Posted December 23, 2011 by Jonelle Patrick1 Comment Just another day in Japan

A Little Radiation Reading With Your Beer?

The other night at our end-of term drinking party, my classmate Garry whipped out his pocket Geiger counter to check the radiation levels at the always-excellent Ushitora beer bar in Shimo-Kitazawa. Fortunately, the only reading that was high by the end of the evening was everyone’s blood alcohol level.

Garry works for a company that sells these pocket monitors, and they’ve been doing a serious amount of business since hot spots started randomly showing up in Setagaya ward. First there was the one that was explained away as leftover vials of radium abandoned in a basement after a watchmaker dealing in glow-in-the-dark watch faces went out of business, but the most recent one still raises questions. Apparently, these might keep turning up, as wind and rain pick up contaminated material and waft it far afield. Nobody is panicking, but having your own monitoring equipment might well become the latest cool accessory. We’ll know for sure when Louis Vuitton starts selling little leather cases for them.

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Read a novel set in Tokyo…

A young woman dressed as a Gothic Lolita is found dead in a car with a pair of strangers. But the more Yumi Hata learns about her friend’s death, the more she’s convinced it was murder…*read more*

Jonelle Patrick View All

Writing mystery books set in Tokyo is mostly what I do, but I also blog about the odd stuff I see every day in Japan. I'm a graduate of Stanford University and the Sendagaya Japanese Institute in Tokyo, and a member of the International Thriller Writers, the Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters In Crime. When I'm not in Tokyo, I live in San Francisco. I also host a travel site called The Tokyo Guide I Wish I'd Had, so if you're headed to Japan and want to check out the places I take my friends when they're in town, take a look!