* * * * * * * * * T E R R I E 'S T A K E * * * * * * *<br>A weekly roundup of news & information from Terrie Lloyd.<br>(<a href="http://www.terrie.com">http://www.terrie.com</a>)<br><br>General Edition Sunday, May 01, 2011, Issue No. 612<br>
<br>+++ INDEX<br><br>- What's New -- Citizens' Radiation Monitoring Network<br>- News -- Tough times if you like Natto<br>- Candidate Roundup/Vacancies<br>- Upcoming Events<br>- Corrections/Feedback -- international school student<br>
numbers vs. Japanese school numbers<br>- News Credits<br><br>SUBSCRIBE to, UNSUBSCRIBE from Terrie's Take at:<br><a href="http://mailman.japaninc.com/mailman/listinfo/terrie">http://mailman.japaninc.com/mailman/listinfo/terrie</a><br>
<br>BACK ISSUES<br><a href="http://www.japaninc.com/terries_take">http://www.japaninc.com/terries_take</a>, or,<br><a href="http://mailman.japaninc.com/pipermail/terrie/">http://mailman.japaninc.com/pipermail/terrie/</a><br>
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visit us at <a href="http://en.pbxl.jp/bcp.php">http://en.pbxl.jp/bcp.php</a><br><br>------------ PBXL is BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS --------------<br><br><br>+++ WHAT'S NEW<br><br>In Terrie's Take 610 two weeks ago, we mentioned the<br>
emergence of a citizen's mobile radiation monitoring group<br>called RDTN.org. We appealed for drivers and others to help<br>them map radiation levels around the Daiichi Power Plant<br>disaster area to the north of Tokyo -- well, those areas<br>
which are still legally accessible anyway.<br><br>With the advent of the Internet, it's amazing how quickly a<br>new idea catches on, and at the moment the RDTN group, now<br>renamed as SafeCast and with a website at <a href="http://www.safecast.org">www.safecast.org</a>,<br>
are on the verge of fame for several reasons: both of which<br>are really interesting.<br><br>First, the SafeCast team, made up of folks both in Tokyo<br>and in the USA, put together a project on a venture funding<br>website we'd not heard of before, called Kickstarter<br>
(<a href="http://www.kickstarter.com">www.kickstarter.com</a>). There isn't anything like Kickstarter in<br>Japan, although there should be. Essentially it is for very<br>early stage start-up promoters to raise their first round<br>
of cash. Donors ("Investors"?) don't get shares, a process<br>that would quickly bog down both the donors and recipients<br>in paperwork and processes. Instead, the idea promoters<br>provide incentives to the donors as an alternative to<br>
shares. You can see the RDTN.org/SafeCast project at:<br><br><a href="http://kck.st/eMi2hN">http://kck.st/eMi2hN</a><br><br>Of course with a model like this, you can't normally expect<br>donations of more than US$20-US$100 per person, but given<br>
the popularity of the site, some of the projects are<br>getting more than one thousand people putting cash in.<br>Indeed, with little more than a Fukushima-bound mission and<br>a prototype home-built Geiger counter/mapping system<br>
(nicknamed the "iGeigie" because it uses an iPhone for<br>uploads), the SafeCast team have been able to raise a<br>surprising US$34,000 from 576 donors (as of Sunday night)<br>in just 2 weeks. They still have 6 days to go, and are<br>
hoping to bring in more, so that they can increase the<br>number of iGeigie's that they will have out in the hands of<br>citizen monitors.<br><br>[Continued below...]<br><br>--------- Tokyo's Fastest Growing Restaurant Guide --------<br>
<br><a href="http://www.metrodining.jp">www.metrodining.jp</a><br><br>If you like eating out and want to explore a little, or<br>help others to do so, then you need to try out the latest<br>Metropolis Magazine food application, Metrodining.jp. The<br>
result of 2 years of development, the database already has<br>600+ foreigner-friendly restaurants, and is adding 100+ a<br>week to the list. First in town to offer user rankings and<br>cell phone additions/comments.<br><br>
Watch the site closely, because in the next few weeks we<br>will offer rewards for people adding more comments and<br>establishments.<br><br>If you own or have an interest in a restaurant,<br>registering your operation is free of charge. For ad and<br>
other enquiries, contact: <a href="mailto:commercial@metropolis.co.jp">commercial@metropolis.co.jp</a><br>------------------------------------------------------------<br><br>[...Article continues]<br><br>The second major point of interest about SafeCast is what<br>
they have found. As we all know, the government has been<br>touting the fact that apart from a tense couple of weeks<br>shortly after the quake, the air around but outside the<br>20km exclusion zone from the Fukushima Daiichi power plant<br>
has been relatively low in radiation and that people should<br>not be concerned. As of the end of April, the Ministry of<br>Science, MEXT, started making radiation monitoring data<br>publicly available, and most of the monitoring points more<br>
than 40km away (West of the power plant) are showing levels<br>of under 2-3 microSieverts (uSv) per hour. For sure, there<br>are a couple of locations that are a lot higher, at around<br>20uSv/hr, but these are exceptions.<br>
<br>Well, SafeCast's first venture into the Fukushima area<br>several weeks ago confirmed that air levels are indeed low,<br>with the highest readings on their route being around<br>Koriyama, about 60km from the Daiichi plant and measuring<br>
around 1uSv/hr~2uSv/hr. But the problem is that radiation<br>does not just exist in the air. Instead, radioactive<br>particles tend to stick to the ground and persist,<br>particularly on hard surfaces. And this is exactly what the<br>
SafeCast folks found. It seems that the government doesn't<br>seem to be particularly aware of the threat of ground-based<br>hot spots. The following is a note we received from<br>SafeCast a couple of days ago:<br><br>
"It was on our first trip to Koriyama that we measured a<br>hotspot on a playground at a kindergarten in excess of<br>50 µSv/hr. On that trip we documented numerous elevated<br>readings in the 20-30 µSv/hr range but 50 µSv/hr definitely<br>
made us take note. For reference the levels we’ve been<br>detecting in Tokyo rarely go above 1 µSv/hr right now. As<br>none of us are medical professionals or radiation<br>scientists we don’t want to make any claims about what is<br>
safe or what isn’t safe, simply that a level more than 50X<br>higher than normal in a playground where children are<br>playing is probably something worth noting."<br><br>More about that first trip can be found here, scroll down<br>
to see the video of the high reading. The background<br>crackling noise you can hear is the Geiger counter:<br><br><a href="http://blog.safecast.org/2011/04/24/first-safecast/">http://blog.safecast.org/2011/04/24/first-safecast/</a><br>
<br>To put the kindergarten reading into perspective,<br>pre-earthquake nuclear workers had an exposure limit of<br>100 mSv/yr and the dose limit for normal person is<br>1 mSv/yr. 50µSv/hr is equivalent to annual dosage of<br>
438 mSv (although the kids at the kindergarten would not<br>be in proximity the whole time), which is more than four<br>times the pre-March 11 limit for nuclear workers. Given<br>that kids, and especially toddlers who would be both<br>
in close proximity to hard surfaces in a kindergarten and<br>whose growing bodies are more susceptible to the effects<br>of radiation, this finding is quite disturbing.<br><br>Perhaps it is no coincidence, then, that in the last couple<br>
of days, a senior science adviser to the government<br>resigned after a spat over radiation safety limits for<br>schools in Fukushima. The adviser, Todai Professor Toshiso<br>Kosako, argued that the government's radiation safety<br>
standards for elementary schools are inappropriate. The<br>government spokesperson, Yukio Edano responded by saying<br>the safety standard doesn't mean children in the area will<br>face an annual radiation level of 20 millisieverts, just<br>
that this will be the limit.<br><br>Well, if only the kids were getting just 20mSv...! However,<br>as SafeCast is demonstrating, if they are out in a<br>playground with a hot spot for 2-3 hours a day,<br>they could be getting double or triple this limit. As a<br>
result, it will be interesting to see the government's<br>reaction once there are more ground measurements being<br>conducted by SafeCast and its growing band of citizen<br>radiation monitors...<br><br>*****************<br>
<br>In case you are wondering who SafeCast is, here is a self<br>introduction (slightly abridged) that they sent us:<br><br>"A few days after the 3/11 earthquake and resulting<br>radiation issues with the Fukushima Daiichi reactor a group<br>
of web professionals in Portland, Oregon, USA at a company<br>called Uncorked Studios realized that the data that was<br>being released was scattered and obtuse. They decided to<br>create a site that aggregated measurements that were being<br>
released by different agencies into one map to try and<br>paint a better picture of what was going on. At the same<br>time, I (Sean Bonner, Los Angeles) was in active<br>discussions with Joi Ito (Chiba & Dubai) and Pieter Franken<br>
(Tokyo) about getting Geiger counters into the hands of our<br>friends and families in Japan so they could see exactly<br>what was happening at their houses.<br><br>We decided to combine our efforts - collecting published<br>
radiation readings and combining those with measurements we<br>were taking ourselves with distributed sensor devices. As<br>we looked at the map it became obvious there were some<br>serious holes in the coverage and the project took on a<br>
larger scope - not just getting Geiger counters to our<br>friends, but to people all across the country to fill in<br>the gaps and create an open sensor data network that will<br>provide information to anyone who wants it.<br>
<br>As this data will be crowd sourced from actual residents<br>and combined with published official feeds, we felt this<br>would be a more reliable set of data than anything coming<br>from a single source. We set out to acquire funds and<br>
equipment and were confronted with the fact that supplies<br>of Geiger counters worldwide had been stretched thin and<br>the qualities that we wanted simply didn’t exist."<br><br>So there you have it. We may be witnessing the birth of a<br>
Japan-wide citizen's radiation monitoring network, and the<br>folks over at Uncorked have already voiced a desire to see<br>the network go global. Interesting stuff.<br><br>***************<br><br>Finally, it is Golden Week this coming week, and so we will<br>
be taking off one of our four weeks a year. Terrie's Take<br>will be back on Sunday, May 15th. We hope you have a good<br>break. This one was probably well earned, our's certainly has<br>been. :-)<br><br><br>...The information janitors/<br>
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<br>+++ NEWS<br><br>- Why is Natto in short supply?<br>- How much trash in the tsunami zone?<br>- Government workers to get 10% pay cut<br>- Molex fraud creates SEC ripples<br>- March consumer spending falls 8.5%<br><br><br>
<br>-> Why is Natto in short supply?<br><br>Whether you love or hate natto, there is no denying that<br>for most Japanese it is a daily staple that is right up<br>there with bread, rice, and fish. But right now natto is<br>
still in short supply because of packaging problems. The<br>Nikkei says that one of the leading natto producers, Takano<br>Foods in Ibaraki, would normally produce around 4.3m packs<br>a day, but is currently running at 60% capacity due<br>
shortages of polyethylene sealant film and polypropylene<br>packaging film. These would normally be supplied by<br>petrochemicals plants in Kashima, but which have been<br>damaged by the earthquake and tsunami. (Source: TT<br>
commentary from <a href="http://e.nikkei.co.jp">e.nikkei.co.jp</a>, Apr 29, 2011)<br><br><a href="http://e.nikkei.com/e/ac/tnks/Nni20110428D28JFA08.htm">http://e.nikkei.com/e/ac/tnks/Nni20110428D28JFA08.htm</a><br><br>-> How much trash in the tsunami zone?<br>
<br>On seeing videos of the massive cleanup going on along the<br>northeast coast, you can't help but wonder where they are<br>going to put all the wrecked cars, homes, and other<br>mountains of trash left after the tsunami. According to The<br>
Japan Research Institute, about 16 normal years of trash,<br>or about 100m tons, have been created, which now needs to<br>be sorted and disposed of. The recycling is of course<br>hampered by the volumes of mud and seawater still<br>
saturating most of the wreckage. ***Ed: We imagine the<br>recyclers exporting to China are going to be busy --<br>probably worth some investment in those sorts of firms for<br>the next few months.** (Source: TT commentary from<br>
<a href="http://npr.org">npr.org</a>, Apr 29, 2011)<br><br><a href="http://n.pr/kvl3HF">http://n.pr/kvl3HF</a><br><br>-> Government workers to get 10% pay cut<br><br>In a textbook case of Japanese group thinking, the<br>
government has almost reached a decision to cut the<br>salaries of all national government workers by 10% --<br>ranging all the way from diet members down to junior<br>clerks. Apparently the government rationale is that by<br>
civil servants taking a hit to help contribute to<br>government financing of the northeastern recovery efforts<br>it will be easier to then sell a rise in consumption tax to<br>the general public, for the same purpose. However, while<br>
the move may seem magnanimous, apparently civil servants in<br>the future will be allowed to form unions and engage in<br>separate wage negotiations, so it's not clear what will<br>eventually happen to the cuts. We suspect that they won't<br>
last for long. (Source: TT commentary from May 1, 20011)<br><br><a href="http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110430003055.htm">http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110430003055.htm</a><br><br>-> Molex fraud creates SEC ripples<br>
<br>We reported last April in TT562<br><a href="http://www.japaninc.com/tt562_huge-local-fraud-case">http://www.japaninc.com/tt562_huge-local-fraud-case</a>, that<br>Molex was victim of a massive fraud by a senior manager in<br>
its finance group, to the tune of US$175m. The fraud case<br>didn't stop there, given the size and the fact that there<br>appeared to be insufficient corporate processes to prevent<br>such a massive deception. As a result, the US Securities<br>
and Exchange Commission (SEC) is now launching an<br>investigation into the incident. At the same time, Molex is<br>involved in a court case with Mizuho Bank, over who was<br>responsible for approving the massive loans despite their<br>
unusual nature. (Source: TT commentary from<br><a href="http://reuters.com">reuters.com</a>, Apr 29, 2011)<br><br><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/29/molex-idUSL3E7FT3IK20110429">http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/29/molex-idUSL3E7FT3IK20110429</a><br>
<br>-> March consumer spending falls 8.5%<br><br>Consumer restraint after the March 11 earthquake caused a<br>record drop in national household spending, with<br>month-to-month outlays falling by 8.5% from February to<br>
March. Transportation expenditure fell 14.4% and leisure<br>fell 18.7%. At the same time, the average income of<br>households dropped 4.1% to JPY421,975/month. (Source: TT<br>commentary from <a href="http://e.nikkei.com">e.nikkei.com</a>, Apr 28, 2011)<br>
<br><a href="http://e.nikkei.com/e/ac/tnks/Nni20110428D28JF378.htm">http://e.nikkei.com/e/ac/tnks/Nni20110428D28JF378.htm</a><br><br><br>NOTE: Broken links<br>Many online news sources remove their articles after just a<br>
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<br><a href="http://www.cch-japan.jp">www.cch-japan.jp</a><br>-----------------------------------------------------------<br><br>+++ CANDIDATE ROUND UP/VACANCIES<br><br>=> BiOS, a Division of the LINC Media group, is actively<br>
marketing the following positions for customers setting up<br>or expanding in Japan, as well as other employers of<br>bilinguals.<br><br>** HIGHLIGHTED POSITION<br><br>BiOS is urgently looking for a Web Development Project<br>
Manager with experience managing a technical team as well<br>as clients, at our office in the Roppongi area. The<br>candidate will be responsible for managing a web<br>development team (designer, content editor, and developer),<br>
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for development team corrections.<br><br>Due to the technical nature and demanding work environment,<br>this position is suitable for someone with solid experience<br>managing web design/development teams in both technical and<br>
project-related areas, and who has solid experience working<br>directly with the clients in delivering services. In<br>addition, since this role requires coordination with<br>clients directly, fluent communications skills in both<br>
English and Japanese are required.<br><br>Remuneration is JPY4m – JPY5.5m depending on your<br>experience and skill level.<br><br>** POSITIONS VACANT<br><br>- Desktop Engineer, global bank, JPY4m – JPY5m<br>- Bilingual Sales Administrator, BiOS, JPY2.5m – JPY3m<br>
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<a href="mailto:kenji.sakota@biosjp.com">kenji.sakota@biosjp.com</a><br><br>** BiOS Job Mail<br><br>Every 2 weeks BiOS sends out a regular communication to its<br>job seeking candidates, called BiOS Job Mail. Every edition<br>
carries a list of BiOS's current and most up-to-date<br>vacancies, with each entry featuring a short job<br>description and a direct link to the main entry on the BiOS<br>home page. Regardless of whether you are unemployed and<br>
searching, thinking about a career change, or just curious<br>to know if there is something out there that might suit you<br>better, the BiOS Job Mail newsletter is an easy and<br>convenient way for you to stay informed. If you would like<br>
to register for the BiOS Job Mail, or to find out more,<br>please email <a href="mailto:kenji.sakota@biosjp.com">kenji.sakota@biosjp.com</a>.<br><br>Interested individuals may e-mail resumes to:<br><a href="mailto:kenji.sakota@biosjp.com">kenji.sakota@biosjp.com</a>.<br>
<br>-----------------------------------------------------------<br><br>***------------------------****-------------------------***<br><br>+++ UPCOMING EVENTS/ANNOUNCEMENTS<br><br>No events for this coming week.<br><br>***------------------------****-------------------------***<br>
<br>+++ CORRECTIONS/FEEDBACK<br><br>In this section we run comments and corrections submitted<br>by readers. We encourage you to spot our mistakes and<br>amplify our points, by email, to <a href="mailto:editors@terrie.com">editors@terrie.com</a>.<br>
<br>*** In TT611 we said that life is getting back to normal<br>and that international school rolls were recovering.<br><br>=> Reader:<br>Interesting that international schools are now just back to<br>80%. Japanese schools in Tsukuba never stopped and never<br>
slipped below 90~95 %.<br><br>The foreign flight ( I still do not understand it) is<br>causing a man made disaster in the community set up to<br>serve it.<br><br>=> We agree. Further checking leads us to think that the<br>
number of foreign families who will continue living in<br>Japan will once again drop as the school year ends for<br>around June-July. Whether they will be replaced by new<br>arrivals is difficult to say, especially since Japan is<br>
still braced for more aftershocks and Fukushima is still a<br>major risk.<br><br>***********************************************************<br>END<br><br>SUBSCRIBERS: 8,827 members as of May 01, 2011<br>(We purge our list regularly.)<br>
<br>+++ ABOUT US<br><br>STAFF<br>Written by: Terrie Lloyd (<a href="mailto:terrie.lloyd@japaninc.com">terrie.lloyd@japaninc.com</a>)<br><br>HELP: E-mail <a href="mailto:Terrie-request@mailman.japaninc.com">Terrie-request@mailman.japaninc.com</a><br>
with the word 'help' in the subject or body (don't include<br>the quotes), and you will get back a message with<br>instructions.<br><br>FEEDBACK<br>Send letters (Feedback, Inquiries & Information) to the<br>
editor to <a href="mailto:terrie.lloyd@japaninc.com">terrie.lloyd@japaninc.com</a>.<br><br>ADVERTISING INFORMATION<br>For more information on advertising in this newsletter,<br>Contact <a href="mailto:ads@japaninc.com">ads@japaninc.com</a>.<br>
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<br>J@pan Inc is Japan's only independently published English-<br>language business website. Authoritatively chronicling<br>online the business trends in Japan, each posting brings<br>you in-depth analysis of business, people and technology in<br>
the world's second largest economy.<br><br>Visit <a href="http://www.japaninc.com">www.japaninc.com</a> for the best business insight on<br>Japan available.<br>-----------------------------------------------------------<br>
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