What are the Japanese people's moods about the radiation?

[eguru]

Are they cautious that some radiation is leaking somewhere (I haven't been watching news recently so I don't know whether it's still leaking or not).
Are they careful with what they eat and where they travel? Has there been reduce of fish from the Pacific Ocean in the market. Has there been any alarming health reports? What will happen now to those affected areas? Will someone be able to live there and farm the land in near future? Can this situation have any advantages? (weird, I know, but can it?)

[Erik Van Thienen]

See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_re..._accidents

[Rotbuche]

Last week there was a demonstration in Tokyo against nuclear power plants, and many people passed by the main building of TEPCO. I heard this piece of news here (Austria, Europe) in the radio. I think this was the first demo against nuclear power plants in the history of Japan.

The "advantage" of the accident in Japan seems to be that the governments in Europe have changed their attitudes, and the peoples' opinion changed. There was on vote on nuclear power plants in Italy this week. Berlusconi, the prime minister, supported atomic power, but the people voted against it.

[Michiyo]

Hi, I am Japanese living in Europe.

As far as I know (from the internet, twitter or FB), there seem to be two kinds of people; people who care very much about radiation and avoid eating suspicious vegetables or have their kids wear masks (not to inhale the airborne radioactive particles), or even consider escaping Tokyo to somewhere west; and people who do not care much about radiation and try to live the same life as before-3.11.

Actually, no one knows what is safe and what is risky, because it's not the same situation as Chernobyl; it's totally a new situation we face. To make matters worse, the present government has no ability to control the situation. They tried to hide the information, and even orders every school and kindergarten not to measure the radiation levels on their own...it's stupid. We are not in the Soviet Union or North Korea.

About 88000 people who lived in the affected area (30km radius from Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant) evacuated and cannot return to their houses. They are allowed to go back to their houses only once to take the important things such as seals and photo albums, but at present only 10% of them could do so.

According to the documentary program on NHK, the farmers in the affected area had to abandon the farmland because of radiation. They can, if the contaminated surface soil will be removed, but who can afford it?

Fortunately there is no report of health damage among people near the plant. There is a strange rumor that connects running nose, sore throat, fatigue or diarrhea to radiation, but it's silly. Scientists says that no acute radiation damage occurs at this low level. Many singers or performers visit the affected areas to cheer up the people. I am going back to Tokyo in July on vacation.

As Rotbuche says, the good thing is the trend toward non-nuclear society. The demonstrations on June 11 Rotbuche referred to were the first time we Japanese said no to nuclear power. These simultaneously occurring demonstrations were the first time in the history. But isn't it strange? Most of the Japanese media ignored it and didn't report a bit of it! This may be because the mass media is long supported by the electric companies money, or may be because the mass media do not want to admit the power of small media such as twitter or FB that collected so many Japanese people to the demonstration.

Anyway, thank you very much for considering the Japanese situation. After 3 months from 3.11 there may be less news in English. But I think the situation should still be closely watched. It may have been a wrong decision to have nuclear power plants in the country with so many earthquakes.