Plants are
dying in the middle of central Tokyo and it could be because of the increase in radiation. One irony of the radioactive fallout from Fukushima is that people in Japan are starting to pay more attention to nature. The picture to the right was taken on the sidewalk of Hakusan Dori in Bunkyo-ku in Tokyo, and was uploaded on July 30. The air radiation in Bunkyo-ku has been higher than the official Tokyo number (measured in Shinjuku-ku, western central Tokyo), along with several other eastern "ku" (special wards of Tokyo). The
person who took the picture says, "About 30% of azaleas on the sidewalk are completely dead. Ginkgo leaves are browning."
Japan is considering the possibility of creating a back-up capital city in case they need to
abandon Tokyo. A new panel from Japan's Ministry of Land and Infrastructure will consider the possibility of moving some of Tokyo's capital functions to another big city, like Osaka. They talk about earthquake threats, which are quite real, but mention nothing about the persistent radiation driving parts of the government out of the city.
The story only gets worse, and this one could eventually bring down the Japanese government, which withheld important information from residents of Tsushima. Tamotsu Baba, the mayor of Namie, said that the withholding of information was akin to "
murder." Japan's system to forecast radiation threats was working from the beginning but they did not warn the people when a radiation plume hit the Karino Elementary School. The school, just over six miles from the plant, was not cleared out. Instead it was turned into a temporary evacuation center.
