JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION

okitokidoki's past comments

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  okitokidokiJan. 28, 2012 - 11:18PM JST

  not even a tape recording?

  Posted in: At least 10 groups dealing with disaster kept no detailed records of meetings

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  okitokidokiNov. 09, 2011 - 04:15PM JST

  replying to DisillusionedNov. 08, 2011 - 09:50PM JST

  I have to disagree with the, "too little, too late!" comments. (..)Gees, your smoke detectors in your home give off radiation.

  I invite you to eat the Americium-241 pellet in your smoke detector. Grind and dissolve it first to better simulate the form that radioactive contamination in food may take.

  Posted in: Tokyo starts radiation checks on city's food

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  okitokidokiOct. 07, 2011 - 12:37AM JST

  @Johannes

  I'm worried that possibly the risks of internal radiation are not addressed enough.

  The radiation dose rate you mentioned -0.3 muSv/h- may be safe, but reflects only the external gamma radiation reaching the body from its environment.

  Cesium is a strong beta emitter. It is present as microscopic dust in the environment,and perhaps dissolved in rainwater.

  Beta particle radiation travels only a few inches in air, and as most contamination is on the ground, it is underrepresented by the dose rates obtained from typical measurements taken 1 meter above the ground. That's if the detector is even sensitive to beta radiation.

  Is there not a strong possibility that people will inhale cesium dust or ingest cesium in some form, whether in rice or mushrooms or from eating a sandwich with contaminated hands? Does Cesium leave the body quickly or does some of it become part of body tissues? And once in the body, does Cesium not bombard the tissues around it with beta radiation? Is that radiation not a risk? In addition to the external gamma radiation?

  I agree the ambient gamma radiation level in Tsukuba is relatively low, except perhaps in some hot spots. Going North from Koriyama the ambient level increases rapidly, in areas where people still live their daily lives.

  I watched kids walking to school as I drove by, my car raising a cloud of dust as I listened to my GM counter making more noise than I had ever heard from it (other than testing using a known source). And I worried about that. Perhaps I was overreacting?

  Posted in: Contaminated soil found outside Fukushima no-go zone

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  okitokidokiAug. 10, 2011 - 09:18PM JST

  Mimana

  Posted in: Anti-Korean Wave in Japan turns political

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  okitokidokiAug. 07, 2011 - 05:53PM JST

  smithinjapan: Why not just send a TEPCO manager? Good point! They could probably lie, cheat and mismanage any country back to the stone age using just the available local technology if given a chance by politicians they bought and paid for. Sigh.

  Posted in: Ishihara says Japan should conduct simulated nuclear weapons tests

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  okitokidokiAug. 07, 2011 - 05:39PM JST

  Does Japan really need nuclear bombs? Can't they just send a Tepco-managed nuclear powerplant to their enemies? That weapon was already tested and appears capable of serious damage.

  Posted in: Ishihara says Japan should conduct simulated nuclear weapons tests

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  okitokidokiAug. 05, 2011 - 03:31PM JST

  Chewable?

  Posted in: Edible condiment from soy sauce

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  okitokidokiAug. 05, 2011 - 03:25PM JST

  IMHO If you have the money to drink out -after driving there-, you have the money to take an unten daiko. If you don't have the money for an unten daiko, you don't have the money to drink out .

  Posted in: 3 Kanagawa teachers disciplined for various infractions

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  okitokidokiJul. 25, 2011 - 12:31AM JST

  @ Liz Many hospitals are paid by the national health insurance system for the number of days a patient occupies a bed, whether that's needed or not, obviously if the patient is not very sick he/she won't be much trouble, nor require expensive other measures or staff time. The patient pays bout 20 percent of what the insurance pays I believe. I suspect that may have something to do with this Japan having "one of the longest hospital stays in the world" issue- almost (social-) insurance fraud?

  Posted in: Cases of emergency patient refusal by hospitals rise to over 16,000

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  okitokidokiJul. 25, 2011 - 12:21AM JST

  We brought a Japanese man who was sufferingfrom a reaction to a wasp sting to Onna clinic in Okinawa. He had lost consciousness abd stopped breathing due to swelling in the throat, he was sweating and his skin looked gray. Our medic was not trained or equipped to open his windpipe with an airway or tracheotomy, nor to administer oxygen or epinephrin. We called ahead to the clinic and they started refusing us, but the nearest hospital was over 30 minutes away and as the victim had already stopped breathing during our evacuation from the worksite I believed we had no time. We continued to the clinic and the man at the reception continued to refuse to allow us to speak to the doctor. I had to scream out loud so the doctor who was in a treatment room down the hallway could hear us. Once he heard my description of the sting and the signs he ran out and he treated the victim in our vehicle, as there was obviously no time to bring him inside. After receiving epinephrin by IV he started breathing again and regained consciousness. The doctor himself said the man almost died. Because of later events I believe he may have had lasting effects as it is, and I wonder if a slightly quicker treatment would have made the difference. I was especially disappointed because they advertise they operate an ambulance and I had visited this clinic earlier while preparing our safety plan, and had received their assurance that I could rely on them for emergency treatment during business hours.

  Posted in: Cases of emergency patient refusal by hospitals rise to over 16,000

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  okitokidokiJul. 24, 2011 - 10:32PM JST

  @ crazyJoe

  Sounds like the voice of reason. You seem well informed. Sure hope you're right. Would you explain how you came to this figure? 3591 bq per kg means , I believe, that in every kilo of meat, every second, 3591 events of disintegration (decay) of an atom occur. AFAIK in the bq measurement there is no distinction made between gamma or beta or alpha type decay events . However I think the damage done (energy transferred) by a beta versus a gamma event is much greater at short range, such as in the case of ingestion. If I understand this correctly, the destructive potential (weighting factor) of beta is at least twice and alpha 20 times as powerful as that of gamma. Therefore there is no clear relation to the the exposure type measurement applicable to CT scans, which I think are much less destructive photon-type radiation events, and happen only momentarily, instead of continuously. Radiation from radioisotopes permanently lodged in the body might be more comparable to something like a very low power ct scan that never stops, and also includes particulate radiation, not photons only. I need some help with the math. Would you please explain how you came to this figure of 46mSv? Is this 46mSv per year? Whole body? Intestinal tract only? For one year only or for the multiple half lives of the radioactive isotopes permanently absorbed into bones, muscle or connective tissues? I worry about this and look forward to your informed response.

  Posted in: Radioactive cesium found in rice straw fed to cattle in Mie

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  okitokidokiApr. 03, 2011 - 05:53PM JST

  Perhaps withholding information on dangerous levels of contamination or on the seriousness of ongoing uncontrolled nuclear emergencies should be a prosecutable offense, especially if it can be shown to have lead to serious physical or enormous economic damage.

  This should be reviewed after we decide whether managing of nuclear facilities in such a way as to lead to widespread contamination (or worse)should be a capital offense.

  Posted in: Should rumor spreading be a prosecutable offense?

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  okitokidokiMar. 30, 2011 - 07:52PM JST

  I've seen escape capsules and boats on oil platforms that had engines that could survive (as part of/inside the vessel) being submerged tens of meters for several minutes. A similar type encapsulated generator (and control room?) should be able to survive a tsunami of just about any height that can be realistically expected. Sure wish I had patented this earlier...

  Posted in: TEPCO dismissed important scientific evidence in planning nuclear plant's defense

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  okitokidokiSep. 18, 2010 - 08:59PM JST

  any relation to fujiko?

  Posted in: Kano sisters keep it behind closed doors

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  okitokidokiJul. 11, 2010 - 12:07AM JST

  @tokyoapple "They should also get rid of Katakana, too." I agree. Katakana are next to useless for teaching a non-Japanese language's pronunciation. So is the Kunrei system of Romanization being taught in elementary schools.It is based on Katakana and was designed to allow Japanese to be transmitted in Morse code telegrams, not to transliterate a foreign language. It follows the Kana structure -sa si su -and so transliterates "sits" and "shits" with the same Kana:ｼｯﾂ.

  Posted in: What do you think of the decision by major Japanese companies such as Rakuten and Fast Retailing to make English the official language at their management meetings?

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  okitokidokiJul. 10, 2010 - 11:56PM JST

  So which half of me is which?

  Posted in: What do you think of the word "hafu," the Japanese term used to describe anyone who is half-Japanese?

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  okitokidokiJul. 10, 2010 - 11:41PM JST

  Didn't some Japanese high school kid win a price last year for designing a noisemaker that would go quiet at highway speeds? It consists of a closed tube with a little loose weight in it, and the tube is mounted near the wheel's center at right angles to the axle. At slower speeds, as appropriate on a city street, the weight drops every time the tube is inverted, making a clacking sound of a frequency increasing with the speed. At highway speeds the centrifugal force of the wheels' rapid rotation keeps the weight from falling to the other end of the tube, avoiding unnneeded noise.

  Posted in: Quiet hybrids: An end to their sounds of silence?

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  okitokidokiJul. 10, 2010 - 11:29PM JST

  China Airlines because they offer affordable tickets from Okinawa to Europe and don't require one to fly to mainland Japan first -often having to stay overnight at hellholes like Narita- when traveling to international destinations from Okinawa. My experience of their service, food and timeliness is good.

  Posted in: What is your favorite Asian airline and why?

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  okitokidokiFeb. 14, 2009 - 09:49PM JST

  @ the sicilian: you are absolutely right. An additional problem is that in elementary school Katakana transliteration from Japanese is taught according to the KunRei system. KunRei, required by the Monbusho, originated before WW2 to allow telegraph transmission of phonetic Japanese (in romaji, as there was no morse code for kana or kanji in international use). It is not designed for accurate representation of foreign sounds, or even for convenient and accurate representation of Japanese pronunciation for (Non-Japanese speaking-)foreigners.

  Kunrei for example uses the following transcription for さ-し-す-せ-そ sa-si-su-se-so. Nice and consistent, easy to remember and obvious for Japanese speakers, who don't have the sound represented in English by the SI in sip, and it saves Yen at the telegraph office by skipping the h. Hepburn (mod)of course indicates the difference between shi and (the in Japanese non-existent phoneme)si: sa-shi-su-se-so As a result, a student (unfortunately) called "Shitsuko" will write her name in romaji as Sitsuko, and will pronounce the english word "Sit" as Sh.. well you get the picture. Elementary school teachers don't seem interested in making any waves over this... The key point is that learning any foreign language for a Japanese(Japanese being a language with fewer phonemes than most other languages), simply means one has to learn to make sounds that don't exist in the native language. This is essentially a type of combined cognitive and neuro-motor-skills type learning, and is best/easiest acquired at an early age. Which is why it would be much better to start teaching some proper pronunciation, rather than Japlish/WaseiEigo, at an early age.

  Perhaps another reader would like to address the problems of most native Japanese English teachers being essentially incompetent to reproduce native English, while agitating politically against any initiative to hire English-speaking foreigners for a decent living wage and with proper insurance, job security or pension rights for any length of time (especially over three years). Hope I did not reveal any resentments there... M

  Posted in: What's wrong with the way English is taught in Japan?

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