No sign of cherry blossoms yet! The buds are really big so I imagine they’ll start to open in the next day or 2, but so far nothing! This is good, though, because we will have the Entrance Ceremony for the new 1st year students on April 8th and it will be lovely if the driveway up to school is lined with all the trees in full bloom. For the past few years the cherry blossoms have been getting earlier, so all our trees have been at their best when the students weren’t there, it would be nice to have more people see how beautiful they are.

I am up to my 7th update now, as time goes on it feels like we’re settling more and more into what I think I described before as a new normal, and I think that the situation we find ourselves in today is going to go on for a while. It’s going to take weeks, if not months, to sort out the mess at the reactors and as for the people in Miyagi, I hope their lives regain some sense of security and comfort soon, but goodness only knows how long it will take to rebuild. Anyway, here is an update from Tokyo today. Please note that if I say that someone has told me something I am only reporting something I have heard, for the most part I can only give you snapshots and anecdotes.

Fukushima

Well, this doesn’t look good, in the last 24 hours they have been talking about a ‘partial meltdown’. The scary ’10 million times the normal level’ reports that were coming out on Sunday were not accurate, the number was actually 100,000 times the normal level. Clearly this is still a very high number, and so gets filed under Not A Good Thing. However, it was pointed out in a BBC report that this is what would be expected inside a nuclear reactor, and it was this they were measuring. The people who were measuring levels should have taken a 2nd reading but saw what they thought was ’10 million’ and scarpered. Since then, they have also found plutonium in the soil around the reactor and elevated radiation levels have been detected in the air as far away as South Korea, China and even the US. However, these levels are still minute and they are being reported because people have looked for the radiation and found it but the amounts they are talking about are miniscule.

Although the government has created a 20km exclusion zone around the reactors, and they have urged everyone to leave, there are some people who have refused to go. From reports I have seen they are mostly elderly farmers who don’t want to leave their homes and animals. Self Defence Forces personnel visit them and try to persuade them to leave but some refuse to go.

The Japanese Self Defence Forces (SDF) are what the Japanese military is called. After the war the new constitution stated in Article 9 that Japan renounced war and the means to wage war forever, so this ‘Self Defence Forces’ idea is a way round this. If you’d like to read more, follow this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Self-Defense_Forces

Miyagi

This is the heartbreaking part. The people whose lives and homes and everything they knew were destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami are still living in school gyms with next to nothing. They are short on supplies and today there are still more than 17,000 people missing. They are being amazingly strong and brave.  One report that made a great impression on me was this one:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12845419

I saw it on TV too and what they don’t say in the article is that the villagers want to rebuild their community but not where it used to be so they are discussing where they will all rebuild together. As the last line in the online article says, ‘This nation’s great disaster has brought out the best in its people.’

In the newspaper today there was an article titled ‘Local wisdom a lifesaver for kids’ which explained how almost all the schoolchildren in Kamaishi survived because they had been taught the word ‘tendenko’, ‘a word coined from the city’s long history of repeatedly being hit by tsunami’. The article then goes on to explain that ‘the word means go uphill independently at the time of tsunami caring only for your own safety, not thinking of anyone else, even your family’. So actually some kind of abbreviated slogan, because no one word can mean all that!

Tokyo

So, how is this great city doing? Actually, we are doing OK. We continue to avoid the rolling power blackouts that the areas around Tokyo are being subjected to (not fair!  I think we should do our bit) but as I said last time, we are all trying to cut down on how much power we use. A lot of the unnecessarily bright lights and giant video screens etc. have been turned off, and in shops and other places the lighting is dimmer. Interesting how much we can cut back if we want to, I hope these lessons remain long after all this is over.

People are still subdued, but we are all just getting on with life. Although there are fewer people about, the trains not so squashed (!) and it all just feels quieter, in personal interactions it seems people are friendlier, kinder, smiling at each other, starting conversations. A lot of people I know have thought about what they have and what they can do and have offered what they can. An example: a friend of a friend, whom I met when I first came to Japan in 1991, and with whom I have kept in touch sporadically over the years, decided that she wanted to do something to encourage me and help me feel better, and sent me a box of oranges from her hometown. (In Japan most places have their regional speciality and producers regularly ship these products all over Japan.) So on Saturday evening the man from the delivery company struggled to my door with a 10kg box of dekopon, a particularly yummy type of orange from southern Japan.

The shortages: there are no large bottles of mineral water in the shops. I suppose we have all got our supplies at home now. I finally got tired of having all the bottles in the corner of my living room and loaded them all into a cardboard box and put them in a storage room under the stairs outside. In case you’re wondering, I have enough water for about 2 weeks if they tell us it’s not safe to drink tap water. I don’t know what the people who left will do as they come back, because they won’t be able to stock up. One of my colleagues went back to the UK  and said in a recent e-mail that they would have to order some water on the Internet to be delivered for when they come back. I don’t know how realistic that is; if we could all do that we wouldn’t have been hamstering everything away since the 11th.

Apart from the lack of large bottles of water, the shops are OK. Some shelves are depleted, but whenever I have been to the local supermarket I have been able to buy everything I wanted. For some things (e.g. eggs) there are signs that say, one box per customer, or something like that, but for most things you can buy what you want. At the same supermarket today I saw a sign in Japanese that also said in English, ‘save energy, shop with love, share with others’. In a lot of places you see a poster of the red circle of the Japanese flag with ‘Pray for Japan’ on it, or another sign which says ‘Ganbare Nihon!’, which is probably best translated as something like ‘Come on, Japan!’, ‘Do your best, Japan!’ or if you were feeling especially British, ‘Chin up, Japan!’

To go back to the radiation levels I mentioned earlier, you can check the levels in the air and the water in Tokyo every day if you follow these links:

radiation levels in the air:

http://metropolis.co.jp/quake/quake-2011-03/tokyo-atmospheric-radiation-levels/

and in the tap water:

http://metropolis.co.jp/quake/quake-2011-03/tokyo-tap-water-information/

There continues to be help from overseas. The US military (which has a large presence in Japan, especially in Okinawa in the south) has been helping with personnel and supplies. They were at Sendai airport from the beginning with personnel from the SDF and together they have cleared a lot already, clearly it was a priority so more aid could be flown in. In the last few days it has been reported that the US is sending a ship / barge / tanker carrying 500,000 gallons of fresh water to help cool the reactors in Fukushima. Salt water is not so good because the salinity can damage the reactors even as they cool them. I heard (hearsay warning!) that the Japanese government was dithering when the help was offered so in the end the US just told Japan, we are sending the water, please use it. In the newspaper I read that the UK is sending a lot of bottled water. It seems a lot of countries have offered help, but until the Japanese government accepts it the aid can’t get through.

Since Libya is in the headlines now the situation here has slipped down the news, and this seems odd to me since the news coming out of Fukushima is as concerning as it has been for the last 2 weeks and while all the overseas media had their reporters here they were certainly making it sound awful. Now we are a footnote! Another odd thing is what they choose to report. For example, Miyagi has had aftershocks registering magnitude 6+ almost every day since the 11th, but a few days ago one of the aftershocks was the first item on the news. Why would they do that?  What was special about that aftershock? (Answer: nothing.)

I would like to add a little about the Japanese language and what you may see reported about what the government and TEPCO have been saying. I have heard the government has ‘scolded’ TEPCO for its failings in dealing with the crisis at the reactors. This is a commonly-used word when translating this kind of criticism. It sounds childish in English but is a common formula. It was also reported last week that TEPCO had apologised for the ‘trouble’ or ‘nuisance’ they had caused, and in English, when you think about a partial nuclear meltdown or the threat of such a thing, ‘nuisance’ doesn’t begin to cover it. Again, it is common in Japan, and when a company fails in some way (and has to issue a recall of products for example) the executives will usually appear and apologise. Sometimes they are actually on their knees. I think in Europe or North America the tendency would be for a company to try to get out in front of something damaging and do some kind of damage-control, but here it seems they start to deal with the problem and then apologise in a very formulaic way.

This week is seeing the return of more people, partly because the international schools are starting back this week. Some people are not returning, and I heard (hearsay warning!) that at one school 12% of the students are not coming back. The same schools lost a lot of students when some banks collapsed a couple of years ago, so this is clearly not good for them. I wonder how the people coming back will cope. For those of us who have been here I think we have got used to rolling with the news, staying calm until we have double-checked information, keeping in touch with people when we need to, (and hamstering) but for them they have to come back and play catch-up. I wonder how differently stressful it will be.

Finally, although I have mentioned before how frustrating it has been to see how ill-chosen words in the media have affected the tone of reporting and the effect it has had, I would like to leave you with 2 links to people who really should have kept their mouths shut. The first is Ann Coulter, known to people in the US but maybe not elsewhere. Right-wing pundit? I’m at a loss at how to adequately describe her. She seems to revel in saying outrageous things, but when what you say makes even Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly incredulous, surely that should make you stop and reconsider what you are saying.  Here’s the link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/18/ann-coulter-radiation-is-_n_837512.html

The other person in my (admittedly small) hall of shame is Shintaro Ishihara, the governor of Tokyo, who delights in saying offensive things about everyone, rather like Prince Philip, but with scary real political power. The headline alone is brilliant, if only everyone he tries to annoy had the same reaction:

http://evolutionarychristianity.com/blog/general/tokyo-governor-says-tsunami-is-divine-punishment—religious-groups-ignore-him/

This has turned out to be a long update, and when I started I thought it would be quite brief. Thank you for everyone keeping in touch, for everyone sending prayers and encouragement, it is all amazingly helpful. I feel I am learning so much about the inherent goodness and kindness of everyone around me, and am impressed and thankful every day for the sense of community we are all sharing.

Life in Tokyo continues in the same subdued manner. The trains are much less crowded, although people are still going to work so there is a certain amount of traffic. I think everyone is going home earlier and some businesses are closing early. A lot of lights have been dimmed (Tokyo is usually a very brightly-lit city) and so that feels different. Some vending machines have been turned off too, and also descending escalators, all with signs on them that this is a measure to conserve power. The much-reported scheduled blackouts don’t seem to be happening much, so maybe we are doing enough voluntarily to make a difference.

It almost feels like a new sort of normal, especially since a lot of reporters have left and the news focus has shifted to Libya. I must say I am glad that much of the alarmist reporting has stopped, though there are still some instances of poorly-chosen words. The BBC website is generally good and I check the British embassy website every day. Other than that I try to limit the news I get, it can all get repetitive and stressful.  If you want to see how bad some of it got, follow this link:

http://jpquake.wikispaces.com/Journalist+Wall+of+Shame

On Monday I had lunch with friends and then we went to the British embassy to get our potassium iodide tablets. Like I said, it’s kind of a new normal. I am used to having medicine which says ‘this is for the treatment of migraine’, or ‘this is to prevent the symptoms of hayfever’ but now I have something which says, ‘this is to be taken in the event of a nuclear emergency’ which is something I never imagined I would have and no matter how calm you think you are, something like that makes you stop in your tracks.

I would like to stress, though, that the embassy has given them out as a ‘contingency’ and no other embassies have done it. I don’t imagine we will need them, and once this is over and we can stop thinking about it I intend to frame mine.

Obviously the big news yesterday was the discovery of radiation in Tokyo’s water supply. Scary stuff. However I found this on the BBC website:

Professor Richard Wakeford from the Dalton Nuclear Institute and visiting Professor of Epidemiology at Manchester University said the health effects would be extremely small. He calculated that drinking water for a year at the Japanese limit would give an infant a dose of 0.4mSv, so you would need to double that to get the effect of drinking water at the higher level of radiation for a year. Professor Wakeford said “in theory, there would be a very small additional risk of cancer, but in practice nothing more than you could expect to get from normal background levels of radiation”.

So the extra risk from drinking tap water in Tokyo for a year would be far less than that of someone moving, say, from London to Cornwall for a year.

As several scientists have pointed out, the alert about drinking water in Tokyo is simply a sensible precautionary measure, based on the principle that if you can easily avoid risk, you should do so.

I do not mean to underplay the issue of the Fukushima nuclear leak. But the dangers from Tokyo tapwater do not bear any comparison with the earthquake and tsunami where there are currently nearly 9,500 confirmed dead and more than 14,700 people still missing.

Now, if you have a small child this is clearly not good. For anyone, this is not good.  However, I would refer you back to one of my first updates where I described the hamsterish habits we had all adopted after the initial quake and tsunami. I can’t imagine there are many people in Tokyo who don’t have some supplies. I have enough bottled water and tea to keep me going for at least a week. If you go into convenience stores there are no large bottles of water but when I was in the 7-11 today one of the employees saw me and without me saying anything asked if I wanted a bottle of water. You can only buy 1 2-litre bottle but as long as you just buy one when you can you should have enough.

Onto the advice we were given yesterday, which was basically, a child under 12 months shouldn’t be given tap water, older children are OK as long as they don’t drink vast amounts (how much not  specified) and for adults it’s safe.

What would you do?!? I can’t imagine there’s a parent in Tokyo giving any child tap water at the moment if they can possibly avoid it. For myself, I think it is safe for showers, for brushing teeth, and for washing up. For anything else I am going to stick with the bottled stuff until we get more information. I am thinking, though, that Monday and Tuesday were rainy days and so the radiation would have washed into the water supply more easily. Today it is dry and sunny and the forecast is for it to remain so for  a few days, and I am hoping this is a good thing. (Not so good for people with hayfever though.)

Regarding the levels of radiation in the air, you can check this link every day if you want to know what it is:

http://metropolis.co.jp/quake/quake-2011-03/tokyo-atmospheric-radiation-levels/

The news from the power station continues to be a mix of what sounds like good and bad. Power restored to control rooms, but then smoke rising.  A couple of days ago this was on the BBC website:

‘the power station is undeniably more stable than at any time last week, and for the first time the International Atomic Energy Agency says it ‘has no doubt’ that the crisis will be overcome.’

If you are unclear about all these measurements for radiation etc. please use this link to find out more:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2922671

Tomorrow it will be 2 weeks since the earthquake that started it all. My ladies’ reading group decided not to come, since several of them come from quite a distance and we are all staying closer to home at the moment. There wasn’t one single factor which decided them, it was a mixture of transportation concerns, aftershocks, radiation concerns and having elderly relatives at home. I have already written about the radiation, so now I’ll write about the other 2 general concerns.

Although the transportation network is running reasonably well, on some lines there are no express trains, only local ones, so journey times are longer. Some lines running to the north and north-east of Tokyo are affected by aftershocks (and maybe damage?) so they are not running so well, if at all. I have not had any problems on trains or buses, but some journeys have taken a bit longer. I believe the reduced service in Tokyo itself is more to conserve power than anything else. Still, so many people were stranded that first day, I think we are all trying to avoid being stranded again!

Aftershocks. Yuck. They are still quite big and Miyagi is still getting magnitude 6 quakes daily. We feel them in Tokyo but they are smaller here. Having said that, the size of quakes we are now blasé about is another part of the new normal. It could take weeks or months for them to stop so we’d all better get used to them I suppose (if we haven’t already).

The rush of last week for some people to leave seems to have slowed down to a trickle. If anyone was going to leave they have probably done it by now. It is in some ways easier now that some people are not here, since their stress and panic was not helping other people. Now we are just carrying on and getting through this together. I have mixed feelings about all this.

On the one hand it is an incredibly positive experience. You have probably seen articles praising the Japanese people for carrying on, staying calm, helping each other. It is all true, and more. It is inspiring to be here. In any conversation we check that we are all doing OK, if there is anything we want, sharing what we have, helping each other to get what we need. There is patience and tolerance, smiles everywhere, no one is taking any of this stress out on anyone else as far as I have seen. No one is getting angry in shops, there is no pushing or grabbing anywhere. Quite amazing.

On the other hand, it seems some relationships are shifting, there are attitudes coming out about the groups of people who decided differently from what you decided was best for yourself. I have been thinking about it quite a lot, because I do feel most definitely that I am where I am supposed to be and when I see how amazing everyone is being I feel quite privileged to witness it, to be able to send these updates and tell you all what I am seeing and experiencing. But I have concerns too. I think whichever decision was made (basically one of three; stay put, de-camp to another part of Japan, leave the country) we all have to respect the decision that was made. You can’t convince me that I should have left, and I can’t convince you that you should have stayed. We all did what we thought was right.

There is no need for those of us who stayed to become self-righteous and make people feel guilty for not being here, that’s just mean. Of course, among ourselves, we can always remember what we have experienced being here, there are many wonderful things I want to remember for the rest of my life. To the people who de-camped to another part of Japan, (personally I don’t know many), I hope they have enjoyed a break in another part of this beautiful country. To the people who left Japan, I would have one request, and that would be, please stop sending e-mails to those if us who chose to stay (either directly or cc’ing us) making it all sound worse than it is. Maybe you need to convince yourself that it was so very dangerous that it will justify your decision to leave, but you have not been helping us. You left because that was your decision, and it’s OK. Just come back! We miss you and you are part of our lives here. I, for one, have no interest in having any conversation with you that will make you feel bad.

(Special note: while I am sending this to some people who have left Japan temporarily, no one receiving this e-mail has sent me any of the e-mails I just referred to.)

I think that’s everything for now. Today was another lovely sunny day, the buds on the cherry trees are starting to plump up, and I looked at my favourite weeping cherry trees today and wondered when they would bloom. I am already planning cherry-blossom viewing with several friends, and Tokyo is expected to see the blossoms opening on March 28th or 29th, with best dates for viewing between April 4th to 14th.

My 5th update, which I have been thinking about for the last day or so. It’s all quite surreal here, life is normal and at the same time ever so not normal; people are calm, but if you listen to conversations on the train, at Starbucks, you hear the same topics over and over again. There are far fewer people out and about. Tomorrow is a public holiday, so it probably would be quieter anyway, but clearly a lot of people are staying at home.

On my way to church this morning my local station had a notice saying between 70% and 80% of trains were running. A lot of lights in shops etc. have been dimmed and everything just feels subdued. In the shops supplies are OK, not as depleted as they were a few days ago. It is quite ridiculous to know that there is less bread in the shops but you can buy the most elaborate cakes in any bakery you pass. Although rolling power cuts have been scheduled, I have so far heard of very few actually happening, and they are listed in the newspaper as something that may happen.  Shinagawa was scheduled for one yesterday but it didn’t happen.

I had a tiring week, just keeping up with what was going on, trying not to let the excesses of the media get to me, and going into school. I don’t think I’m sleeping so well, and often have a nap in the afternoon / early evening to catch up. Until Wednesday I was definitely feeling the stress and anxiety, but from Thursday I started to feel better and by yesterday was feeling quite OK. I think one reason was the absence by then of people who left at the beginning of the week. I had a few people really feeling extremely anxious and sending their stress my way, and I didn’t like that at all.  (I think I mentioned it at the time.) After they left I felt much better.

There was a second wave of people who left towards the end of the week / over the weekend, and I think their reasons were mainly based on the need or desire to calm family and friends overseas.  To any of them reading this, I send you greetings from Tokyo on a sunny afternoon. I miss you and am looking forward to your return! I hope you can come back in time to see the cherry  blossoms.  Now the people who are still here are the ones who are taking a calmer, more measured view and I feel better talking to those friends.

As I said, I went to church today, and that was, with hindsight, not a good idea, because I came home feeling quite wound up. I had coffee afterwards with a friend (no coffee for a week so that was probably not a good idea!) and since I got home another friend has called me, so I am feeling better. Basically it is this: this morning the priest didn’t mention the earthquake / tsunami / nuclear power stations at all in his sermon, he just talked about Greek verbs (!!!). If you look at the church website there is a notice that the church and attached hall (where the nursery is held during the week) were unharmed by the earthquake, and the button you can usually click on to donate to the church has been changed to a place to donate to help the victims in Miyagi. Apart from that, nothing. No e-mails from the church during the week, nothing. The fact that the church has done nothing all week for the international community is completely shocking to me. As a community within Tokyo we have failed our neighbours miserably. I am not giving you the link because there is nothing to see there.

School has now finished for this school year. We won’t be in again until April 6th. The students didn’t come to school all week apart from the graduating 6th years on Tuesday, but the teachers have been in every day. I think we have all kept each other going and by the end of the week we were starting to feel a bit more positive. Of my 2 British colleagues, one is in Osaka because her mother was distressed about her being in Tokyo and this was the compromise to keep her mother calm. The other left Tokyo on Monday and flew out of Osaka on Thursday, because her partner was severely anxious after what had happened and he probably needs to think about whether he wants to stay in Japan now.

It is interesting to watch the foreign community changing. One friend said to me a few days ago, that he thought those of us who have chosen to stay would always have a special bond. I agree with him. There are certainly fewer foreign residents about, and at Starbucks this morning a Japanese woman pointed us out to her friend (she was sitting right next to us so we heard every word) like an endangered species.

On to information about Fukushima and Miyagi.

It seems the news from the nuclear reactors may be getting better, gradually. The people who are working there are heroes. The British Embassy continues to say that Tokyo is safe but is giving out iodine tablets to any British citizens who want them as a precaution. It is a pack of 2 doses, to be taken only in the event of an emergency when either the British or Japanese government tell us to take them. I’ll go tomorrow to get some since it is probably a good idea but in the meantime I continue to munch my way through dried kombu and take my multi-mineral tablets.

In Miyagi the people there continue to suffer in evacuation centres. Nothing seems to have changed for them in the last week. I hope and pray that the nuclear reactors can be stabilised soon because then we can really focus all our attention on them.

We continue to have aftershocks every day. The biggest ones are magnitude 5 or 6, so quite big.  They could continue for ages yet so we have to get used them I suppose but they rattle us in more ways than one.

I have continued my new hobby of chastising the media for its unhelpful tone. Since the BBC has taken to using a photo of 2 young women wearing masks as the image for their ‘Japan Disaster’ coverage, I would like to point out again, they have hayfever, and are trying to avoid pollen, not radiation. I have found the BBC disappointing in their choice of language; in the last 24 hours I have heard words like ‘catastrophe’ and ‘apocalyptic’ batted around and I say again, it is not helpful.

Cultural note: You may hear in the media that Tepco (the company operating the reactors) has apologised. Whatever translation you see will sound ridiculous because that kind of highly formulaic Japanese just doesn’t translate. This kind of corporate apology is usual in Japan and is  not the too little, too late, offensive-sounding statement it may seem if you see a translation.

I think that is everything updated for now. To everyone who has told me they are praying, thank you so much. To you all, please keep the people of Miyagi and Fukushima in your thoughts. In Tokyo we are anxious but safe and staying calm, but the people there are enduring severe hardships and are bearing everything with dignity and fortitude.