panic buying

Another quick update from me on the volatile situation over east here!

As scary as it is to say, it feels like the disaster is getting closer. We had a quake in shizuoka prefecture, the one bordering north of Aichi (where Nagoya is located) yesterday by Fuji at a magnitude of about 6.4, felt down here as a 3 or so. I did feel this one! And i was about ready to grab my emergency pack and run outside.

Everyone is very tense over here, not just the foreigners! The latter seem to be fleeing the country, with some governments calling people back and offering free flights. The number of tourists and business travelers now unaccounted for are around 900 so far.
As far as the Japanese are concerned - as I previously stated 'there is another earthquake to come'. There has been a prediction for a major earthquake in the Tokai region (just south of Tokyo) for a while, and I thought at first this one was it but it turns out it's NOT. This one has nothing to do with that one. However, how much this one has affected the likelihood of the earthquake just south on the faultline people don't know, as there is no way to detect the amount of energy located at a certain place on the earth's crust (therefore also exactly how big it will be is difficult to measure) - for more information see: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/03/was-fridays-quake-tokyos-expec.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

There was an earthquake this morning just north of this area registered at a 6 in Ibaraki prefecture... it just doesn't stop.

So yes, even panic buying is happening down here, with cup noodles (because japanese have portable kerosene stoves) and the accompanying kerosene is almost sold out in the stores, toilet paper gone, batteries being bought in mass quantities. I think people are just so scared is that they've never had this much uncertainty hang over their heads... ever. And as word-of-mouth warnings of earthquake tomorrow! pass on from person to person, it's hard not to feel a little on edge yourself, no matter how much you try and calm other people down. And as a result of panic buying, not enough resources are being sent north. Catch-22.

The weather isn't helping people live normally as it's all being messed-up: we've had lovely days of up to 15 degrees yesterday and the day before, today it's CONSIDERABLY colder with very very short bursts of hail and snow, followed by clear blue sky. I was riding my bike with gloves today! Seems the weather may delay the cherry-blossom season a little, which might be appropriate for solidarity reasons.

As far as the most news-worthy disaster is concerned - the nuclear power plants are in a little bit of a pickle. Even the Japanese government isn't sure on how to cool them down, with airplanes trying to pour water on it from the top. This morning there was an explosion in reactor 4 at Fukushima Daiichi (though the news was very clear to state that reactors 1 and 3 had hydrogen explosions but 2 and 4 only had explosions) and white smoke was coming out of reactor 3 - though a clarification of what white smoke means compared to black smoke wasn't given (or i couldn't understand the Japanese). reactors 5 and 6's cooling systems stopped, but no other damage yet.
HOWEVER. Despite all the sensationalisations from the media, the radiation levels are not anywhere near critical. Tokyo is not going to be threatened by a chernobyl-esque explosion. And it's very important to remember this. The 30km radius is enough to protect people from health damage in the worst case scenario.
And although there have been higher levels than normal detected in Tokyo, it is nowhere near threatening.

So, i would like to request people to focus back on to what started this whole mess to begin with and donate! Money is the biggest problem in large-scale devastations like this. Someone put quite nicely (i think) - man up for japan. Man being a pun on the japanese value of 1 mann, or 10,000 yen - about 90 pounds/93 euros or so.
If you don't trust organisations, then donate directly to the Japanese red cross. I have.

4 days later... and a cat cafe!

So as days pass by since the earthquake, there is less developments, other than in the sky-rocketing number of deaths & missing – there are now estimated of 12,800 dead & missing. Scenes of devastation and horror stories are all that people can now show on the news with the occasional update about the state of the nuclear reactors.

As far as that’s concerned – today there was a small explosion in reactor 2, though it’s been contained, and some holes have been discovered in the walls of reactor 4. Radiation, as a result of wind direction, has been detected in Setagaya-ku, which is the most populated ward of Tokyo, but this at minimal levels. Furthermore, the radiation levels in the area are ‘harmful to human health’ but this only within the 20km radius, on top of their standards being legal limits which are very conservative.

The government seem to be on top of it, providing iodine where needed (though I think they’re been a little slow to evacuate people). IF an explosion were to happen, that is a huge IF, it would only go up 500m, compared to over 9000m at Chernobyl. Most likely it would leak into the ground, in which case the government could box it in.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s scary shit, this has been a horrendous event, and I am deeply shocked by it, but people are overreacting. The media only reports on the area (understandably) but know that the rest of Japan – i.e. all the big cities, are mainly operating as usual. People are panic buying noodles (which doesn’t make sense to me because don’t you need electricity to heat them up??), toilet paper and water, which therefore means other people who really need it don’t get it.

And it’s difficult not to make all of this and other hearsay stories about major earthquakes happening here and there make you lose your cool.

Actually it’s been noted that Japan has reacted better than the earthquake in 1995. Well, you’d expect them to learn wouldn’t you! At the time the government was severely criticised for sitting on their chairs in Tokyo and doing next to nothing, and surprisingly most of the money donated to disaster relief at the time was by the Japanese mafia, the Yakuza. This time communication is much better between the disaster area and the big guys in Tokyo, and the speed of disaster relief has been notably faster. However, there are still complaints that many people are not getting what they should be.

The most urgent point, one of the failures during the Hanshin quake, was that there wasn’t enough medical staff. Currently people are saying that Japan can maybe just make do, but with the huge death toll this time round, they’re desperate for medical aid workers from overseas.

This is all information I gather on the news and from the internet, so maybe you’ve heard it, maybe you know better than me.

Trying to stay positive despite all of this, I visited a neko café (cat café) today, it was quite amusing. My friend and I got a lunch special which included 50 minutes of play time with the cats and some tuna to feed them. These cats were not about the petting and all about the food. One of them actually jumped up to hold on to my arm, at least 1m30 into the air! There were at least 25 of them as well, and one of them had one green eye and one blue eye… freaky! It was cute, but part of the fun of cats is playing with them and petting them!

These cafes have become quite popular in Japan, and I was surprised that there were about 4 other couples in there, on a Tuesday lunchtime! There are also rabbit cafes, and dog cafes but the latter is for bringing your dog to rather than actually petting them. I guess maid cafes could be put into this category, though I’m sure for most men that go to these, it’s more of a sex-factor than a kawaii thing.