{"id":677,"date":"2016-01-27T05:20:28","date_gmt":"2016-01-27T11:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/esj-2016\/?p=677"},"modified":"2016-01-27T05:20:28","modified_gmt":"2016-01-27T11:20:28","slug":"fukushima-hope-and-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/esj-2016\/2016\/01\/27\/fukushima-hope-and-loss\/","title":{"rendered":"Fukushima: Hope and Loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we are nearing the end of out month-long excursion in Japan, everything’s getting busier. People are writing papers and finishing up their research, but we still have time for one more trip off ARI. Tomorrow, we are heading for a place that almost everyone will recognize\u2014Fukushima.
\nFukushima is, of course, the site of the nuclear accident on March 11th, 2011, which was destroyed by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and following tsunami that hit just off the coast of Japan. This story was all over the news in America when it happened, as it was one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded, and killed thousands of people.
\nI\u2019m writing this blog post over two days to put my thoughts into place a little bit. I want to explain how I\u2019m feeling now, before I go, and then the actual results when we leave tomorrow. While I can\u2019t say I\u2019m entirely sure what to expect, I\u2019m sure it will be a pretty heavy day. While all of our field trips have been extremely educational and eye-opening, I can’t say that they\u2019ve all been lighthearted. As we are studying environmental issues in Japan, Fukushima is bound to be something that people were thinking about. Even here at ARI it affects up\u2014we were told to be careful around the mushrooms, because a lot of them absorbed a lot of radiation. Coming off of our free days (which I spent at Tokyo Disneyland), this will certainly be a large shift in tone.
\nWe\u2019ve read a lot about Fukushima in our textbooks and heard a lot about it even in America. We\u2019ve talked a lot about Japan\u2019s energy future. It\u2019s a little strange that we\u2019re actually going to be going there.
\nThese are some of my thoughts about tomorrow. I\u2019m not entirely sure what to expect, but I\u2019ll report tomorrow evening. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ll being this part of the blog with a brief apology for the quality of my pictures; they were all taken on my cell phone and quite a few were take from inside the moving bus.
\nWe ended our Foodlife work early to get to Fukushima. We picked up a professor from a local university to tell us about the 2011 incident and what\u2019s happening now. It\u2019s quite a long drive up there. Here\u2019s a picture of what we saw scattered all the way there.
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\nIt\u2019s a little hard to tell here, but what they are are bags filled with contaminated soil\u2014and let me tell you, they are everywhere. They cover them with tarps to keep the radiation from leaking out, but otherwise, there are just these bags filled with radioactive material, wherever you look. The picture can\u2019t really do it justice.
\nSome may be wondering why they\u2019re still there. Some people have suggested moving the bags to permanent, more solid homes, however a lot of people are against that, as building those buildings would basically be admitting that all that radioactive waste will never leave this area. While there have been talks about what to do with it, unsurprisingly, no one wants it in their town. It\u2019s mostly topsoil and the top layer off of the roads.
\nThe next thing we saw was equally grim\u2014a once-residential area that was completely demolished by the tsunami. The tsunami caused considerably more damage than the earthquake itself. It\u2019s hard to believe what was once here in this open field.
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\nEven now, five years later, there is nothing there. A little later on, we went to another part of town that was washed away by the tsunami. Here are two pictures that show some remains\u2014one the foundations of a house and one a mostly ruined house.
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\nThis sign on the ground reads (to the best of my knowledge) \u201cdo not proceed\u201d.
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\nHowever, the professor was talking about how the people from this area get sad when others use the term \u201cghost town\u201d. At first, I had to admit I wondered why, as it actually seemed to be one. One of the spookier things were the abandoned houses that always had the radio on, even after five years of no one living there, to scare off animals (especially, apparently, monkeys). However, I took this picture from only a slightly different angle. In fact, you can still see the sign on the ground.
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\nThat\u2019s someone rebuilding a house. It\u2019s a little off in the distance, but another house is going up. I couldn\u2019t say I say a lot of that in our time around Fukushima, but if anything gave me hope, it was this. People were trying to rebuild. Perhaps it was taking longer than they thought, but things were going up again. <\/p>\n

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\nThat was another thing I was surprised to see around Fukushima\u2014(inexplicably sideways) solar panels. At first I thought they must have been something to measure radiation, but they actually were solar panels. I suppose I sort of assumed that everything in Fukushima was nuclear, which is a pretty bad assumption in retrospect. There was a lot more there, even energy-wise, than just the nuclear plant. We talked a lot in class about Japan\u2019s energy future. As a country with little to no coal, natural gas, or oil, nuclear seemed to be a good option, as it was more reliable than wind or solar (which depend on weather). But is a country with 10% of the world\u2019s earthquakes plus tsunami potential really a good match for nuclear? It also seems a lot of Japan\u2019s public was against nuclear for a long time\u2014understandable, considering the events in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One of our texts, an essay by Daniel P Aldric, described Japan as having a \u201cnuclear allergy\u201d (Japan at Nature\u2019s Edge, Postcrisis Japanese Nuclear Policy).
\nHowever, life is going on. A little while off in the town of Minami Soma, we went to eat and do a little shopping. Here are the fresh flowers in their window.
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\nThere we also visited their nuclear measurement center. They took measurement of air to test for radiation. They have performed tens of thousands of tests while the government, they said, performed only eight, a slightly scary thought. Here are some of their maps (showing where radiation is most high over several years in Minami Soma and another close city) and some of their measuring machines.
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\nYou might notice that last picture includes a Russian nesting doll. This place had strong ties to environmentalists who studied Chernobyl. In fact, they gave them a lot of the equipment.
\nWe ended our day at Fukushima University\u2019s FURE, which is FUkushima FUture Center for REgional REvitalization, where we had dinner and another talk with the professor. Most of us were rather overwhelmed to say the least. Obviously, there is no easy answer to any of the questions about what to do.
\nAs we came back to ARI for the night, I thought a lot about what this trip meant. It was certainly one of the most impactful things I\u2019ve done in my life. Very few people have been to Fukushima who weren’t living or working there after the accident occurred. However, perhaps it is true that that worst times bring out our best. Working with the FURE professor and seeing the efforts to do something, I left feeling a little hopeful. While I can\u2019t speak for everyone on the trip, I think we really did see some amazing things mixed in with some frightening ones. It was certainly unlike anything I have ever experienced.
\nEven as I write this, I feel motivated to do something. I\u2019m not an environmental studies major (in fact, this is the first ES class I\u2019ve taken), but there were things here that will stick with me long after I\u2019m home from Japan.
\nIt was a long day, packed with events, tiring for everyone involved, physically and emotionally. But to end it on a light note and finish the description of the entire day, this is what happened when we returned. As I got off the bus, I went by to say good night to my two little friends.
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\nActually, it appears it was just one little friend (who may have just been a little confused I came to take pictures of her at 9:00 pm!). One-eyed Meme was off somewhere, obviously less tired than the rest of us!
\nHowever Foodlife starts early tomorrow for all of us (except the cats), so I had to be off to bed. We really are getting down to the last few days now, which is hard to believe. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we are nearing the end of out month-long excursion in Japan, everything’s getting busier. People are writing papers and finishing up their research, but we still have time for one more trip off ARI. Tomorrow, we are heading for a place that almost everyone will recognize\u2014Fukushima. Fukushima is, of course, the site of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1668,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/esj-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/esj-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/esj-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/esj-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/esj-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/esj-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":682,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/esj-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions\/682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/esj-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/esj-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/esj-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}