Sunday, August 28, 2011

Fukushima Peaches to Be Pushed by Fukushima City Junior High School Students



They are radioactive, actually, and that's according to Fukushima Prefecture's measurement. But since the level (64 becquerels/kg) is far less than the national provisional safety limit (500 becquerels/kg), the students, along with their parents and teachers no doubt, consider it as "baseless rumor", that the fickle, unreasonable consumers in big cities are causing the suffering.

From Kanagawa Shinbun (8/28/2011):


The seniors at Hirano Junior High School (Hirano District, Iizaka-machi in Fukushima City) will conduct a PR campaign in Yamashita Park in Yokohama City on August 30 to promote peaches grown in their town. Fukushima is well-known for peaches, but the sales has plummeted because of the "baseless rumor" after the nuclear power plant accident. The students are visiting Yokohama on their school trip. Using handmade banners and pamphlets, they will appeal safety, and distribute freshly picked peaches for free.


Their school is located in Hirano District [in Iizaka-machi in Fukushima City], a well-known fruit-growing region with many orchards for tourists. In normal years many visitors go there from the Tokyo metropolitan area to pick peaches. This year, however, because of the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident, the number of tourists has dropped by 90% and the orders for peaches have dropped by 70%.


According to the survey by the Fukushima prefectural government, the maximum amount of radioactive cesium detected from peaches grown in Hirano District is 64 becquerels/kg, far below the national provisional limit of 500 becquerels/kg. The seniors at Hirano Junior High felt it [that tourist stop visiting and people not buying the peaches in Hirano] was "baseless rumor" causing the suffering of the people in the area where they grew up. So, they planned a PR campaign to promote the town's peaches in Yokohama where they were going to visit on their 3 days 2 nights school trip. The campaign is dubbed "福島は負けない～食べてくなんしょ福島の桃 Fukushima will never be defeated - please eat Fukushima's peaches [said in Fukushima dialect]".


On August 26 at school, they made pamphlets and cards that they will distribute in Yokohama. The 14-year-old chairperson for the school trip organizing committee said, "Fukushima's peaches are safe, and we want to convey that message with our own words".


70 seniors from the school will launch their PR campaign from 5:30PM on August 30 in Yamashita Park (Yamashita-cho, Naka-ku in Yokohama City) with handmade banners to promote local produce [peaches]. They will distribute 150 bags (each bag will contain 2 peaches) of "Kawanakajima Hakuto [white peach]" peaches, freshly picked that morning [and rushed to the park] along with the "safety declaration" by the Fukushima governor and the mayor of Fukushima City.

It sort of makes you lose hope in the next generation.

300 peaches, each weighing, probably 200 grams, so it's 60 kilograms total. 64 becquerels/kg times 60 kilograms - 3,840 becquerels of radioactive cesium right there.

Yokohama City, which already made kindergarteners and school children eat radioactive beef, should have no reason to question the campaign.

The Fukushima governor's safety declaration looks like this:

All it says is the produce has tested below the provisional safety limit. His smiling face is supposed to assure consumers.


Anonymous said...

It sort of makes you lose hope in the next generation. -quoted

Just as the smartest ones of the next generation, and rightly so, have no hope in ours.

Anonymous said...

Hmm,the use of the human intestines as a means of dilution and dispersal.

Some remains in the body and some disintegrates on it's way through,some emerges at the other end to be flushed into the sewage farm before returning to the consumer at the tap.

Don't sweat it,the rain and groundwater are polluted too.

Really i would be looking at accepting the generous Russian offer of mass migration,maybe even to Mongolia.

Anonymous said...

'next generation'? There won't be one.

You're talking about dead kids spruking.

Sebaschan said...

its just unbelievable how a country can still use propaganda, mass media blackouts and brainwashing even though the whole world is watching. Money rules the world... so who cares about 120 million Japanese...
Sick sad world

Anonymous said...

It fulfils several criteria for an industry that isn't really capable of being not only a crime against humanity but all life on earth,then,now and into the future.

Of couse one of the reasons for the shit eating grin in the radiation is good for you advert above is that international usurer-terrorists would still quite like to bomb the Bushr reactor in Iran.

Though they will settle for sabotage and have their shills blame whichever straw-man they choose to write into their narrative.

The awful truth is they as an industry will get away with contaminating and even irradiating more people in the future and they will wave their successful PR campaign in Japan at their own straw-man detractors.

This is because the Japanese government are incapable of doing the right thing for Japan let alone anyone else.

The terrible burden of responsibility sits lightly on peach guy doesnt it.

It's because he only has twenty years tops, wants the money and to hell with everyone else.

There is no law to protet humanity from banality,there should be.

Anonymous said...

From article in Japan Times:


Reminds me of an anonymous quote:

"Enjoy life. Think of all the women who passed up dessert on the Titanic".

FigNewton said...

Have been witnessing this nonsense on tv for a few weeks now. The more they push, the less I trust.

BTW, you're missing an 'h' in a couple peaches in your post. But Fukushima is falling to 'peaces'. :)

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

thank you for the missing "h"s... corrected.

Anonymous said...

"His smiling face .." assures me that the Ass does smile.

cuz that's what that is


Anonymous said...

Hello, Philippe here,
I was in japan in July, and I spotted two kind of behaviours.
One was the kind of "great, beef is cheap now!" - from rather old people, most but not all were poor.
Second like "it's a shame they still sell Fukushima vegetables in here !" Spoken loud in the shop, and for Japan it is very strong talking.
So the people don't buy this kind of tricky communication that easily.
And we were VERY cautious about food there, although it comes at some cost, and some frustration.

I would want to report a wonderfull memory, since here we are all sharing anxiety, and may-be a kind of intoxication with fear and desaster - I am not trolling, don't worry.
And I suggest you don't eat Fukushima peaches, nor those sold on the street as "Yamanashi peaches", that come from you don't know where.
I had a trip by bus Tokyo (Shinjuku) to Sendai, some twelve years ago, and we stopped at stations along the highway. I went off the bus at Fukushima, giving way to a bunch of scool girls in very short skirts, so as to show their thighs that were so plenty of life and calling for pleasure, and as they saw a stand of a local selling peaches they screamed "momo yasui" (the peaches are so cheap). I bought a whole box of peaches for the people I would meet in Sendai.
I should have bought three boxes. Yes the "momo" were so desirable, and so good.

jmdesp said...

Will make sure to eat some in my trip in Japan in a few days. It's just the same "radioactivity" level as the bananas I enjoyed buying and eating a few days ago at my local supermarket.

Anonymous said...

"But, the Banana Equivalent Dose probably isn't the best way to do that.

The problem is that this system implies that all radioisotopes are created equal—That there's no difference between 520 picocuries of Potassium-40 and a similar intake of, say, radioactive iodine. And that simply isn't true. I contacted Geoff Meggitt—a retired health physicist, and former editor of the Journal of Radiological Protection—to find out more.

Meggitt worked for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and its later commercial offshoots for 25 years. He says there's an enormous variation in the risks associated with swallowing the same amount of different radioactive materials—and even some difference between the same dose, of the same material, but in different chemical forms.

It all depends on two factors:
1)The physical characteristics of the radioactivity—i.e, What's its half-life? Is the radiation emitted alpha, beta or gamma?


And that's the difference between a useful educational tool and propaganda. (And I say this as somebody who is emphatically not against nuclear energy.) Bananas aren't really going to give anyone "a more realistic assessment of actual risk", they're just going to further distort the picture."

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Big J, be sure to gobble up some for all of us, k ?


Kyotoresident said...

I saw Fukushima peaches on sale @ a supermarket in Osaka today. I was surprised to see them selling so well. Needless to say I didnt buy any.

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