May - Visitors to Japan Plunge 50%

The number of foreign visitors to Japan in May plunged 50.4 percent from a year earlier to 358,000, the second-sharpest year-on-year fall following April's 62.5 percent drop, in the wake of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in March, the Japan National Tourism Organization said Thursday.

The rate of decline, however, has been narrowing since reaching 73 percent in the March 12-31 period following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, with foreign governments lifting advisories on travel to Japan, according to the organization.

The rate of decline in foreign visitors also slowed as travel agencies organized cheaper group tours to Japan and foreigners including those who were studying and undergoing vocational training in Japan returned to the country.

Of foreign visitors in May, the number of South Koreans plummeted 58.3 percent to 84,100 and that of Taiwanese tumbled 40.4 percent to 68,000 while that of Chinese decreased 47.8 percent to 58,700.
Comparable data has been available since January 1961.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9NST9O00&show_article=1

Tokyo starts radiation checks at 100 locations

The Tokyo metropolitan government kicked off Wednesday a weeklong program to measure radiation levels in the air at 100 locations in the metropolis in a bid to address fears over the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. 


There are one to three check points per 4 square kilometers across Tokyo, excluding mountain areas. Two groups of metropolitan government employees will take measurements at six to seven locations a day during the week, with the results published basically everyday on its website after each measurement, it said.

At a park in Toshima Ward, the first location under the program, three employees measured 0.06 microsieverts of radiation one meter above the ground and 0.07 microsieverts at five centimeters above ground, against the legal limit of 1 millisievert per year for the general public.

The move came after a number of requests from cities, towns and villages in Tokyo asking for expanded coverage of radiation measurements to the metropolitan government, as it has conducted measurements only in Shinjuku Ward.


http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9NS2S2O0&show_article=1

Yakuza Trying to Get Post EQ Fukushima Contracts

The government and law enforcement authorities appear to be fighting an uphill battle to prevent gangsters and other "antisocial" groups from cashing in on disposing of huge amounts of debris generated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which played havoc with large areas along the Pacific coast of northeastern Japan.

These groups, including not only Japan's indigenous organized crime syndicates known as "yakuza" but a mafia based in China, are seeking to win a chunk of more than ¥15 trillion estimated to be poured into reconstruction of the areas.

On May 5, in the midst of an annual holiday season in Japan, an officer of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, on his visit to Minami-Soma City in Fukushima Prefecture, which was hard hit by the calamities, was flabbergasted to find a Chinese man known as a leading figure in the "China mafia."

This man (who will be referred to as "Mr. X" in this article) is a naturalized citizen of Japan, and is engaged in the business of treating industrial waste in both Japan and China. He was giving gyoza dumplings to evacuees in shelters in an apparent bid to impress the local people with his benevolence.

But his ulterior motive is to win a contract for collecting and disposing of mountains of debris that local authorities are finding difficult to handle. Making matters worse for local residents, some of the debris near the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power station are contaminated with radioactive substances and therefore cannot be moved to other prefectures.

Indeed, on April 17, the municipal government of Koriyama City, Fukushima, removed contaminated surface soil from the grounds of a public school but was prevented from dumping the radioactive soil at a disposal site by local residents.

According to the Tokyo police officer, Mr. X recently visited the mayor of Minami-Soma with a DPJ Diet member apparently in a bid to win business contracts. The mayor is said to have been unaware of Mr. X's background. The same police officer says Mr. X has sites in inland China where he can dump waste. This means that should he be awarded a contract, debris, including materials contaminated with radioactive substances would be shipped to China.

The China mafia is not the only group seeking to win a deal in the debris disposal projects. On April 21, a member of the yakuza group Kodo-kai was found to be distributing cash to earthquake victims in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, and the police believe this was part of an attempt to get a contract for debris disposal. Kodo-kai is the largest group under the umbrella of Yamaguchi-gumi, which is the largest of Japan's "Big Three" organized crime syndicates.

The other two Big Three members — Sumiyoshi-kai and Inagawa-gumi — are also stepping up their activities in the disaster region, which gives rise to the difficult question of how the three groups would split the pie in the event they win contracts, according to a newspaper reporter well versed in their actions.

Another category of "antisocial" groups is groups of people known as sokai-ya, which are corporate blackmailers unique to Japan. They extort money by threatening to publicly humiliate or embarrass companies and their executives at annual meetings of stockholders (kabunushi sokai).

One such group is said to have dispatched more than 30 workers to the stricken nuclear power station in Fukushima to work on disposal of contaminated debris. Each worker carries a Geiger counter to measure and records the levels of radiation. The group's aim, of course, is to threaten Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the nuclear station, and win compensatory money by proving that these workers have were over-exposed to radiation.

The government and the police have already launched steps to counter these antisocial forces, but their task is not easy to say the least. In late March, the National Police Agency instructed the police departments in the earthquake-hit prefectures to take measures to prevent yakuza and other antisocial groups from taking part in reconstruction projects.

On May 8, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku said in an NHK-TV program that disposal of debris, which he noted was primarily the task of the municipalities, would not work unless the central government takes direct control.

But even these steps taken by the government and the police might not prove sufficient because the sheer size of the debris and the work required could enable the yakuza to edge their way in.

One case to illustrate this point is found in a construction company in Iwate Prefecture, which was on the verge of bankruptcy prior to the March 11 disasters due to insufficient work. Although the company is now getting more work than it can possibly handle, it knows that the boom is temporary, and that, therefore, it is refraining from hiring more workers. Other construction companies are in a similar position, and, as a result, each has more work than they can handle.

In this kind of situation, the national and municipal governments cannot devote much time to carefully choosing contractors to undertake debris disposal.

The police authorities are also facing difficulties in clamping down on the yakuza groups because many of them take the form of normal business entities engaged in legitimate enterprises.

The National Police Agency is said to have distributed to prefectural police departments a list of antisocial individuals but it is not clear if the police department can fully make use of the lists in their efforts to exclude gangsters from contracts.

It appears to be an uphill battle to prevent yakuza and other crime syndicates from benefiting from the multitrillion yen reconstruction-related projects.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20110615a3.html

Osaka Real Estate Market Still Flat - No lift from Kanto EQ

Osaka has not received any relief in its trouble real estate sector from a previously expected movement of companies from Tokyo to Osaka which has not occurred

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/16/osaka-idUSL3E7H806Y20110616

Government to Monitor for Cesium on Swim Beaches this Summer

The government will ask municipalities to check radiation levels at bathing areas this summer in assessing their water quality in the wake of the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, government officials said Tuesday.
The Environment Ministry will notify local governments of a guideline this month for monitoring radioactive cesium in seas, rivers and lakes in addition to regular screening for coliform bacteria and other contaminants.
The decision comes in response to requests from municipalities for a national guideline for water safety in the light of radioactive contamination of water, soil and food.
Independent inspections of 34 bathing areas by Chiba, Tokyo, Kanagawa and Shizuoka prefectures since May have not detected any radioactive materials. There are about 850 bathing areas in the country. 




http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9NRK6DG0&show_article=1

Cesium Detected in Whales

Radioactive cesium was detected from two minke whales caught off the coast of Kushiro, Hokkaido, in Japan's so-called research whaling, a whalers' association said Tuesday. 


While the level of the radioactive material remained below the temporarily set upper limit, the association officials said during a press conference in Kushiro that the contamination must have been caused by the continuing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant and that they will closely monitor future developments.

During the research whaling that started in late April, 17 whales were caught, and researchers examined six of them. Of the six, two were found tainted with 31 becquerels and 24.3 becquerels of cesium per kilogram of whale meat, they said.

The upper limit tentatively stands at 500 becquerels per kilogram.


http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9NRIS780&show_article=1

June - Radioactive strontium detected 62 km from Fukushima

Minute amounts of radioactive strontium have been detected in soil at 11 locations in Fukushima prefecture, including the city of Fukushima located 62 kilometers from the crippled  Daiichi nuclear power plant, according to the science ministry. 


The Nuclear Safety Commission said they are unlikely to pose an immediate threat to human health but warned people about the intake of radioactive strontium into their bodies.

According to the Government 54 becquerels of strontium 89 per kilogram were detected in soil collected in the city of Fukushima on April 27.

The highest amount, 1,500 becquerels of strontium, was detected in soil collected on May 6 in the town of Namie located 24 km northwest of the nuclear plant, which was severely damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

The ministry also detected 1,000 becquerels of strontium in the village of Iitate, 220 becquerels in the town of Kawamata and 30 becquerels in the town of Hirono
 
The commission said it will investigate to see if the strontium has been released into the air from the soil.

Strontium tends to accumulate in bones and is believed to cause bone cancer and leukemia.

The ministry was investigating samples of soil collected in the prefecture from March 21 through May 6.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9NO5N3G0&show_article=1