150,000+ to Noda: “Saikado hantai!” ("We oppose the restart of the reactors!")

The Asahi Shimbun has reported that "Even [Prime Minister] Noda [was] startled by [the] size of [the] anti-nuclear protest outside his office" last Friday evening. What began as 300 people protesting weekly outside his Tokyo office last March had grown to 45,000 by June 22nd after he had approved the first atomic reactor restarts (at Ohi nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture) in Japan since the beginning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe. But the Friday evening, June 29th rally was of unprecedented and historic size, with estimates ranging from 150,000 to 180,000 protestors. "Listen to the people's voices," one protestor was reported to have said. Prime Minister Noda was overheard saying to a police officer guarding him “It is such a huge sound.”

Simultaneously, protests took place across the country, including a rally of 2,200 at Kansai Electric Power Company headquarters in Osaka, and several hundred at the Ohi nuclear power plant itself. A blockade of the front entrance at Ohi nuclear power plant forced a government minister sent to witness the restart to enter the nuclear power plant by ferry boat, as vehicular traffic was blocked.