Weekly Update: News on Japan & the Netherlands – Week 50, 2020

Facing a coronavirus resurgence, Osaka Prefecture has decided to raise its original virus alert level from “yellow” to “red,” meaning “emergency” and a first since the system was implemented in May, as it asked residents to refrain from nonessential outings from 4 until 15 December.

Businesses, which had been asked to shorten operating hours and close by 9 p.m. until 11 December, will extend the duration of its request until the 15th. They will receive four extra days of government funding to total 580,000 yen. Recently, trips to Osaka have been excluded from the central government’s Go To Travel campaign and residents of Osaka are asked to refrain from using the campaign.

Osaka Gov Hirofumi Yoshimura said Monday he has asked the central government to send nurses from the Self-Defense Forces to the city due to a shortage of healthcare workers attending to patients suffering severe coronavirus cases.

Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi told Yoshimura that his ministry is ready to send several nurses to a temporary medical facility for COVID-19 patients to be launched in Osaka next week, the governor told reporters. He has also ordered the Self-Defense Forces to send nurses to the prefecture of Hokkaido where they deal with a shotrage as well.

The package is the first drawn up to fight the pandemic since Suga took office in mid-September. It came as Japan has seen record numbers of new coronavirus cases, seriously ill patients and daily death tolls in recent weeks, raising concern over the strain on the medical system.

The government will extend its financial support measure for companies to late February. The measure was due to expire at the year-end. They will also increase subsidies to help local governments make up for losses suffered by restaurants and bars that comply with requests to shorten their operating hours. Financial support for medical institutions will be raised as well so they can secure more beds for COVID-19 patients.

Among policy measures to bolster longer-term economic growth, 2 trillion yen will be earmarked to set up a fund for firms developing green technologies such as next-generation batteries, hydrogen fuel and carbon recycling over the next decade, as the country seeks to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. About 1 trillion yen will be set aside to promote digitalization.

So far in the current fiscal year, Japan’s parliament has already passed two extra budgets totaling 57.60 trillion yen to finance economic stimulus steps in the fight against the pandemic. Among the past measures were 100,000 yen cash handouts to all of Japan’s 126 million residents.

As a result, Japan’s total budget for fiscal 2020 has swelled to over 160 trillion yen even before the compilation of a third extra budget, fueling fear of further deterioration in its fiscal health. The country’s public debt already exceeded 1,100 trillion yen as of the end of fiscal 2019, more than double its gross domestic product, the worst ratio among major developed countries.

While the six-year mission has so far proceeded smoothly, Kuninaka revealed that the agency had considered changing the date for the retrieval of the capsule due to the coronavirus pandemic. “We made the decision to show the world that we were ready to recover (the capsule) at any cost,” he said.

A sealed container within the capsule, believed to be with samples from the Ryugu asteroid, about 300 million kilometers away from Earth, will also enable trapped gases to be analyzed. JAXA will open the capsule in a vacuum at a special facility to prevent any potential contamination and confirm whether it has actually brought back samples from the asteroid.

“What had been on another (world) is now in front of our eyes. It’s like a dream,” Yuichi Tsuda, the Hayabusa2 project manager told reporters. Referring to the space probe, which is currently on its next journey to a different asteroid, he said that Hayabusa2 “worked really hard.”

The capsule, which was released from the space probe on Saturday afternoon, landed in a desert near the Woomera Prohibited Area, a remote Australian military and civil aerospace facility.

Gas samples believed to be from the asteroid were collected in a preliminary analysis conducted Monday in Australia, but Hayabusa2 mission manager Makoto Yoshikawa said JAXA cannot yet determine whether they are from Ryugu.

A rocket carrying Hayabusa2 was launched from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center in December 2014 to look for clues about the formation of the solar system and the origin of life. The Ryugu asteroid’s subsurface rock, unaffected by solar flares, is believed to have remained in the same state since the solar system was formed 4.6 billion years ago.

The probe reached Ryugu in June 2018 before touching down on it twice the following year. It apparently succeeded in collecting the first-ever asteroid subsurface samples after creating an artificial crater by shooting a copper projectile at the asteroid, according to JAXA.

But the ministry says this cannot be achieved with current efforts. It says a change in people’s lifestyles and innovative technological development will be necessary to achieve the goal.

Japan’s last outbreak of bird flu was in January 2018 in Kagawa Prefecture, when 91,000 chickens were culled. The last big outbreak was between November 2016 and March 2017, when a total of 1.67 million chickens were culled due to the H5N6 strain of bird flu.

Bird flu is being reported around the world, with South Korea last week confirming another case in an outbreak that has led to the culling of around 400,000 chickens and ducks. In Europe, the poultry industry is on alert as a highly contagious bird flu, deadly to animals, is spreading rapidly on the continent.

Panasonic has already begun the first phase of the test that is scheduled to run until the end of December, putting the self-driving robot on a public road within the designated area called the Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town, located in Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture.

In the second phase, the robot will deliver food and daily necessities purchased at shops to residents in the area between February and March. The robot can avoid obstacles on its own but it will be remotely controlled when self-driving is not possible, according to Panasonic.

Panasonic is involved in a public-private sector panel to discuss the reworking of the legal framework to accommodate self-driving delivery vehicles. Testing of autonomous vehicles on a public road including such delivery robots requires permission from local police. In October, Japan Post Co started public road trial runs in Tokyo of self-driving delivery robots.

The Prime Minister pointed out that neighboring countries are also discussing stricter restrictions. It emerged on Tuesday that advisors in Germany were advocating for a full lockdown in that country to break the second wave of infections.

Rutte encouraged people to stay home as much as possible, follow hygiene guidelines, and to do all Christmas shopping alone. Health Minister Hugo de Jonge said it all comes down to people’s behavior. “Ultimately, it is about compliance rather than enforcement. That we consider for ourselves whether or not we really need to go out and about,” De Jonge said.

“Maybe we will get a little more space by mid-January. That is still possible, but we have to get there together.” Should the intensive care figures fall to a rolling average of ten, Rutte said it might be possible to reopen bars, cafes and restaurants to some degree for the first time since mid-October.

The Outbreak Management Team was also looking into expanding team sport participation so that people up to 27 years of age can participate. Currently, that is limited to people up to age 18.

But for this to work, affiliated travel agencies and organizations need to stop issuing new vouchers as soon as possible. “From now on, immediately rebook or refund if a trip cannot take place.

The extensive package is offered at a discounted rate to people who earn a gross income of about 28,300 euros annually, and in some cases the monthly premium and deductible are partially subsidized by the city, information provided by the insurer showed.

All masks will be delivered before the end of the month. The city will continue to distribute free disposable masks through the food banks in the municipality to help anyone who cannot afford a mask, and has also teamed up with Hema and Vegro to allow masks to be purchased with different assistance programs.

“Competition plays the biggest role in this, especially among first-time homeowners and consumers with a budget up to € 400,000,” says Schevernels. Numbers show that competition has increased in this area.

Schevernels adds that this leads to concessions being made. “69% of consumers who expect to succeed, think that it will only work if they adjust plans. That actually means that most consumers in this market find a house that is different from what they were originally looking for.”

Housing preferences are not the only aspect that has been affected by the coronacrisis. The Funda Index shows that timing has changed as well. About half of consumers want to change their buying or selling plans as a result of a change in working habits, as people are working from home.

For both buyers and sellers, this has mostly led to a push forward on their agendas. A small number have decided to postpone their plans due to the pandemic. Schevernels says that the push forward is still following existing trends in the market. “It is still far too early to say that a less tight market is in sight. But if this continues, it could provide some relaxation on the market,” he adds.

“This expansion is in line with the project’s international ambitions,” Cas Konig, CEO of Groningen Seaports, said to the newspaper. Groningen Seaports, Gasunie, and Shell together launched NortH2 in February. “We always had the plan to make the consortium international. The reason we started with the three of us is that we wanted speed.”

Konig is delighted with their new partners. “Equinor is a very large player in the offshore wind sector. So that was a natural choice. This also applies to RWE, an energy giant with strong hydrogen ambitions.”

Anders Opedal, CEO of Equinor, called NortH2 a groundbreaking project that is important for his company’s goal of being CO2 neutral by 2050. RWE CEO Roger Miesen said that Groningen’s ambitions tie in well with his company’s plans for green hydrogen. RWE wants to build an electrolyser for the production of green hydrogen in Eemshaven in the Netherlands and in Lingen in Germany.

The biggest doubts surrounding this project are about the large amount of extra green energy it will require. But according to Konig, that is exactly why NortH2 is involving the entire chain in the power production field. “Of course, the large-scale wind and hydrogen production will not happen overnight. But if you want something done the day after tomorrow, you have to start doing it today.”