Archive for month: October, 2018

Much like my trip to Kiev-Pripyat-Chernobyl in 2016, I took a lot of pictures (Robyn took more and much better pictures), and I learned a lot which I now need to sort out in my head and do a whooooole lot of follow up. I think I may have just signed myself up for an autodidact’s master course in city planning & demographics to process what I saw and learned in four hours. After going to Ukraine, I needed about three months to find the story and the correct inspiration to tell the three essays worth of the tale in a stream of rage, so I put up some of the better pics right away. This might take a bit longer so I didn’t want to leave you hanging.

Too Long, Didn’t Wait Months for Phil to Get His Shit Together Version: Fukushima was not, and is not, Chernobyl. Don’t light your reactors on fire, folks!!! When this all began seven years ago, the thing I never stopped repeating to people is that the disaster that ended lives and turned the world upside down was the earthquake and tsunami; a nuclear accident is just the icing on a really shitty cake that makes it a disaster trifecta.

First off, let me introduce you to Shuzo Sakai, Karin Taira and their project, Real Fukushima. Unlike the various Chernobyl tours of varying quality done by various independent operators, this is a Fukushima Prefecture government project to show the work done for decontamination and rehabitation of the towns in the Fukushima Exclusion Zone. Karin is runs the prefecturally sponsored B&B in Odaka called Lantern House which I highly recommend if you have the time to stay overnight (sadly, I did not). Shuzo is a prefectural government official who grew up in a town that is now in the exclusion zone and he’s become head of the redevelopment agency. When you are the boss, you’re allowed to give yourself any extra tasks you want; the one he has chosen for his extracurricular activities is showing people the work done to rebuild and reoccupy. Only foreigners at the moment because, and I quote, “I feel foreigners have less radiophobia than the Japanese.” While I didn’t laugh out loud at this, I did tell him that if this was actually the case that my day job would be much easier. As a local boy done good, Shuzo’s desire is to see the people in the towns he’s always known and loved come home. He would also like people all over the world to see their hometowns in his. That you might remember to give your loved ones a call now and then, maybe go home and visit. They miss you, you know. 🙂

Shuzo is the person that wrote the procedures for entry into the Fukushima Exclusion Zone. Shuzo is the person who is ultimately responsible for the decon, demolition and reconstruction of all the towns in the Exclusion Zone. This is personal to him. So please know that it is with the greatest respect and amusement that I share this story from the end of our time together.

We stopped at an abandoned Family Mart in Okuma that was damaged in the quake. While Robyn got all excited with her camera and dodging large spiders, I noticed the gashapon machines in front of the store. I walked up to test the cranks on the machines after seven years of being exposed to the elements with no maintenance. The knob on the machines in the bottom rank didn’t so much as budge, but the ones on the top felt like they had some give. And so I dropped my 200¥ into the machine on the top left to get myself an Exclusion Zone gashapon.

Sure enough, it dispensed me this sweet Cool Guy Bean. I saw Shuzo bent over laughing, hands on knees, because in 7 years of wandering past this abandoned convenience store no one, NO ONE, had bothered to so much as touch these gashapon. He also realized that he probably had to track down who owned these and let them know they had money sitting in them still. It took a crazy health physicist from Berkeley to even notice that this was a thing he might need to do. While I apologize for making some work for Shuzo, I cannot deny that Mr. Cool Bean here is pretty boss.

There will be more Fukushima stories to come, but in the meantime let’s talk about Extra Life!

Several years ago, I participate in the Tested.com Oktobercast to help support the Extra Life campaign. Last year, My Lovely Assistant and I joined Test Subject Not A Whale Biologist and Test Subject The World to embark on 24 hours of our favorite game, Shadows of Brimstone. Well, we’ve decided to do it again this year as part of my birthday celebrations. I do believe we’ll be livecasting it again although we’ll be running a week late, November 10th, due to logistics concerns. If you’d like to donate for this endurance trial, you can do it on my page or you can do on our the team page for TEAM SENSIBLE SHOES. Last year, we managed to raise $590 of Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital. We’re already at $450 and would like to break that total for this year. So please, if you’ve come here considering a bottle of BBotE, go hit our Extra Life campaign first. If you still want ultracoffee, the Funranium Labs store will be there for you.

Thank you for your support, and here’s a picture of Test Subject Not A While Biologist and I at DiceFest 2017, the con run by the people who make Shadows of Brimstone.