STILL ALIVE

タイから九州の水害へのお見舞いメールが届きました。
ありがたいです。

2012年7月16日

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九州豪雨被害へのお見舞い

急啓　この度の記録的な豪雨により、貴国九州北部・中部におきまして、

床上浸水や住宅の損壊、がけ崩れ等の甚大な被害がでていることを知りました。

被災者の皆様に心よりお見舞い申し上げますと共に、

犠牲になられた方々のご冥福を心よりお祈り申し上げます。



タイにおきましても、昨年記録的な大洪水に見舞われ、

被災地では長期に亘り苦しい生活を余儀なくされました。

その意味で、この度被災された皆様がとても不安な日々を過ごされていることとお察
しいたします。

一日も早い復旧をお祈りいたしますと共に、

未だ各地で警報や注意報が出される中と存じますので、くれぐれもお気をつけくださ
いますよう心よりお祈り申し上げます。

日頃よりご支援をいただいております子どもたち、ならびに当財団職員一同を代表
し、謹んでお見舞い申し上げます。

合掌

ドゥアン　プラティープ財団

創設者　

プラティープ　ウンソンタム　秦

カンボジアのプノンペンポストに、カンボジアの子どもの学校給食に福島で採れた魚を提供するWFPと日本政府の計画があることが掲載されていました。
対象国はカンボジアの他に、ガーナ、コンゴ、セネガル、スリランカが挙がっているといいます。
福島で採れた魚が放射能に汚染されていなくて全量検査をして安全が確証されるものであるならば、風評被害で売れない魚を有効活用し、貧困国の子どもたちの飢えをしのぐという一石二鳥となります。
しかし、いまの日本の基準にあわせた検査体制では、放射能公害の輸出になりかねません。


WFP to feed schoolchildren Fukushima fish
Wednesday, 04 July 2012 David Boyle
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012070457180/National-news/wfp-feed-fukushima-feesh.html

An official from Thailand’s Food and Drug Administration takes a sample from a shipment of fish imported from Japan last year to test for possible radiation contamination. Photograph: Reuters
The Japaness government and the UN’s World Food Program plan to feed Cambodian schoolchildren fish from areas affected by the massive earthquake and tsunami last year that sparked the Fukushima nuclear crisis.

It’s a move that has prompted an outcry from at least one Japan-based anti-nuclear group, but the WFP says any concern about potential contamination from the nuclear crisis is unfounded and that stringent testing has shown the fish is completely free of radiation.

The food aid, supplied by the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s Official Development Assistance program, provides fish from tsunami-affected areas to schoolchildren in Cambodia, Ghana, the Congo, Senegal and Sri Lanka.

WFP country director Jean-Pierre de Margerie said 124 tonnes of fish that arrived in Cambodia in March had been tested by Japan and two independent superintendents before it was approved after returning universally negative results for radiation.

“If there was any risk with any in-kind food given to WFP, we simply don’t accept that contribution,” he said. “Every time I go into the field, I eat with the beneficiaries, and I plan to do the same thing with Japanese fish.”

De Mangerie said the fish arrived in March and would be distributed in October through a more than decade-old program encouraging parents in poor areas of Cambodia to send their kids to school by providing breakfast as an incentive.

He said the food had been sourced from Hokkaido and Aomori prefectures – both hundreds of kilometres from the Fukushima Daichii nuclear power plant.

But fish for the program has, according to a Japanese news report, been sourced from areas such as Ibaraki prefecture, which at its closest border is slightly more than 50 kilometres from the plant.

Yukie Tokura from Stop! Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant, a campaign to shut down a plant that operates in an area where a magnitude-8 earthquake is thought to be 87 per cent likely in the next 30 years, has been protesting the ODA/WFP program and said she was ashamed by what she called the unethical double standards of the Japanese government.

“It seems that the Japanese government force ‘the fish that Japanese people don’t want to buy’ on developing countries under the name of International Aid,” she said by email.

The Japanese embassy in Phnom Penh has not replied to inquiries from the Post, and officials at the Ministry of Education as well as the Health Minister have all said they were unaware of the program.

The WFP has said that the results of testing conducted on the fish are not made public because of internal policies.

James Sutherland, international communications coordinator for Friends International, said if WFP had given assurances about the food’s safety, he would assume they are serious, but that it would help if testing results were available to reassure the public.

Sutherland said people would be asking: “Why not give it to other countries as well? Why just developing countries?”

Japanese seafood suppliers in tsunami-affected areas have been hit hard since the disaster, both by damage to their vessels and consumer fears about their fish.

On March 11 last year, a massive magnitude-9 earthquake struck off the northeast coast of Japan, generating a 15-metre tsunami that ploughed into the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power plant, knocking out crucial cooling systems.

Hydrogen gas explosions blew the roof and walls off some of the reactors, spewing radiation out into the atmosphere.

Ever since, huge amounts of water have had to be dumped on the reactor’s fuel rods to stop them from melting, creating contaminated waste runoff, which can end up in the ocean.

The nuclides that have been released by the crisis that are of greatest concern are Iodine -131, Caesium-134 and Caesium-137.

At unsafe levels in food, these nuclides can generally increase the risk of cancer and accumulate in the thyroid gland, which regulates growth rates.

But near-daily testing by Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare as well as reports from the US Environmental Protection Agency and nuclear radiation specialists suggest that contamination levels in fish are generally low or undetectable in most of the country.

Still, scepticism of government claims about food safety remains high following the less-than-forthcoming release of information about the severity of the crisis.

A recent study by the Meteorological Research Institute found that about twice the amount of caesium than previously thought had spilled from Fukushima Daiichi’s number 1 reactor after the earthquake and that about 70 per cent of this went into the ocean.
To contact the reporter on this story: David Boyle at david.boyle@phnompenhpost.com

夕張のホテルで朝食終了。
朝食バイキングの会場での印象は7割以上が外国人客。
中国、韓国が多い。
香港からは自転車で北海道を巡るチームが来ている。

夕張が財政破綻した当時は外国人観光客はおらず。宿泊客が少ないため、バイキングではなく朝定食だった事を考えるとずいぶんお客さんを取り戻したものだ。
しかし、夕張を訪れる宿泊客で増えたのはあくまでも外国人であって日本人ではない。

これは、北海道の他の観光地も比較しないと言えないので検証しないといけないことだが。
夕張の日本人観光客が増えない理由は、財政破綻というマイナスイメージのせいもあるのではないかと思われます。
財政破綻直後は、夕張を支援しようと、物産展を催したり、いろんなグッズが開発されたり、新しい工場を夕張に建てたりした。
しかし、五年経って、その神通力は力を失い、残ったのは日本人にとってマイナスイメージだけなのでお客さんが来ないのではないでしょうか。
話題になった花畑工場のキャラメルさえも勢いを失った。
逆に外国人にとっては、そういうマイナスイメージがないだけに、素直に夕張を受け入れることが出来るし。過剰な設備は多くのお客さんを受け入れる町の能力となっている。

これから、東北の復興を考える上で夕張の出来事は無視できない事だと思う。
マイナスイメージに影響されやすい日本人より先入観の少ない外国人を相手にすること、自転車などアクティビティを取り入れることで観光にバリエーションを与えることで観光客の幅を広げることが、顧客をとりもどすキーになると思います。

しかし、特に中国からのお客さんに関しては団体旅行になるので、ある程度大きな施設にしかお客さんが来ず。地域に直接お金が落ちにくいという問題がある。
外国人観光客が来ても、地域にお金が落ちる構造を作っていく必要がある。