Daily Japan Headlines: Thursday, Jun 16, 2011

Written By: guyjin on June 16, 2011 No Comment

20110616
Picture Source: Washington Post.

Washington Post: Japan struggles to attract tourists

“Everybody else in the world thinks Japan is saturated with radiation,” said Zensuke Suzuki, an international travel executive at the Japan Tourism Agency. “And we can try to convince people otherwise, but whatever Japan itself says, people won’t really trust.”

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AFP: Japan’s mega-quake struck in small zone of fault: study

Modelling of the stresses and strains placed upon Honshu island as the fault was torn apart indicates the epicentre was about 200 kilometres (120 miles) east of Sendai, at the heart of an extraordinarily compact, lozenge-shaped area of ocean floor.

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NPR: NRC: Spent Fuel Pool Never Went Dry In Japan Quake

Newly obtained video shows that the spent fuel pool at Unit 4 at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex probably did not go dry, as NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko had insisted in March, the [U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission] said.

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Wall Street Journal: Deja Vu All Over Again at Fukushima Daiichi?

“These plants are all of roughly the same vintage and suffer from a common lack of ‘human factors’ considerations in the design of their control systems. That was a major contributing cause to the Three Mile Island accident,”

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NPR: Traces Of Radiation Found In 2 Whales Off Japan

“The levels are far below the limit, and the meat from the catch is safe for consumption,” Fisheries Agency official Kosei Takekoshi said.

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Wall Street Journal: Two Cheers for the Bank of Japan

Japanese banks still have a ways to go before they develop the skills to lend to entrepreneurs based on cash flow and business plans to the extent found in other developed countries. And we’ll reserve that third cheer for when Japan’s leaders, especially those in the Ministry of Finance, figure out that if it were really so easy to know which are “growth industries,” then it wouldn’t have to worry about giving them special access to loans in the first place.

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BBC: Japan astronaut Satoshi Furukawa in ‘travel sick’ tweet

“Space motion sickness got me. Especially when I move my head suddenly, I really feel sick. My head feels heavy.”

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BBC: Unlocking the mysteries of anti-matter

That raises the prospect of explaining the difference between matter and anti-matter, and ultimately solving the question of why the universe around us appears to be made almost exclusively of matter.

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Huffington Post: Burger King Introduces Spam Burgers For The Women Of Japan