Video footage showing Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s response to the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant calamity shows the utility was reluctant to use seawater to cool the melting core of one of its reactors because the salt would ruin it.
Partial footage from teleconferences between its head office and the plant showed that the head office said injecting seawater was "wasteful" because it would corrode the inside of the reactor.
The remark was made March 13 to Masao Yoshida, who was in charge of the plant when it was crippled by monster tsunami from the Great East Japan Earthquake two days before. Struggling with a blackout and dwindling supplies of fresh water, Yoshida was preparing to use seawater as an emergency measure to cool reactor 2 in a failed effort to prevent a meltdown.
A 24-year-old woman was in a serious condition Friday after being stabbed by a man whom she reported to police for stalking her in Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture. (Japan Today )
China's television regulator has ordered a crackdown on dramas about the country's battles with Japan during and before World War Two and demanded they be more serious, state media said on Friday, following viewer complaints about ludicrous storylines. (Reuters )
Police said Friday they have found four dead bodies in an apartment in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, in what is believed to have been a family murder-suicide. (Japan Today )
Shukan Post (May 24) conveys the difficulties experienced by other parts of the adult-entertainment biz in servicing customers from the communist nation.
A deri heru (“delivery health”) call-girl tells the tabloid that she is often requested to arrive at major hotels in the Shinjuku and Ikebukuro entertainment areas of Tokyo by Chinese visitors. (Tokyo Reporter)
Six sailors were found dead after a fire on a foreign freighter docked at a port in Hokkaido, northern Japan.
The sailors are presumed to be Russians. (NHK )
Police on Friday said that a real estate company employee was stabbed by an unknown assailant in the lobby of an office building near JR Akihabara station. The man is currently in a serious condition in hospital. (Japan Today )