TT-948 -- The Nuclear Issue: Missiles, Meltdowns, and MOX, e-biz News from Japan

* * * * * * * * TERRIE'S TAKE - BY TERRIE LLOYD * * * * * *
A weekly roundup of news & information from Terrie Lloyd, a long-term
technology and media entrepreneur living in Japan.
(http://www.terrielloyd.com)

General Edition Sunday, Jun 10, 2018, Issue No. 948

- What's New -- The Nuclear Issue: Missiles, Meltdowns, and MOX
- News -- Foreigners keep combini running at night
- Upcoming Events
- Corrections/Feedback
- Travel Picks -- Sumo tickets for Osaka, fireflies in Oji, Kyoto
- News Credits

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+++ WHAT'S NEW

Whatever you may think of Donald Trump, the president of the USA, he is
certainly fulfilling the prediction that film maker Michael Moore once
made about him, being: "The human hand grenade that [the people who used
to be in the middle class] can legally throw into the system..." The
thing about hand grenades is that you don't always know where they are
going to go off if you're not an expert in using them, as the G7 leaders
found out to their dismay late this week. And as Japan is just now
finding out from Trump's meeting with North Korea's Kim in Singapore.

For the Japanese, the Trump-Kim summit is a bit of a slap on the face as
they are being bypassed by Trump in his eagerness for a North Korea
deal. Essentially the White House is relegating Japan's interests to
being of minor concern, and the message being sent is that Trump doesn't
really care about the USA's most loyal ally in Asia. Maybe he had a bad
experience trying to raise finance here? But even as this subtle
humiliation of PM Abe is going on, there is another White House pivot
which is just as concerning, and that is their public calling out of
Japan over its plutonium stockpile. It seems that both the Department of
State and the National Security Council have decided in the most public
way possible that Japan's plutonium stockpile is going to become a US
bargaining chip in getting North Korea to end its nuclear ambitions.

We find this to be an extraordinary turn of events. The official stance
of both Japan and the USA has for years been that Japan does not have
nuclear weapons, so if that was the case, why would anything in Japan be
considered worth bargaining the North's nuclear step down over? Of
course, as we reported in August 2015, most military analysts believe
that while Japan may not have actual weapons (or that it might), it
certainly does have the capacity to produce them in significant
quantities very quickly if it wanted to.

http://bit.ly/2xXQM1l [Terrie's Take-815 about whether Japan has nuclear
weapons]

Japan has the launch vehicles (rockets), which it certainly doesn't need
for other commercial reasons - there being much better launch services
available from SpaceX and others. And it has the mountain of plutonium,
47 tons of it according to US news sources, and possibly more. As China
keeps saying, the thing about Japan's plutonium is that it is supposedly
for our MOX reactors, but right now out of the 8 reactors still
operating nationally, only 3 use MOX (a Uranium/Plutonium mixture). So
why does Japan need to stockpile it? The only logical conclusion is for
national security.

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-----------------------------------------------------------

[...Article continues]

Now that the White House has decided that Japan's Plutonium reserves
should be used as a bargaining chip, we can conclude that probably Japan
is viewed as the main regional threat by the North Koreans (yes, an
irony, we know), and perhaps Japan really does have a secret nuclear
weapons program - as our reader commented hinted back in 2015. If that
were the case, North Korea would probably know of it - as they have been
remarkably industrious in hacking various online Japanese institutions.

What's strange about all of this is that most of the officially
recognized plutonium (about 36 tons) is not in fact in Japan at all.
It's in France, being held in storage or for re-processing, and must be
shipped back to Japan at some risk (of environmental catastrophe) on a
regular basis. So if we are to believe that North Korea thinks Japan is
a nuclear (weapons) power, then we can also assume that Japan is not
being honest about just how much plutonium it has stockpiled or
alternatively how it is using it. Again, our logic in this line of
thinking is based on just why the Trump administration thinks Japan
makes an attractive bargaining chip.

**************

Staying on our nuclear theme, we now move from a story of national
insecurity to one of national despair - that being the ongoing crisis
happening at the ruined Daiichi power plant site in Fukushima. Rainy
season is almost upon us and this is the time of year when TEPCO, the
site operator, most struggles with surges in contaminated ground water
flows. TEPCO has famously been building acres of water storage tanks to
retain 850,000 tons of this contaminated water, which it then treats.
But it has announced that by 2020 it will literally run out of space at
the site and rather than build more tanks in a much further away another
location, it is instead planning to do controlled releases into the
Pacific ocean. This of course is not being well received by the public
and in particular the fisheries cooperatives that operate north and
south of the site.

Last week one organization that we do trust, one with the understanding
and skills to properly analyze the risks involved, www.safecast.org,
released a two-part paper arguing the fact that the science shows that
water release into the Pacific will be so dilutive that it should be
safe, and that probably such releases are unavoidable and should go
ahead. Their paper makes the point that the stored water has been
treated to remove most of the radionuclides and that the primary
remaining contaminant is Tritium, which has a short biological "half
life" of 10 days and a radiation half life of 12.5 years. The
expectations by scientists are that the tritium will be quickly
dispersed in the ocean waters to such small concentrations that they
will be only just perceptibly higher than natural background levels.

You can read Part One here:

http://bit.ly/2JFBOSu

The main concern about the tritiated water (HTO) is that while it does
not bio-accumulate, organically bound tritium (OBT) does, and fish
consuming tritium can retain OBT in their body tissues for years.
Scientists don't have enough data to know just how bad the
bio-accumulation will be, but current assumptions are that such fish
will be safe for consumption. Indeed, after dilution, the levels of
tritium (HTO) will be hundreds and even thousands of times lower than
the permissible amounts for drinking water in many western economies
(such as Australia, for example).

For this reason, TEPCO and METI apparently have already made up their
minds that the water releases will occur, but other government forces
recognize that a lot more work will have to be done to convince the
public and the fishing community that the levels will be safe.
Safecast.org makes a good point that the authorities could go a long way
to alleviating public fears by opening up in situ contamination
measurement to neutral third parties rather than organizations
controlled by the Japan's Nuclear Regulation Agency. Unfortunately, as
the white paper concludes, it is more likely that the release will
happen on the command of someone at Kasumigaseki, and responsibility for
the release will be decided later.

As far as we are concerned, while the fish from Fukushima may well be
perfectly edible, we prefer not to be the guinea pigs in finding out. So
long as we have the financial means to do so, we will stick to buying
marine products harvested no further south-east than Hokkaido and
Aomori, and more preferably those from the other side of Japan, such as
in Kyushu and Chugoku. We get the feeling that most other Kanto and
Tohoku consumers will be thinking the same thing - and so for now at
least, the idea of 850,000 tons of tritiated water being dumped into the
Pacific Ocean is going to be more of an academic exercise. Still, that
IS an awful lot of bad water.

...The information janitors/

***------------------------****-------------------------***

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-----------------------------------------------------------

+++ NEWS

- Japan's obsession with cash
- Last Japanese PC business sold off
- Face recognition gates at Narita - for the people who need it least
- Nissan foreign trainee missteps
- Foreigners keep combini running at night

=> Japan's obsession with cash

Fascinating article by norbert.gehrke posting to Medium, about Japan's
obsession with cash payments versus cashless. While cashless is trending
all around the world other than in some structurally-challenged interior
parts of China, Japan is once again proving a Galapagos marketplace.
Gehrke presents evidence that Japanese consumers still prefer cash by a
wide margin. Using forward-looking South Korea as a reference, where
they have a cashless payment rate of around 70%, one of the highest in
the world, Japan's cashless usage is stuck at less than 20%. ***Ed:
Actually, this isn't so surprising when you think about all the
negatives consumers face with banking their cash these days, especially:
difficulty in getting a bank account, JPY10m limitation in bank deposit
insurance, rising bank fees, dwindling numbers of bank branches, and
minuscule interest rates.** (Source: TT commentary from
medium.com/@norbert.gehrke, Jun 02 2018)

http://bit.ly/2LFplM3

=> Last Japanese PC business sold off

Although the Japanese press are reporting the Toshiba decision to sell
its PC business to Sharp for JPY4bn, as a Japan deal, in reality given
that Sharp is now owned by Taiwan-based Honhai, the deal is better
characterized as the exit of the last major Japanese electronics maker
brand from the PC industry. With NEC and Fujitsu's PC businesses being
bought by Lenovo several years ago, and Sony's Vaio brand being sold to
an investment fund in 2014 (and thus for sale at some point to the
highest bidder), Toshiba has been the last PC holdout. ***Ed: On the
bright side, Toshiba's divestment of its chips, PC, and home electricals
business have allowed the company to report its first group net profit
in four years.**

http://bit.ly/2JDeB3p

=> Face recognition gates at Narita - for the people who need it least

The Immigration Bureau at Narita has installed automatic passport
control gates for Japanese passengers, which will go into operation on
Monday. Over the next few months Immigration plans to turn on at least
31 gates across the nation's major international ports of entry. ***Ed:
Hopefully the new face recognition gates at Narita are just a test, and
not an indicator of long-term official policy. If you're Japanese, your
typical wait is already less than a minute, so what benefit the gates
will bring is hard to say. On the other hand, certainly something needs
to be done about the long foreign traveler lines at the major
international ports. Then of course there is the joke that is the
automatic gates for re-entry visa holders, who after going through the
gates still have to go to a manned booth for what amounts to the same
period of time and same level of personal checks as previously.**
(Source: TT commentary from the-japan-news.com, Jun 09, 2018)

http://bit.ly/2JAapyd

=> Nissan foreign trainee missteps

Not sure why the Nikkei is beating up Nissan over missteps on its
employment of foreign trainees, since for sure, other auto makers have
similar issues. Nonetheless, the newspaper outlined a voluntary report
from Nissan to the Organization for Technical Intern Training, where the
company says that of about 200 trainees from mostly SE Asian countries,
45 were given out-of-spec jobs and the remainder are under-employed and
therefore not achieving training aims. The company is saying that one
incident where plastic molding operators were asked to paint car bumpers
is a case of factory line managers not understanding the company's
obligations towards the trainees. ***Ed: Or maybe the managers were
simply remembering back a couple of years ago to when the trainees were
just cheap slave labor? Very strange how the whole system has suddenly
swung from being so abusive to so timid now. They way things are going,
we wonder if the trainee programs may even be dropped by major companies
- due to their being just too much trouble. Certainly Japanese
manufacturers still need a new source of labor.** (Source: TT commentary
from asia.nikkei.com, Jun 06, 2018)

https://s.nikkei.com/2sTRA1D

=> Foreigners keep combini running at night

Interesting to see a new book that claims that mostly foreign workers
are now running Japan's top three combini chain stores in the evenings.
The book's author, Kensuke Serizawa reckons that there are now more than
40,000 foreign workers at 7-Eleven, Family Mart, and Lawson - almost one
for every one of their stores nationwide. As a ratio, the number of
foreign workers to Japanese overall at the stores is about 5%. Most of
the employees are Japan-resident students hailing from China, Korea,
Nepal, and Sri Lanka, who are working the 28-hours a week they are
permitted by their visas. The author gives an example of the tough life
these students lead, describing one Uzbekistani clerk working at a store
in his neighborhood, who works through the night then leaves directly
for his language classes the next morning, without sleeping. ***Ed:
Great way for these kids to learn Japanese and make some extra cash. We
hope that more than a few of them stay on after they graduate. Japan
needs more people with this kind of motivation.** (Source: TT commentary
from soranews24.com, Jun 07, 2018)

http://bit.ly/2sMJqZC

NOTE: Broken links
Some online news sources remove their articles after just a few days of
posting them, thus breaking our links -- we apologize for the inconvenience.

***------------------------****-------------------------***

+++ UPCOMING EVENTS

No upcoming events this week.

***------------------------****-------------------------***

+++ CORRECTIONS/FEEDBACK

=> In response to our TT-944 story about expat Canadian banker Glen Wood
and his lawsuit against Japanese-owned securities firm Mitsubishi UFJ
Morgan Stanley Securities and its obliviousness about paternity leave
laws in Japan.

*** Reader One: GREAT article about Glen Wood. Having experienced the
short end of the stick about the Japanese Government discrimination I
know how hard it must have been for him. Since I do not know how to
contact him, please convey my best regards to him and thank him for
holding on. Japan is a great country and it's a pity that it is marred
by such backwards thinking... if any amount of change happens from Mr.
Wood's actions, it will help define a role for those of us foreigners
who love the country - to become change agents.

*** Reader Two: Wow! What an explosive interview with Glen Wood! Great
reporting! Thank you for this terrific piece.

***------------------------****-------------------------***

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can use the bicycle or any replacement, for up to 24 hours (from 00:01
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rental and return to any port within the area. JapanTravel.Bike is
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major cities in Japan.

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-----------------------------------------------------------

+++ TRAVEL DESTINATIONS PICKS

=> Tickets for the Sumo Wrestling Tournament in Osaka

Sumo is a traditional sport founded in Japan more than 1,500 years ago,
where wrestlers fight with their bare hands, exemplifying their true
natural strength and fairness of the sport. These dramatic matches have
been captivating fans worldwide. Now Japantravel.com makes it possible
to purchase online tickets for the sumo matches at the Osaka Prefectural
Gymnasium in Osaka. Tickets usually sell out quickly, so make your
reservations quickly!

Being offered is a one-day pass, so in-and-outs are okay, and you can
arrive and leave at any time you desire. Please keep in mind the tickets
do not include food or drinks.

http://bit.ly/2JJAKgg

=> Firefly Viewing in Uji, Kyoto
Discover magical fireflies in the Botanic Park

Venue: Uji City Botanical Park
When: May 26th - Jun 10th 2018, 5:00pm - 9:00pm. The big names and
famous photo opportunities in Kyoto city can seduce visitors and locals
for an entire lifetime. However, the rest of the prefecture should not
be overlooked. Uji, just 15 minutes from central Kyoto by train, draws
visitors throughout the year, entranced by the Tale of Genji Museum,
Byodo-in Temple, and traditional cormorant fishing in the summer months.
Uji River in particular offers a special something to visitors in late
May and early June - fireflies.

A short bus ride (or a fair uphill walk) from the city center brings you
to the Uji City Botanical Park where its firefly population show off
their luminescent talents for just a few weeks a year. The park's hilly
position offers lovely views stretching south to Osaka, and it's the
perfect place to watch the sky's changing colors at sunset before
seeking a different type of light show. Once the sun does go down and
dusky light bathes the area, I recommend browsing the photographs of the
park's previous flower bed masterpieces, as they are quite spectacular.
You can also squeeze in a quick lap of the greenhouse; a jungle in its
own right, full of exotic flowers and beautiful blooms.

In the evening it is a lot cooler and beautifully lit. There is also a
special display to peruse in the waiting area. When I visited it
featured an impressive collection of azalea bonsai trees, pruned to
perfection. Finally, when all is dark, venture down the lantern-lit path
in search of the park's seasonal attraction... and there they will be.

http://bit.ly/2Mc9ntX

***------------------------****-------------------------***

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+++ ABOUT US

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