wasao comments

I can't stop thinking about the optics of the Tokyo Olympics, and it has my mind spinning.

The IOC, Koike, and the LDP have repeatedly hyped up this event as a celebration of "triumph" over covid-19. Let's look ahead a few months.

The U.S. is on track to reach herd immunity through vaccination by the middle of summer. Israel is already nearly there. Many European countries will be well on their way by then. Aus and NZ are permitting travel between their countries because they've managed to contain the virus. In Taiwan, life has moved on. Even India is farther along in its vaccination program than Japan is.

When the Olympics begin, the world's eyes will be on Japan. What will the world see?

No, not unless it was part of a real lockdown that had an actual chance of getting the virus under control.

Japan could beat this thing and find itself on equal ground with Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand if the government could just get its act together. Impose a real lockdown and make PCR testing and quarantine requirements the same for everyone who enters or reenters the country, whether Japanese or foreign. Yes, life will suck under lockdown for three weeks. Just like ripping a bandage off, the point is to get it over with quickly. There is no vaccination program to speak of at the moment so this is Japan's only option unless it wants to endure a 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th wave.

Forcing everyone to report for work and pack themselves into crowded trains as usual, but penalizing them for a little low-risk socializing outdoors, when there's no end in sight to the pandemic in this country, is cruel.

Woman walking alone, outside, far away from everyone: wearing mask.

People huddled close together: not wearing masks.

Yeah, makes sense to me.

My salary has plummeted in the past year and I barely make enough to pay my rent and bills. I couldn't afford to travel even with the Go To Travel subsidies. I'm more than a little resentful that the tax on what precious little money I make is going toward helping better-off people pay for vacations they shouldn't be going on anyway.

In this country there is way too much energy spent and way too much crap given to others over pointless trivialities.

This is so ridiculous. No one is more efficient at work and more eager to wrap up meetings quickly than moms of young kids.

Mori should shut up and bring me a cup of tea.

Keep schools open, but suspend club activities. Close the bars. Come on J-gov't, bite the bullet and support those business owners and workers for the next few months until we get a vaccine.

Pointless message. No one is stopping them from going without masks. No one is stopping them from going to bars or partying.

@Objective, it takes 3-4 weeks for people to die of coronavirus. If we've seen a spike in cases in July, don't expect to see a spike in deaths until August.

A German study found that 3/4ths of coronavirus patients (average age 49) had structural damage to their hearts two months after recovery. This disease is serious, so please take it seriously, everyone.

The virus is not that deadly. There have been many anti-body studies showing the real fatality rate is lower than 0.5%

There are 7.5 billion people in the world. At the beginning of this pandemic, epidemiologists predicted that up to 70% of humanity would eventually catch the virus before a vaccine is developed. Let's say that the actual death rate is on the lower end at 0.02%.

70% of 7,500,000,000 equals 5,250,000,000 people falling ill with the virus.

Out of that number of the infected, a 0.02% death rate means over 100 million people will die. No, it's not the end of the world, but it's nothing to sneeze at, either.

I'm stunned. Ugly stereotypes aside, this video does the Japanese public a terrible disservice by not stating the real reason for the protests, which is police brutality. Maybe NHK doesn't want its viewers thinking too much about how their own justice system works?

All the naysayers here fail to grasp that this is for the safety of the flight crew. They have to breathe in that recirculated air not just for the duration of your flight, but every working day of their lives. If flight attendants and pilots are too scared to do their jobs, you won't be flying anywhere, face mask or not.

Great idea. Only let oyajis do the shopping, and every home will be well-stocked with canned coffee, beer, and cigarettes.

Trump is a weak, silly little man.

Amazing filmmaker. "The Discarnates" left me shaking in a pool of my own tears. RIP, my friend.

Since it's predicted that 70 percent of humanity will catch coronavirus at some point, most of these bullies will have to eat their words when it's their turn to become ill.

While it's true I'm not happy with the way the Japanese government has handled things, there's no way I'm going back to the U.S. during the biggest public health crisis of our time without health insurance. Thanks, but no thanks.

Japan is on the brink of a massive public health crisis right now, but I sure am glad the Diet is hard at work making sure they can squeeze five more years of labor out of me in my old age.

Could these politicians at least keep their eyes open as they discuss our fates? I don't give up a huge chunk of my pay each year to fund these old dudes' nap time.

My guess is that the government will declare a state of emergency on a Friday, after everyone's put in a full work week.

Right off the top of my head, I can think of 8 W-gal/J-guy couples I know personally, either married or in long-term relationships. One of them is about to tie the knot this fall. It's not that rare.

I think W gals and W guys in Japan just tend to move in different circles, and don't often pay much attention to what's going on on the "other side." The W ladies I know who are married to J men live in the suburbs, drive cars, and are usually too busy with work and raising kids to be "seen in public."

Nothing will change until working conditions for Japanese men improve first. Unpaid overtime is out of control in this country. No employee needs to stay in the office ten or eleven hours per day, multiple days per week, month after month and year after year. It is soul-destroying stuff. Japanese women are smart to opt out of that insanity.

Fact #1: It's cooler in the shade.

Fact #2: A parasol is portable shade.

Fact #3: In the summer, people generally desire to stay cool.

Everything else is cultural conditioning.

I feel American when I pay my student loans every month.

Johannes Weber,

Thank you for injecting some sanity into this thread. You know that many people throughout Japan, both Japanese and foreign, are making some tough decisions right now in response to this nuclear crisis, some of which include major changes in life plans or lifestyle. In order to make informed decisions, we need unbiased people like yourself to share your knowledge with us. Keep up the good work.

ichiichi

The 82.65 microsieverts compares with the 100 microsieverts (0.00065 millisieverts) of radiation a person would be exposed to during a one-way flight from Tokyo to New York.>

This is technically true. The problem is that external and internal radiation exposures are not the same.

When you fly from Tokyo to New York, the dose of radiation you receive is distributed equally throughout your body. For any given cell, the dose is extremely low. Also, when your flight is over, so is your radiation exposure.

However, when you breathe in or consume radioactive particles, they concentrate in certain tissues (in the thyroid, for example) where they can do a great deal of damage for days, weeks, or several months.

Think about the thermal energy required to take a nice comfortable bath. When that thermal energy is distributed equally throughout your body, it's not harmful. But, if you were to concentrate that same thermal energy in a tiny amount of water and then stick your finger in it, you'd get burned. That's what internal radiation exposure does.

Please try rereading the post by Johannes Weber above. He's given us a lot of prudent, useful information.

Radiation exists all around us, always has, in food products and in other ways. >

The types of radiation being released into the environment from Fukushima did not exist before 1945.

This is terrible, and I'm afraid it's going to get worse. While one serving of contaminated beef probably won't raise a person's cancer risk, most Japanese eat rice every day. Beware this year's rice harvest. Rice is slow-growing, and by October will have had several months to absorb high levels of cesium. I hope the Japanese government is aware of this and is making provisions now to import foreign rice if necessary. Remember, rice is also used extensively in animal feed. Keeping Japan's people safe and healthy is going to require some serious thinking outside the box. I'm not worried about myself, since I can leave the country anytime I want. I'm worried about my friends who don't have anywhere else to go and must ride this out for better or worse.

I agree with Zenny in part; choosing not to be consumed with worry and fighting the good fight to the end are admirable qualities. They will serve people well in the tsunami damaged areas of Miyagi and Iwate. But I fear the situation in Fukushima is different and calls for a different response. Life will return to even the most ravaged coastlines of Miyagi and Iwate, as it always has. Those towns have a future. Many areas in the eastern half of Fukushima prefecture, however, including Fukushima City and Koriyama, may simply be too radioactive to sustain human life in the long term. If that's the case, trying to continue on with life as usual there is pointless. Go to where there is hope and a future, if you can. Those who can't leave should channel their worry and anger into efforts to demand more from their government, whether that means a widening of the mandatory evacuation zone or more aggressive decontamination efforts. Yes, that stuff will be expensive. Japan can afford it. What Japan can't afford is a significant percentage of its children, a fast-dwindling resource, not surviving to adulthood.