day 32

Yesterday marked a month since the big earthquake and tsunamis. I think all of the news anchors from all the channels were "reporting live" from different disaster areas for their newscasts last night to commemorate.

There were a lot of aftershocks yesterday. A LOT. One was bad enough that we temporarily evacuated our office in the late afternoon. It seemed as if every hour there would be a ticker at the bottom of the TV screen that was reporting a new earthquake. I saw on the news this morning that in the last month there have been over 400 earthquakes/aftershocks recorded (magnitude 5 or greater). That's an insane amount. Thankfully, there have not been any centered near Tokyo. For comparison, in the month that followed the big Kobe earthquake in 1995, there was a total of six aftershocks that were magnitude 5 or greater. The aftershocks have been continuing today. When I was waiting at the station this morning, the subways stopped running for about ten minutes after one aftershock hit.

Today's Japanese lesson. 緊急速報「エリアメール」. きんきゅうそくほう「えりあめーる」. Kinkyu shokuhou "Area Mail".


The photo is from my cell phone. There is a emergency message service (free) that sends these messages. It sort of predicts or warns you about an upcoming earthquake, seconds before you feel it. Now, I know what you are thinking. There's no way to predict earthquakes. I don't know how it technically works either. This message service is somehow tied into the national weather service and when they issue an emergency warning for earthquakes and tsunamis, you get this message if you are in a potentially affected area. It's pretty smart. The weather bureau must have a way to detect earthquakes the instant it happens and issue a warning before you actually feel the ground shake. The phone makes a very loud siren-like sound. Unless your cell phone is pretty old, all the cell phones in Japan have this service. So it's really jarring when an office full of people all have their cell phone go off with siren sounds at the same time. I guess in the US it would be similar to the emergency broadcast service that I'm sure you've heard being tested on TV. Imagine getting something like that on your cell phone.

Needless to say, we've been getting a lot of these messages the last month. I went back and counted, and I've gotten 25 of them so far. You don't necessarily get one for every single earthquake. (In fact, it didn't go off for the big one on 3/11. So the cynic would say, what good is it for?). Like I said, there must be a way that the weather bureau can detect some of the earthquakes super-early and have time to issue warnings. It'll come at any time of day, so there are times it wakes you up in the middle of the night. It's getting annoying on the one hand, but at the same time, that's what it's supposed to be doing--be annoying and giving you a warning. And it doesn't always mean that if you get the message, you will definitely feel an earthquake. It's just an alert to be cautious.

The actual message in the photo reads, "April 12th, 2:07pm. Emergency Earthquake Update. An earthquake has been detected in Fukushima Prefecture. Please take caution against strong shaking (from the National Weather Service)." About 5 to 10 seconds after getting this message, we did feel the ground shake. (The actualy earthquake was a magnitude 6 earthquake in Fukushima. It was probably only a 3 here in Tokyo).

Uh oh....the phones are going off again. Another earthquake warning. Better take cover.

day 28

As of 8pm on 4/8, the recorded amount of radiation in the air in Shinjuku was 0.0847 microsieverts/hour.

The reading for tap water in Shinjuku for 4/7 was 1.40 Bq/kg for iodine-131, 0.32 Bq/kg for cesium-134, and 0.27 Bq/kg for cesium-137.

The recorded amount of radioactive materials in particles in the air (dust and rain) for 4/7 was 6.22 Bq/meter squared for iodine-131 and 10.3 Bq/meter squared for cesium-137.

To be honest, right now there is not that much fear or worry about being affected by radiation in Tokyo. I don't get that sense at all. Everyone has calmed down by now. Maybe it's time to stop listing all the different readings now. What do you guys think? You probably don't really read it anyways. We'll see.

Last night, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake hit off the coast of Miyagi. It was the biggest aftershock since the one on 3/11. We are doing OK. Actually, I was already in a Nyquil-induced sleep (I've been battling a cold) when it hit. The earthquake woke me up. It shook for a pretty long time, but it thankfully was not too violent. When the big one hit on 3/11, it shook for a long time as well, but the shaking kept getting stronger and stronger. Last night, it didn't get stronger--just lasted a while.

No big effects today in Tokyo from the last night's earthquake. Life went on as usual (or what we call usual now post-earthquake). The trains are pretty much now running at the full schedule. Other than 2 liter bottles of water, you can pretty much buy anything now. We have not had any rolling blackouts in over a week and a half as the weather has gotten warmer.

自粛 じゅしく jushiku. It's a Japanese word that means something like "self-imposed control" or "voluntary restraint." It kind of a popular word these days. It almost feels like public peer pressure to be in self-imposed mourning. Like you cannot let loose and enjoy yourself. The cherry blossum trees are in full bloom and normally there would be big "flower viewing" parties. This year, there are not that many people out. I understand that there are still many people living in shelters and still sufferring from the after-effects of the earthquake. But at the same time, you can't be in mourning forever and need to turn the page and get on with it.

What happened in NYC after 9/11? Was there a similar self-imposed mourning-like period? When was it deemed OK to have fun? It's like the crowd yelling "Too soon!" to a comedian who made an inappropriate joke. When is it not "too soon"?

day 24

As of 3pm on 4/4, the recorded amount of radiation in the air in Shinjuku was 0.0894 microsieverts/hour.

The reading for tap water in Shinjuku for 4/3 was 2.93 Bq/kg for iodine-131, 0.21 Bq/kg for cesium-134, and 0.28 Bq/kg for cesium-137.

The recorded amount of radioactive materials in particles in the air (dust and rain) for 4/3 was 8.03 Bq/meter squared for cesium-137. Iodine-131 was detected only at minimal amounts.


Operation Tomodachi

That's the name of the US military operation currently underway in Japan. You can read more about here on someone else's blog.

http://tokyo5.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/operation-tomodachi/

I kind of want one of those patches.

P.S. Still new to this blogging thing. I can't get that link to load correcty. You'll just have to copy and paste. So analog.

day 22

As of 5pm on 4/2, the recorded amount of radiation in the air in Shinjuku was 0.0941 microsieverts/hour.

The reading for tap water in Shinjuku for 4/1 was 2.06 Bq/kg for iodine-131 and 0.45 Bq/kg for cesium-137. Cesium-134 was detected only at minimal amounts yesterday.

The recorded amount of radioactive materials in particles in the air (dust and rain) for 4/1 was 37.6 Bq/meter squared for iodine-131 and 26.1 Bq/meter squared for cesium-137.

I was all ready to write about how things in Tokyo are returning to normal and the worst seems to be behind us. Then about an hour ago, there was ground violently shook as an earthquake hit again. It was the first one we've felt in the last few days. There was no damage or anything--it lasted only a few seconds. But again, just a reminder that you can't fully let your guard down yet.

I went to the supermarket next door to my apartment for the first time in a few days and was pretty surprised to see how full the shelves were (except bottled water). It was hard to imagine that it was the same place that had the barren shelves a few days after the earthquake. And starting this weekend, Takashimaya is starting to extend it hours and will now be open until 9pm on weekends and 8pm on weekdays. There are no rolling blackouts scheduled for the weekend so that means we'll go almost a week without having any blackouts.

day 20

As of 3pm on 3/31, the recorded amount of radiation in the air in Shinjuku was 0.103 microsieverts/hour.

The reading for tap water in Shinjuku for 3/30 was 5.09 Bq/kg for iodine-131, 0.25 Bq/kg for cesium-134, and 0.63 Bq/kg for cesium-137.

The recorded amount of radioactive materials in particles in the air (dust and rain) for 3/30 was 21.3 Bq/meter squared for iodine-131 and 5.35 Bq/meter squared for cesium-137.

New developments seems to have really slowed down to a crawl now. Maybe that is a good thing. Progress at Fukushima Dai-ichi is very slow. After the initial fears over food and water, the public has seemed to calmed down and is getting used to the situation. There have been no rolling blackouts the past two days as the weather is back to spring-like temps.

Shelves on the supermarkets are still not back to 100%. In our neighborhood, for some reason all drinks--water, soft drinks, beer, etc--are especially in low supply. You can buy drinks, it's just your choices are really limited.

In Japan, tomorrow (April 1st) is sort of a symbolic day and represents a brand new beginning--the new school year starts, the new fiscal year starts for companies, first day of work for new graduates, the beginning of the new television season, etc, etc. A new start to a new Japan.