Wednesday, July 13, 2011

#Radiation in Japan: Fukushima Prefecture Stops Subsidizing Residents for Taking Summer Vacations Outside Fukushima

From a blog by a father in Fukushima who wanted to send his children and his wife for the summer to Shizuoka Prefecture:

Apparently Fukushima had a program that helped the Fukushima residents to escape Fukushima during the school summer vacation (July, August) by subsidizing the cost of the hotels and bed and breakfast places (called "pension" in Japan, just like in continental Europe) in participating prefectures.

This father had booked a pension in Shizuoka Prefecture, and was looking forward to sending his kids to a lower radiation location (well, relatively speaking, at this point). Then, he suddenly got a call from the pension, on July 12, and was told they had to cancel his reservation because they received a notice from Fukushima Prefecture not to accept temporary summer evacuees from Fukushima.

WTF? (He said in a more polite Japanese, but that's the idea.)

Why on earth Fukushima would want to do this? To irradiate children more? he wonders, and remembers Dr. Shunichi Yamashita, who was on the radio all the time in Fukushima preaching safety ever since the nuke accident started on March 11 which totally brainwashed the residents in Fukushima.

So he tried a hotel in another part of Shizuoka to see if he could make a reservation. The answer was no. But he found out from the hotel people that the pension that had canceled his reservation and others like that in that particular city had been booking the temporary evacuees from Fukushima without approval from the local government.

[WTF? Why do these private businesses need the government approval to receive customers?]

So he decided to find out what was going on. And he's found out:

The temporary summer evacuation will have to be approved, from now on, by both Fukushima Prefecture and Shizuoka Prefecture, and it will be approved only for people who are considering permanent evacuation due to high radiation levels.

Fukushima Prefecture is not banning the evacuation that the residents do on their own (i.e. without any government subsidy), but it wouldn't recommend such a move.

Fukushima Prefecture has stopped the subsidy program for the temporary summer evacuation. The hotels and pensions that had been accepting the temporary summer evacuees from Fukushima will not receive subsidy any more that allowed for a lower room rate for the Fukushima evacuees, therefore they are canceling the reservations made under the program.

In addition, Fukushima Prefecture has asked other prefectures to shut down the evacuation shelters for Fukushima residents by the end of this month, citing the reason as "temporary housing within Fukushima Prefecture available".

He's still looking for a place to send his kids and his wife for the lower-radiation summer somewhere. But since the subsidy has been cut off, not many places are willing to take reservations.

Is there anyone in Japan, or anywhere in the world for that matter, willing to take his family for the summer? And many others like them?

7 comments:

John said...

I can empathize with this father's plight. My family lived in Ojima, Koto-ku, less than ten kilometers downwind of the waste incinerator plant. I evacuated my wife and child to Fukuoka on March 17, and when I read about the water incinerator being a secondary source of radioactive pollution, I evacuated, too. Many of our neighbors ridiculed us for running from an imaginary danger. My employer showed no sympathy stating that Fukushima has no effect on business in Tokyo. So now I am living in Fukuoka without employment, but I am still worried because it is not easy to buy properly labelled food or to know where it originally comes from because businesses are not honestly disclosing full information.

I want to help this father, but I have no money. I do have a spare bedroom in my Fukuoka apartment if his wife and children do not mind sharing one room of an apartment. I cannot speak Japanese but my wife can. He can contact me via my website if he likes.

International visa requirements make it difficult for my entire family to leave Japan as do financial reasons. But I wish we could leave.

Anonymous said...

I suppose this is a good reason for all of us to learn to have Visa's in case of a national emergency... We should all pray for this family, and this Dad whose heart is in the right place, that doors open for him and his family. Perhaps there is a philanthropist who would finance his journey to USA? But then, is that too a risk with all the disasters that have happened this summer? So far, it's a bit better than Japan. Pray. It works.

japanimal said...

Dear Ex-SKF,

this time Fukushima officially incompetent officials are pushing too much!!
If you happen to know this man s mail address or twitter account I certainly would like to send money to help. I am curently helping people who go get the dogs and cats abandonned by the government in the 20 no-go area, and will post info on my FB wall so that this man gets attention and hopefully funds to get his family out of there. Thank you for the wonderful work! I also do translations from japanese to french, so that French know about how the japanese government is being insensitive to the crying out of the evacuees who were forced to leave their pets behind.
Helios from Bistro bar blog is also doing a wonderful job by translating most of your articles!

http://japanimal.canalblog.com/

Apolline said...

Hello,
Nice to meet Japanimal on your blog, yes I put on my blog some articles from this interesting blog too.
And every day, I translate your articles in french on "bistrobarblog", I did'nt find some others sites or blog like yours.
About the article above, someone on comment on my blog propose to let come some japanese people in France for summer. Difficult to make a link between you and japanese people...But very kind proposition !

Anonymous said...

Sorry to say that Japan has becomed a Black Hole.
Nothing is coming out of Japan considering the Fukoshima fallout, nothing.
I have tryed to link in coments but are completly ignored, by everybody, you dont exist anymore.

The only way of getting goverments to react is mass movments. You better start to scale up your reactions and demands to your gov. and TEPCO.
Even as we speak, we dont get any info from Fukoshima, other that the usual dribbel.
Is quiet, and that worries me.

You have to start the fight, and as time goes by, the damage mounts, and it is getting wurs. We all know it by now, when the nubers are tikking in.

Wake up, before its to late.

"Whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent"
— Martin Luther King Jr.

Anonymous said...

tepco,, japanese officials ,, get in the reactor, have a nice bath with super hot spring, amazing spa,,, and DIE! japanese officials lost the integrity of this country.. tepco ruin japan... murderer!!! a year, two or three,, maybe five more then see what will happen ... unexplainable disease, hospitals will loaded, doctors will b thousands times busy and what about the funerals???????? aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh i hate CANCERS... ok... meltdown,,, peeing on the oceans n groundwater,, keep on farting on the air...

Anonymous said...

what is going on with the japanese people... just sit down there and wait for d soushiki ... please ... get up, life should not be wasted... what about the future????

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