March 10, 2012
Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary to the earthquake and tsunami. All week, all the TV channels have been running special programming, TV movies, etc, etc that looks back at the events that happened and how things have changed or improved—culminating tomorrow with all kinds of live programming from the areas that were devastated the most.
It’s a little surreal to see all the videos of the earthquake and tsunamis again. Even though we were fortunate that Tokyo was not hit too hard, it’s still almost dream-like. “Did we really go through all of that?” A year later now as more and more reports come out about how the government reacted poorly or TEPCO didn’t do this or that, I think it would be easy to get angry or upset. But I’d rather not do that—you can’t go back and change history, just learn from the past and make the most of each upcoming day.
The last few months, various agencies have come out with report about the likelihood of the a major earthquake hitting the Tokyo metropolitan area and how big the earthquake could be. The predication ranges all over the place—some say 70%, some say 40%, some say 7.0 magnitude, some say 6.0 magnitude, etc, etc. But the consensus seems to be the same—the likelihood another big earthquake will hit has gone up last year. Plate tectonics and seismology can explain why. We still feel earthquakes today—they happen much more frequently than they did before March 2011. . I just think about it this way. In my lifetime there have been three major earthquakes in Japan—Kobe in 1995, Niigata in 2004, and last year. So it seems pretty likely that it will happen somewhere again.
Obviously, there has been all kinds of efforts to be better prepared if such an earthquake would occur. There are always stories on the news about how such and such a place went through evacuation drills and emergency preparation drills. Our company prepared an emergency kit for each employee—food, water, flashlight, radio, hardhat, etc, etc. The idea is that it’ll help you survive enough to get home or to the evacuation center. It’s hard to say if you can ever be prepared enough for something like that to happen. But experiencing it a little last year I think makes a difference. I think the part that really sticks out in my mind is the feeling of just trying to survive today—do we have enough food, enough water, enough whatever to get through day. Just taking it one day at a time.
It’s hard to say what’s changed in my life a year later. I can’t really come up with anything—I guess that’s a sign that for me things really are back to normal. I guess what comes to mind is that things will get more and more expensive. Someone has to pay for all this recovery and in the end it falls on the general public. TEPCO has announced that they are raising the electric bills 20% for companies and businesses starting in April. They proposed raising civilian electric bills as well, but there was such a huge backlash that it’s been tabled for now. The government is proposing to raise the sales tax from 5% to 10% to raise money for the recovery. It just seems like a matter of time before we see the prices rising, if it hasn’t already.
That’s it for now.
For old times sake…….
As of 3pm on 3/10/2012, the recorded amount of radiation in the air in Shinjuku was 0.05 microsieverts/hour. There was no radioactive materials detected in the tap water or in particles in the air.
