News in Japan

Food contamination: the last thing Japan needed

If there's one thing Japan doesn't need in the wake of the disastrous combination of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and the ensuing nuclear drama, it's problems with its food industry. But those seem a distinct possibility following Saturday's announcement by the government that milk and spinach bearing radioactive particles well above normal limits - the first-ever such discovery in Japan - have been found in the broad area around the troubled Fukushima prefecture nuclear complex, including on a farm only 110 kilometers from Tokyo.

Certainly, Japan's food exports don't account for a huge chunk of money; the country is a net food importer. But even a strong groundswell of sympathy around the world will be hard pressed to keep Japan's food flag flying high. (Wall Street Journal) 

Tsunami-hit hospital copes with no heat, light

TAGAJO, Japan -- The temperature drops about 10 degrees when you walk into Senen General Hospital, which hasn't had gas, electricity or running water for a week and a half.

The old concrete buildings, in a part of town between a river and the coast, were flooded on the first floor when a giant tsunami swamped the neighborhood. In these cold, dark halls, the staff -- some of whom have lost their homes and are now living in shelters -- work 24-hour shifts to keep its remaining patients alive.

"The worst thing is the cold," says nurse Takako Suzuki.

The hospital has one or two deaths a day, all older and fragile patients most vulnerable to the frigid conditions -- they've lost 11 since the disaster struck. More subfreezing temperatures and rain are due this week.

Fish from the river swim in the flooded basement, which houses the boiler, the electrical room and other key machinery. Two small generators pump water out of the 7-meter (23-foot) rooms underground -- at about a centimeter (less than a half-inch) per hour.

With its first-floor medicine stockrooms and kitchen ruined, the staff has had to improvise. They pour hot water into plastic juice bottles and tuck them around patients, carefully rinse and mix soiled medicines, and try to clean off adult diapers with newspapers to make them last longer. (Boston Globe)

Japan 'BP moment' is global economic problem

You never want to kick a nation when it's down. It's time, though, to consider the depth of Japan's coming recession.

A week ago, before radiation fears prompted a mass exodus from Tokyo, a downturn was of the "if" variety. Japan's prospects then dimmed with each passing day of blackouts and panicked news reports. The questions now are when the recession will officially begin, how bad it will be and when might it end?

There's this bizarre notion that Japan's crisis is a non- event for the world economy -- that at just 9 percent of global gross domestic product, Japan's zigs and zags mean little. And besides, it's thought, the Group of Seven stepped in to cap the yen and all's well again. Perhaps. Yet Japan's near-term trajectory may surprise the global bulls out there. (Bloomberg)