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Radiation Leaking From Fukushima Site 18 Times Greater Than Previously Believed

By on September 5, 2013 in News 6

fukushima

Radiation levels were being measured using devices with far-too-limited scales, the BBC reports:

Radiation levels around Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant are 18 times higher than previously thought, Japanese authorities have warned.

Last week the plant’s operator reported radioactive water had leaked from a storage tank into the ground. It now says readings taken near the leaking tank on Saturday showed radiation was high enough to prove lethal within four hours of exposure.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) had originally said the radiation emitted by the leaking water was around 100 millisieverts an hour. However, the company said the equipment used to make that recording could only read measurements of up to 100 millisieverts.

The new reading will have direct implications for radiation doses received by workers who spent several days trying to stop the leak last week. Experts have said the scale of water leakage may be worse than officials have admitted.

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Japanese Government Opens “Internet Fasting Camps” To Treat Addicted Teens

By on August 29, 2013 in News 5

Computer_labCould you survive these brutal camps? Via the International Business Times:

In response to rising numbers of young people who are “pathologically addicted” to the internet, Japan is opening up so-called “internet fasting camps” to wean youths off the web. Researchers at Japan’s Nihon University estimate that about 8.1 percent of the country’s students are addicted to the internet.

The Tokyo government’s education ministry will introduce “web fasting camps” to help young people disconnect from their PCs, laptops, mobile phones and hand-held devices. Akifumi Sekine, a spokesman for the education ministry, added: “We want to get them out of the virtual world and to encourage them to have real communication with other children and adults.”

Youths forcibly removed from their beloved mobile devices may suffer withdrawal symptoms, i.e., “cold turkey.”

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Japanese Company Markets Pillow Shaped Like Woman’s Lap

By on August 16, 2013 in News 3

Screen Shot 2013-08-16 at 11.11.50 AMOh, Japan. I love you so much. You’re like America’s  repressed id come to sparkling, slightly sticky life.

Via Oddity Central:

Designed to replicate the relaxing experience of resting your head on a woman’s lap, the Himazakura Lap Pillow is still very popular in Japan, years after it was launched.

On the popular online store Japan Trend Shop, the Himazakura Lap Pillow is described as” soft and elastic to the touch, and perfectly suited to lying your head on. You’ll be surprised at how comfortable and real it feels!” Shaped as the lap of a woman kneeling in Japanese style, the polyurethane cushion recreates the comfortable feeling of resting your head on a woman’s lap, be it your mother or your loving wife.

Have that talk with your girlfriend about her “sharp knees” and click here to keep reading.

 

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On Door-To-Door Salespeople, Brainwashing, And Trances

By on August 13, 2013 in News 0

brainwashingAmway, traveling magazine sales, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others arguably blur the line between door-to-door sales and cults. The Neurocritic presents an unusual psychiatric report from Japan describing a door-to-door salesman’s use of religious brainwashing and hypnosis to make a Tokyo-area housewife be “possessed by God”:

In Japan, due to the prevalence of door-to-door peddling of items such as amulets and talismans to ward off curses and misfortune, the term ‘door-to-door sales’ has come to have a religious connotation.

Recently, we treated a case of possessive state accompanied with suicidal tendencies which are thought to have developed in connection with door-to-door sales.

When the patient was 47 years old, a male she described as a ‘salesperson type’ came to her home in May. He predicted that some misfortune would befall her husband. The patient’s husband had fallen in an accident a few days earlier, and she became extremely anxious. The man then said, ‘I have a talisman, a lucky name chop (family seal) which will protect your husband from misfortune’.

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Nuclear Reactor At Fukushima May Turned Into A Tourist Attraction

By on August 11, 2013 in News 3

dark tourismA summer vacation spot that will give you a healthy glow? Thanks to a tip from Rhoid – Japan Today reports:

Paying visits to historic places where death and suffering occurred is known as “dark tourism.” After taking note that in 2011, or 25 years after the accident, the Chernobyl reactor site has become open to general tourism, a group of individuals in Japan is attempting to lay the groundwork for plans to make the No. 1 reactor at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant a tourist spot.

The group includes author-critic Hiroki Azuma, tourism scholar Akira Ide, artist Kazuki Umezawa, media activist Daisuke Tsuda, sociologist Hiroshi Akenuma, editor Kenro Hayami and architect Ryuji Fujiwara.

Along with providing a venue to convey their own histories to future generations, the members aim for the activities to be useful in aiding in recovery of the affected areas.

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US Empire of Bases: Destruction of Okinawa

By on July 30, 2013 in News 1

Abby Martin goes over the effect of prolonged US military presence in bases all over the world, highlighting the case of Okinawa, Japan, which has hosted over 60 years of US occupation and thousands of young troops who are almost immune from prosecution against crimes committed on the island.

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In Japan, Getting Plastic Surgery On Your Palms To Influence Your Destiny

By on July 18, 2013 in News 3

palm reading

Hazards of the procedure: the surgeon misunderstands palm reading, and inadvertently puts a curse on you. Fox News reports:

Japanese intent on changing their fate have begun having plastic surgery to alter their palms. The new trend relies on the ancient art of palm reading, or palmistry, the belief that you can tell a person’s future based on the lines on their palms.

Plastic surgeons have reported an increase in patients asking for operations to extend or add lines associated with luck or marriage. The surgeries cost around $1,100 and are performed with an electric scalpel.

Takaaki Matsuoka, a surgeon at the Shonan Beauty Clinic’s Shinjuku branch in Tokyo, said: “You have to use the electric scalpel and make a shaky incision on purpose, because palm lines are never completely straight.” Around 40 palm plastic surgeries have been performed at the Shonan Beauty Clinic alone in the last two years.

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Japanese Authorities Admit Fukushima Has Been Leaking Radiation Into Water For Two Years, And Cannot Be Stopped

By on July 16, 2013 in News 15

fukushimaVia the New York Times, a reminder to always take officials with a grain of salt when they issue statements denying that the oceans and air are being poisoned:

The stricken nuclear power plant at Fukushima has probably been leaking contaminated water into the ocean for two years, ever since an earthquake and tsunami badly damaged the plant, Japan’s chief nuclear regulator said on Wednesday.

In unusually candid comments, Shunichi Tanaka, the head of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, also said that neither his staff nor the plant’s operator knew exactly where the leaks were coming from, or how to stop them.

The operator, Tokyo Electric Power, has reported spikes in the amounts of radioactive cesium, tritium and strontium detected in groundwater at the plant, adding urgency to the task of sealing any leaks. Radioactive cesium and strontium, especially, are known to raise risks of cancer in humans.

Until recently, Tokyo Electric, known as Tepco, flatly denied that any of that water was leaking into the ocean, even though various independent studies of radiation levels in the nearby ocean have suggested otherwise.

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‘Psychic Attack’ Rumors Run Wild After 18 Hospitalized at Japanese High School

By on June 29, 2013 in News 35

psychic attackPsychic attack? Teen angst externalized? Via Who Forted?

Last Wednesday at the well-known prep school Kamigōri High in Hyogo, Japan, emergency services were called out and a reported 18 girls were taken to hospitals after what was described as a bizarre, hour long “state of panic” during which dozens of teen girls began hyperventilating.

The initial incident began when a first year student began complaining of a “bad feeling”. Her hyperventilating sparked a chain of similar events that affected [18 others].

Things got even stranger when rumors began spreading that the incident was actually the work of a psychic attack dealt from the first girl to exhibit the bizarre symptoms. According to the Aioi police department, it was well known amongst the other students that the girl displayed “supernatural senses” and they believed she was to blame for the hospitalizations.

The victims have since been released from the hospital and have shown no long term after effects.

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