The Weight of the World

As of late I've been carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. I know that I, as a historian, should be able to distance myself from the terrible things I read about. I should be able to treat it professionally, and without letting my own emotions or morality get in the way.

The problem isn't that I can't. The problem is that I won't.

World War Two. The largest conflict in human history. Unfathomably large numbers of people killed, wounded and abused. Unspeakable atrocities on all sides. If World War One was what lost us our innocense, World War Two certainly confirmed that there was no way back. The loss of civilian lives were not only collateral damage in this war; civillians were targets.

Reading about air raids, firebombings, Manchuria and - last but definitely not least - the atomic bombs, I feel obliged to remember that this is more than numbers and figures. It's about people. People who suffered. Who died.

And it's about people who made decisions.

Good people? Evil people? Somewhere-in-between people?

People we with time can laugh of, even if their decisions had extreme consequences.

Consequences I want to keep in mind, even if they make my days bleaker.

No one if neutral or objective in history. No one should be. Even if we need to understand more than one aspect; we're allowed (and, in my mind, bound), to have opinions and bias. You just need to be aware of it, and try not to let it affect your professional work too much.

If you want to carry the weight of the world too, you may watch the video below. It is long. But it should make you feel something. (And not just about atomic bombs, if you make it past the first ten minutes)

My sincerest appologies for forsaking "Writing Wednesday" for "Cruella pours her heart out (but still couldn't resist the photoshopped image of the 'big three'...)".

Hypocritical much?

I'm well aware that Japan and the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami is out of international news by now. It's been long replaced with other stories, such as Libya, Syria, other countries that end with -ia, and politicians tweeting their wieners. If covered at all, chances are that what you hear from Japan has the word "Fukushima" in it, since that seems to be the preferable way news desks worldwide see the potential for scaring people into buying papers.

That might sound cynical, but I've been monitoring foreign coverage of Japan lately, and it's not encouraging. If you have spotted Japan in the news recently, there's a good chance you think the entire country is a wasteland. If you haven't, though, there is an equally good chance you think everything is back to normal.

Neither is particularly close to the truth.

First of all, there are areas where the tsunami left entire societies in pieces, many of which are still not rebuilt, some of which it will take years to fix. Many of the people - those who survived - previously living in these societies, have not been able to return yet. Some are still living in shelters - high schools and sports centers and whatnot - while others have moved to temporary housing of the slightly more permanent kind. But even here there are problems. Some of these houses do not have tap water, or if they do, it might not be drinkable. Some of them are located far away from shops and other facilities, which is unfortunate since many of the residents are elderly and/or without cars (a substantial number of cars were washed away or destroyed in the disaster).

Then there is Fukushima. It is still very much a topic - both because it is ongoing, even though the reports of new developments are few and less spectacular now than they were in the beginning. But there remain unanswered questions. How much radiation was actually released, and can we trust the measuring now? What sort of impact does this, and the still heightened levels surrounding the defunct power plant, have on the people living there, the food produced close by, or the fish in the surrounding sea?

In addition, there is a political crisis in the country. The Prime Minister is sitting on a bit of a catapult seat (the details of which you can find in a rant from yours truly, here). While it seems to me that the Japanese population isn't particularly happy about changing the head of the government right in the middle of a crisis, the members of the parliament seem intent to do so. Further, the political crisis might have direct influence on the general crisis, since passing of laws and bills (such as the reconstruction budgets, for instance) requires political agreement.

And let's not forget the economic crisis while we're at it. The disaster sent Japan into its first trade deficit for more than a decade. That alone isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the fact that exports have gone down - more or less the only thing that was pulling the already sluggish Japanese economy - is not good. However, by now a lot of the production in Japan is nearing its pre-crisis level. That opens for exports again, and thus there might be light at the end of the tunnel. But Japan already faced tremendous economic challenges before the crisis, and so far it's looking like the impact of the crisis has been all bad (without even the small benefit of inflation, as some economists hoped for).

Apart from this, however, most of Japan is functioning as usual. It's not dangerous to travel here - unless you insist on going to the no-go zone around the Fukushima-power plant... Same goes for food produced in Japan - I don't worry about that anymore. I trust that the tests the authorities in cooperation with international organizations such as WHO perform are as good as they can get, and that the food here probably will not kill me anymore than food produced elsewhere would (e.coli in Europe, anyone?). And despite all the bad things I said about the Japanese economy in the previous paragraph, I do think it's safe and wise to invest here again. The tsunami did not wash away the Japanese innovative spirit. They *will* recover, and foreign investments will be much needed (and probably much rewarded, with time).

As for quakes? Yes, there is still the occasional aftershock, but by now they are mostly down to the pre-disaster levels. Japan has always been, and will always be, a seismically active country. Those of us who have spent some time here know this, and by now I'm not even as edgy about them as I was. I had the following conversation with a friend from back home the other day:

"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, my cold is getting better..."
"I meant the earthquake..."
"Earthquake? Oh, you mean the 6,7 we had this morning? Yeah, didn't feel it. Don't think it did any damage. No biggie."

So that's not so much an issue anymore.

What IS an issue, though, is the energy supply, and what will happen with it during summer.

You probably knew that the Fukushima plants are now closed (or as closed as they get, since they are still struggling to cool them down). But did you also know that a good 30 others of Japan's total 54 reactors are closed for the time being? Due to interruptions of regular security checks after 3/11, many plants were shut down as a safety measure. Japan has relied quite heavily on nuclear power, and thus this is putting a severe strain on the energy supply. During the summer, when the sweltering heat makes living and working without air-conditioning seem almost impossible, it is feared that the country will face blackouts. This coincides with industries trying their best to make up for lost production by running the assembly lines at top speed. And at a time when fossil fuels are running at an all-time high cost precisely due to the incidents in Japan, and those in the Middle East.

Japan is trying. The Prime Minister - from his catapult seat - is promoting renewable energies. It's a good cause, and an important one if Japan is to find economically and environmentally affordable energy sources in the future. But "future" is a keyword here. You cannot exchange nuclear for solar, geothermic, wind and hydro power overnight. The time frame Prime Minister Kan has set is "20% by early 2020s". It's commendable, ambitious and perhaps even possible. But it doesn't solve the problem right now, this summer.

People living here are also trying to save energy. They turn off their AC, or at least set the temperatures higher. In order to make this more feasible, the "Super Cool Biz" campaign  (a intensification of the regular "Cool Biz", where people are encouraged to loosen [or remove] their ties and jackets to better cope with the summer temperatures) is running. I haven't seen many Hawaii-shirts in Tokyo streets yet, but who knows - perhaps this will be the end of the traditional Japanese salaryman "uniform" - black suit, white shirts and ties?

It's difficult, though. Have you tried working in an office environment where the temperatures rise above 25, 30, 35 degrees (celcius)? It doesn't really matter if your shirt is white or Hawaiian, I can assure you. And the same ting goes for my house. Lately I've been sleeping poorly, waking up every hour or so, guiltily letting the AC run for a few minutes. I can't open the window - since the mosquitoes here seem intent to eat me alive - and it wouldn't do me much good anyway with the still hot night air flowing in with the bugs. It's not comfortable, and it's not healthy. And this is just the start. Summer in Tokyo is hot and humid, and June is nowhere near as bad as July or August. The worst is yet to come. Some claim that the nuclear lobby - a considerable force in this country - are keeping a low profile until the worst commotion has settled down. Then, when summer sets in for real, they might remind people how one again can afford using cooling systems. It might be a conspiracy strategy, but it really sounds quite effective...

The Ministry for Economy, Trade and Industry is saying that it is safe to turn the nuclear reactors closed due to the security check interruptions back on. Prime Minister Kan admits that a (near) future without nuclear power in Japan is hard to imagine. The population, I don't know... As often is the case here, they generally don't speak up much. We've had some demonstrations, but we're talking a few hundred people. Out of 127 million. The newspaper Asahi Shimbun recently published an interesting survey, however. 74 percent said that they supported a gradual termination of nuclear power. I think this is probably the closest to the truth you get. Japanese people are pragmatic. They understand that shutting down all reactors tomorrow is impossible. But they also don't want another Fukushima.

Personally I see a lot of problems with nuclear power plants. If it were up to me, we'd have nothing of them. We'd go all the way for renewable energy (and when I say renewable, I mean that, and not pseudo-renewable as nuclear is, since it leaves HUGE infrastructural and logistic problems once the reactors are too old. They will continue to demand attention [and potentially costs] for centuries or millennia after they stop producing values). I'd like solar panels on every rooftop, windmills, and every other environmentally friendly energy form there is to dominate the market.

But for now it is an illusion. Maybe Japan will manage 20 by 2020. In the meantime, however, it's difficult not feeling like a hypocrite. I don't want them to turn the reactors back on, but I also don't want to live through the summer feeling like a raisin-zombie. I'll be leaving mid-July, so probably I'm not even going to see the worst of it. Which makes me an even bigger hypocrite.

But there you go. The world works as it always does. We all want too much. I want my cake, and I want to eat it too. And since I will leave the cake soon (stretching the metaphor here now, I know...), I feel that my nibbling at its edges won't make that big a difference. I'm good at turning off the light when I'm not in the room, after all... But of course it does, if we all think that way. Thus, I can only hope for Japan's sake that the rest of the people living here are not as big hypocrites as I am...

This weekend I had the dubious honour of baby sitting a room.

Actually, it wasn't so much the room, as all the stuff inside the room. You see, we had an event at the embassy, with lots of kids and adults who weren't always entirely sober. Now, the main part of the event took place outside, since the weather was gorgeous, but since we couldn't be sure of that in advance, we had also prepared some indoors activities, in our lovely multipurpose hall.

The problem with this hall is the multipurpose part. There is a rather expensive AV-system there, and the walls are peppered with buttons and touch pads that control the AV-system, the air-conditioner, the lightning, the blinds, and so on. There is even a red button with a sign above it reading it capital letters - DO NOT TOUCH!!!  Obviously, this would be terribly tempting to touch...

Thus the baby sitting.

During my guard duty, two girls of about ten were playing in the hall. They were just that age. A little too young to realize the full consequence of their every action, but definitely old enough to know when they were doing something they were not supposed to. It goes without saying that they pushed the button.

Now, as far as DO NOT TOUCH!!!-buttons go, ours is relatively innocent. The only thing that happens is that it messes with the settings for the system, so it creates extra work for the next person using it. Hardly comparable to what I'm about to compare it with, but bear with me...

You see, these girls, knowing that they shouldn't be doing something, but not being able to resist it anyway, made me think of something else that is never far away from my thoughts these days. All things nuclear.

Mother nature produced radiation. But for the most part, she kept it neatly tucked away, out of our reach. As man grew old enough to realize there was something his mother was holding back, he decided to ignore that he didn't know exactly what consequences pushing the button would have, and just do it, even if he knew he probably shouldn't.

Humans wanted so bad to use these resources hidden from us. We put our best scientists to the task. They got some great results. Marie Curie's discoveries led to great achievements in medicine, but she eventually gave her life to her research. Like a Mummy's Curse, injuries from long-term radiation came sneaking in on the eminent scientist unexpectedly. Perhaps we should have taken this as a warning, and been content? Use x-rays and avoid developing these substances we did not know how to control further?

But there were more buttons to push. The power contained in the tiniest piece of all - the atom - was too tempting not to explore further. Like the explorers desperate to win the race to the South Pole in 1911, the curiosity - and perhaps the glory? - was too much to resist. In 1911 Robert Scott died in attempt to get back from the pole, after having discovered that he had been beaten by a countryman of mine, Roald Amundsen. Scott took four expedition members with him in death, people who willingly (I presume) had gone with him to try to be the first to go where no man had gone. The nuclear scientists who tried to do what no man had done,  also took others with them in death. Only the numbers are infinitely larger, and the willingness is more than questionable.

Japan knows the effect the enormous powers contained within a minuscule fraction can have. This nation has felt it up close, even if it is a long time ago. Stories of the horrors experienced in Hiroshima and Nagasaki 66 years ago have been a part of what every Japanese child has been taught about their own country ever since. And yet. Japan too had to go nuclear when it came to energy.

I get it, in a way. With the bombs ending World War Two, then the subsequent 45 year standoff between the US and the USSR where both parties held enough nukes to destroy the planet multiple times. It must have felt good to finally be able to put the atomic power to positive use again. Nuclear didn't have to be a synonym to weapons. Power plants! Peaceful use of this wonderful energy!

How clever they must have felt, when the first nuclear power plant opened. It worked! It really did! It generated electricity, it was (relatively) cheap, it was - marvelously so - CLEAN! The nuclear age was upon us, and it was every bit as wonderful as imagined. People didn't even turn into spider-superheroes or other cartoony predictions. We touched the button, and the button had delivered.

Of course there was Chernobyl. Three Mile Island. Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon and Michael Douglas warned us in The China Syndrome. Hippies sold anti-nuclear stickers. But the hippies also sold "save the planet"-stickers, and nuclear power plants was the only way to ensure stable, large-quantity, energy supplies that were also environmentally friendly. You can't have both, hippies.

I must admit I haven't been particularly nuclearly aware in my life. Norway doesn't have nuclear power plants - we don't really need them, due to an abundance of hydropower and then the oil and gas, of course. We have neighbours whose plants we aren't too fond of - an accident at the Russian plants in Murmansk, the British ones in Sellafield, or even the Swedish ones, might prove disastrous to Norway. We actually still have problems after Chernobyl, which due to the direction of the wind those fateful weeks in 1986 ensured that a significant amount of radioactive material ended up in the Norwegian mountains. But it never felt very close.

Here, in Japan, it definitely does. I've stood with you, Japan, through the crisis. I admired your high-held heads, your dignified grief, your determined reconstruction starting from day one. But if there is one thing I find hard to forgive in the midst of this, it is the nukes. Whose delusional idea was it to build a massive amount of nuclear power plants on a seismic fault line? Didn't it occur to you that even your superior technology might not be able to harness the wrath of Mother Earth once she decided that we had gone too far in pushing the buttons she deliberately asked us not to touch?

Those two girls discovered that pushing that particular button had limited effect. I asked them - a little sternly - not to touch anything, and explained why. They agreed not to do it again, and to my knowledge, they kept their promise. The system had to be reset, but nothing was broken.

The same cannot be said for the nuclear button. We pushed too hard, this time. It's time to find something else to play with.

Topical Tuesday - Man versus Nature?

I read an article titled Quake is 5th biggest, but Japan best prepared yesterday from AP Science Writers Alicia Chang And Seth Borenstein. As expected, parts of the article suggested that Japan's preparations saved them from worse damage. Other parts were not so clear. In particular, they wrote that Friday's earthquake was part of the "classic battle of Man vs. Nature".

What the hell is that supposed to mean?



Let's start with the word 'nature'. Like all words, its meaning is revealed in how it's used. And like all dictionary entries, the given definition is derived from such use.

First, we have "innate characteristics":

nature - The innate characteristics of a thing. What something will tend by its own constitution.

Of course your feet are cold and wet. That's the nature of snow.

One stray ampersand will crash the whole database. Such is the nature of xml.

That should be straightforward, but it's not the meaning we're concerned with. Another meaning is the "natural world":

nature - The natural world; consisting of all things unaffected by or predating human technology, production and design. e.g. the natural environment, virgin ground, unmodified species, laws of nature.

Forest fires can occur in nature when lightning strikes.

Thwarted by stability problems, the airplane designers studied nature to see how birds managed.

That's all I got from Wiktionary, but there's something of a corollary to the latter meaning. When we urge for an "understanding of nature" or warn against "tampering with nature", for example, we do not usually mean that it's dangerous to dig a hole or eat a berry. Rather, we mean that the natural world has a complex biological (and occasionally physical) equilibrium. I would call that 'ecological nature'.


Now, does any of that work with the phrase "man versus nature"? I think not.

The phrase likely originates from literary analysis, where "character versus nature" is a type of literary conflict. My guess is that the terminology was influenced by the heavy anthropomorphism of natural phenomena, both in the literature itself (as a creative but entirely unreal device) and in the actual belief systems associated with historical writers. When Odysseus' raft is wrecked by a storm, Poseidon is not some symbol for the dangers of sea travel, he is a willful entity that does the wrecking.

In that light, the phrase should have never left the classroom. In fact, it's a lousy term even for literature. Sure it seems to fit the type of examples we're given: Jim and Judy try to climb a mountain; a bunch of people try to colonize Mars; Hank struggles to escape the burning desert. But we're being misled by the presence of undeveloped landscapes or a struggle for survival into applying the 'nature' tag. How about a story where Jim and Judy try to find the corner of 63rd and Elm? Where a bunch of people try to build a new operating system? Where Hank struggles to open a can of beans without a can opener?

It's the same type of conflict. It's not "character versus nature" at all, and neither are the previous examples involving Mars, mountains, and desert. The real conflict is "character versus unmet goal", either one that he has chosen for himself (as with the unclimbed mountain) or one forced upon him by an immediate threat to his life (as with the unopened can of beans). The literary term is poor, and I make no apologies for the fact that my alternative is much less catchy. I'd rather be right.


But Holy Hermes, how the phrase has been appropriated! A Google search reveals:

- A slew of videos depicting people being hilariously mauled by animals. This actually comes far closer to "man versus nature" than the literary standard (although "man versus animal" would be more precise). Even so, the animal in question is rarely a willful entity that seeks to thwart its human victim. More likely it's surprised, scared, or hungry.

- More videos of pratfalls involving park-like settings or naturally-occurring objects, such as a boulder falling on a car or a boater falling into a lake. The "versus nature" designation is bunk. A telephone pole can fall onto a car and a sunbather can fall into a swimming pool. These are simply accidents that involve objects.

- Environmental topics, such as global warming. The phrase seems to be a popular for describing conflict between people who disagree about the status of the environment and/or what ought to be done about it, but that is clearly man versus man. It is simultaneously used to imply that nature is responding negatively to human efforts to better our lives, particularly anything (that they perceive as) indulgent, without regard to such relevant particulars as the release of carbon. And that's absolute rubbish. The only sane purpose of environmental management is to better our lives.

- Survival scenarios, like the television show "Man versus Wild", wherein a man is left in the wilderness and tries to improvise food and shelter until he can get back to civilization. Now let's consider the "versus" aspect more philosophically, shall we? To survive in the wild, the show's protagonist eats eggs, catches salmon, makes a kukui torch, brushes his teeth with a manzanita leaf, climbs using a vine, and makes a raft out of bamboo. Barring an attack by a wild animal (again, that would be "man versus animal"), nature is not his antagonist-- it is his greatest provider. The "antagonists" are his own body's need for food and warmth (a constant among all humans all the time) and his goal of getting back to civilization (part of the show's premise).

- Natural disasters...

... which takes us back to the AP earthquake article. And I, for one, have found nothing in the lexicon or common usage that suggests a clear meaning for "man versus nature" in the context of an earthquake. There is no fight with an animal, nobody is stuck in the wilderness, and I'm assuming (for now) that we do not believe in a God of Earthquakes. So what do Chang and Borenstein-- and others who use the phrase in regard to natural disasters-- mean?

Our only remaining baseline is the literary term, which equates generally to "man versus unmet goal", with the particular goal (in some instances) of surviving an immediate threat to one's life. Not only do both interpretations stink, but the AP writers seem to have conflated them.

Japan, indeed, has made it their goal to construct for earthquake survivability. But life is not a narrative. A "character versus unmet goal" story has a beginning and an end; it presents a challenge to the character; and it describes events relevant to that challenge. Chang and Borenstein would have us believe that they are describing a bit of reality that matches this pattern, but they're full of crap. What they've done is cherry-pick to give the appearance of such a narrative.

"Japan has the strongest building standards in the world for withstanding earthquakes. It trains and prepares more for them...

And still the result was devastating."

Are you seeing it yet? Consider the tremendous challenge of the space race in the 1960's. That was life, that was reality, and that was a bunch of engineers working toward a presented goal. One could pick out a reasonable beginning and end, call it a narrative, and say that NASA "won" because they succeeded in landing a man on the moon.

But here's the kicker: Japan never set out with the goal of suffering zero deaths from an 8.9 earthquake 80 miles off its eastern shore. The event was unpredicted and unpredictable. It is neither a cause nor a result of Japan's earthquake preparedness (and, it should be noted, the worst damage was from the tsunami). The two do not constitute a narrative, and certainly not a contest; and it would be wrong--nay, contemptible-- to declare a winner.

"In the classic battle of Man vs. Nature, Nature won again."

Because people died? Chang and Borenstein, you have my contempt. To say nothing of kicking a people while they are down, this is an absolute fallacy. It makes as much sense as observing that a society has built hospitals, and then declaring them "losers" after a massive meteor impact because those hospitals can't bring back the dead. Unpredictability is not futility.

From the tone and theme, they should have flipped the article's title to read Japan best prepared, but Quake is 5th Biggest. The writers take pains to contrast Japan's preparedness with that of Haiti, and imply some kind of parallel to the comparative magnitude of the two quakes. They select the following quote:

"Nature can always throw an event at us that exceeds what we've designed for."

That's some strong personification. There's the vague implication that if you do more to protect against disaster, "Nature" responds with something unexpected. I'm suddenly haunted by visions...

... Hank made sure he had snow tires and chains, and drove very carefully through the pass. But the snow loosened a boulder, which fell on his car and crushed him. "Nature won again."

... Judy exercised regularly and stuck to a healthy diet, determined to avoid heart disease. But at the age of forty, she lay dying of cancer. "Nature won again."

... Phil's team had reached the summit of Everest, and returned, without loss. But he only thought he'd won. One week after returning home, Phil was bitten by a rattlesnake and died. "Nature won again."

Perhaps Chang and Borenstein would say that they only wished to express respect, or perhaps reverence, for the power of nature. But I say again: in this context, it is wrong. Such an attitude should be confined to the realm of biology and ecology, where the actions of man directly interact with a complex equilibrium. And I say again: Nature is a not a willful entity. The shifting of tectonic plates does not respond to our efforts to survive them; they are not an antagonist; and it is a gross disservice to measure human effort against the magnitude of such forces.

- J

Write for Japan

Strictly speaking, this is not a Writing Wednesday post. But it is about Writing, and it is on a Wednesday, so you can call it a Writing Wednesday post. As all of you know, the Digressionista Burrower, Cruella, went to Japan on work in January. In the days after the tsunami, she reported faithfully from Tokyo. Yesterday, she had to make the painful decision to go back home to Norway, and to decide on whether and when to return after things returned to normal.

We are naturally still in a bit of a shock because of how close one of our own came to the disaster, and that's going to manifest itself as missed blog posts for a couple of days till we come to terms with it. But since we do not want to miss a day if we can help it, here are some ways in which we writers can show our solidarity with the people of Japan- Bookish ways to Help Japan.

As many of you know, I work in the social sector, and am actively involved with fund-raising for non-profits. It is reliably learnt that Japan does not at this point need financial assistance. In fact, there are articles on how people and organizations are raising money without a clue as to how it is going to be spent. So do not feel guilty about not being able to donate anything.

In India, we have lived through more than our share of natural and man-made disasters. The one thing that people need at a time like this is to know that others care. Show your solidarity for Japan, but doing what you do best - WRITE FOR JAPAN!

Japan Mayhem

Sendai Tanabata credit

I'm normally sort of a mess addressing Topical Tuesday. I'm extremely opinionated, but don't want to make THIS a political place (though I am aware on a world front, I am far more moderate than I am on a US only evaluation, where I fall somewhere between Progressive and Bleeding Heart). This week however, there is a lot of BIGGER THAN POLITICS stuff going on.

I will say first, I am not the most informative Burrower to read on this... Cruella is actually living in Tokyo, Japan and much of what I know or can surmise is ONLY because she has been so articulate about her experience. I recommend checking out her blog for her first hand account.

I do however, have a handful of friends over there, and think I can put together some thoughts that aren't my normal riduculum.


In Praise of Modern Technology

I have four friends living in Japan at the moment—three I went to high school with, including one of my closest friends through high school--my original friend of the mind-meld--we could see something, look at each other and FALL OVER laughing because we shared the same (typically dirty) reaction. (all these three are married to Japanese citizens, and so are there permanently), and then there is Cruella, who I normally talk to (almost) daily—you know her too... and she will return to Norway in May or June, though knowing her love of Japan, I expect she will end up back there at some later date.

I knew there'd been a small earthquake several days before this, as Cruella had posted about it making her seasick. I'd thought (based on my minimal personal experience), that it was one of those things that was sort of spooky, sort of cool... (you can thunk me in the head in a minute)

[Digression #1: when I was a senior in high school, I had an 'early bird' Calculus class. It began at 7am. I drove to school and on the street ran into my friend Kim, also parking for the same class (yes, in Moscow Idaho, most high school seniors had access to a vehicle to get to school), and we walked into the building together. There was a pervasive clicking... horror film stuff... closer inspection showed us the locks were tapping against their lockers--all of them... in unison... we only had to walk 15 feet before we rounded a corner and a teacher met us saying, “there's been an earthquake, we need everyone to leave the building until they're sure it's safe”. Well WE didn't need telling twice. Kim spooks easier than most anyway, and I honestly LIKED being a little freaked out (being me)... we waited and were finally let in... went to Calculus, and as Mrs. Ringo spoke... a CRACK ran through the paint, first at the front, then at the back of the classroom... I swear it looked like half the classroom was going to fall off the building... it didn't, but several people changed chairs with no objection from Mrs. Ringo... after the fact... it was COOL--one of those stories to tell... so that makes up exactly half of my earthquake experience...]

My first knowledge of THIS BIG ONE though (biggest one ever, if I am reading reliable sources), was the notice “I'm okay,” from Cruella. It was posted on Facebook, and exploration of mutual friends displayed a lot of worry over several hours, but being in my time zone... I'd slept through the excitement. Once I knew Cruella was fine, I proceeded to check Facebook for two of my old friends... the third isn't on Facebook. It turned out one was in Hawaii at the time (she and her husband met when she was a flight attendant on the Honolulu/Tokyo route and they have interests in both places—though she WAS worried about her husband--more in a bit)... My friend NOT on Facebook though, was the one I had to wait on, as I needed to wait for her to respond to my one-on-one email.

Success... all four friends safe... But I learned some interesting things I hadn't known.

Tokyo Credit

Tokyo is DARNED Resilient

This is from the things Cruella has posted. It sounds an awful lot like once the rail system got moving again, businesses got back to normal. She stayed at the Embassy, as the house where she rents a room 'felt like paper' and the Embassy seemed much more stable (and aftershocks are still in effect). It sounded like any shortages (as of this weekend) WERE there were due to Westerners panicking and stocking up.

Now I have no idea WHY the Japanese are so calm and efficient, but it certainly sounds like those are the predominant traits coming through. Maybe, as an island far from most everything, it just takes a lot longer to run OUT because they already had products in transit before things hit? It makes sense that imported goods would have been disrupted since Friday and may NOW be coming up short, where over the weekend, the things that had already made land were still easy enough to get where they had to go...

I don't know what portion of Japan's imports come by air and what by sea... I DO know the sea warnings are still in effect...


Transportation Problems

My friend who was in Honolulu at the time had a return flight to catch. I take it she lives north of Tokyo... What she found off the plane was a 5 hour wait for getting on the 'next bus' to home (I got the impression still no train?  I am working with FB updates, so I hope I understood that)... she and a few others decided instead to split cab fare... On their ride (4000 yen each), they sat in silence as the 3rd nuclear reactor exploded.  She is gathering things and headed BACK to Honolulu, though her husband can't go. He has a new business he just can't leave. I can't imagine being separated, but I also can't imagine HIM wanting his wife there in the danger if she doesn't need to be when they have other options.


A Detour

My close high school friend... the one it took me a while to reach... lives in Okinawa. Yes, Okinawa that had to come back after one of the only nuclear bombs ever exploded... there is a large US military base there, but she is there because it is where her husband is from (though initially she went there to teach English with the JETS program).

But see... Okinawa is the large city FARTHEST from the devastation... Okinawa is far to the south in Japan (it's actually tropical) and so has experienced some small tremors ( 0.5-1.0 in strength) and has had warnings not to go on the beach... but because of their history, everything is strongly reinforced for both earthquake and tsunami... their life has been largely unaffected... except the emotional impact.

Michelle talks of something akin to survivor's guilt. She has a sister-in-law in Tokyo who is okay, but her WHOLE FAMILY there is Japanese—they are tied to this event. They know people they are worried about, but they are worried for their country in a bigger way, too. Michelle's email from Sunday morning said they'd been warned of a few more earthquakes around the 6.0 range in strength, so she went to the bank, the gas station, and the grocery... stocking up for a disaster, but feeling this odd powerlessness that THEY aren't probably the people who need this... and how do they help?

I'm sure SHE, like Cruella, would request if you WANT to help, to donate to disaster relief for the people actually affected. If you can. I know economic recovery is a trickle down process, so not everybody can... but in whatever form, we can send prayers, karma, warm thoughts, healing energy... whatever your belief (the scientist I am by day knows it doesn't matter--it ALL works--our collective energies are a thing of beauty, so send away)



And then the Nuclear Thing...


GADS! I need to confess something. Among the things that scare me, NOTHING outranks nuclear power plants. It may or may not be rational, but I've long felt like our skills were outpaced by the potential for disaster. Now Cruella posted a FB update about this Sunday... that Chernobyl comparisons were not appropriate... knowledgeable people said the modern technology made that kind of disaster all but impossible. All. But.

(My American Friends hold the same indoctrination I do, so they are more worried, mostly...)

Not impossible. All BUT impossible... I worry for the radiation disaster that seems possible, if not likely. But even barring that... given 55 nuclear power plants... 11 with damage... that is a 20% cut in power in the short term... Maybe in the long term... At least 5 of these plants seem to have sustained substantial damage... maybe the time of year is lucky... Daylight Saving Time is all ABOUT power conservation... but I can't help but wonder if there is a pending power shortage and how that might impact the recovery efforts.

Michelle said the 8 prefectures (which to me, sounds like states) closest to Sendai are having rolling 3-hour blackouts for the time being to conserve power. My friend Cathy expressed her home was in one of these, so it gets CLOSE to Tokyo... This seems so practical and reasonable... which considering the magnitude of everything, is darned impressive.

And this just in... From Michelle--she is part of a Yahoo group of educators in Japan and forwarded this from their discussion on the nuclear threat:

sic "LONG BUT VERY INFORMATIVE:
But here's one helpful comment (from my friend at Princeton) regarding
the nuclear power plant issue:

"To the best of my understanding, the technical analysis in this blog

http://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-worried-about-japans-n\
uclear-reactors/

is essentially correct. In other words, there is *very* little danger of a radiation release at Fukushima significantly affecting people at the distance of Tokyo. And even people in the area are surely at much more risk from less exotic dangers such as typhoid (from contaminated water supplies), tainted food, dehydration and exposure, fires started by the earthquake etc. English language news coverage in the US is focusing heavily on the "nuclear crisis" (I don't know about the Japanese coverage), but this is basically due to "nuclear hysteria" and the media's love of fear, as far as I can see."

And then here are two more links from Michelle on the discussions about the nuclear power stuff:

http://www.npr.org/2011/03/14/134543680/sizing-up-japan-s-nuclear-emergency-no-chernobyl

http://jeffhamann.blogspot.com/2011/03/regarding-nuclear-meltdown-fears.html
So that is fairly heartening... Did I mention of my lifetime friends Michelle is probably the one with the highest IQ? (in fact I'd bet I could place her with Jason and Leanne, which my fellow Burrowers know is fairly phenomenal) This makes her the rare American likely to assess the information and come up with the rational answer? So on the nuclear piece, I think this is a fair assessment.

Still I wonder...
How devastating is this going to be to Japan's economy?
How much does that affect other world economies?


I'm sure a ton of you know a lot more on the subject than I do, so PLEASE, chime in!