Hi everyone!! Thank you for supporting and sale of the GAMAN shirt is now closed. We are extremely proud to say that with your help, we have altogether raised $4,006.35! Although this sum may not be much, it still goes towards helping the Japan tsumani and earthquake victims. Thank you for your help and support and we hope that you will remember the meaning of gaman and persevere in everything you do!
Hello! In view of the twin disasters in Japan, we have decided to sell shirts which recognise and celebrate the Japanese’s spirit during this difficult time. Their spirit is the inspiration for our project and is represented by the word “gaman” in kanji, which can be roughly translated to “a dignified endurance of difficult situations”. Please buy a shirt (or more!) as all profits will be donated to Red Cross Singapore to aid with Japan relief efforts!
Shirts are available in white and red, and you can choose between dri-fit or cotton! Here is our shirt design:
The shirts cost $12 each.
Here’s something to help you decide on the size if you’re buying online:
(WHITE DRI-FIT & COTTON IN SMALL ARE OUT OF STOCK!)
Here’s how you can order online:
Send the form below to gamanshirtorders@gmail.com
Name:
Collection mode: Self/Postage
Color+Material:
Quantity:
Sizes:
Color+Material:
Quantity:
Sizes:
(If you are buying more than 1 type.)
Once your order has been processed, you will receive a confirmation email. You can then make payment to POSB savings 039-85097-4 and reply with the below information:
1. Time/date of transfer:
2. IB/atm-transfer:
3. IB nick/location transferred:
4. Transaction ref.:
5. Total amount transferred:
Other arrangements can be made if you are unable to make payment via bank transfer.
You can collect your shirts by
Also, if you’re interested to help us bring this project to your own school/community, or if you have any queries, please leave a comment (the speech bubble above)!
Note to RV-ians: If you are interested in buying the shirt, please send us the order form and you can pay us on the collection day (Thursday) upon our confirmation email. Sizes and materials are limited so please place your order early! 
Tsuyako Ito wipes away tears during an interview at a shelter in Kamaishi, Iwate prefecture, Japan, on March 25, 2011. The “last geisha” of this once-bustling steel city says she lost everything from her kimono to music instruments as a tsunami swept them away. (Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images)
Japan said Wednesday it is to decommission reactors at its disaster-hit Fukushima nuclear plant and overhaul nuclear safety procedures after admitting serious failings in its battle to contain dangerous levels of radiation. Power plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) — whose president Masataka Shimizu has been hospitalized with high blood pressure and dizziness — said the shutdown of four damaged reactors was inevitable.
Japan’s Trade Ministry, responsible for the safety of the country’s expanding nuclear energy program, said in a statement that tougher new regulations would be drafted to in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami that triggered the world’s worst atomic crisis since the 1986 Chernobyl explosion.
The latest steps came as France and the United States pitched in to help Japan in its efforts to bring Fukushima under control amid fears over rising radiation levels detected outside the plant. French President Nicolas Sarkozy plans to visit Tokyo Thursday, making him the first foreign leader in the country since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that triggered a massive humanitarian crisis and nuclear accident. France, which produces three-quarters of its power from nuclear reactors, also flew in two nuclear experts to assist Japan’s plant operator, TEPCO, Reuters reports. TEPCO has come under heavy criticism for its slow response to the incident and safety lapses. The United States will send radiation-detecting robots to help Japan explore its reactor cores and spent fuel pools, it states.
New readings show the seawater near Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi plant to contain radioactive iodine at 3,355 times the legal limit, according to the Japanese nuclear safety agency. Earlier testings put the water’s radioactive iodine at 1,850 times the legal limit, BBC reports. However, the agency played down the impact of the findings Wednesday, saying people had already left the area and no fishing was taking place there.
The spike in radioactive iodine in the sea comes a day after officials found the radioactive substance plutonium seeping into the soil near the plant. It remains unclear where the higher levels of plutonium had come from, and experts believe at least some may have come from spent fuel rods at the plant or damage to one of the reactors.
Japan has been working for weeks to get a handle on its crippled power plant, which was damaged during the earthquake and tsunami that devastated much of the country and left 27,000 people either dead or missing.
While the government offered strong assurances last week that significant progress had been made to bring power back to the plant and restart its cooling systems, this week that confidence has slipped away, the New York Times reports.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who has come under criticism for his handling of the crisis, gave his most sober message yet on the developments in an address to Parliament on Tuesday. “The earthquake, tsunami and the ensuing nuclear accident may be Japan’s largest-ever crisis,” he said. “We find ourselves in a situation where we can’t let down our guard. We will continue to handle it in a state of maximum alert.”
Japanese workers at the plant now face a difficult choice between continuing to douse the plant’s stricken nuclear reactors with water to keep them cool, and preventing the possibility of highly radioactive water that has flooded the reactors from spilling into the ocean, the Wall Street Journal reports. “At the heart of the day’s moves lies a calculated choice between bad and worse: To meet their goal of keeping reactors cool enough to forestall catastrophe, officials appear willing to risk letting some highly radioactive water spill out of vents that are positioned some 50 to 70 yards from the sea,” it states.
The cooling strategy has also released harmful amounts of radioactive steam, making conditions for the 400 workers at the plant sometimes too dangerous to complete repair work, the Times reports.
-globalpost.com
To all RVians who are still interested in buying our shirts, we regret to inform you that we are unable to sell the shirts in school from tuesday (29 march) onwards. However, you may approach any year 6 softballer or leave a comment via the speech bubble above if you have any enquiries. You may also refer to the post entitled “Online orders are open!” for instructions on how to place an order online. Orders can also be placed on our Facebook events page. After placing the order, you can pay us upon collecting your shirt on thursday. We will have a booth open on Thursday till 4pm.
Also, we would like to thank all those who ordered the shirts – you have aided in our fundraising efforts greatly. You can collect your shirts on thursday at our booth outside the student lounge. Those who have ordered but have not paid can pay on thursday itself.
Please spread the message to your friends. Thanks!
By Jeffrey Oon | Yahoo Newsroom – Wed, Mar 16, 2011 4:21 PM SGT
A man comforts a woman as she cries in front of her damaged home in the Miyagi prefecture. (Jiji Press/AFP/Getty …
COMMENT
As I watch the dramatic events unfold in Japan and marvel at the way its people — bruised, beaten but undefeated – struggle to comprehend their new reality, I wonder how Singapore would react if a similar disaster were to engulf our island.
By now, you must have read about how hundreds of thousands of Japanese face a dire struggle for survival with quiet dignity and gaman (stoicism). Of how, despite the desperate conditions they face, the Japanese still wait in orderly queues to cross the road, of how they patiently wait in line for food and water rations to be distributed.
It is a marvel to behold, and so unlike the stories of looting and violence that emerged from the aftermaths of the Haiti earthquake and Hurricane Katrina.
But what about us, how would we react as a nation and as a people? Will qualities such as dignity and pride and a quiet determination that we can overcome adversity shine through or will our famously kiasu (scared-to-lose) attitude rise to the fore in times of panic and self-preservation?
Because when we have lost everything that in Singapore is deemed important — the cars we drive, the watches we wear or the balances in our bank accounts — then we become indistinguishable from our fellow Singaporeans, save for our individual character and qualities.
Where you stay, whether Sentosa Cove or Sembawang, Bukit Timah or Balestier, won’t make one bit of difference. Condo or bungalow or not, what will matter, foremost, is if your husband or wife, mother, father and siblings, or your friends and other relatives are still alive and accounted for, and that you are lucky enough to still be able to feel the warmth of their touch and hear their voices.
But beyond that, when the realisation of all that is important takes on a new meaning, will you still extend a helping hand to your fellow man? When food and water are in short supply — be it a half bowl of rice, a left-over packet of instant noodles or a cup of muddy water – will you still happily give it to those in greater need?
People use temporary phones set up for residents at the Natori City Hall in Miyagi Prefecture. (Toru Yamanaka/AFP/Getty …
Will our leaders come out of their million-dollar homes, roll up their sleeves, pick up a shovel or pail and lead by example, or will they shirk responsibilty and hide behind a curtain of finger-pointing and blame?
Will they come out looking like Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano, who has been the tireless face of the Japanese government’s response to the crisis, or will they come out looking like the unpopular Prime Minister Naoto Kan, criticised for his slow response to the nuclear emergency?
What about the foreigners in Singapore? Will they in the thousands who have been lured, given citizenship and PR status join their adopted nation and its people and stay to fight the good fight — or will they, in the face of impending disaster, radiation or worse, take the first flight out of the country, back to the welcoming arms of their home nation. Only then will we know if the government’s relentless preaching about the need to integrate and embed with the rest of Singapore society has paid off — but by then, it may be too late.
How will our big businesses — the SIAs, SingTels and SMRTs react? Will they follow in the footsteps of Japanese noodle maker Nissin, who contributed a million cups of instant noodles to relief efforts, or will they seek to profit from the disaster like the recent example of a local media broadcaster?
And what about our overseas Singaporeans, who represent the best and brightest the nation has to offer — will they return from far and wide to help or will they view the crisis unfold from a distance with ready chequebook in hand?
Japanese citizens move food and water out of a Sea Hawk helicopter (AFP photo)
What about our highly trained 3G Singapore Armed Forces? Will we even respond to the call to report for duty in the first place or will our first instinct be to protect and preserve our loved ones and possessions first? Will our training, untested as it has been, have come to nought at the first sign of danger or, like the 50 Japanese emergency workers toiling heroically at the Fukushima nuclear plant, will we be ready to lay down our lives for our fellow Singaporean?
Singapore’s similarities with Japan are remarkable. Both our societies are highly modernised, efficient and advanced. But it is only in time of crisis that true character is revealed. Only then will we discover if the common ties that bind us are strengthened or if they come loose in the face of desperation and panic. Let us hope we react like how our Asian neighbours have, with quiet dignity, pride and respect for one another.
In the words of Yuta Saga, a survivor from the tiny Japanese fishing town of Yuriage that was wiped out by the tsunami, said, “I saw the ugly side of people, and then I saw the good side. Some people only thought of themselves. Others stopped to help.”
Singapore, which side will we see?
Residents eat emergency rations in a temporary shelter after leaving their tsunami devastated areas. (AFP phot …
-citynewspost.com
“While the nation’s industrial clusters in the south and west seemed to be spared the worst, the crisis at damaged nuclear plants north of Tokyo was threatening to cause an energy squeeze that could set back all sectors of Japan’s economy.
To help bring electricity back to the devastated areas, utilities across Japan are cutting back and sharing power, imposing rolling blackouts that will affect factories, stores and homes throughout the nation. The emergency effort is expected to last up to two weeks, but could take longer.”
-nytimes
-lngworldnews.com
-allvoices.com
-dailymail.co.uk
-politifi.com
Nearly two weeks after the earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, engineers still do not know the full extent of damage to roads, bridges, rail lines and other infrastructure.
While much attention has been focused on the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, only fragmentary information has become available about damage to other large complexes, like water distribution and sewage treatment plants.
Even Japanese government agencies and professional engineering groups appear to have limited knowledge of the scope of the destruction along the northeastern coast of Honshu Island, where the tsunami hit on March 11, and further inland, where the quake damaged buildings and other structures and caused landslides.
“We don’t understand the real situation,” Hiroyuki Yanagawa of the Japan Society of Civil Engineers wrote in an e-mail. “We cannot investigate the area.” The group is based in Tokyo, far from the affected region, where entry has been restricted largely to emergency vehicles.
In the United States, earthquake engineers who often travel to the scene of a major quake within days have been unable to go to Japan because of concerns about radiation.
Stephen Mahin, a structural engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the director of the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, said that he and others had been planning to go but that the university had canceled their travel insurance.
He now expects to go next week, but will most likely be limited to Tokyo, about 140 miles from the damaged reactors.
“Inspecting earthquake damage is a risk, but it is a risk we know about,” Dr. Mahin wrote in an e-mail. “Being dependent on public release of information on radiation hazards (or evacuation orders) that we have little control over is a different thing entirely.”
The National Science Foundation, which finances field research after disasters and supported an engineering team that went to New Zealand after the recent earthquake there, said it was accepting proposals for Japan. The review process takes several weeks.
Some information about infrastructure damage is now trickling out. Incomplete as it is, the information helps explain why the Japanese government says that apart from the damage caused by the problems at the nuclear plant, recovery will take five years and cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
The Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, which had been posting limited information about road and rail service since the quake, now says all expressways in the region are passable, and that high-speed rail service has been restored on all but two lines that have long stretches with damage to rails or to overhead electric lines. All airports are open to commercial traffic except the one in Sendai, where video cameras recorded a wall of water reaching as high as the jetways.
The ministry reported damage to about 50 sewage treatment plants. Other agencies reported that gas and water distribution had improved, though there were still many towns with limited or no service. None of the reports outlined the degree of damage to specific facilities.
Other assessments have been cobbled together by engineers based on reports from local agencies, photographs and, in some cases, personal observations. Engineers at the University of Tokyo listed 17 bridges that had been washed away by the tsunami; five sewage plants either damaged or destroyed; flooding at one damaged dam; and dozens of landslides and deposits of debris that have closed roads. In one case, they reported tsunami damage along an 18-mile stretch of coastal roads south of Iwaki.
A report by an engineer at Tokai University in Shizuoka, south of Tokyo, was more anecdotal, with photographs of roads blocked by landslides or warped as the ground underneath them subsided; rail lines tossed about like strands of spaghetti; collapsed electrical pylons; sewage plants buried in debris; and, in Sendai, huge storage tanks toppled over at a brewery.
A few engineers who study tsunamis lived through the disaster and described the destruction around them. Shunichi Koshimura, a researcher at the tsunami engineering laboratory at Tohoku University, and others reported that the lab was effectively destroyed and that much of the university was heavily damaged.
A day after the quake, Dr. Koshimura, who published a study last year about coastal effects of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, tried to conduct a field study by car of the damage in the flatlands around Sendai but was turned back by debris and water.
Kit Miyamoto, an earthquake engineer born in Tokyo and living in San Francisco, was in Tokyo when the quake occurred. His flight home delayed and able to obtain the necessary permits, he drove up to the affected coast.
In an interview, Dr. Miyamoto described coastal rail lines that were swept away by the tsunami, and said the vast majority of the buildings that were destroyed were made of wood. “Almost all concrete and steel structures survived,” he said, though they were often heavily damaged.
Dr. Miyamoto said some infrastructure in the area appeared to make the disaster worse. In the city of Rikuzentakata, one of the worst hit, a concrete channel funneled the tsunami surge, increasing its speed, height and destructive power.
“Construction like that makes things more dangerous,” he said.
-NYTimes
Two Japanese travellers were briefly sent to hospital in China with radiation levels well above normal levels after they arrived in the eastern city of Wuxi on Wednesday on a flight from Tokyo, China’s safety watchdog said.
A doctor at a hospital in the nearby city of Suzhou told AFP the pair were checked, “decontaminated” and released, and the safety watchdog said they did not pose any threat to other travellers.
The pair hospitalised Thursday were installing cables in the basement of the third reactor’s turbine building when they stepped into water containing iodine, caesium and cobalt 10,000 times the normal level, TEPCO said.
The men, aged in their 20s and 30s, were wearing radiation suits but had on ill-fitting shoes, and they had ignored a warning alarm from their dosimeters, “assuming a problem with the device”, a TEPCO official said.
