Professional Documents
Culture Documents
It's capital city was in ancient times Edo, which is modern day Kyoto. It's current capital city is
Tokyo.
Major cities in Japan include Nagasaki, Osaka, Nagoya, Hiroshima, and Fukuoka.
To the west of Japan lay North and South Korea. Farther west is China. To the south, Taiwan
an the Philippines. To the north, Russia.
The landscape in Japan is diverse. It is covered with many streams from it's mountain ranges. It
has no deserts, and is generally a very well hydrated land.
Current events in Japan have been hectic. The Fukushima reactor meltdown happened in 2011.
This is a huge, complex subject that I follow. Recently, many companies have been developing special
radiation resistant robots to investigate the radioactive meltdown and waste beneath the two reactors.
They have, as of March 3rd, discovered that the radiation in the reaction chamber is 570 seiverts. This
is equal to 57,000 RADs. To put this into perspective, a dosage of radiation between 100-300 RADs is
fatal.
The government and government contracted companies are trying very hard to create a robot
that can withstand the radiation in the chamber. So far, they have not been able to build a single robot
that can last more than 8 minutes within the chamber. Being that the current plan is to use robots to cut
the radioactive slag and material out from the concrete under the reactor and remove it before it seeps
into the groundwater, this is a huge problem. However, every cloud has a silver lining. The urgency
these robots are needed is causing advances in robotics across the board.
Sources:
Experts baffled as robots sent ot clean up Fukushima nuclear site keep dying. By Niamh McIntyre.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/robots-fukushima-nuclear-disaster-dying-probe-clean-up-
tepco-toshiba-reactor-nuclear-radiation-a7612396.html
Japanese funeral
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_funeral
My memory from studying Japan for 15 years, having always wanted to teach English as a second
language there.