A Little Different Perspective...: Kyushu Trip

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Kyushu Trip - Desserts

It's been over 6 weeks since mum and dad got back from their Kyushu trip. You probably surprised that there were nothing posted about the trip. It is just difficult to put everything into words and the dithering has led us here, i.e. nowhere. Lets just look at their photos and imagine.

By the way, where is Kyushu? It is in the southern part of Japan, third largest island. And yes, they went there 1 month after the big earthquake and all the news about the nuclear plant failure. So most of their friends reckoned they were nuts. But if you look at a world map, Fukuoka, Kyushu's capital is about the same distance away from the Fukushima nuclear plant as Seoul in South Korea.

And radiation?! You might like to consider the following facts and numbers. (μSv = microsieverts)
Mid size Banana - 0.1 μSv per banana {source}
Smoking cigarettes - 1 to 5 μSv per cigarette {source}
Dental X-ray - 5 μSv per shot {source}
Transatlantic flight - 100 μSv per return trip {source}
nb Hence airlines need to monitor flight personnel's the equivalent does of radiation from their professional activities. No such monitoring or jet setting executives.
CT Scan for Abdomen and Pelvis - 15000 μSv per session {source}
nb Whenever Dr Gregory House prescribes a CT Scan to his dying patient in the TV Series, House, it's like stuffing his patient with 150,000 bananas' worth of radiation down the patient's body. Food for thought indeed.

The list just goes on and on. But surely going to Tokyo even for a few days must be bad for you with all its nuclear plant radiation. In fact you will not suffer any net increase in radiation exposure by staying in Tokyo vs coming to Hong Kong. And it is all to do with background radiation. Hong Kong's very own background radiation {click here for latest readings} is about the same as Tokyo, 2 weeks after the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, about 0.1 μSv per hour (about 1000 μSv per annum). In fact if you are lucky enough to live by the hillside in Hong Kong, the background radiation from Radon, seeping through the ground from the granite below, will be much higher. [ref. UK's average background radiation = 0.3 μSv per hour but Cornwall's background radiation = 0.9 μSv per hour]

So anyone who suffered panic attacks from the nuclear meltdown and decided to fly from Tokyo and retreat to scenic Cornwall would have short changed himself massively.

On that thought, lets look at the desserts' photos.