Noda visits disaster-hit Miyagi areas

SENDAI — Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda traveled to Miyagi Prefecture on Saturday to gauge conditions after the area was ravaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Damage control: Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda inspects a fishing port in Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture, on Saturday. KYODO PHOTO

Noda met with Deputy Gov. Shuichi Miura and Shigeru Sugawara, the mayor of Kesennuma, and pledged further support for the region's reconstruction.

"I would like to reflect your requests in the third supplementary budget for fiscal 2011," Noda said.

He visited a Kesennuma fish market that was devastated by the tsunami and was asked by local officials to rebuild seafood-processing facilities.

"There will be no reconstruction of the affected areas without job creation," Noda replied, adding he will try to finance the necessary steps through the third extra budget.

Later in the day, the prime minister was scheduled to visit Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, also hit hard by the tsunami, to inspect the damage and meet with senior officials.

Noda, in office since Sept. 2, has vowed to speed up reconstruction of the areas stricken by the catastrophe and the nuclear crisis.

On Thursday, he visited Fukushima Prefecture, home to the radiation-leaking Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

Noda also traveled Friday to the prefectures of Wakayama, Mie and Nara, which were devastated by heavy rain dumped by Typhoon Talas last weekend.

OSAKA — The typhoon that ravaged western Japan last weekend caused an estimated ¥2 billion worth of damage to the farming, forestry and fishery industries in Wakayama Prefecture, according to a tally the prefectural government released Saturday.

The survey did not include damage to the livestock industry, and the final total may turn out to be much larger.

Nara Prefecture, which was also hit hard, is conducting its own survey of the damage.

Typhoon Talas, the 12th typhoon of the season, left 57 people dead and 44 missing across the country.

It caused around ¥880 million in damage to farm production in Wakayama, including oranges and Japanese apricots.

Damage to the fishery industry is estimated at ¥160 million, while damage to the forestry industry is put at around ¥520 million.

The natural disaster also caused an estimated ¥490 million in damage to farmland, irrigation channels and other facilities, according to the prefecture.

MATSUE, Shimane Pref. — The city of Yasugi, Shimane Prefecture, which is known for it's comic dance based on scooping up loaches, is gearing up for an influx of visitors to its annual festival thanks to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's remark on the mud-loving fish.

Now that the city of 43,000 has found itself unexpectedly in the limelight, it is receiving a flood of inquiries about local loach cuisine and souvenirs.

The city and a local tourism association have printed tourist maps showing restaurants that serve loach.

"We want women, in particular, to try loach dishes rich in the kind of nutrition that is good for their beauty," said Hiromi Sakuno of the local tourism association. The fish is rich in calcium and iron.

Expecting a sharp increase in visitors to the Yasugi "Dojo" (Loach) Festival next Sunday, the city has opened a souvenir shop near the Yasugi railway station to sell processed loach food items and novelty goods related to the fish.

Noda compared himself to the humble fish in a speech during the Democratic Party of Japan's presidential election earlier this month.

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Shipments of beef cattle from Miyagi are resumed

SENDAI — Farms resumed Tuesday shipping beef cattle raised in Miyagi Prefecture after the central government lifted a ban late last week.

Off to market: A farmer leads a cow from a barn in Kurihara, Miyagi Prefecture, on Tuesday. KYODO

Miyagi beef had previously tested positive for high levels of radioactive substances following the triple meltdowns at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

Beef processed from cattle shipped from Miyagi Prefecture will be auctioned off Friday morning and sold to consumers and dealers if its safety is confirmed by private-sector laboratories, which will check for radioactive contamination.

The Miyagi government said 636 cattle farms in the prefecture that didn't use tainted rice straw as feed were the first to get the green light to ship their cows.

Farms will be allowed to ship one cow per day for the time being. The prefecture said about 100 cows a day will be sent to meat centers in the cities of Sendai and Tome.

The laboratories will check 1 kg of beef per cow for contamination. The beef can be marketed if the amount of radioactive cesium detected is 50 becquerels or lower per kilogram.

On July 28, the central government instructed Miyagi to halt cattle shipments but lifted the ban Friday.

The government instructed the Miyagi, Fukushima, Iwate and Tochigi prefectural governments between July and early August to ban cattle shipments. Miyagi was the first to be allowed to resume shipments.

The central government decided Friday to keep in place Fukushima's ban after beef contaminated with excessive levels of radioactive cesium was newly detected.

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Cesium detected in a Miyagi boar

SENDAI — Radioactive cesium more than four times the safety limit has been detected in the meat of a wild boar killed in Kakuda, Miyagi Prefecture, officials said.

It is the first time radioactive contamination exceeding the limit has been found in a wild animal or bird in the prefecture, the officials said Friday.

They said they will ask residents not to eat meat from wild animals or birds.

The meat of the boar, which local hunters caught in the mountains in Kakuda on Aug. 7 as part of a city extermination request, was found to have 2,200 becquerels of cesium per kilogram. The provisional safety limit is 500 becquerels per kg.

KYODO

The science ministry has published a map on cumulative radiation estimates and hot spots five months since start of the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

In giving estimates for 50 locations in the no-entry zone for the first time, the ministry said Friday a spot in the town of Okuma, 3 km southwest of the plant, had an estimated accumulative radiation of 278 millisieverts.

The annual radiation exposure limit for humans is 1 millisievert.

The government has urged people living in areas around the plant, where annual exposure is likely to exceed 20 millisieverts, to evacuate.

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Famed Miyagi temple's visitors vanishing

MATSUSHIMA, Miyagi Pref. — Entsuin, also known as the rose temple for its unique Western-style rose garden, has long been a tourist fixture in the bay town of Matsushima, Miyagi Prefecture.

Welcome: Haruka Amano, a priest at Entsuin in Matsushima, Miyagi Prefecture, stands in front of the temple gate Aug. 4 ALEX MARTIN

But in the seven years Haruka Amano has been serving as a priest at Entsuin, she has never seen the number of visitors fall so drastically, a phenomenon that could threaten the historic temple's future.

Built in 1646 next to Zuiganji, the Tohoku region's most prominent Zen Buddhist temple, Entsuin houses the mausoleum of Date Mitsumune, the grandson of Tohoku warlord Date Masamune, and belongs to the Rinzai school of Zen.

While the temple luckily suffered only minor damage from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the northeast coast, the number of visitors admiring the temple's well-tended gardens and mausoleum has plummeted in the following months.

"Look around, all you see now are a few elderly tourists here and there. All the children who used to visit us during summer break are gone," Amano said.

Prior to March 11, around 1,000 visitors would enter the gates of Entsuin during an average day and nearly 2,000 when the temple hosted special events. Around 40,000 people in total would visit the temple during the peak summer season, Amano said.

"But now there are days when we only receive a few dozen visitors," she said, citing radiation fears as a major factor contributing to the decline in tourists.

Amano said at least the temple received some visitors when nearby Sendai hosted the Tohoku Rokkon festival on July 16 and 17, which drew more than 360,000 visitors from across the nation willing to participate in the festival's effort to revitalize the region.

But all reservations to visit Entsuin were canceled once the beef radiation fiasco broke out in late July, when beef from thousands of cattle that were fed hay tainted with radioactive cesium was distributed to the market.

"We run our temple relying on admission fees. I'm not sure how we'll get past this winter if this situation continues," she said.

As a female priest in a mainly male occupation, Amano went through 18 months of rigorous training in a Zen monastery before she could begin working in the temple, where her father presides as the head priest.

A graduate of Hanazono University, a school in Kyoto belonging to the Rinzai school, Amano said she was the first female priest in the Tohoku region who hailed from the Zen sect.

The training was so hard and the vegetarian diet so scant, Amano said she suffered twice from beriberi, an ailment caused from lack of vitamin B1. She laughed when she recalled how she had to wear diapers when undergoing a weeklong intensive session of sleepless meditation in the cold of December.

"It was tough. We weren't allowed to use the bathroom during meditation," she said.

After finishing training, Amano came back to her hometown of Matsushima to help her father operate Entsuin. In recent years, she has been in charge of setting up illuminations to light up the temple's garden at night, as well as hosting workshops where she would teach visitors how to make Buddhist rosaries.

But Amano worries that if the current critical lack of tourists continues, not only Entsuin but local businesses in Matsushima will suffer.

"Visiting us is the best way to show Matsushima your support. It's been five months since the disaster struck, but I'm afraid the initial efforts to support and rebuild Tohoku are gradually wearing off," Amano said.

"Come to Tohoku, visit the disaster sites, and buy a can of juice, or anything, because this all helps in restoring what has been lost," she said. "What we are most of afraid of is being forgotten."

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