A Nuttycellist's Monologue
A semiretired pediatrician living in a countryside in Japan will describe what he thinks of his hobbies, life and the events around himself.
7/06/2022
Gardening and farming, the subject seemingly same but different every time
7/03/2022
A memory of a hall and a friend Cellistin
In that concert, an accident has happened to M. In the intermission, a bassist has had the end pin of his contrabass erroneously pierced the front board of M's cello. It was just an accident but a serious happening for her. She was almost crying. I checked if it won't cause any noise when being played. Seemingly no noise. Then I told the conductor what had occurred to her instrument. The conductor, almost 80 years old and a retired violinist of a professional orchestra, seemingly understood that. I was a bit suspicious that he had really understood it.
6/27/2022
Summer starting
It is already mid summer here. The temperature hits more than 30 degrees C everyday. No rain at all. It has become a routine work for me to water vegetables and flowers spending half an hour as soon as I finish breakfast. I am afraid this drought may have an adverse effect on farming and, of course, water deficit. Actually, in the western Japan, there are areas with water shortage. Sometimes, there are vigorous rainfalls for short time. But such rain won't be very beneficial for crops. They need long lasting rain typical for the rainy season.
While making this post, I found the weather bureau announcing that the rainy season was over in this area. It is about 3 weeks earlier than usual and the earliest record start of summer.
Seeing the growing vegetables every morning is still a pleasure for me. We, living things, are in the same flow of life in the world even if our forms of appearance in the world are different each other.
6/20/2022
Alstroemeria
Alstroemeria is fully blooming in the garden of my parents' house. Chinese knotweed or other weeds are among them. Alstroemeria is still triumphing in the garden. It has been in the shade of the big zelkova for years and has been bothered by the other weeds. With that big tree cut a couple of years ago, it has become vivid again. It's hued elegantly pink. If my parents were still there, they might be very delighted to see them coming out this way. I would care for them even better and this bulbous flower may bloom beautifully for a long time.
I was astonished our government had spent over 200 trillion JPY for the pandemic since 2000. The expenditure for the vaccine development was only 0.3 trillion JPY. Most of the budget have been executed for "unknown" things. Together with falsification and concealment of official documents the Abe administration has committed, isn't it a sign of "kleptocracy"? It is a grave sign for a democratic society. But very little is discussed or even publicated by the mass media.
It is another reason why I am prone to suffer from insomnia.
6/14/2022
Beef and potato stew
I might have posted this menu in the blog. The difference from previous one is that those home grown vegetables, potatoes and onions, were used. Potatoes were really newly harvested ones. Onions were 2 weeks old having been dried under the eaves.
The other batches will be gathered in very soon. This species of potato has shorter resting time and some of them would be planted in fall.
Four of pumpkins, planted a week or two ago, are growing nicely. Melon and water melon have been also planted. A few of the seedlings of water melon are growing in pots. It is amazing they are growing successfully without fertilizer but only with compost. The soil might be well nourished since this area was a forest owned by my mother's family decades ago. The fallen leaves and even weeds would be a source of the other lives thereafter. A miracle but a reality. Human beings should behave in the same way.
6/13/2022
Re-run of nuclear power plants is insane
In Japan, in proportion to the recent rise of the energy cost, the electricity charges are increased by 30 or 40% for the past several months. Some people insist the nuclear power plants should be re-run in order to have the power rate reduced. It seems, however, a plot by the power companies that would not lose the chance to get profit to run the nuclear power plants. Without running them, they are losing so much as billions of Yen in a year to maintain the resting nuclear power plants.
Compared with the renewable energy, the cost of nuclear power generation has turned out to be much more than expected. In addition, there are too many issues regarding nuclear power plant's operation. Risk for another serious accident, no policy/idea to deal with Plutonium produced and with the used nuclear fuel/
contaminated water and the unforeseeable future of the crippled nuclear power plants in Fukushima and so forth.
As a matter of fact, there are two serious problems in front of us regarding the sequel of the accident in Fukushima.
The first is the fragility of the pressure vessel supporting structure. There have been a series of pretty big aftershocks around Fukushima. So far, they have not further devastated the plant yet. There could be the other structures vulnerable to further quake. If those structures fail to stand, it will result in further contamination of radiation all around. It would be quite tough for them to manage the situation.
The other issue is the childhood thyroid cancer in Fukushima. It's been argued as a consequence of mass screening with sensitive ultrasonogram. But during 3 years between two mass screenings in Fukushima, there have been 68 new cases found in 2016, which should be regarded most probably as a sequel of the nuclear accident. A recent research published in Nature has disclosed close relationship between the air radiation dose and the occurrence of childhood thyroid cancer as well as the protective effect of evacuation.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32139763/
It takes more than, at least, 20trillion JPY to recover the crippled nuclear power plants in Fukushima. Even if it should be achieved, more than 1000 victims of nuclear power plant accident related deaths and tens of thousand of people eternally losing their home land could not be recovered. Re-run of nuclear power plants in the country of earth quake is an insane decision.