
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Posted in: Yasmine Djoudi of Ikkai: One French woman's dream to inspire Japan's next generation See in context
Je ne parle pas français. Yet, I wonder: how do you do business now-a-days when the shrinking population at the age of graduating from college means more jobs available than persons that age ready to do them?
IF, as you say, you plan to "address...[the] problem...[also] of an aging population," what are you doing besides matching elderly persons with tasks for hire, with young workers? Are you doing anything now in Fukuoka about hiring the elderly themselves? (As an old person myself, I thought a "one-time" job would be a good start to see what I can still do--or even what I can now do, thanks to the good sides of aging. Yet, I do not plan to move to Fukuoka. . . . . )
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Posted in: Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated as heavy rain hits wide areas of Japan See in context
Do you remember silencing my theory that the amount of water has increased with global warming? Please see my Facebook post for a new and successful attempt to argue that again!!
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Posted in: One in four surveyed Japanese workers admits to wanting to kill boss; Osaka quake helps show why See in context
Although "Bullfighter" is surely right that such a small, open-to-the-Web news gathering may not reflect real Japan's thinking, perhaps it IS right that so-called extroverted Japanese are also aware of their interior feelings and so mastering them. A survey in a less "Zen" culture might turn up persons who THINK they would never stoop so low and yet are in fact harboring such sordid fantasies. Nevertheless, beware of casually passing on this sort of popular psychology--many English-Speakers (here or abroad) will fail to understand and judge you unusually murderous!!
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Posted in: Finance Ministry officials given lectures on sexual harassment See in context
There seems to be a wavering between denying the issue entirely (VicePM Aso et al.) and imposing DRACONIAN punishment for one (possible ignorant) slip! I recently commented on the latter problem, thinking of the songster for TOKIO whose dismissal ended the group's cohesiveness and a major of a KANTO city, who also seems headed not only for losing his job, but fro a future of unemployment. A clarification for all officials senior enough that their refusal as would-be sexual partners poses the risk of career losses (from loss of chances for promotion to loss of job itself) that their sexual advances must be separated from the workplace-threat-possibility IS NOT A WASTE OF TIME for any man. A rewriting of the law, if need be, to enable a distinction between sexual harassment and rape (or similarly worse acts) and a gradation of punishments would prevent the possibility, now looming, of men's despairing over the penalty so much as to go even further with the "intrusive sexual advances unfairly empowered by employer status" that might serve as one definition of sexual harassment. IF they risk their entire career anyway, what do they have to lose by refraining from rape and stopping at mere harassment?
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Posted in: Tokyo could be paralyzed by Mt Fuji eruption: gov't report See in context
I do not know the chances accurately for a Mt Fuji eruption, but for an earthquake: the scientists were quoted as saying it would not be out-of-the-ordinary (FUSHIGI DE WA NAI) for a major earthquake to occur at any given time. Moving the Capital WAS considered some years ago by committees and the result was there was found no suitable--really safer--city. There ARE back-up data storage places, very sophisticated we suppose. The research and planning, altho' these take time, DO HELP. We DID DO better in Kanto during the last earthquake/tsunami disaster because of updating after the "Great HAN-SHIN ...earthquake disaster"; and since then, even better plans have been made, based on researching the errors made. For example, people now know NOT to drive on the designated highways, where spouses, et al., eager to "save" their own, blocked deliveries of emergency supplies to shelters by merely trying to go pick up their loved ones [essential roads turned into parking lots]. Others take walking shoes to work regularly, having once found how miserable high heels are for a long night's walk home. Such a disturbing but for only a few fatal earthquake would not be out-of-the-ordinary; and one CAN take candy in one's bag, and so forth, as precautions. So for an eruption, imagination and implementation of conclusions CAN help us!! STUDY for example the difference between the losses at Hiroshima's A-bomb and those at Nagasaki, where people had heard rumors of what not to do and what can be done afterwards. The difference was considerable!!
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Posted in: S Korea, Japan, China to hold summit next week See in context
If No. Korea has any other nuclear power plants or active bomb-building sites, will these not be detectable by their heat-loss into the atmosphere and out into space? "So"--we are told by a scientist. This inability to conceal the sites makes them targets for so-called "conventional" bombs (as in the case of Iran and more recently, Syria).
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Posted in: Brazil ethanol sales to Japan to sputter as Tokyo bends to Trump See in context
こちらは家庭用エタノールにも影響がありますか?偶然今日はうちのビンは古いと見つけて、新たしいのを買ったばかりです。(Does this affect also merely household-use ethanol? By chance, I happened to notice that our bottle was old and to buy a new one today.)
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Posted in: Trump, Macron seek new measures on Iran as deadline looms See in context
In view of the report that a foreign country used "conventional" bombs to disable an Iranian nuclear power plant in the past, I am surprised that that country is eager to continue its nuke power programs despite threats from the unpredictable Mr. Trump. Had I power (which may God/the gods forbid!), I would dismantle the USA nuclear establishment as too dangerous for the future. Not only the threat of nuclear waste--so hard to store and guard for generations and generations, as is required--but also the threat of a foreign bombing that might provoke a melt-down even worse than the one in Fukushima, Japan. (The heat released by the plants is said by a scientist to be so great as to be virtually unable to be hidden from space/the atmosphere. Thus, there is no hiding them.)
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Posted in: Names of 3,607 members of WWII Unit 731 to be released See in context
There are many things to say, including the fact that my previous remarks on the so-called "comfort women" issue were basically too frivolously agreeing with the current view. Yet, this much I have time to protest in these comments: the number of casualties in the bombings by nuclear/atomic bomb was greater than that in China by this Unit 731: FROM:
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/MED/med_chp10.shtml
“The number of total casualties has been estimated at various times since the bombings with wide discrepancies. The Manhattan Engineer District's best available figures are:
TABLE A: Estimates of Casualties
Hiroshima Nagasaki
Pre-raid population 255,000 195,000
Dead 66,000 39,000
Injured 69,000 25,000
Total Casualties 135,000 64,000”
One has to conclude: Whether torture compares with radiation sickness--this one has to decide after at least reading about radiation sickness!--or not, the torture casualties were about 3000, whereas the A-bomb casualties (only the immediate deaths) were about 199,000.
Of course such "kill-ratios" are meaningless. Both sides should make a new start toward avoiding war. Japan has done this "bringing forth of the fruits of repentance" (far better than the USA): not by wallowing in guilt but by renouncing revenge/hatred of the US side and by starting anew every time with the choice of diplomacy over war.
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Posted in: IMF: A major trade rift could imperil solid global economy See in context
Consider this logic: even if the USA renews its manufacturing industry in time to provide alternatives to the Chinese products that are driven out of its market by tariffs, the US will face NO competition from abroad. That may well mean poorer quality goods. The temptation is there: the need for haste, the lack of competition to weed out "rotten apples"!!
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Posted in: Water at Tokyo's new fish market contaminated: official See in context
To the writer "bubblegum" and others who cannot trust the government to check on the poisons: In all the cases of government delinquency you listed it was also the government that struggled to undo the mistakes and make reparation. In Japan, unlike the US or Great Britain, one "CAN sue city hall" or the national government for torts. This makes for a very different access to the bad news kept well concealed in those Anglo-American Law countries (have you ever heard of an accident at a nuclear bomb-making plant? Would those not have been concealed as national secrets?). What about the accident reported on TV in the early 1970s at LOVELAND, NEW YORK's power plant? Why has this news been the victim of amnesia that recalls only Three Mile Island and afterwards? The good reporting still being done to some extent in Japan should not banish our vision of the struggle of that very same government to rectify itself. The possibility of court cases against the government itself makes that self-correction a duty that cannot be shirked.
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Posted in: Quake shakes parts of western Japan; more tremors expected See in context
Dear "elephant200" yes, there is a distinct rise in volcanic activity and (hence?) earthquakes sometimes causing tsunami are also rising in number--but this is not only for Japan but for the entire Pacific Ring of Fire as it is called. Basically, I think that means the Pacific Rim countries. California, where our son's company is, is also vulnerable--as are Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Cambodia (? I think), Vietnam, Australia, Malaysia, islands such as Samoa, etc., South America's west coast countries, and so forth. The volcanoes of this ring around the Pacific Ocean are called the "Ring of Fire" and for some reason are now predicted to be active for a while. Fortunately, in the case of this mode lasting two years, Tokyo itself is not near a tall mountain nor is it sunk below sea-level like Holland. Yet, even at the Olympics (unless the patterns change) one must face the possiblity of a major quake. The infrastructure of Tokyo (like New York City's) is said to be aged and cannot draw off all the run-off water in the event of a tidal wave.
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Posted in: At least 22 people killed in Israeli airstrikes in Beirut; strike on Gaza school kills 27
Posted in: At least 22 people killed in Israeli airstrikes in Beirut; strike on Gaza school kills 27
Posted in: Taylor Swift donates $5 million toward hurricane relief efforts
Posted in: Man arrested over murder of 17-year-old girl in Osaka hotel