Heroes of Japan's nuclear disaster all but forgotten
Koichi Nakagawa sometimes wonders if he should have bailed out on his friends and other employees at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant a lot earlier.
Maybe he should have left the day he worked to restore electricity to the plant wearing his regular work clothes while others wore hazmat suits. Or the day he watched as a pink mushroom cloud formed over the plant after Reactor Unit 3 blew up.
Or maybe he should have driven away on March 11, 2011, when he felt the earth move at 2:46 p.m. Hard pavement started undulating like waves on water, windows shattered, and a female employee was frantically shouting on the public-address system: "Please evacuate! Please evacuate!" Soon hundreds of workers rushed toward the headquarters where Nakagawa was standing petrified.
(thedailybeast.com, Mar 05)
17 May
To be filed under "Who can you trust nowadays?" Shukan Jitsuwa (May 24) reports on the bust of an organization offering consulting services regarding organized crime. For its November 3 issue, the weekly tabloid profiled the Osaka-based Nationwide Organized Crime Relationship Certification Association, which performed background checks on firms or entities to expose any possible ties to crime syndicates. It seems, however, that the association was up to a fair bit of criminal activity itself. (Tokyo Reporter)
17 May
The U.S. Federal District Court in Riverside, California, has sentenced a Japanese man to 17 years in prison and lifetime supervised release for conspiracy to advertise child pornography on the Internet, the Justice Department said Tuesday. (Japan Times)
17 May
The Emperor and Empress departed for an official visit to Britain on Wednesday morning to attend events celebrating the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's accession to the throne. (Yomiuri)
17 May
Like many Japanese women, Koyuki Higashi adores Tokyo Disneyland. So it was only natural that she would want to hold her wedding there, as many other couples have done. (Reuters)
16 May
A three-year-old boy fell to his death from the balcony of his 11th-floor apartment in Adachi Ward on Tuesday after his parents left him home alone. (Japan Today)