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japan Archives - Page 2 of 2 - juesatta (CJ Photography)

Mar 21

February.March 2011

By Life Journal, Photography
love.peace

love.peace

Last month, February was a very busy and hectic month for mEE, nothing but work. The pace of life is going back to normal in early March and I can have more updates on juesatta.

Having said that, a series of fortunate events have just happened in Japan, earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown tragically claim countless human lives and destroy the livelihoods of many others including wildlife and ecosystems. And the latest update of today,

The toll of Japan’s triple disaster came into clearer focus Monday after police estimates showed more than 18,000 people died, the World Bank said rebuilding may cost $235 billion and more cases of radiation-tainted vegetables and tap water turned up. (yahoo.com)

More work has to be done here such as to increase awareness of the need for aid after natural disasters. And we’re grateful that everyone is standing together in such difficult moment and is giving a hand. Each of us make a difference and together we’re powerful.

Besides the quake, war has also begun in Libya when US coalition forces launched strikes on Libya to degrade its air defense yesterday. Despite the goals of US coalition forces to protect the people of Libya, Libyan government claimed that allied attacks on Sunday have killed innoncent civilians. It was not immediately clear what targets had been hit but we do hope that Libya can return to stability as soon as possible and its problems can be resolved peacefully.

May you find serenity here and we hope that the victims in Japan and people in Libya to peace, and survive. May all beings bEE happy.

Sharing some shots taken in Melaka within these two months.

demolish

demolish

"I'm watching you"

"I'm watching you"

seven

seven

duet (traditional Malay performance)

duet (traditional Malay performance)

dine

dine

ambitious

ambitious

heading home

heading home

Masjid Selat Melaka (Malacca Straits Mosque)

Masjid Selat Melaka (Malacca Straits Mosque)

fire fighters

fire fighters

Mar 15

juesatta awakening foundation: japan quake relief mission launched

By Involvement
juesatta awakening foundation logo (draft)

juesatta awakening foundation logo (draft)

A huge 8.9 earthquake, subsequent tsunami, and nuclear meltdown struck Japan on March 11th at 2:46 pm, causing immeasurable human suffering and physical damage. Officials say at least 10,000 people were killed, many more are still missing or injured, and millions are without food, water, power in Japan.

Major disasters always require a huge amount of international support to provide relief and long term recovery efforts. Japan, being one of the world’s most generous nations, has always donated when other countries have experienced disasters. In these, their days of greatest need now, we stand ready and are eager to help the Japanese in this time of great trial.

I’ve received calls these two days from friends who  have expressed their sympathy and wish of helping those who are at risk in Japan now. We are getting the assessments by the reputable aid organisations such as Red Cross, Tzu Chi, World Vision, Salvation Army and those already have a presence in the impacted area and their response will likely be faster and more efficinet than other organizations that are not on the ground.

Right now, while waiting and see how the relief situation develops, we express our heartfelt sympathy for the tragic loss and are ready to assist the reputable aid organisations. Friends, you can make a donation to well-known charitable organisations or through us as we are collecting fund and will make the transfer next week to the organisations mentioned that are working on relief and recovery in the region.

A woman cries amid the destruction in Natori, Japan (Reuters photo)

A woman cries amid the destruction in Natori, Japan (Reuters photo)

Residents walk along a path overlooking shattered homes from the tsunami in Kesen Numa, Miyagi Prefecture. (Reuters photo)

Residents walk along a path overlooking shattered homes from the tsunami in Kesen Numa, Miyagi Prefecture. (Reuters photo)

A man surveys the damage in Minami Sanriku, a town in Miyago Prefecture, on Tuesday, March 15. (AFP/Getty photo)

A man surveys the damage in Minami Sanriku, a town in Miyago Prefecture, on Tuesday, March 15. (AFP/Getty photo)

A Self Defense Forces soldier holds a 4-month-old baby in Ishinomaki city in Miyagi prefecture Monday. The child survived the tsunami with her family. (AFP/Getty photo)

A Self Defense Forces soldier holds a 4-month-old baby in Ishinomaki city in Miyagi prefecture Monday. The child survived the tsunami with her family. (AFP/Getty photo)

Mar 12

Hundreds killed in tsunami after 8.9 Japan quake

By Compassion
A massive tsunami engulfs a residential area in Natori, Miyagi Prefecture in northeastern Japan. (photo by Reuters/Kyodo)

A massive tsunami engulfs a residential area in Natori, Miyagi Prefecture in northeastern Japan. (photo by Reuters/Kyodo)

TOKYO – A ferocious tsunami unleashed by Japan’s biggest recorded earthquake slammed into its eastern coast Friday, killing hundreds of people as it carried away ships, cars and homes, and triggered widespread fires that burned out of control.

Hours later, the tsunami hit Hawaii but did not cause major damage. Warnings blanketed the Pacific, putting areas on alert as far away as South America, Canada, Alaska and the entire U.S. West coast. In northeastern Japan, the area around a nuclear power plant was evacuated after the reactor’s cooling system failed.

Tsunami waves swirl near a port in Oarai, Ibaraki Prefecture (state) after Japan was struck by a strong earthquake off its northeastern coast Friday, March 11, 2011. (AP Photo/Kyodo News)

Tsunami waves swirl near a port in Oarai, Ibaraki Prefecture (state) after Japan was struck by a strong earthquake off its northeastern coast Friday, March 11, 2011. (AP Photo/Kyodo News)

Police said 200 to 300 bodies were found in the northeastern coastal city of Sendai, the city in Miyagi prefecture, or state, closest to the epicenter. Another 137 were confirmed killed, with 531 people missing. Police also said 627 people were injured.

The magnitude-8.9 offshore quake unleashed a 23-foot (seven-meter) tsunami and was followed for hours by more than 50 aftershocks, many of them of more than magnitude 6.0.

Dozens of cities and villages along a 1,300-mile (2,100-kilometer) stretch of coastline were shaken by violent tremors that reached as far away as Tokyo, hundreds of miles (kilometers) from the epicenter. A large section of Kesennuma, a town of 70,000 people in Miyagi, burned furiously into the night with no apparent hope of being extinguished, public broadcaster NHK said.

Koto Fujikawa, 28, was riding a monorail when the quake hit and had to later pick her way along narrow, elevated tracks to the nearest station.

“I thought I was going to die,” Fujikawa, who works for a marketing company, said. “It felt like the whole structure was collapsing.”

Scientists said the quake ranked as the fifth-largest earthquake in the world since 1900 and was nearly 8,000 times stronger than one that devastated Christchurch, New Zealand, last month.

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Jul 18

Japan’s Shark Fin Capital, Kesen-numa City

By Compassion
Japan's Shark Fin Capital, Kesen-numa City. This is the picture that sparked a global outcry. (by Alex Hofford)

Japan's Shark Fin Capital, Kesen-numa City. This is the picture that sparked a global outcry. (by Alex Hofford)

KESEN-NUMA CITY, JAPAN – It’s 5am on the the north eastern tip of Japan’s main island of Honshu, and 75 tons of dead shark is being meticulously arranged into a neat grid of tidy piles, of twenty sharks per pile.

If you thought shark finning was exclusively a Chinese problem, think again. Welcome to Kesen-numa City, Japan’s shark fin capital.

Here, six days a week, small teams of Japanese workers go about the hushed business of industrial shark-finning.

By 6.30am, with piles arranged, the sharks are disemboweled first. Hearts are ripped efficiently from bodies by men wearing brightly coloured rubber boots and aprons. At 7am, shark corpses are cleaned of their blood by workers wielding water hoses. And by 8am, small teams are silently moving up and down aisles and rows like robots in a Japanese car factory, quickly slicing off every dorsal, pectoral and tail fin from the lifeless, grey lumps. Big hungry black crows squawk in the shadows, looking for bloody morsels. And shark fins plop with regularity into small yellow plastic baskets. The baskets fill up fast, are then weighed, and finally carried to a nearby truck, where a man with a notepad strikes a deal. At 9.30am, it’s all over for another day. Fork lift trucks scoop up tons of limbless carcasses, then dump them into a high-sided truck. The process is a brutal sight to behold, and not for the faint-hearted.

Cutting the fins (Alex Hofford)

Cutting the fins (Alex Hofford)

The fishing port of Kesen-numa City is located in Miyagi Prefecture in North East Japan, and is the country’s only port dedicated to catching sharks.

Over two days in early July this year, I saw 119 tons of blue shark (Prionace glaucaof), ten tons of salmon shark (Lamna ditropis), and three tons of short fin mako shark (Isurus oxyrinchus)  landed on the dock at Kesen-numa. Not to mention several tons of endangered bluefin tuna, (Thunnus thynnus), but that’s a whole other story. Taking government transparency to another level, landed shark tonnage numbers are provided daily by the port of Kesen-numa’s Japanese only website, which is publicly, (and apparently unashamedly), available.

About half of the shark fin that is processed in Kesen-numa City is destined for China, mainly Hong Kong and Shanghai. For wealthy Chinese, shark fin from Kesen-numa is seen as a premium, or luxury, brand. Mr Hatakeyama, 45, a shark fin processor from Kesen-numa, said, “Quite a bit of shark fin is sent to Shanghai from here as there are many rich people there. Our shark fin here can command higher prices than Chinese shark fin sourced from elsewhere in Asia, the Middle East or Africa. Even though the Chinese have their own shark fin, they prefer Japanese brands”.

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