I do this with regrets but due to a libelous statement made in one of the comments to this blog, I will now have to moderate comments.
A guide to Japan’s general election
8 hours ago
Marginalia on Japanese politics and society
At current very low interest rates - 10-year government bonds yield a paltry 1.0 percent - Japan has ample room for maneuver. Take that rate to 2.0 percent and Japan's annual interest bill doubles.Call that bold; call it counterintuitive. Call it 1+1=2.
The 2007 U.S. Maritime Strategy calls on the U.S. sea services—the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard—to stage "credible combat power" in the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean for the foreseeable future, remaining the dominant maritime force in East, Southeast, and South Asia. Yet some 40 percent of the navy remains in the Atlantic, where it risks becoming a wasting asset. It’s high time to reallocate forces in to support the Maritime Strategy, and to back up President Barack Obama’s pledge to keep the U.S. military number one in this critical region. China’s People’s Liberation Army would be the yardstick for a new "one-power standard." Once concentrated in the Pacific—arrayed not only along the West Coast, Hawaii, and Guam but at forward bases in Japan and, preferably, in central positions like Australia—preponderant U.S. forces would dissuade China from mischief-making, much as Theodore Roosevelt’s "Great White Fleet" did vis-à-vis Imperial Japan a century ago.Oh yes, great. We all remember how well that policy of prevention of "mischief-making" on the part of the Japanese Imperial Navy turned out in the end, do we not?
Kashiwa stops operation of incinerator again as radioactive ash fills up storageFunny, this reduction in volume thing, which worked so well at solving the nation's landfill limitation problem (and heats so many municipal swimming pools) seems to create, post-3/11, a staggering radioactive waste problem.
Mainichi Online
KASHIWA, Chiba -- The municipal government here suspended the operation of one of its main incinerators again on Jan. 5 as a storage facility at the waste disposal factory was filled up with incinerated ash contaminated with radioactive substances emitted from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant.
The operation of the city's Nambu (south) Clean Center had previously been suspended for about two months from last September. It is not clear when the city can resume operation of the incinerator this time because it has not been able to secure new space to store incinerated radioactive ash.
According to the Kashiwa Municipal Government, the Nambu Clean Center is storing about 200 metric tons (about 1,049 waste drums) of incinerated ash whose radiation levels are higher than the national limit of 8,000 becquerels per kilogram for landfill. The storage space there is now filled with drums, and there is also about 30 tons of incinerated ash left in the incinerator. (Link)
Saitama Pref. to take tsunami countermeasuresOK, so Saitama Prefecture has no coastline, is 20 kilometers upriver from Tokyo Bay and 100 kilometers from the open ocean.
The Yomiuri Shimbun
The Saitama prefectural government has begun work to include tsunami countermeasures in its regional disaster management plan, it has been learned.
This will be the first attempt by an inland prefecture to prepare for tsunami damage in its disaster preparations.
It is part of a review on possible damage after experts examining the impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake said a future tsunami could hit Tokyo Bay and travel up the Arakawa river that runs from Tokyo through Saitama Prefecture. (Link)