ScribbleLive

@ian - around 7pm Japan time

teppycam is gone at least.

China, S. Korea leaders show support for Japan near Fukushima plant

TOKYO, May 21, Kyodo

Chinese and South Korean leaders visited near the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Saturday and munched on some local farm produce together with Prime Minister Naoto Kan to show their support for Japan's reconstruction efforts.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and South Korean President Lee Myung Bak sampled the produce after being welcomed by Kan at a gymnasium in Fukushima city, where evacuees of the nuclear crisis are taking shelter, after touring other areas devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

It was the first visit by foreign leaders to the city, situated about 60 kilometers from the nuclear plant, since the tsunami knocked out its reactor cooling systems, leading to radiation leaks and the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents.

Before entering the gymnasium to offer words of encouragement to the evacuees, Kan guided them to a table of locally grown vegetables and fruit.

The leaders tasted cherries grown in the city and some other farm produce from nearby, including tomatoes and cucumbers.

''Very delicious,'' Wen told reporters with a smile before he left for Tokyo to commence an annual summit of the three countries.

Wen also said that China is ready to ease restrictions on Japanese agricultural products as long as they are safe.

Back in Tokyo, Kan told reporters before hosting a dinner banquet for Wen and Lee, ''With the two leaders visiting disaster-hit sites and evacuation centers, their warm feelings really came through. I'm very glad they came.''

The visits by Wen and Lee to Fukushima were strongly desired by Kan at a time when he is still struggling to restore domestic and international confidence in Japan's ability to ensure the safety not only of its nuclear facilities but its products in general.

Kan is hoping that the get-together in Fukushima will help to dispel rumors that Japan and its products are unsafe due to radioactive contamination from the plant, located on the Pacific coast around 220 kilometers northeast of Tokyo.

Before meeting Kan in Fukushima in the afternoon, Wen and Lee traveled separately to areas in Miyagi Prefecture, also hard hit by the 9.0 magnitude quake and ensuing tsunami.

Both offered flowers and a moment of silence during their tours of the prefecture. China and South Korea quickly sent rescue teams and necessary supplies to the area after the twin natural disasters, which killed at least 15,000 people and left around 10,000 others missing mostly in the northeastern region of Tohoku.

Wearing a navy blue work jacket, Lee went to the tsunami-stricken city of Natori to learn more about the damage and expressed his sympathy directly to some of the local residents.

''I hope that Japan will quickly rebuild,'' Lee said, as he was being briefed by Natori officials.

During the two-day trilateral summit, which formally started with the dinner banquet in Tokyo on Saturday night, Kan will seek to persuade China and South Korea to review their import restrictions on Japanese food products imposed following the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

Compared with industrial products, Japan's food exports to China and South Korea as well as to other parts of the world are minor, but the Japanese government and the private sector are concerned about the negative ripple effects throughout the economy if the country's image is affected by prolonged import restrictions.

The three leaders are expected to agree that ensuring the smooth flow of goods and people between the three countries, which now account for nearly 20 percent of global gross domestic product, is essential for Japan's recovery.

But it remains to be seen to what extent the three countries will be able to agree on the scope of how to deal with the current restrictions on Japanese food at their fourth trilateral summit, at which the leaders will announce measures to improve disaster management and nuclear safety.

Japan's ties with the two countries from time to time have become strained over historical and territorial issues. But as Kan himself said at a news conference this week, Tokyo's bonds with Beijing and Seoul have deepened since the natural calamities.

The trilateral summit was first held in 1999 as an informal breakfast gathering on the sidelines of a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus the three countries.

China and South Korea agreed in 2008 to hold three-way meetings every year in their countries in rotation as a way to strengthen mutual trust and cooperation in a future-oriented manner.

==Kyodo

why not send these old men into the plant ? to prove everything is wonderful. or bath in sfp 4 ?

see ya ..... next week in chernobyl.

Live cam still working (and plant still there) www.youtube.com

@Ian - scribble has a logic all its own with times, as indeed it does woth enter too.

Re Edano's pic, are those tomatoes glowing??

LOL!

@Maureen Burke We get pink sunsets in SD but they look nothing like the photos of FUKU. The pink it clearly in the distance in the sky at the horizon and doesn't give objects on the ground a pink hue.

For anyone that speaks/reads Japanese.....TBS was working on a new cam the other day from the South East of the plant. I am wondering if they put it up on Youtube at a different place than the one we currently view ? Wondered if somebody that read the language could look at the TBS cam site and check ?

@jt re cam shot -yes but it was the same cam - Dainii is visible from there. i saw the cam pan round between the 2 several times

@UKVal, no this was a 2nd cam that they had someplace South East of the plant, it is more south than the Teppy cam is, and it sees the ocean side of the plant very well. They were trying it out, and switching back and forth for about an hour, then went back to the regular cam. My thought is that they would put it up as a 2nd live feed.

@jt, never seen it that pink before on that cam !!!

Oh dear I think we're at cross purposes! @jt - the pink isn't what i was posting about, it was an event half hour before the float shots @wtm -yes would be goood to see pics from 2nd cam - only seen it once

@wtm goo is green -seen on video

Teppy cam is NOT working, did you mean TBS cam ?

@Ian My screenshots were in the morning at sunrise. I didn't see the evening event.

@Edano, didn't you have a contact over at TBS? Possibly they can look at prior footage and see the event ?

@JT, no...There is Teppy cam (TEPCO's company cam) and then the TBS/JNN cam, which is up in the mountains (TBS cam)

@Ian, Yes but people on this list call it Tippy