At the top of this blog, it says, This blog is about "ALL THINGS ABOUT THE MEDIA, MARKETING AND JAPAN..."
I want to write about Japan and the media and marketing as, good bloggers are supposed to write about their expertise. It is the death-knell of any blogger to go off on subjects that they are not expert in.
I consider myself an expert on mass media, Japan in particular.
Surprisingly, this blog never was about nuclear power nor Fukushima. I only wrote about Fukushima when it concerned mass media sensationalism or media reporting. I wrote lots of those....
Especially when idiots said stuff like, "A large chunk of Japan will be uninhabitable."
Laughable...
Even so, people still attack my former comments on the prophets of doom.
Here's one that just makes me want to pull my hair out:
You seem to have gone very quiet about the radiation and how safe we are in Japan since the beef story hit? You have no comment about such a big issue? Are we all still safe living with this risk? You think beef will be the last of it? It is amazing how much faith people have here in the authorities ability to manage such an enormous and complex situation. How they try to show support for the region by buying food that will now damage the thing they were trying to support. Is it not obvious that there is contamination and food safety issues relating to the release of radiation in the region??
I responded:
Anonymous! I've written about this much. I am not a radiation expert. I am a media expert. I have written that I wanted to stop writing about Fukushima. When I wrote about (Fukushima) I wrote about media and sensationalism. I don't eat beef - (Mad-cow, chemicals, hormones, etc. that will kill you)... I've even written that if you want factual information on the Fukushima disaster, go to the right of my blog to recommended blog and go to EX-SKF blog and/or Alexander Higgins blog.
As I've said 100 times, living in Fukushima area near the plants are not... What do you mean, "(Is it safe) Here in Japan?" Do you mean, Okinawa? Nagoya? Osaka? From the information available, Tokyo is safe. The radiation levels are listed at the top of this blog everyday. See for yourself.
Eating beef from Fukushima is probably not (safe). I don't know. When we get a sensationalist story about how radioactive cows are killing "everyone who eats a burger or at McDonalds," I will probably have a comment. I've written several times that I want to stop writing about anything to do with Fukushima. Here is the post where I tried to send people to other blogs who need information on facts about Fukushima:
Need Facts on Fukushima Disaster?
I added a link on my blog to this: http://ex-skf.blogspot.
Japanese kid who writes well and his English is awesome! Factual reporting on Fukushima... Often makes my blog posts look stupid. Good stuff. Never ventures into conjecture or sensationalism.
I've also linked to my recommended posts a site run by my friend, Alexander Higgins. http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/ and to an excellent blog by Marc Shaffner: http://www.sheffnersweb.net/blogs/accuratemaps/
Anyhow, no. I have no intention of writing about anything that has to do with eating beef. In my, opinion, beef is not healthy - in some cases unsafe - to eat anyway. It is too expensive. We don't eat the stuff. Used to. Mad Cow disease finished us off on that... Never really were big beef fans anyway...
Like I said, though, if some clown comes out in the mass media and starts making wild claims along the lines of "Fukushima beef is irradiating our food supply and 20,000 McDonald's customers are going to die from eating it!" I will write about it...
But, I would write, if only to say that eating McDonald's food regularly will probably kill a hell of a lot more people than the meat from a thousand cows from Fukushima will.
I've gone silent on this? Yes.
Arnie Gundersen said that "20,000 people were going to die from Fukushima."
Yawn!
Many say that Fukushima is much worse than Chernobyl...
Here's fun fact for you about Chernobyl from Wikipedia: At Chernobyl, 237 people suffered from acute radiation sickness soon after the accident, of whom 31 died within the first three months.
Here's a fun fact for you about Fukushima: Total number of people reported to have acute radiation sickness from Fukushima; 0 (zero). Total deaths from Fukushima nuclear accident in first four + months; 0 (zero). Total number of affected cows; almost 1500.
Very bad news for the cows who will be destroyed.
Fukushima: You'd think that foreigners in this country would bother
to learn how to read second-grade kanji... You'd think wrong.
Afraid of irradiated beef? Don't eat beef...
Also, here's another hint.... Learn to read and write basic Japanese. At ALL grocery stores in Japan they list where produce is from. If it says 福島 (Fukushima) and you are worried about it. Then don't buy it and don't eat it.
Simple. Problem solved.
UPDATE: on Fukushima from Business Insider: Fukushima Stabilized.
UPDATE TWO: The worst thing so far about this tainted beef is that 240 school children were fed it it Yamagata. Now there' some kids parents who, if I were them, I'd be screaming bloody murder!
Yamagata Shimbun Newspaper (7/20/2011) reports:
Concerning the beef from the cows from Asakawa-machi in Fukushima Prefecture that were fed with the rice hay that contained the high level of radioactive cesium, Sakata City (in Yamagata Prefecture) announced on July 19 that 3 nursery schools in the city purchased the beef in late April, and total 290 children and teachers ate the meat in school lunches.
According to Sakata City, the three nursery schools purchased the meat from the same food grocer in the city. The meat was cooked into "hashed beef" dish and served as lunch. 240 children and 50 teachers and administrators ate 20 to 40 grams per person.
The food grocer alerted the nursery schools. Sakata City traced the history of the meat, and confirmed that the meat that was delivered to the three nursery schools came from the Yokohama City Central Wholesale Meat Market, and the cow had come from Asakawa-machi in Fukushima Prefecture. The city notified the parents of children at these nursery schools on July 19, and decided not to use beef in school lunches until the safety is assured.
UPDATE: on Fukushima from Business Insider: Fukushima Stabilized.
UPDATE TWO: The worst thing so far about this tainted beef is that 240 school children were fed it it Yamagata. Now there' some kids parents who, if I were them, I'd be screaming bloody murder!
Yamagata Shimbun Newspaper (7/20/2011) reports:
Concerning the beef from the cows from Asakawa-machi in Fukushima Prefecture that were fed with the rice hay that contained the high level of radioactive cesium, Sakata City (in Yamagata Prefecture) announced on July 19 that 3 nursery schools in the city purchased the beef in late April, and total 290 children and teachers ate the meat in school lunches.
According to Sakata City, the three nursery schools purchased the meat from the same food grocer in the city. The meat was cooked into "hashed beef" dish and served as lunch. 240 children and 50 teachers and administrators ate 20 to 40 grams per person.
The food grocer alerted the nursery schools
NOTE: If you are worried about the government not testing and checking our food. All I can wonder is why in the world after all the recent deaths from food in the west does anyone in the west complain of Japanese government incompetence concerning beef. Just Google search "2010 food deaths" and you'll find 5,000 people die in the USA from tainted food every year and 40,000 die from eating junk food... The USDA doesn't test USA produced milk for radiation. Read here. That the government is incompetent is a foregone conclusion. Why anyone wants that same government to take over the nuclear power plants is beyond comprehension.
6 comments:
This whole thing with cesium contaminated beef kind of reminds me of those Brits who want the death penalty if a Japanese citizen has murdered a British citizen (and appear to believe that a life imprisonment sentence is way too lenient), but have this habit of condemning the Japanese for human rights infringements periodically and keep telling Japan they are barbaric for still having the death penalty.
On another note, I wonder if the anti-nuclear lobby even realizes they are actually helping the LDP, which has been taking donations from TEPCO for years? Maybe the LDP was doing a better job of running the country and maybe they are better than the DPJ, but if you are anti-nuclear, you should not be helping them.
Please don't be fooled into thinking that "those Brits" would not also want the same penalty for the same evil and heinous crime in The UK if it were available by law in the UK (which it no longer is). To suggest there might be a racial bias on this heinous and evil crime because of the nationality of the perpetrator is to skew the matter away from the very sad fact that a young woman was brutally murdered.
Anonymous:
First of all, I am not a sympathizer of murderers. When you take someone's life, you have forfeited your own human rights as you clearly do not believe in them (in my mind).
Harsh? Well, that's my opinion however wrong it may be, and sums-up what I think of this guy who murdered this woman.
On another note, I should have been more careful with my words. When I mentioned 'Brits' I meant British media, not the average British person.
Now that I've clarified let me say that I doubt very much that if a British citizen murdered someone in Japan, British media would remotely suggest that this person should get capital punishment. There would be a media circus about how this person should be deported to be tried back in Britain and not in Japan's corrupt justice system and should not have to endure Japan's heinous and inhumane prisons.
This isn't necessarily about simple racism but about an agenda behind the article. The agenda is to communicate that the Japanese justice system is corrupt, so it makes perfect sense to make suggestions that the Japanese murderer wasn't punished enough and it makes perfect sense to say that British citizens should never be tried in Japan or put in Japanese prisons.
To get back on topic, the same thing goes for some of the reporting on radiation. Some of the articles are deliberately written to give this impression that *such things* would never happen in the west, but are happening in Japan because the Japanese government is corrupt.
Of course all you need to do is read the local sections of UK papers or US papers etc to see that in each country, there are citizens who think their own country is corrupt and their politicians are total basket cases. The international news is an area where people can generally feel better about their own corrupt government by being mislead into thinking that there are more corrupt governments out there. :)
Mike... I learned over 500 kanji in a couple of weeks. My problem was putting them together. I knew how to make a Horse kanji and a Deer kanji... but to create the word "stupid", well... that was just baka. It doesn't make sense. Much like the idiots out there who are looking for any excuse to bash things they don't understand.
Personally, I like beef. Would I buy something from Fukushima-ken at this time. Probably not. Better safe than sorry... but being chotto baka, I might buy some by mistake. I assume that everything coming out of Japan for export might actually be scanned for radiation contamination. At least that is what other nearby countries said they would do.
People are so horse-deer. Did you really expect that commenting on this topic would go nuclear? Ya post one story and offer facts and an opinion the dear people yell themselves hoarse claiming you are afraid to comment further. What's to comment on? Good thing my blog doesn't invite criticism... unless you are one of the women I slept with, of course.
Free speech for sale! But that's a dear horse of a different colour.
What the hell was my point of writing? Oh yeah... now I remember... just keep telling it like it is. I swear... you must have a lobby watching every one of your blogs to see if they can take offence at something.
The point of the comment about "no comment" was that having read this blog for quite sometime it seemed to suggest that everyone in the western media is over hyping the health issues and risks associated with the nuclear problem. It took quite an aggressive stance against such claims. Now we have a real and clear risk from radiation in the form of food safety. But no comment.
Taking a cheap shot at whether someone reads Kanji, or even eats beef, has nothing to do with the issue of food safety. In many cases the food is labeled as "domestically produced" so you have no idea where it is produced. Obviously you also can't control the purchases for every outlet you buy food from. And do you really expect someone visiting for a one week holiday to learn Kanji? Seems a little extreme a request don't you think?
Then, to constantly claim zero deaths caused so far and then re-state the figures, which are heavily debated, about Chernobyl as some kind of proof to your argument seems also a little weak. The true impact of this problem will not be known for years. As a total population, the statistics will show little difference I am sure due to the ratio of the total population but for those effected it has a big impact.
You're supposed to have had media training so I expected a more rounded and professional response, not a cheap, stand up comedian style put down to what you obviously interpreted as a heckler's jibe instead of a request for your considered opinion.
Problem you have of course is having taken such a hard line against those highlighting the risks, you now find it difficult to alter your informed and educated opinion and debate it in a reasoned and fair manner.
Still anaonymous as I have no wish to find fame in a blogg.
Appreciation is probably incalculable. Thanks for sharing. I’ll come back to read more of your works.
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