Flu season is upon us. Take care! -- Kirk
2026-10-05 09:48 JST 2026 Flu season is upon us. Take care! -- Kirk Flu Spreads in Quake-Hit Kumamoto as Japan Sees Early Outbreak - JIJI PRESSNEWS,JIJI PRESS,jiji.com https://jen.jiji.com/jc/i?g=eco&k=2026100300281 ↗ View original post on Bluesky ← 2026-10-04 15:29 JST 2026-10-05 11:23 JST → Around this time … 2026-10-05 11:34 JSTThis is from about a week ago but I think the situation is largely unchanged. Here in a part of Kumamoto City that has not been severely affected, it's easy to forget that the suffering is ongoing. -- KirkOver 1,500 still in shelters two months after Kumamoto quake 2026-10-05 11:23 JSTThis article is a bit fuzzy about who owns the land, who performs the work, who pays, and what agreements make it possible, but at the very least Suntory seems to be quite interested in recharging the aquifer and conserving water. -- KirkSuntory’s collaborative approach to water stewardship 2026-10-05 09:48 JSTFlu season is upon us. Take care! -- KirkFlu Spreads in Quake-Hit Kumamoto as Japan Sees Early Outbreak - JIJI PRESS (this post) 2026-10-04 15:29 JSTBack in the old days when travel was mostly by sea, Amakusa was closer to Shimabara than it was to Kumamoto proper. The Facebook page Samurai Legacy has a piece on Amakusa Shiro, a Christian convert who in 1637 led a rebellion against the nascent Tokugawa shogunate, which was duly crushed; he was executed at the age of 17 and his head was displayed on a pike near Nagasaki as a warning to Christians. A statue of his is erected in Amakusa.Per the Facebook post:In 1637, the peasants of Shimabara and the Amakusa islands stopped paying. Taxes had been set at a level the land could not produce, collection was brutal, and Christianity had been outlawed in a region full of Christians.What they did not have was anyone who knew how to fight a war.They chose a sixteen-year-old named Amakusa Shiro. His father had served a lord who lost everything at Sekigahara, which left the son a masterless nobody — but still, by birth, a samurai. He could have kept his head down and waited for a household to take him in. Men in his position did exactly that.He took command of about 37,000 farmers instead.They seized an abandoned castle at Hara and held it for three months against an army of over 120,000 while the shogunate ran out of ideas and eventually borrowed Dutch cannon to shell it from the sea.He was seventeen when it ended. Japan stayed closed to the outside world for the next 200 years. ‐ William 2026-10-04 10:02 JSTI think a lot of people found their visit to be very encouraging. I'm glad they were able to come. -- KirkImperial couple visit quake-hit Kumamoto to meet with disaster victims - The Mainichi 2026-10-04 09:37 JSTIt shouldn't be surprising that earthquakes can disrupt how water flows underground as much as they disrupt life at the surface. During the 2016 quakes, flow from the springs that feed Suizenji declined but then recovered. I'm hoping for a similar recovery here. -- KirkResidents in Yatsushiro face well water issues following July earthquake 2026-10-04 07:57 JSTKumamoto's Kengun SDF base has a collection of old buildings dating back to WWII in which Mitsubishi built Zero fighters. The buildings are not of much use now and there has been talk of dismantingling them to make better use of the space, but thought of preservation has halted any movement towards that end.Still, one has appeared to have been used to store the long-range Type-25 surface-to-ship guided missile, which is able to hit targets as far away as China and North Korea. Some say this makes Kumamoto a target should push come to button-pushing. Japan Today has more. https://japantoday.com/category/national/japan-gsdf-displays-long-range-type-25-missile-equipment-to-public - William 2026-10-03 20:52 JSTThe article says that, among other things, how increases in water temperatures and loss of seaweed beds are affecting the dolphins in Amakusa will be studied. Researchers from the University of Sydney are also expected to participate. -- Kirkmainichi.jp/english/arti...Japan city, MUFG Bank to launch satellite-based study of local dolphins - The Mainichi