“Eiraku is the last surviving sushi bar in this cluttered neighborhood of steep cobblestoned hills and cherry trees unseen on most tourist maps of Tokyo. Caught between the rarified world of $300 omakase dinners and the brutal efficiency of chain-restaurant fish, mom-and-pop shops like it are fast disappearing.
Chef Masatoshi Fukutsuna and his wife, Mitsue, smile without a word. In the 35 years since they opened up shop, the couple has seen many of their friends move away for a job or family, only to return decades later, often without the job or the family, their absence unspoken. Continue reading →
The plane to Lisbon, you would like to be on it. Why, what’s in Lisbon? To get back to America. I’ve often speculated why you don’t return to America. Did you abscond with the church funds? Did you run off with the Senator’s wife? I like to think that you killed a man, it’s the romantic in me. It’s a combination of all three. And what in Heaven’s name brought you to Casablanca? My health, I came to Casablanca for the waters. The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert. I was misinformed. – Reins & Bogart, Casablanca (1942)
I stand to be corrected but what I recently witnessed first hand and face to face in the city of Nihonmatsu can be interpreted as nothing other than scientific fraud and blatant misrepresentation of the facts on the part of the Japanese government regarding gamma radiation levels, leading to the early deaths of tens of thousands of residents (1). I visited a large nuclear refugee camp in a beautiful location near Nihonmatsu, a modest sized city just outside the evacuation zone of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant No. 1 (FNPP#1) disaster site (2).
Mild mannered, kind and brave Mr. Honda: “People are angry because the government has lied to them and is not resolving the situation in an honest and forthright manner.”
Nihonmatsu is a typical mid-sized city in the near region of the FNPP#1 that was heavily doused with radiation from the triple meltdowns that occurred in March of 2011. Due to wind direction, the southern side of the plant did not receive nearly as much as in the northwest (3). Last summer I traveled within just a few kilometers of the FNPP#1 from the south, but readings never exceeded 0.5 microsieverts per hour (mcr sv pr hr). (Consider that 0.1 mcr sv pr hr is roughly an average dose received by a person in a normal environment).
Charles Hugh Smith – There is much more to this article than first meets the eye: In a Tokyo neighborhood’s last sushi restaurant, a sense of loss