Ten months after a tsunami devastated parts of Japan, some of the island nation’s debris has washed up on North American shores, according to news reports.

On Vancouver Island, B.C., The Sun newspaper reported that wreckage from Japan began appearing this month. "In or around Dec. 5th the first item or two of some consequence was found," Tofino Mayor Perry Schmunk told the newspaper. "Some lumber came ashore that had Japanese export stamps on it."

Two weeks ago, CNN affiliate KIRO in Seattle showed video footage of what it said was debris from the March 11 tsunami - at least 10 Japanese buoys - on the Washington coast. “That’s about as good as the evidence gets for first arrivals,” retired oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer told KIRO.

More reports of mundane Japanese items - such as bottles and toothbrushes - popping up along North American shores are beginning to emerge.

But that’s just the beginning, experts say.

Physicist Michio Kaku said Thursday that it is vital to understand the sheer size of the Japanese debris field in the Pacific Ocean.

“First, you have to understand the size and scope of this problem. The debris field from this Japanese tragedy is the size of the state of California,” he said.

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Researchers in Hawaii who predicted that a wave of debris from Japan’s March 11 tsunami may hit Hawaiian shores by 2013 are preparing studies that may allow more precise forecasts.

The preparations come a month after a Russian ship found “unmistakable tsunami debris” – including a refrigerator, a TV and a damaged 20-foot fishing vessel – in the Pacific Ocean between Japan and the Midway Atoll, according to the International Pacific Research Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

The fishing boat had markings that indicated it came from Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture, the university said.

“The most important thing the (Russian ship did in September) did was provide solid proof of the existence of the tsunami debris,” researcher Nikolai Maximenko said Wednesday. “Soon we hope to have better information and to make exact forecasts for the landfall of debris for Midway (Atoll).”

Maximenko and fellow researcher Jan Hafner predicted in April – using computer models developed from observations of how buoys drift in the ocean – that some of the debris that the tsunami carried away would reach the Hawaiian islands by 2013. Some debris would then hit the western U.S. and Canadian coasts by 2014 before bouncing back toward Hawaii for a second impact.

They also predict that some of the smaller, lighter debris such as plastic bottles could reach the Midway Atoll, more than 1,200 miles northwest of Hawaii, by this winter.

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Officials in Yokohama, Japan’s second largest city, are investigating soil samples after a radioactive substance was found in sediment atop an apartment building about 155 miles (250 kilometers)  from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, according to news reports.

The discovery has raised concerns that leaked radiation from three Fukushima reactors that suffered meltdowns after the March earthquake and tsunami may be more widespread than thought, The Japan Times reported Wednesday.

The findings come after a travel alert issued by the U.S. government last week, warning Americans in Japan to avoid areas near the stricken reactors.

The alert recommends that U.S. citizens stay away from areas within 20 kilometers (12 miles) of the nuclear facility. The State Department also admonished Americans to stay away from territory northwest of the plant in a zone that Japan calls the "Deliberate Evacuation Area." The zone includes Iitate-mura, the Yamagiya district of Kawamata-machi, Katsurao-mura, Namie-machi and parts of Minamisoma.

The radioactive isotope strontium-90 was detected on a rooftop by a private agency responding to a resident's request, The Japan Times reported.

Strontium-90 has been found in Japan at concentrations up to 20 becquerels before the nuclear crisis, The Japan Times said. The latest discovery found the strontium-90 level at 195 becquerels, according to the paper.

Since strontium-90, which has a half-life of 29 years, is widely dispersed in the environment and the food chain in trace amounts, external exposure is minimal, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. With internal exposure at high concentrations, strontium-90 can accumulate in the bones and is “one of the more hazardous constituents of nuclear wastes,” according to the EPA.

Meanwhile Wednesday, Tokyo Electric Power Co., the embattled utility whose territory includes the nuclear crisis zone, held a disaster drill at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power, according to news reports.

After the March 11 earthquake and tsunami off Japan damaged the Fukushima Daichi nuclear reactor, the Japanese government was presented with a scenario which would have required the evacuation of half of Tokyo and the entire width of the main island of Honshu, former Prime Minister Naota Kan says in an interview with Kyodo News.

The evacuation zone would have covered all areas within 200 to 250 kilometers (125 to 155 miles) of the nuclear reactor, meaning about 30 million people in Tokyo and its surrounding areas would have needed to be moved, according to the Kyodo report in The Japan Times.

Kan said he feared such an evacuation would have resulted in chaos, according to the report.

"I wasn't sure whether Japan could continue to function as a state," he is quoted as saying.

Kan also said Japan was not prepared for the disaster resulting from the 9.0-magnitude quake.

"We had never foreseen a situation in which a quake, tsunami and a nuclear plant accident would all happen at the same time," he is quoted as saying.

Kan resigned in August after widespread criticism of how his government handled the aftermath of the quake. His approval rating plummeted.

As of early September, more than 75,000 residents who live within 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) of the crippled nuclear plant were still unable to return to their homes because of high radiation levels.

Toshio Nishizawa, president of Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the Fukushima plant, has said he hopes to achieve the second phase of a cold shutdown of the plant before a January deadline.

An environmental group on Monday urged the incoming Japanese prime minister to delay the start of school near a nuclear plant crippled by a massive earthquake and tsunami six months ago.

Fukushima city schools are scheduled to reopen Thursday.

The March 11 disaster triggered the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, as cores overheated and spewed radioactive material into surrounding areas.

Greenpeace said the government's decontamination plan is lacking, adding that its team found average radiation doses remained high in areas decontaminated by the government.

The tsunami spawned from the March 11 earthquake off eastern Japan broke up parts of an Antarctic ice shelf that hadn't moved in 46 years, scientists say.

Though the tsunami waves were only about a foot high when they reached Antarctica, their consistency was enough to crack the 260-foot-thick ice and split off icebergs with combined surface areas more than twice the size of Manhattan from the Sulzberger Ice Shelf, the scientists report in a NASA statement.

It was the first time scientists have been able to tie icebergs directly to a tsunami, according to NASA.

The tsunami waves traveled 8,000 miles and took 18 hours to reach the ice shelf, the scientists said, giving them time to validate theories on how an earthquake can affect geography a hemisphere away.

"In the past we've had calving events where we've looked for the source. It's a reverse scenario – we see a calving and we go looking for a source," Kelly Brunt, a cryosphere specialist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said in the NASA statement. "We knew right away this was one of the biggest events in recent history – we knew there would be enough swell. And this time we had a source."

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At perhaps the most tense time in Sunday’s FIFA Women's World Cup final - preparations for the penalty kick shootout - TV cameras showed Japanese coach Norio Sasaki smiling and laughing with his players. Cameras focused on the U.S. women showed a different mood, with expressions of grit, focus and determination.

The contrast was stark, and that wasn’t a surprise to Sasaki.

"It seemed to me there was more pressure on the Americans," he said.

It was a remarkable moment for Japan, a country that has had little to smile about this year, and a keen insight from the coach of a team that had not beaten the Americans in 25 games.

But Sasaki’s assessment was spot-on.

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Three things you need to know today.

Hatch closed – At 9:19 a.m. ET on Monday, the hatch between the space shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station will be closed for the final time and the shuttle will prepare for a return to Earth.

Tomorrow, the shuttle will undock from the station and fly around it so visual inspections of both the space station and the shuttle's thermal protection system can be performed.

Atlantis is scheduled to land at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:06 a.m. on Wednesday, bringing an end to three decades of space shuttle flight.

Hot temperatures – A heat wave will continue to roast the country's midsection even as it spreads to the east, according to the National Weather Service.

The hottest spots from Oklahoma through South Dakota should see highs of more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and top temperatures are forecast in the 90s for most of the rest of the country - with the exception of some mountain and coastal regions, according to the weather service.

On Sunday, daily temperature records were broken from Alpena, Michigan, south to Miami, Florida.

"Heat index values" - how hot it feels outside - have been running over 125 degrees Fahrenheit in the worst-hit areas, the National Weather Service said. The scale designed to describe how intense heat feels also includes factors such as humidity.

Japan typhoon – Workers in Japan scrambled Monday to build a protective covering over a damaged nuclear reactor ahead of an approaching powerful typhoon, an energy company spokesman said.

Typhoon Ma-on  should strike Japan well south of the damaged No. 3 reactor at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

But the Tokyo Power Company, which is responsible for the plant wracked by the March 11 tsunami that struck northeast Japan, is constructing a "roof-like structure to prevent rain from entering holes on the turbine building," spokesman Satoshi Watanabe said.

The energy company says it aims to complete construction late Monday.

Japan's energy plan needs to be completely revised and must eliminate the nation's dependence on nuclear power, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Wednesday, according to The Daily Yomiuri.

"I have realized that nuclear accidents cannot be prevented completely with the conventional safety measures we have at present," he said.

It's a sharp about-face for Kan. His government approved a plan just last year that called for 14 new nuclear reactors by 2030 and an increase in nuclear energy production from 26% to 53% of total electricity generated, The Daily Yomiuri reported.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. planned Thursday to inject nitrogen into the last of the damaged reactors at the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Kyodo News Agency reported.

The inert gas will help stabilize the reactors as the utility aims for a cold shutdown by January at the latest, Kyodo reported.

TEPCO already has new water circulation systems working at all three reactors to keep their temperatures under control.

Meanwhile, the Fukushima municipal government says it plans to cleanse the entire city of radioactive contamination, Yomiuri Shimbun reported. The city is about 30 miles from the damaged plant.

The effort, which could take nearly 20 years to complete, would involve pressure-washing buildings and scraping off the top layer of soil.

Three things you need to know today.

Rangers' fan's funeral: Funeral services will be held Monday for a Texas man who died at a baseball game last week.

Shannon Stone will be buried in his hometown of Brownwood, Texas. The 39-year-old firefighter fell to his death Thursday while trying to catch a ball at a Texas Rangers game.

In the second inning of the ill-fated game, star outfielder Josh Hamilton tossed a souvenir ball into the stands after a batter hit a foul ball. Stone stuck out his glove and reached for the ball, but lost his balance and flipped over the railing of the outfield seats. He fell about 20 feet and crashed head-first into a scoreboard, suffering fatal injuries. Stone died of blunt-force trauma, according to the Tarrant County medical examiner.

Nuclear checks in Japan: Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano announced Monday a new round of safety tests for the country's nuclear plants in the government's latest bid to gain the public's confidence.

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Japanese nuclear safety officials say 45% of children in the prefecture where three nuclear reactors melted down had thyroid exposure to radiation, Kyodo news agency reported.

None of the 1,080 children surveyed was exposed to more than 0.2 microsievert per hour, the threshold for pursuing further examinations, and most were far less, officials told Kyodo, as reported in Japan Times.

That amount is not considered a health risk, officials said.

Meanwhile, soil at four locations in the city of Fukushima was contaminated with radioactive cesium at levels 1.5 to 4.5 times the legal limit, Kyodo reported. The city is well outside 12.5-mile evacuation zone around the stricken plant.

A sample of soil from a street ditch found radiation far in excess of the amount that required permanent resettlement in the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident, the agency reported.

Japan's government plans to require safety assessments, or "stress tests," on all the country's nuclear power plants, industry minister Banri Kaieda said Wednesday, according to Kyodo. All the plants have been shut down since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami disaster.

A Japanese electric utility is likely to pay more in damages for its ongoing nuclear crisis than all the profit it made off nuclear power over 38 years, a study says.

The study by Kenichi Oshima, an environmental economist at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, estimates that Tokyo Electric Power Co. earned nearly 4 trillion yen from the time the Fukushima 1 plant opened in 1970 until the end of the 2008 business year, the Kyodo News Agency reported in The Japan Times.

The damages TEPCO will be forced to pay evacuees, farmers, fishing businesses and others hurt by the nuclear disaster will run into the trillions of yen, perhaps as high as 8 trillion to 11 trillion, according to Kyodo.

Three of TEPCO's reactors experienced full meltdowns after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and continue to leak radiation.

Nevertheless, shareholders on Tuesday rejected a motion for the company to abandon nuclear power, Kyodo reported.

Three things you need to know today.

President visits Puerto Rico: President Barack Obama makes a rare presidential visit to Puerto Rico on Tuesday, spending about five hours there on a trip aimed as much at Puerto Ricans on the mainland as those on the island.

The roughly 4 million residents of the U.S. Caribbean territory are American citizens but can't vote for president, while the almost 5 million Puerto Ricans living in the 50 U.S. states have full voting rights, and Obama needs strong support in 2012 from what traditionally has been a largely Democratic constituency.

In particular, an influx of Puerto Ricans has moved in recent years to central Florida, a key swing state in Obama's re-election campaign. Other states with large Puerto Rican communities include New York and Connecticut.

Obama's trip, the first official presidential visit to Puerto Rico in 50 years, shows "the importance the Hispanic vote has in his re-election campaign," said political analyst Angel Rosa.

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The amount of radiation released from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in the immediate aftermath of Japan's earthquake and tsunami were twice the level that the country's Nuclear and Industrial Safety originally admitted, Japan's Emergency Response Center said.

NISA, which previously held that the amount of radiation initially leaked was as low as 370,000 terabecquerels, has revised its estimate to 770,000 terabecquerels. A terabecquerel is equal to one trillion becquerels. A becquerel is a unit of radioactivity equal to one nuclear decay per second.

The new estimate does not alter the fact that the amount of radiation leaked at Fukushima is but a fraction compared to Russia's Chernobyl disaster, but it does put the amount closer in line to some outside estimates.

The new figure refers to the amount of radiation released from March 11, the day of the accident, to March 16.

It is the latest of a several revisions the Japanese agencies have made regarding the extent of the damage at the nuclear plant.

The Fukushima power plant experienced full meltdowns at three reactors in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami, the Emergency Response Center said.

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Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced full meltdowns at three reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami in March, the country's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters said Monday.

The nuclear group's new evaluation, released Monday, goes further than previous statements in describing the extent of the damage caused by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

The announcement will not change plans for how to stabilize the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the agency said.

Reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced a full meltdown, it said.

The plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., admitted last month that nuclear fuel rods in reactors 2 and 3 probably melted during the first week of the nuclear crisis.

It had already said fuel rods at the heart of reactor No. 1 melted almost completely in the first 16 hours after the disaster struck. The remnants of that core are now sitting in the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel at the heart of the unit and that vessel is now believed to be leaking.

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Do you believe flying saucers have been around for "many years?" Would you like to see people travel in flying saucers as part of their daily life?

For reasons not immediately apparent, you'll have to answer these two questions, among others, if you want to bid online on the flying saucer that was used to temporarily trick authorities into believing a 6-year-old boy was floating above Colorado.

Richard Heene's claim in 2009 that his son was in the balloon prompted live coverage nationwide of authorities tracking the craft while they grappled over how to rescue the boy inside. When the balloon came to rest in a field, however, Heene's son was not inside. The boy later was found hiding in the family's house.

Now, the self-styled scientist behind the "balloon boy hoax" is offering up the saucer in an online auction to benefit relief efforts in Japan, according to the website, balloonboyflyingsaucer.com. The site, which claims to be the work of California lawyer Perry Rausher, assures potential bidders that Heene will not receive any money from the auction.

"The winning bidder’s funds will go directly into the Trust Account of Attorney Perry H. Rausher of Calabasas, California. Mr. Rausher will then write a check to a selected charitable organization that is helping the Japanese cause. The Heene family will not receive anything from the sale," the site says.

Rausher did not immediately return calls for comment.

The site says visitors can purchase the saucer outright for $1,000,000 or submit a bid online. In addition to the questions mentioned above, the form also inquires of "your main interest" in the craft, how it will be used and whether you have read Heene's paper, "Electromagnetic Fields Recorded in Mesocyclones."

The site also contains a link to a YouTube video of Heene and his wife, standing outside in front of a deflated silver balloon while they explain their motives and the craft's functionality.

"We went on the Internet and we saw that over 18,000 people have perished over in Japan because of that tsunami," Heene says in the video. "We thought, how can we help out? We can't with our hands but we have something that we think could help."

"Funds raised by the sale will go to charity to help Japanese in their recovery," his wife, Mayumi, says in subtitled Japanese.

Heene did some jail time on a felony charge for the hoax and was ordered to pay $36,000 in restitution. Since then, he has managed to remain in the public eye through stunts that included a rock band and back scratchers.

Radiation from Japan's damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is accumulating in marine life off Japan's coast above legal limits for food contamination, Greenpeace said Thursday.

The environmental group said its findings run counter to Japanese government reports that radiation from the Fukushima plant, damaged in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, is being diluted as time passes.

“Despite what the authorities are claiming, radioactive hazards are not decreasing through dilution or dispersion of materials, but the radioactivity is instead accumulating in marine life," Greenpeace radiation expert Jan Vande Putte said in a press release.

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The Tokyo Electric Power Co. has released dramatic tsunami images on its website, as a nuclear expert slammed comparisons between the Japan nuclear disaster and Chernobyl.

The photos, which are available on TEPCO's website, show the tsunami that crippled the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant barreling toward the facility before inundating it with water.

The news came as the power company continued to issue press releases reporting radiation in the groundwater and seawater around the plant. It also came two days after the company said it learned that a pressure vessel in reactor No. 1 may be leaking and that the reactor's fuel rods almost melted completely hours after the tsunami hit.

A U.S. physicist said, if accurate, the revelations would indicate a "very, very bad accident" that would be difficult to clean up.

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Gas prices: The national average price of a gallon of regular gas dropped two-tenths of a cent overnight to $3.982, according to the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge Report.

The average price is virtually unchanged from a week ago and is about 13 cents below the record average price of $4.114, recorded on July 17, 2008.

But analysts fear pump prices could rise as Mississippi River floodwaters move downriver toward New Orleans.

"When we've had floodwaters in this part of Louisiana before, it has closed up to 12 refineries," Peter Beutel, an analyst with energy risk management firm Cameron Hanover, told CNNMoney. "The fear here is that we could see refineries close again." Beutel was referring to the impact of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

How much of your paycheck is going to pay for gas? Check out CNNMoney's state-by-state look.

Town waits for flood: The small town of Butte La Rose, Louisiana, is waiting to learn if the Army Corps of Engineers will open the Morganza Spillway to let waters from the swollen Mississippi River into the community of 800 homes.

Hundreds of people heard a dire prediction from Col. Ed Fleming of the Army Corps of Engineers at the town's firehouse.

"I'm telling you the depth of water from right here will be 15 feet," he told them.

Read what CNN's Ed Lavandera found in the Cajun community.

Nuclear accident compensation: Japan's government has announced that victims of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant accident will be getting financial compensation.

Some analysts say total compensation could amount to more than 10 trillion yen ($124 billion).

More than 78,000 people have been displaced by the disaster. The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power, has made a down payment on compensation of 1 million yen (about $12,000) per household to some families.

Hudson drownings burials: Lashanda Armstrong, who killed herself and her three young children by driving her minivan into the Hudson River last week, will be buried in Spring Valley, New York, on Thursday, but relatives' plans to bury her children alongside her will not be carried out, according to media reports.

The father of the three children, Jean Pierre, announced Wednesday the funeral and burial of the children would be separate from that of their mother.

“After consulting with the Armstrong family, I have decided that the funeral arrangements for Landen, Lance and Laianna should be separate from that of Lashanda’s. My deepest sympathy goes out to La’Shaun and the Armstrong family," Pierre said in a statement released by his lawyer, according to a report in the Poughkeepsie Journal. "I ask that I be given the opportunity to grieve the loss of my three children privately," he said.

That angered Armstrong's aunt, Angela Gilliam, according to a report in the New York Daily News.

"She should be buried with her children, regardless of what she did," the Daily News quoted Gilliam as saying.

The children, an 11-month-old girl, a 2-year-old boy and a 5-year-old boy, will be buried Monday.

Another child, 10-year-old Lashaun Armstrong, escaped the vehicle as it was sinking in the Hudson.

Nuclear zone restrictions: On Friday, Japan will begin enforcing an evacuation order on a 20-kilometer zone around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a top government official said.

The restriction –in place since the early days of the nuclear disaster - has often been ignored.

Many of the about 78,000 people who have homes in the evacuation zone have gone back in recent weeks to retrieve belongings, and check on farms and businesses.

No one will be allowed within 3 kilometers of the crippled nuclear facility and entry within 20 kilometers of the plant will be highly regulated, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters Thursday.

People who temporarily return to their homes, businesses and farms must wear a protective suit and ride into the restricted zone on a designated bus.

Car of the Year: The winner of the World Car of the Year will be announced at the New York International Auto Show on Thursday.

Finalists are the Audi A8, the BMW 5 Series and the Nissan LEAF, whittled down from an original list of 39 entries.

A panel of 66 automotive journalists from 24 countries votes for the winner.