6 Nara deer deaths attributed to plastic in stomachs; tourists cautioned to feed animals properly – Nara
One of the highlights of a visit to Nara is the chance to walk amongst the city’s free-roaming deer. And with more than two million foreign visitors last year alone, some of the deer in the area have been so well-fed by day trippers that they find it hard to stand on their feet during holiday periods.
However, it appears that some tourists have been feeding these nationally protected animals something other than the deer-friendly senbei crackers sold by vendors in the area. According to a recent report from the Nara Deer Welfare Association, the animals have been eating plastic, which has led to the deaths of a number of deer in recent months.
A veterinarian from the association said a sickly looking deer was found near Todaiji temple in Nara Park on March 23, and although they attempted to feed it, it refused to eat. The severely weak 17-year-old female deer–which weighed 30 kilograms, 10 kilograms below the healthy weight range–died the next day. An autopsy revealed that the stomach of the animal was almost entirely filled with hardened material that looked like a clump of polyethylene bags. The mass weighed 3.2 kilograms.
Like cows and sheep, deer chew their cud as part of a process called rumination in order to digest nutrients in plant-based foods. The food first enters the rumen, one of their four-chambered stomachs, where it’s broken down by bacteria before being regurgitated for the animal to chew in order to be fully digested. However, the accumulation of so many bags inside the deer’s stomach made it unable to regurgitate, digest, and ingest new food, resulting in its death.
The association is now appealing to the public to help save the deer from themselves by being more careful with what they allow the deer to eat. Signs around Nara clearly state that deer should not be fed anything other than deer senbei, but there have been sightings of tourists holding out plastic bags with food for the deer to eat, and cases where deer bite into plastic bags carried by tourists. Deer are unable to tell the difference between food and plastic, and if tourists are carrying food or sweets inside plastic bags, which are at nose-height for the animals, the deer’s keen sense of smell will lead them to believe the bag and its contents are both edible food.
Japan to open up job fields for foreigners graduating from universities – Nationwide
The immigration agency said Tuesday it will open up the business sectors foreigners are allowed to work in after graduating from universities or completing postgraduate studies in Japan, in the latest effort to lure more laborers to the country. Under a revised Justice Ministry notification, to take effect Thursday, foreign graduates will become able to work at restaurants, retail shops and factory production lines under the “Designated Activities” status of residence. Up to now, such graduates have usually acquired the “Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services” visa to work in jobs such as engineers and accountants, according to the Immigration Services Agency.
The status has not permitted work in the services sector and at factories on the grounds that they are irrelevant to their expertise. Therefore, the agency has decided to add such jobs to the list of activities allowed to engage in by the holders of the Designated Activities visa. Under the plan, the revised Designated Activities visa will be issued on condition that the students will be ensured full-time employment and equal or higher payment compared with Japanese colleagues. They must also have a high level of Japanese language proficiency.
Japan is stepping up efforts to bring in more workers from abroad to cope with a chronic labour shortage due to the country’s rapidly graying population and declining birthrate, with new visa statuses introduced in the country last month to bring in blue-collar workers to labour-hungry sectors.
Japanese firms resist hiring foreign workers under new immigration law: poll – Nationwide
Only one in four Japanese companies plan to actively employ foreign workers under a new government immigration scheme, a Reuters poll found, complicating Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s efforts to ease the country’s tightest job market in decades. And the bulk of the firms that may hire these immigrants do not plan to support them in securing housing, learning Japanese language skills or getting information on living in Japan, the Reuters Corporate Survey showed.
The survey results underscore the challenge for Japan to cope with its dwindling and aging population that has put pressure on the government to relax tight foreign labour controls. Immigration has long been a taboo here as many Japanese prize ethnic homogeneity. The lack of language ability, cultural gap, costs of training, mismatches in skills and the fact that many foreign workers cannot stay permanently in Japan under the new system were among factors behind corporate wariness about hiring foreign workers, the Reuters poll showed.
The law, which took effect in April, creates two new categories of visas for blue-collar workers in 14 sectors such as construction and nursing care, which face a labour crunch. It is meant to attract up to 345,000 blue-collar workers to Japan over five years. But the survey suggests the government may struggle to get the workers it needs to ease the country’s labour shortage where there are now 1.63 jobs available for every job seeker, the most since the beginning of 1974.
Some 41% of firms are not considering hiring foreigners at all, 34% are not planning to hire many and 26% intend to hire such foreign workers, the survey conducted from May 8-17 showed. Of those considering hiring foreign workers, a majority said they have no plans to support them in areas such as housing, Japanese language study and information on living in the country, it showed. The survey, conducted monthly for Reuters by Nikkei Research, polled 477 large- and mid-size firms, with managers responding on condition of anonymity. Around 220 answered the questions on foreign workers.
