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ESCaPe FRoM ToKYo
Quote of the Week: "It is possible the reactor containment has been breached." Japanese Atomic Regulatory Official
Todays's Weather
Meanwhile, little mention has been made of the fact that on top of everything else, this is the peak of the traditional Japanese cherry blossom season. Tokyo would normally be a tourist mecca and party town this time of the year. Throngs of happy Japanese and tourists would be feasting under the cherry blossoms all over town. Sadly, this will not be the case in 2011...
The sweet Spring of night...
Of cherry blossom viewing
Has Ended
(Basho)
Just because you look and behave calm and collected, doesn't mean your are not seething with anger inside. The people of Tokyo are not stupid. They understand what is happening and why much better than we do.
This is something Buffoon and the Wall Street talking heads, who are so concerned with protecting their market wealth, are not factoring in. The time to pay the piper will come and Japan's national appetite for unbridled economic exploitation is a fatal assumption going forward. It will take years to sort this out.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported that a condo in New York's Plaza Hotel went for $45 million to a Russian composer (yes musical composer). Which can only mean we are now at Threat Level 6
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They rode on and on.
Wading rivers abune the knee.
They saw neither sun nor moon.
But they heard the roaring of sea.
a thousand suns rise
bleed out on the horizon
till the sea's black blood
+3
great haikus
<a href="http://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/prodinfo.asp?number=G17365">Geiger-Mueller tube...</a>
<a href="http://www.goldmine-elec.com/pdf/G17365.pdf">Home made gamma ray counter....</a>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZvfr3HsSto&feature=related">Naughty neutrons surge.....</a>
Sub-Continental
Fracture Non-Consequential
Tec-tonic Eight-Ball
I always admire your work, but not so much this time when my aging parents in Tokyo scramble to have clean water and all they can get is two bottles.
I hope you create something that ridicules the government officials and TEPCO management who basically caused the nuclear disaster all by themselves, instead of people trying to survive.
You misread me. I'm not ridiculing them. I'm ridiculing the people who think that people should not be or are not alarmed. Particularly people who have gotten alarmed in the past. It so happens I was in Japan during the toilet paper scare.
I am also suggesting that it is disingenuous to say everyone should remain absolutely calm when all the foreigners have been told they ought to leave, hence Escape From Tokyo. How does that make everyone feel? It reminds me of missing the last helicopter out of Saigon. I don't care how reserved the Japanese are (and I am half), human nature is human nature.
If I were in Tokyo, I would be hunting for water and other supplies and planning my back stop. I know from other personal experiences how people behave in the middle of a potentially lethal crisis. What else are you supposed to do when you know you are not getting the full dope on what's going on, irrespective of why.
This is a blog with more than its share of survivalist types who know what preparation means.
William Banzai inspires
Zero Hedgers write haiku
Truth preserved in verse
life has some beautiful meaning, coming from within you, banzai. i am so glad i am a part of this.
Here is a Haiku about a true incident I read about years ago, but have never been able to find reference to on the Internet. It is about the Japanese goverment or company's answer to people's fears about some nuclear waste containers.
Uneasy winds blow
Now a painted Happy Face
A Play of Mirrors
Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter
I fear you are going to be writing these kinds of haikus for some time to come based on what I am reading today...
floodgates open wide
poetry within pours out
danger! words flying!
Your fear is warranted, but you asked for it!
I quote WB7 "Keep this up! More Haikus everyone, please..."
Prepare to be poetry bombed. ;->
I wish I could find that book. It must be in storage. It was about Japanese versus American business practices. The incident was that there were some shipping containers that were were supposedly leaking radioactivity, and the Japanese people were concerned that like Godzilla or Mothra was going to get created, along with three eyed people. Sooo, the Japanese answer was to paint Happy Faces on the containers, and everybody was satisfied.
There was also a concept of Real Reality versus Perceived Reality, and the Japanese had two words, that I can just not remember for the life of me. Tatanabe??? or something like that, and some other word.
OH, I just have to finish my spring cleaning and get all my books out of storage. Plus, I think my copy of Venus in Furs is in the storeroom, and I was going to write a satire about Bernanke. First though, is getting over my hangover. Don't ever let those cute little umbrellas in drinks fool you!!!
Squeeky Fromm. Girl Reporter
Obama's mass media were cheering last week when power was restored and babbling about how this was the beginning of the end of the crisis. Meanwhile on ZH, they had reports from NKH saying that the cooling pumps had been destroyed. Which sure enough, they had been. Not hearing too much from the cheerleaders about power being restored now! Pendejos! Chupa mi verga, Bernanke!
Cautiously optimistic is babble, just like "green shoots."
my dog licks my face
his fur shags my tile floor
sweeping imminent
i luv this thread
that weaves it's way
to hell and back
not back today.
a blinding light over Fuji san
long ago it fell
now it's son is darkness
wb,
"fear" from last post, beautiful
Tnx ;-)
she lit
the fire neath
a samurai
warrior
the flames
arched his heart
.
http://www.youtube.com/user/peacsees#p/u/0/KNTu7wOUdqU
you are very intriguing, for a blindman.
i can see much clear today
then yesterday.
i liked how you uploaded some of your videos on 3. 11. 11.
beautiful art
that survives time
filmed by a friend!
The Land of the Rising Rads...very sad.
The girl in traditional dress looking over her shoulder with the mask on was striking to me...beauty/innocence/danger all in one.
Well done once again WB.
First Haiku in years
cherry blossoms smell of fowl
bird flu scare no more
If anyone is interested, here is a pretty good article on zen haiku writing http://www.ahapoetry.com/haiartjr.htm
William I love the Japanese woodcuts. In my eye they still represent the Exotic.
Apropos Exotic. The Austrian Philosopher Günter Anders who visited Japan in 1959 for a congress against the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki wrote:
'If there is still something Exotic left here in our Age, it is alone in History: The now inaccessible coast of the prenuclear Age has become the truly Exotic.'
About Yaizu, a little village on the cost of the Pacific where the first known remote victim of radiation fallout died, he wrote:
'Noctunal Beach. Cracking crabs under my feet. To the left a wall of Concret or Stone. Strong splashing surf. The smell of Cuxhaven. Wading. Here swam Lafkaido Hean in the prenuclear times. And took Yaizu for the Garden of Eden. Tempora mutantur.'
Here Anders not only opened a new chapter in travel to Japan but in in human travel in general.
These kinds of moments are sad and tragic. But they are a prism into the foibles and trials of mankind. How often can you make a statement like that without coming off as some kind of pearl inlayed ntellectual broom handle ;-)
Maybe my quotes do not give full credit to Anders.
An overview of his work can be found here.
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/anders.htm
He published his correspondence with Claude Eatherly, the US pilot who gave the drop command on the Hiroshima mission, in 1961 as Burning Conscience: The Case of the Hiroshima Pilot Claude Eatherly, told in his Letters to Günther Anders.
Anders' published several books of reflections on morality in the atomic age.
I remember reading his stuff in high school.
My heart is waxed wrent.
A shivering cold ascent;
Who will save my child?
Man, his pile of toys
Though empty inside himself
What ruin he brings
All empty inside of himself
Man toys with his pile of stuff
What ruin he brings
... Adapted
equity trader
impotent sick greed disease
thinks that he is smart
;)))
My nose is sliding
Stuff the eyeball back in place
Oh, there goes my ear
Well I am amazed at the prolific haiku writing. It's really great. It's one thing to keep it in your diary. It's something else to share it with others. Since words cannot adequately capture a disaster like this it is uniquely suitable. Anyone one who wants to haiku on my posts is encouraged to do so anytime. ;-)
William Banzai Man
Seven frogs call the rain down,
"Burn the Treasury"
That one gets hung on the temple gate ;-)
image here and there
foto chop samurai then
neurons fire in brains
"Let them eat Borax".
Seems to me the power of the atom is in it's near infinite emptiness,
not that tiny grain.
hyaku nin ishyu
100 men
fun game to play
till there's ten.
Dear Japan, bein stranger is better mojo than puttin out for any mofo.
Jesus this haiku
for you or your mom to help
before they're all dead
Fukushima 50
sattori behind blue tarps
It's the GE way
funny how they can't
get that fission seperates
wet feet from dry legs
the god of earth, spoke
the god of sea replied, death
is god of nothing.
Another Haiku:
Government conceals
What Zero Hedge reveals
Disturbing but true
The bad sleep well