Radiation is Scary, Isn’t It! (放射線怖いですね)

When I suggested to an American advisee of mine, who had equipped herself with a Geiger counter to check her food after shopping here in Tokyo, that she take the Geiger counter along to the store, she said she thought it would draw too much negative attention. But, I thought, Japanese customers and store employees are all free agents. They live with the same radiation risks that anyone else does. Why would they be offended? Might Geiger counters be bad for business? Maybe. But ethically, no one would deny the importance of knowing, and being Japanese should do nothing to change that basic human ethic.

So I tried bringing my own radiation counter (by the way, I didn’t realize it was not a Geiger counter, but an electromagnetic wave counter, so be careful what you buy that is advertised on Amazon! I have to go out and make another purchase now.) to the local 八百屋 (green grocer). When I pulled out my little gismo, I heard the store tender say to his colleague, “That guy is using one of those things for measuring radiation.” I turned and asked him, “Wanna see it?” and before long everyone in the store was gathering to see that the spinach was not irradiated at all (which of course I don’t know because I had the wrong gismo). The green grocer was really happy that I had brought this little devise as one of his customers retorted, “There you have it! See? These vegetables are all safe.” Well, clearly nobody was offended that I brought my radiation counter, but I better get a real Geiger counter and go back and give them some accurate readings!

But as I was leaving, the grocer who was giving me my bag of vegetables and taking my money said to me, ｢放射線こわいですね｣ (Houshasen, kowai desu ne—radiation is scary, isn’t it?). Why would he think anything else? He has to eat vegetables too. Yes, the act of measuring radiation at the green grocer is an attention getter. Some people might not like that sort of attention. But I feel we need to realize we are all in the same boat? What good would it do a grocer to make hand over fist on sales but die of cancer from eating the same irradiated food? When radiation is in food, nobody wants to eat it, and nobody really wants to sell that stuff either. Of course news of radiation is bad news, but bad news can be life-saving, so no intelligent person hates the messenger. When I get my real Geiger counter, I’m going back there.