What is the situation in Japan really like ?

[Saint in Paradise]

Japan radiation fears prompt firms to move employees.

 

 

Foreign firms are evacuating staff from Japan, after fears of radiation leaks at the Fukushima Daiichi plant escalated further.

 

German car maker BMW and car part maker Continental are among companies moving employees out of the country.

 

Others, including software group SAP, are moving staff to southern cities within Japan.

 

Workers have suspended operations at the nuclear plant after a rise in radiation levels.

 

Radiation levels in Tokyo were higher than normal, officials said, but not at levels dangerous to humans. Really then why move ?????

The expatriate staff of international banks, including Morgan Stanley, BNP Paribas and Standard Chartered, have reportedly left the capital city.

 

However, the Japan-based International Bankers Association said that none of its members had ordered its employees to evacuate, and some financial firms were continuing "business as usual".Although predominately staffed by Japanese employees, expatriates typically make up a large part of the management at the Tokyo offices of foreign financial firms.

 

Companies are moving to ensure the safety of their staff after an explosion and fire broke out at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, about 220km north of the capital.

 

SAP said it would evacuate offices in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. It said it had offered about 1,100 employees and their families transport and hotel rooms further south.

 

Private equity firm Blackstone is closing its office in Tokyo and relocating staff as well, according to the Bloomberg news agency.

 

A spokesperson for chipmaker Infineon said: "We've offered to move staff to the south but only a small amount have decided to go."Many airlines operating through Tokyo have been affected, with dozens of flights to Japan halted or rerouted.

 

Deutsche Lufthansa said it was diverting flights away from Tokyo to Osaka and Nagoya, while Air China cancelled flights to the Japanese capital from Beijing and Shanghai.

 

At Hong Kong's international airport, many passengers arriving from Tokyo said they were relieved to have left.

 

Cindy Khemalaap and her husband had been due to relocate to Hong Kong from Tokyo later this month, but decided to bring forward the move because of their fears about radiation and worsening food and fuel shortages.

...

[JackFrost]

A precaution I suspect.

[Red and White Army]

That article is several weeks old. There is no danger to anyone in Tokyo at all, and there never has been.

[Kingsland Codger]

I was in Tokyo for the first part of this month and returned yesterday.

 

Life carries on in Tokyo more or less as it always has done. There is a concerted drive to use less energy - on the Tokyo subway escalators going down have been mothballed and horizontal moving stairways are also out of commission. Lights are dimmed. However, the most obvious energy-saving policy would be to move to daylight saving time (in the summer it gets light at around 4.30am and dark at 7pm so there is ample scope to save huge amounts of electricity) but so far there has been no decision to do this.

 

There are also fairly frequent aftershocks, some of them relatively large. There was a 7.4 earthquake last week which rocked us around a bit but there was no damage.

 

There are signs in some shops saying you can only purchase two 3 litre bottles of water.

 

My son works for one of the international banks you mention and the foreign staff have NOT all left Tokyo.

 

However, I was in Tokyo during my stay - the condition of the homeless up in the Tohoku region where the tsunami hit remains desperate.

 

Without fail, the most frequent complaint was of the sensationalist reporting of the situation in Japan by the foreign press and there was a genuine deep sense of gratitude from those whom I met that I had turned up to visit and not cancelled my trip.

[Deppo]

S'funny. It's not like Saint in Paradise to post spurious tabloid knee-jerk nonsense.

[Saint in Paradise]

Read this article and still think it's a joke ? Pleased I don't live in the Northern Hemisphere.

This plutonium etc WILL reach you eventually and WILL cause future medical problems

and early death.

 

 

http://www.viewzone.com/nuclearplague.html

.

[Kingsland Codger]

Thank you, SiP for posting the above link. I do not know who the author, Gary Vey, is but I'm not sure that relying on someone who, in his own words, has only "read several books on physics, atomic energy and radiation" is necessarily a wholly reliable source. Similarly, I am sceptical when he writes "We need readers "clicks" on commercial ad banners to keep our web site viable."

 

He might be right, he might not. Either way, your thread posed a question and raised some initial points. Many of them are not correct.

 

I have already dismissed the statement about expatriates leaving certain named banks as inaccurate. I can do the same for your assertion that Lufthansa are "diverting flights away from Tokyo". I saw a Lufthansa plane on the runway at Narita. But you don't have to take my word for it.

 

All you have to do is go to the website for Narita airport and check for flights to/from Frankfurt and Munich. The link you require is

 

http://www.narita-airport.jp/en/flight/today.html

 

and can easily be found via the simplest of Google searches.

[dubai_phil]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/globalbusiness/8462094/Rebuilding-Japan-Self-restraint-threatens-recovery.html

 

A more accurate and interesting piece about the "jishuku" that is causing change in Japanese life

[Red and White Army]

Thank you, SiP for posting the above link. I do not know who the author, Gary Vey, is but I'm not sure that relying on someone who, in his own words, has only "read several books on physics, atomic energy and radiation" is necessarily a wholly reliable source. Similarly, I am sceptical when he writes "We need readers "clicks" on commercial ad banners to keep our web site viable."

 

He might be right, he might not. Either way, your thread posed a question and raised some initial points. Many of them are not correct.

 

I have already dismissed the statement about expatriates leaving certain named banks as inaccurate. I can do the same for your assertion that Lufthansa are "diverting flights away from Tokyo". I saw a Lufthansa plane on the runway at Narita. But you don't have to take my word for it.

 

All you have to do is go to the website for Narita airport and check for flights to/from Frankfurt and Munich. The link you require is

 

http://www.narita-airport.jp/en/flight/today.html

 

and can easily be found via the simplest of Google searches.

 

As I said, that article is several weeks old. Lufthansa did cancel flights, as did many airlines. They have since resumed.

 

Expats have left a lot of banks - I personally know over two dozen people (all working for banks) who left Japan temporarily in the crisis. One family came and stayed with me for two weeks.

 

The majority have returned, but not all. Some of those who have returned are looking to move permanently to Hong Kong or Singapore.