Japan in first national quake drill since tsunami

Japan in first national quake drill since tsunami Japan on Thursday conducted its first national earthquake drill since the March 11 disasters that left 20,000 dead or missing and triggered a nuclear crisis. Police supervised traffic at some 100 points in central Tokyo while passengers were guided to safe zones from train stations in a simulation of a post-quake scenario in which all rail and subway services are suspended. Disaster Prevention Day is an annual drill to train for a potentially deadly magnitude-7.3 quake scenario in Tokyo and is held to commemorate the anniversary of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, which killed more than 140,000.
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1 Sep Following BEAST, CN Blue has been reported to be caught up in Japan due to their entrance being denied for visa problems, delaying their upcoming press conference. CN Blue was originally supposed to enter Japan through the Haneda Airport on August 31 but was denied for the same reason BEAST was denied earlier this month. The group has an official press conference for their major debut on September 1 as well as music video filmings. (soompi.com)
1 Sep With the aid of bacteria that lowers the level of sodium in soil, a farmer in the city of Iwanuma, Miyagi Prefecture, harvested 150 tomatoes last month on farmland that was swamped by the March 11 tsunami. The cyanobacteria - also called blue-green algae - is found in seawater and sludge on the seafloor. Since it consumes salt when it photosynthesizes, it lowers the level of sodium when mixed in soil. Farmer Etsuo Iizuka, 62, used the soil on his 1,000-sq.-meter tsunami-damaged farm to plant 400 tomato plants in June. Each yielded about 10 tomatoes. (Japan Times)
31 Aug Vines creep across Tomioka's empty streets, its prim gardens overgrown with waist-high weeds and meadow flowers. Dead cows rot where they were left to starve in their pens. Chicken coops writhe with maggots, a sickening stench hanging in the air. This once-thriving community of 16,000 people now has a population of one. In this nuclear no-man's land poisoned by radiation from a disaster-battered power plant, rice farmer Naoto Matsumura refuses to leave despite government orders. He says he has thought about the possibility of getting cancer but prefers to stay - with a skinny dog named Aki his constant companion. Nearly six months after Japan's catastrophic earthquake and tsunami, the 53-year-old believes he is the only inhabitant left in this town sandwiched between the doomed Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station to the north and another sprawling nuclear plant to the south. (twincities.com)
31 Aug A growing number of Japanese men and women keen to lose weight are slipping into underwear which claims to burn hundreds of calories a week, simply by wearing them. Perfect for exercise-shy food-lovers, the MXP Calorie Shaper Pants are made with non-elasticated material that the company claims can make muscles work extra hard while walking or climbing stairs. The new underpants, from the Tokyo-based Goldwin company, claim that the average 10 stone man who walks 90 minutes a day while wearing them can lose 210 kilocalories weekly - the equivalent of half a litre of beer. (telegraph.co.uk)

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Japan holds annual earthquake drill, first since March disaster - Telegraph.co.uk

The government conducted drills based on the scenario of a 7.3 magnitude earthquake striking Tokyo, which would have catastrophic consequences given that the capital and its surrounding prefectures account for over a quarter of Japan's population and about a third of its economy. The March earthquake measured 9.0.

More than a thousand people participated in exercises in central Tokyo's Yoyogi Park, where military helicopters buzzed overhead, police bikes sped past and medical personnel tended to people trapped under a damaged car in a mock emergency situation.

Outgoing Prime Minister Naoto Kan, whose support ratings plummeted due to disapproval of his administration's response to the March disaster, held a mock press conference in which he told the public that the government was doing its utmost to minimise the damage.

"It feels more real, that this place could actually be filled by people unable to get home," said Ikuo Suzuki, an official at Yoyogi Park, which is a designated evacuation area in the event of a major earthquake.

Preparedness exercises included experiencing various disaster situations, such as boarding a specially designed elevator that shakes violently as if in a strong earthquake.

"It has a tenser atmosphere than I expected," said Masako Yoshida, a mother of two who was participating for the first time. "I remembered how on that day (March 11), I was separated from my children. Transport had stopped."

The police also conducted exercises in which they blocked traffic at about 100 locations in Tokyo to practice ensuring the passage of emergency vehicles.

The preparedness drills are held every year on Sept. 1, the anniversary of the Great Kanto Earthquake that killed 140,000 people in the Tokyo area.

The government forecasts that a 7.3 magnitude quake directly under Tokyo would kill up to 11,000 people, injure about 210,000, force 7 million to evacuate and cost the $5 trillion economy around $1 trillion in damages – five times the estimated damages from the March 11 disaster.

Kishie Shigekawa, a professor of environmental disaster studies at Fuji Tokoha University, said progress has been made in improving Tokyo buildings' anti-quake reinforcements, after the 1995 Kobe earthquake in western Japan took so many lives due to lack of structural strength in that city's buildings.

But she warned that post-quake fires were an urgent issue given Tokyo's dense population and crowded architectural landscape.

"It inevitably takes time, but long-term city planning to reduce loss of life ... is something we need to keep on pushing for," Shigekawa said.

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