Random Japan

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
The Red Cross Society of North Korea sent $100,000 (¥8.1 million) in aid to the Japanese Red Cross Society for victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Fearless leader Kim Jong Il also kicked in another $500,000 to help pro-Pyongyang Korean residents in Japan affected by the quake/tsunami.

Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic organized a charity soccer match and dinner involving several ATP stars that raised $100,000 for the relief effort.

Yomiuri Giants baseball star Alex Ramirez, meanwhile, donated $1 million, as well as sending trucks stocked with medicine to the worst-hit areas.

One of the biggest sources of aid has come from what some might consider an unlikely source—the yakuza.

Stats

262
Number of aftershocks of magnitude 5 or greater in the seven days following March 11, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency—a record

145 million
Approximate number of DS gaming consoles sold by Nintendo through the end of 2010

1,024,820
Signatures from around the world on display at UN headquarters in New York calling for the abolition of

FALLOUT
The American-owned Tokyo Apache of basketball’s bj-league decided to scrap the rest of their season after the destructive earthquake and tsunami hit. They also donated $1 million to relief efforts.

It was reported that a play concerning the effects of a tsunami that was written by an ex-elementary school principal will be published in social studies textbooks next year. “People stand no chance against the power of nature,” said author Hagemu Kumagaya, whose grandfather lost his whole family in the 1933 Showa Sanriku Tsunami.

Tokyo’s Grand Prince Hotel Akasaka is set to be knocked down, but before that happens, the landmark will be used as a shelter for up to 1,600 people who have been evacuated due to the crisis in Fukushima.

It was revealed that Masataka Shimizu, the president of TEPCO, whose damaged nuclear power plants have left the nation on edge since March 11, took a few days of sick leave after the disaster.

A group of student volunteers in the tsunami-hit village of Noda in Iwate Prefecture have begun searching for photo albums amid the rubble that was once a town and handing them back to their rightful owners.

Unlike many other nations, the Philippines decided to keep importing Japanese food with the exception of chocolate made with milk from the Fukushima area.

Every Dog

Has His Day

Catch And Release

Caught

Deport Me

Please

Man found stranded since March 11 in empty town inside evacuation zone

Saturday 09th April, 06:24 AM JST
The farmhouse sits at the end of a mud-caked, one-lane road strewn with toppled trees, the decaying carcasses of dead pigs and large debris deposited by the March 11 tsunami.

Stranded alone inside the unheated, dark home is 75-year-old Kunio Shiga. He cannot walk very far and doesn’t know what happened to his wife.

His neighbors have all left because the area is 20 kilometers from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant - just within the zone where authorities have told everyone to get out because of concerns about leaking radiation.

No rescuer ever came for him.

Curbs on summer power use in offing
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Kyodo News　
The government said Friday that it plans to set a legal curb on power consumption by large-lot users to cope with electricity shortages expected this summer in the Kanto and Tohoku regions, while asking households to reduce their use by about 15 to 20 percent during peak hours.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a government task force that the measures are intended to avoid the rolling blackouts introduced by Tokyo Electric Power Co. after the March 11 catastrophe.

Tepco separately said it is basically terminating the scheduled area-by-area blackouts as of Friday.