Japan encourages citizens to eat radiation tainted food

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3njJ8Ppp2A]

Click on the "cc" button at the bottom right of the YouTube window to show the English subtitles.

This TV clip (15 seconds) and its longer full version are sponsored by Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, and have been on-air intermittently since early June, 2011. (A month after that, the problem of contaminated beef started to emerge).

The full 30-second version can be viewed here: http://syokuryo.jp/news-commercial/2011/06/tvcm-1.html

According to the official webpage for the campaign, the food items that appear in the full 30-second version are as follows: rice ball using rice from Miyagi, asparagus from Fukushima, cucumber from Fukushima with "miso" from Miyagi, tomato from Ibaraki, apple from Aomori, watermelon from Gunma, milk from Iwate, peach from Yamanashi, BBQ using beef from Yamagata and onion from Chiba, and raw skipjack "sashimi" from Chiba.

These 5 men are in a musical group named TOKIO.  One of them was tested for radiation, and during the test showed elevated levels of Cesium 137.  In spite of that, and in keeping with Japan's spirit of "Ganbatte!",  the band is involved in developing a village called Dash in Namie machi, in an attempt to encourage people to move back into the area.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWOeKk1GUo]

The woman in the above story, named "Numayu" (a.k.a. Emiko Numauchi), was blogging on her struggle with radiation sickness from Fukushima when her blog was shut down.  It has been recovered and reposted (Japanese only).

As a former Japan resident, I am aware that Japanese as a rule don't take great care of their teeth.  However, the damage seen in this video is extreme and uncommon.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2dghS1otAw]

Keiko Ichikawa, the author of "A Letter from Fukushima", goes over why we almost never see malformed children in Japan. The video is from a symposium on the  Fukushima nuclear disaster held in Odawara on 21st Aug 2011.

Doctors in Japan who withhold health information are common - Japanese doctors will routinely shield patients from a diagnosis of cancer, for example.