Klein2 comments

What? No Japanese company being sued? Hard to believe. I heard one was involved and just assumed it would be peppered with lawsuits too.

LFRagain and kokoro:

Why do you think it is sad that this step is being taken? I think it is a good thing. Don't just give up on human decency so easily.

You seem to think it is in response to something immediate or some report, but I see the date 1995 here. This is a reaction, a precaution, based on things that happened in Kansai 16 years ago.

At last count, there were more than 200 NGOs operating in affected areas. That was two weeks ago. I have no doubt that the figure is double now. Each one of those NGOs has to justify their work to donors and members, so there is all kinds of hand-wringing and posed photography there.

This organization's raison d'etre is protecting women, so they are doing what they do and making press releases. That is all it is.

If they did something that looks illegal, sure.

I have not seen anything that they have done so far that is illegal, but maybe prosecutors can find something.

The tsunami killed 15,000 people, so if we are going to put every contractor up and down the coast in jail just because tsunamis wiped out structures, then prisons are going to get pretty full.

Just to emphasize what a bunch of ingrates we are, lets make sure we let them finish cleaning everything up before putting them in the slammer, shall we?

This will be reported soon if not already. These are official figures.

Tohoku Univ. had 1500 exchange students as of 3.11. 1000 have formally left. The dormitories, which normally hold 270 students, have 16 students now.

As I posted before, those rooms cannot be cleared to house the students who have come to attend classes.

Most of these are graduate level students.

The problem is extremely bad here. Certainly leaving and coming back is not so good, and it causes immense problems, but it appears that most are not coming back at all. The figures for regular students are not being reported, but I would guess they would be more "contrastive" than "comparable".

"Since March 11 dude, 90 percent of the foreigners' jobs in Sendai are english teachers and the rest are Nihongo school students... After what happened , no body goes to English lessons, meaning no income for these english teachers who were only earning less money,....they will be just a burden to the people who are already in need of food and other important things, so going away for a while or for good is a big help for the people of Sendai especially for the people who has no where else to go."

Yeah. I saw you were from Sendai. Sorry about the English teaching biz. You probably know that food has been plentiful at Asaichi downtown at least since the buses started running again, which I think was 3.13, so I think we can handle the food burden of having you here rather than leaving.

All I can do is shrug at your post. This is a decision you are making now or recently based on employment. I kind of see this as another topic really.

What I said about Tokyo is that MAYBE the foreigners in Tokyo who left MAYBE left because they felt no strong ties to their communities. I really made no definitive statement on why a bunch of people who were in no danger decided to leave Tokyo and cleared the market shelves. You try to explain that, I can't. However, my theory about community does go a long way toward explaining why the gaijin/foreigner leaver ratio seems higher here than in Tokyo. That was kind of my point.

TKO tries to lambaste me with many examples of people who did not leave Tokyo, but decided to pitch in and help instead. Obviously nobody is talking about them, so don't get caught up in that. I certainly won't. Obviously a few foreigners are working overtime, and their efforts are being undermined by others who bought plane tickets and skipped out on their rent.

OK. That really is it this time. Finished.

Well Adam.

"I owe this country nothing and this country owes me nothing"

We do understand each other. This is exactly what I am saying. People who felt like this, whether foreign or not, felt no "community" to protect or be a part of. What stuns me is that, in my "zone" in Sendai, apparently all the foreigners felt like this, and very very few Japanese did.

Look. Everyone who wants to flame: Just read what I wrote above. I am not going to change my mind, and if I am nuts, then we are all doomed. I mean, if I am whacko, then there is nobody standing up for the little guy, nobody to jump in there and cover your back. I am speaking up for civility and decency writ large, and if that makes no sense, well it probably never will. Maybe I live in the last little Mayberry or Springfield left on the planet. If so, then I am the luckiest man alive.

I have not and will not call people names. I won't post on this thread anymore.

Manfromamerica. See above. You are right for Tokyo. Tokyo is not Japan. Tokyo is not my Japan. I know all the foreigners in my area. It is not an assumption. It is a fact. ANd it is not so grand. See Stevecpfc comments above. He has three or four, we have 17.

Steve. Not all left Japan, from what I know. They left Sendai. Up to now, I think 4 have returned. Many have not communicated at all. Many said they would return and won't. It is a problem for landlords and neighborhood associations, and even the utilities. Until the contract is over, landlords have trouble repairing pipes, etc.

Yeah. Anyway. Sorry for the long posts.

The whole thing makes me sad.

Most foreigners don't have a sense of community. The more "modern" they are, the less they have. Or could it be said that people who don't get what they want are less inclined to support a community? It also makes sense that Japanese will have a stronger sense of community in Japan, but really, why should foreigners be allowed to vote if they can just hop a plane when things get dicey?

Community either means something, or it doesn't. Nobody can have it both ways, even foreigners.

Moderator: Please do not post inflammatory remarks.

Uh. Part. II.

I have a family. I took care of them. The first thing I did when communications opened up was ask about Fukushima. My first email. We were using a dial up long distance to Hawaii just to send email. I asked literally one question to one person who I KNEW had the right answer. I got my answer in about three sentences.

And from that point, all I thought about was helping my community. Is that heroic? Am I patting myself on the back? Why would anyone think so? My greatest disappointment is that some people see that as any motivation at all. Why is what I did even unusual?

I said in the post above that the coasts and Fukushima were just messed up. People needed to get away from there. Kansai? Go ahead and go to Hawaii. Your communities are not affected.

But Sendai? Tokyo?

In Sendai, the communities were endangered. Supplies of everything were low and all utilities were out. Police were just gone. I shared everything I had, and others did too. We had community meetings and other events to keep cohesion and keep spirits up. We dealt with broken pipes. Freezing. Older people. Health problems. Families with infants. We needed crossing guards, school help. Clothing donations to 400,000 people in shelters who needed clothes fast.

I did what any civilized person would do. You do your part and support others. Even if you do nothing, you watch and you encourage others. Eyes. Hands. Give people what you can. Make coffee.

So in that "zone", I think I did the right thing. I was not in danger. I stayed. Other people in that zone, whom I judge as having equal or greater social responsibility, did not. Every other foreigner in my area, and many in similar areas, with similar hazards and responsibilities, bolted. I am sure some Japanese left, but not many. We knocked on doors every few days. Certainly for every empty house, there were another two or three full to the rafters with relatives from Natori or Wakabayashi ku. They needed food too. And furniture. And blankets. And everything else.

Then there is this other "zone"... Tokyo that I have heard about, where it seems that many people behaved far worse despite having no threat to their community. Wow. I think that maybe there is no community there to begin with, but it is just a hunch. Generally, foreigners feel at home there, and I guess I can understand that now. People just ocme and go. It totally explains the disagreement between TKO and CLEO. Cleo won't support me because I am way too abrasive, but I KNOW she knows what I am talking about.

If you understand the explanation above, you can understand why I am startled. People who fled and felt as though they were in imminent danger did not try to help others. They just ran. People who fled who were in no danger at all did not try to help anybody. They also fled. And then a lot of people just said, "Whatever. It is my personal choice." Then there are those who fled and taunted those who remained. I have seen some posting here.

I made my remarks in that context. I have nothing to say about Kansai, Fukushima, or people on the coast. People who could have helped their communities should have. At the very least, they should not have made problems for others. That is common decency and civility and humanity in my opinion, and I won't stop defending that in the strongest terms. When you start thinking it is a personal choice, sooner or later, say bye-bye to all the benefits of civilization.

Anyway, it has been an eye-opener to say the least. I stuck around to see amazing things. The best and worst of human nature.

I see a few people have got the gist of what I am saying.

First of all, I don't think of myself as a gaijin. I don't try to ingratiate myself with J or dress up in kimono or any of that. Although I am extremely unpopular with my views here, I spend as much effort defending "gaijin.flyjin" all over the place. I use all the excuses and explanations shown above. They are all convenient and seem to explain most cases.

Let me suggest that this is not about good Gaijin/ bad Gaijin or about Gaijin vs. Japanese. My beef has to do with belonging to a community. Not just a Japanese community. I am really talking about common decency in any community, and that is why I use strong language. In my community, to a man really.... In every instance, really, the Japanese did one thing, and the foreigners did another.

But Klein! You are saying it is a gaijin/Japanese thing! Says someone. No. Look. I am saying much more than that, and that is why everyone hates me.

If you are in Ishinomaki or Natori or Aomori, then life is so bad that everyone is running to get somewhere. It is just foolish to hang and stick it out. In Fukushima, things might be dicey. You do what you are told, and you have a reasonable expectation that you should probably move away. Chances are your communities in those cases are not functioning. SO you go. I am totally cool with that. In such a case, you have a reasonable fear of safety. You do what you do.

If you are in Kobe, you aren't going to do much good by staying. So why not take a vacation? OK. I am cool with that. You are not leaving because you feel endangered, your community is fine. Your coworkers are ok. So why not?

Those are individual decisions, individual consequences. There we are.

Where we have a problem is in that middle ground, where, in my extremely pompous presumption, I believe that an individual has a clear and undeniable responsibility to the community. ANY community. ANYWHERE. It is not fascism. It is not holier than thou. It is common decency and civility. Britling knows what this means and most Brits used to know what it means.

Digest that and then read on.

Great Steve, so just don't call me a liar or say that what I say is so unbelievable and we will be just fine.

Hey STEVE, "You said "all" foreigenrs left in the middle of the night in your area, sorry but these claims don't sound real"

What's the matter, don't know your neighbors?

I live in an area of Sendai where I know all of the foreigners. I know where they live, usually what their jobs are, what country they are from, and about how long they intend to stay. I know how old their kids are, etc. I even know their religious beliefs, mostly.

They were all accounted for one day. I even knew what their state was. Whether they had electricity, water, heat, etc. I was sharing water, sharing food, and doing other things to help them.

They were gone the next day. All of them. All of them. Electrical power came back on, and they remained, but cable modems came up a couple of hours later. A heavy snow was coming in. After the snow had melted a little, I counted noses. I was the only one left of 17.

My own children never wanted to go to school as much as they did after the quake. They really do need the routine and their friends.

Our community got specific requests from the affected areas and they indicate the priorities for getting kids back into their school routines: first they wanted graduation clothing, dresses, etc. so that graduating students could look nice, then warm clothes that could be worn to school, then stationery items, then spring clothing. The call went out in our community and it was organized by junior high school students.

Everybody ran out of gas. This whole area was cut off. So the students grabbed a box of donated items and started walking. 15 km? 20 km to Natorii? Off they went. Down the road. They walked all that stuff in to affected areas and made it back by nightfall.

That was the day the embassy called and told me I could leave. Yeah. Right. Somebody else could have my seat.

These parents are in shock. The teacher needs support, and probably does not have it. The organizational structure needs to be reinforced there.

People in general need to re-examine this whole thing.

In Fukushima and elsewhere, people are being convinced that there is something that reasonably could have been done to prevent this or that. It leads them to point fingers rather than address the immediate problems.

My view, backed by what I hear from many experts and careful consideration, is that these disasters overwhelmed EVERY system and countermeasure that had been installed, no matter how expensive, well planned, well practiced or executed. At a meeting I went to last week, even the disaster response teams apologized for being delayed. By up to an hour... which I think is astounding. EVERYTHING WORKED! It just was not enough. If by some miracle, someone finds something that worked, which I emphasize has not been found, then it is inconceivable that it could be applied successfully and rationally everywhere.

It is so easy to look from far away and point fingers, but if you did not feel the quake in Sendai, or see the waves coming in, you just have no idea.

Woulda, shoulda, coulda are phrases that should be banned for a year.

Let me propose my odd world view. I forgive and understand human nature that I saw before 3.11. I am much more judgmental about what I have seen since. This disaster has brought out the absolute best and the absolute worst in human nature.

I am appalled. "Dissatisfaction with TEPCO's plan"? Oh, well let's just do it twice as fast then!

These critics must be idiots. It takes TIME for those plants to cool down. You can't start one step until you finish another. The plan is realistic and pragmatic. What is going on with people?

And really, if you were TEPCO, don't you think you would be the LAST people on earth to want to drag this out?

TEPCO saved my life. And about 50 million other people. Let the person who predicted the tsunami cast the first stone!

OK. I will tone down my rhetoric. How about things I actually know?

I am a foreigner. I live in Miyagi.

I know that I definitely made a choice to stay and help. I knew that the radiation was not dangerous and I knew I was not endangering my family despite the fact that aftershocks were occurring by the hundreds, and despite the fact that I am a lot closer to Fukushima Daiichi than Tokyo people are.

I know that all the foreigners in my area left in the middle of the night in a snowstorm without telling anyone or packing things, etc. Not leaving. Fleeing. Really.

I know that no Japanese co-workers of mine left their posts. Except when there was no electrical power at all. No Japanese teachers or administrators at local schools left. All the foreign ones left. Doctors stayed. Shopkeepers stayed. All officers of the neighborhood association stayed. All the crossing guards stayed.

I know that many foreign professors at two local universities left without turning in grades or leaving contact information. Some were in charge of graduating students. I know of no cases of Japanese professors failing to submit grades.

I know that many, almost all, foreign students at one university fled the dorms and left all of their things there. The arriving students (Can you imagine? Kudos to them.) now have no place to live because the students who fled cannot be contacted and their belongings are not to be disturbed.

I know that a group of workers, when contacted in the early afternoon of 3.15 or 3.16, were too inebriated from a drinking party to answer basic questions from coworkers at one firm that I work with. Japanese people were struggling to work through incessant aftershocks while trying to get basic information from drunken foreigners in a crowded bar. During business hours.

These are cases with which I have had some personal contact. In each case, as you see, the burden of the foreigners' irresponsibility fell on Japanese people who were already overburdened. In the case of the graduating students, the basic desire for continuity and routine was thwarted by people in positions of responsibility. People they trusted.

Tone down my rhetoric. Yes. I think words can't describe how I feel anyway. I think Japanese people are far too polite to say anything. What I said about tourists above applies in that regard. If I did not give my point of view without any sugar-coating, everyone would just default to "It's an individual choice, what's the big deal?" and wonder why Japanese would view them with a jaded eye.

I also read the J press, and I know stories of orphans younger than 10 who apparently behave with greater responsibility and care for the people around them. And they are certainly a lot more alone and afraid than any foreigner I have ever met. What do you think? Will kids with that much courage and maturity be ok even though their parents aren't coming back? Yeah. That's life in Miyagi.

I encourage people to look at the JT logs for 3.13--3.17. They are very revealing. You can see exactly how people justified what they were doing at the time they made their decisions. People became deeply suspicious. They panicked and spread the panic.

One last thing. Judgment. Who wants to employ someone who can't trust Japanese, can't believe their eyes, can't trust their employees or employers, and knows less about Japan than the lowliest reporter for Fox News or CNN? Ignorant. Scared. Pushing for the lifeboats instead of helping women and children. Derision? People who can't make decisions based on facts have no business making decisions that affect others.

People made bad decisions based on bad information from bad sources instead of just using sense, looking around, and paying attention to the facts. I was not following JT at the time, but I have looked at the logs, and you can see that people who decided to leave went through a pretty obvious pattern: worry, fatique, despair, cynicism, suspicion, panic and pessimism.

The JA ads, as corny as they are, are designed to keep people reasonable and not let people move to later stages.

It is what we do in the worst of times that makes a difference. This event will define a generation. I never felt endangered. I am extremely proud of people who remained calm and helped others.

Finally I guess, these events brought out the best and worst in people. The contrast that sticks in my mind is not FOREIGNER/JAPANESE it is Fukushima/Tokyo. As in: here you have Tepco people willing to die to save everyone else, and people in Tokyo can't restrain themselves from buying up all the toilet paper available.

I lived in Tokyo once. As Burakumin has observed, it is a mystery why anyone would want to live there, and I can add "the people" as a reason not to. These are the bankers and business managers and decision makers who are guiding us all, and I have seen more civilized behavior from people who have lost everything and are living in a shelter. SHAME.

Moderator: Please tone down your rhetoric.

Burakumin. Don't know what I would do in Fukushima. Really don't know. If I were beyond 30 km, I would just stay inside. Or mostly stay inside. However, if I were within 30 km but not within 20, I would have left, advising others to do so, because of the small probability of things getting worse. That is, I would have stayed put until 3.12, probably moving back at about 3.16.

My situation is that one government told me I was in so much danger that I had to evacuate. They called me personally to tell me so. Another told me I was safe. I knew the facts and made the right choice. I took the road less travelled, and it has make all the difference.

All the foreigners I know decided to flee before their governments advised them, but after they saw foreign press reports. I know almost the exact timing.

I read an article in one of the J weeklies this weekend. The gist was, "I dont blame the foreigners for leaving. The food, the security, the smiles, etc. that they came to Japan for are gone now. We Japanese need to work hard to make Japan better. When they come back, we know we will have succeeded."

Isn't that nice? What a great sentiment. But this is called "the Japanese kiss-off". As soon as you smile and nod your approval, you are basically saying, "Yes. It's true Japan. I am a vapid tourist. A sightseer. I do not give a whit about this country or its people. I am not in it for the long haul and I do not deserve a say in how things go. Ever."

I did not come to Japan to see smiles and take pictures.

My easy answer to the question is that I would never label a person by calling them a flyjin. Nevertheless, I believe that the people who fled from affected areas earned my contempt for leaving their neighbors and friends in imminent danger. That is reprehensible and is only justified by sheer panic. Sheer terror. People needed help. People needed solidarity. This is why school teachers at public schools DID NOT shirk their duties in the slightest in my area. Nobody did. They walked through the snow to do home visits to make sure ALL of their students were ok. It was MOVING to see each teacher come to our door. They all had families of their own. Postal workers delivered on foot because they had no gas for their vehicles. Newspapers were delivered. Milk was delivered to households until it ran out. People have a duty to KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. You do it for the next guy. For the community.

One of my children had a graduation ceremony. How many were absent? Out of about 150 kids, how many gaps in the line? ZERO. ZERO. They were all there. I am glad we were there too. It was important. Extremely important. Dressed in our best when some had not showered for a week.

Others did not feel in imminent danger, but left anyway. Then why leave? Why not help others? Still a very poor show.

Many many many of the people I have seen posting on this site have been agitating for voting and other rights to be extended to non-citizens. Kiss that goodbye. Japanese people, and I as well, got a chance to see what the most responsible and influential foreigners do when the going gets rough.

There are obvious exceptions. Like myself, frankly, and TKO, and even the quiet calm of USNINJAPAN and SMORKJAN helped people to be calm. Too bad that people will just assume that we are like all the other foreigners.

Just tourists.

I am not saying that somebody in Fukushima will not get cancer next year. Definitely someone will! But it is meaningless to say that people should alter their behavior in any way for hazards that don't exist.

I know for a fact what rad levels are in my neighborhood because my neighbor, who has a PhD in nuclear physics and actually teaches and researches in the subject, has shown me raw data that he collected himself with his own instruments every day. The levels have been ludicrously low since about 3.14, and we stayed inside before that, so I am unconcerned. There is no reason to believe that a heavy radionuclide like 137C would be up here, so... I eat my chard. Plus, I pay attention to the way the wind is blowing, and knowing that this is Kosa season, I thank my Chinese friends for the special present this year, -COUGH-.

And if there were 137C lying on the ground, I would wash my chard. If there were a real whole lot, I might go for some other veggies for a while, but it all leaches out and binds up after a while. With all the mercury in the environment, why aren't we all dying of mercury poisoning?

Moderator: Readers, please stop sniping at each other.

"What kind of fantasy world are you living in?"

Thepro. What kind of hell are you living in? 5 weeks ago, all of the reactors shut down. They have been cooling ever since. That means less chance of fire and steam every day. No explosions. Fewer leaks. No radionuclide release. No melting.

So your 30 km people can come out and not worry, and your 20 km people can go back to their homes as soon as it is confirmed that levels are low enough. Not long at all, I think. Even at high outdoor levels, indoor levels are a fourth or less. People will not believe TEPCO, of course, so independent people are on it. That will take time.

But that is it. We are basically back to where we were on 3.14 or so, with a little bit of stuff sprinkled on the ground. Probably not much. The iodine is now 1/50 as radioactive as it was when it was spewed. The cesium is not going to jump up and bite people, after all. The hotspots will be removed. Leaching and chelation will do the rest.

The Japanese press reported that 3 of 5 hot samples of radionuclides close to the plants that they found were from a-bomb tests done in the 50s. Things like that will be looked at.

And my fantasy world? Hey. I planted my garden today. I am in Sendai, where Piglet says I should not eat the food, and others say I should not drink the milk. I am going to have some great potatoes this year. I have a fantasy world, and Fukushima is not that far away. Enjoy your fear.

"This is the first time they've sounded like adults speaking to adults."

Could not disagree more. TEPCO and the J government have been pressured at every turn to make predictions and estimates based on knowledge they did not have. When they refused, well, the US NRC went storming off and called them liars, the world press started making things up, and China and Korea started spouting off. I stopped listening to the foreign press and made excellent decisions. People who listened to the foreign press and governments look like fools now. They are.

I think the J government and Tepco have done an excellent job. Excellent. NHK and local news covered their conferences carefully and reported accurately. I suspect that you were reading foreign news, where the reporters either knew Japanese OR science (a little) but certainly never both. The NY Times bylines were from Hong Kong, for instance. Novosti had a good reporter. The Guardian had the best science coverage from a junior reporter. They made the BBC look like boobs. The French news agency.. FPA? FRP? ... top reporter actually said on a news show today, "The Japanese government never told us what to tell people." Well. DUH! All they did was gave her the facts, they did not write her story for her. BOO HOO.

"Anything future from TEPCO is tied up in the courts - which means a decade or two. Although "

Not true, Lizz. TEPCO offered them the money last week. NOW. They can have it now. It does not release TEPCO from anything. They are just concerned that people have to deal with hardships, so here is some money.

Sure, settlement MIGHT take some time, but this is not part of a settlement. That is what MOST readers of the announcement never bothered to understand. This cash is NOT the settlement. It is money people can use NOW...even to hire lawyers if they want.

"Cesium acts chemically like calcium.

Not it doesn't. Get your facts straight."

Uh. Yes it does.

"I think all her weird costumes just distract many people. Take away those costumes"

Pukey. She wants the weirdness. It is part of the art. David Bowie did this a lot. I have heard that Elton John and Billy Joel describe her work as excellent.

I think GaGa is a realistic person. She tried to make it the hard way, as Billy Joel did, but, SIGH, you just can't do it nowadays. And big glasses and being gay have already been done by Elton John, so what are you going to do?

One thing is for sure, when she is finished with her career, she will have a PhD in "Fame" studies. Whatever that is.

You know, everybody has the right to be wrong, but what happened to you man? First of all, the money they offered the other day was understood to be the first tranche of compensation. These people need money to keep going. If anything, it will help them bargain from a position where they will not be entirely desperate for any payout.

And yeah it is a sad situation. But just to put it in perspective, I would say that NO ILL EFFECTS is quite a bit better than being dead from a tsunami, like a bunch of people are up north. My perspective of SAD has changed a lot in the last month. I won't say "things are tough all over" but they are if you go north of Ueno eki. On a sad spectrum, Fukushima is no Ishinomaki.

Third, I very much doubt that the radiation will approach that of Chernobyl, but if it did, so what? Most of it is low level, short-half-life stuff released into or over the Pacific Ocean, where it is basically GONE for all purposes other than measurement. Cesium is more likely to wind up in a snail shell than a fish bone. Chernobyl sent its spew over Amsterdam, Stockholm, etc. And it was nasty stuff mixed with coal smoke. I remember Chernobyl, and this is no Chernobyl.

Fourth, someday, somebody will do a study, and they will find that people in Fukushima were more likely to commit suicide, more likely to die younger, more likely to have heart attacks, more likely to kill their spouses, and abuse their children, but I don't think they will find a higher incidence of thyroid or other cancers, within statistical error. You know cancer is a terrible thing, but, and I don't want to sound flip, eventually we will all die of cancer, if you live long enough, you will die of cancer. And thyroid cancer just happens to be one of the most treatable cancers there is.

This is not the end of the world, and this is not the worst thing a government has ever done to its people. Put it in perspective. Is it a BP? A Katrina? A Bhopal? A Chernobyl? Not even.

Just as a big "in your face" to all of the worriers who said "bury it in concrete", let me just provide this:

After some period of time, workers were actually able to enter the CORE of Three Mile Island. That is how cold and inactive it all got. In contrast, nobody will be getting closer to Chernobyl's reactor for thousands of years, and it will be leaking before that. It is unlikely that the core is even in one place. What a mess.

People are going to regret forcing Japan to call this a 7. The IAEA is going to have to find a new system, or maybe just admit that ranking does not mean very much. The "consequences over a wide area" will have less of a health effect on people than US a-bomb tests had on Steve McQueen.

This problem was handled in excellent fashion in very dire circumstances. Can you imagine? ZERO deaths from a problem like this. Crisis indeed.

"They may have developed a technique to remove radioactive cesium from contaminated water, "

This is very likely to be so. Cesium acts chemically like calcium. People are saying that cesium will concentrate in the food chain, but I seriously doubt that. If calcium did that, we would be walking sticks of chalk. We could write on blackboards with our bare hands. Just think about it.

I would bet that, with Japan's rains, particularly acid rain, the cesium will bind to other minerals and be "sequestered" soon, or it will be leached down from topsoil soon. Or lets say half will this year, then half of that next year, etc. That is what happens to calcium, anyway.

Got to love the headline.

I would say the "crisis" was over more than two weeks ago. What is going to take 6-9 months is basically watching and waiting and getting ready to handle problems if they develop. Not much of a crisis there. Probably like watching paint dry.

What this means in terms of fukushima people is that they can get back to their homes probably very soon. Not all, but I would say most. We will see what the scientists say in a month.

The gov wants to be very cautious about it because we as taxpayers might have to pay their medical bills otherwise... oh wait... we already DO... then I guess the government just wants people to be safe. What a surprise.

Prudence. Since 3.11 we have gotten good decisions on Fukushima.

@5 cents I also heard there was a spike. Was not concerned, but there is bound to be fluctuation.

"could any prior training have prepared citizens to cope with a magnitude 9 earthquake and 10-15-meter-high waves hurtling kilometers inland at speeds of 100 kmh?"

That should be km/h. h is not a multiplicand, it's a denominator. But anyway, the answer is yes! Such training is possible, but the marginal benefit from doing it considering that it is such a low probability combination of events does not make it worth it.

So it is exactly tied to nuclear safety. Of course we can all be safer, but we would rather spend time and money on TV and potato chips and cross our fingers. It isn't bad. It's the way we are. Every day, we live in denial that our sun is going to blow up some day and make all of this meaningless.

"Daily life makes us complacent"

Yep. Kurt Cobain said -- I think I'm dumb. Or maybe just happy.

The last line of the article could not be more wrong. Drilling, even if it does not prepare people for everything, has the effect of calming them and letting them act rationally. "Do I do this, or stick to the plan?" Then actions are based on CHOICE and DATA rather than panic and clamor.

Tokyo needs to spend less time writing articles and more time drilling.

I am bursting with pride at the actions of teachers and my community in the first hour after the quake. No panic. No confusion. Never. Few tears. No screaming and yelling. My whole family was home in less than half an hour, checking on neighbors, and preparing for a cold dark night in the aftershocks. Then we brainstormed about how we could help others.

No need for SPA to second-guess. I don't think the preparation could have been better. That quake? That tsunami? The death toll could just as well have been double. Generally, young people were saved, which says to me that the older folks knew what to do, they just couldn't do it.

She is doing the concert here to make a statement. It is bold and brash and intelligent.

"I am not afraid! I won't be cowed! I won't run!" She stands with Tohoku.