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Geopolitics

Japan: Thousands March On Parliament To Demand A Ban On Nuclear Power

JAPAN TIMES, ASAHI SHIMBUN, JAPAN TODAY(Japan)

Worldcrunch

TOKYO – Thousands of people gathered in Tokyo on Sunday to form a human chain around the parliament building, to protest against the reopening of nuclear power plants, after the Fukushima disaster reports the Japan Times.

Event organizers said 200,000 people attended, though police estimates put that number at under 20,000 according to the Asahi Shimbun. This is the latest in more than four months of demonstrations. The number of protesters increased sharply in late June after the Japanese government announced it had decided to restart two reactors at the Oi nuclear plant.

The two reactors were the first to return to operation since May, said Japan Today, when the last of Japan's 50 reactors went offline for security check-ups.

According to the website, there haven't been such massive demonstrations since the 1960's. Japanese people usually don't demonstrate, said Shoji Kitano, a 64-year-old retired math teacher, but they are outraged over the restarting of nuclear power.

What is surprising, said the Japan Times, is that for the first time, protesters are not just anti-nuclear activists, but also many ordinary citizens. Some of the participants said they were attending a rally for the first time.

Candlelight vigils have been held outside the Prime Minister Noda's residence every Friday evening.

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Society

Why Every New Parent Should Travel Alone — Without Their Children

Argentine journalist Ignacio Pereyra travels to Italy alone to do some paperwork as his family stays behind. While he walks alone around Rome, he experiences mixed feelings: freedom, homesickness and nostalgia, and wonders what leads people to desire larger families.

Photo of a man sitting donw with his luggage at Athens' airport

Alone at Athens' international airport

Ignacio Pereyra

I realize it in the morning before leaving: I feel a certain level of excitement about traveling. It feels like enthusiasm, although it is confusing. I will go from Athens to Naples to see if I can finish the process for my Italian citizenship, which I started five years ago.

I started the process shortly after we left Buenos Aires, when my partner Irene and I had been married for two years and the idea of having children was on the vague but near horizon.

Now there are four of us and we have been living in Greece for more than two years. We arrived here in the middle of the pandemic, which left a mark on our lives, as in the lives of most of the people I know.

But now it is Sunday morning. I tell Lorenzo, my four-year-old son, that I am leaving for a few days: “No, no, Dad. You can’t go. Otherwise I’ll throw you into the sea.”

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