Tōhoku Earthquake Part 4 (東北の地震パート４)

The impact of all of this is too difficult to be fully determined this early and with ongoing problems at the plant, but I can talk about things that have already happened because of it.  The biggest impact is obviously in the area around the plant.  There is a 12 mile (20 km) evacuation zone around the plant and a further 6 mile (10 km) zone where people shouldn't be outdoors.  [1]  Besides the evacuation zone, crops and fishing have been hurt not only by contamination of: raw milk, spinach, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, turnip, shitake mushroom, bamboo shoot and sand lance (fish) in parts of Fukushima, Ibaraki and Tochigi prefectures [2], but also by the stigma with no one wanting to buy anything from Fukushima Prefecture or areas around the nuclear plant, whether it is contaminated or not.  What I think the biggest problem might be the radiation that leaked into the ocean.  A lot of the emergency water used as emergency coolant had leaked out of the plant through a vent.  This water was very irradiated and directly entered into water streams that led to the ocean.  At this point, not much is known about how much there is or how far it spread except for an estimate and radiation found in small fish. [3]  Why this is worse, is with varying currents it's really difficult to figure out its spread.  Not only that, but the radiation is able to spread through the food chain potentially, further spreading radiation and being difficult to find.  While this might be the biggest concern, I imagine the area around the plant will be environmentally damaged for some time also being a terrible disaster.

The nuclear situation quickly followed the earthquake, so even while the earthquake situation was still very serious the news and focus quickly turned to the nuclear situation.  The news I usually used was NHK World (Japan's National News Network) or Reuters, which had the best coverage I found (terrible additional social media forum comments aside).  Besides the news, I also had a variety of live updating Geiger counters in various locations in Japan and research in radiation, nuclear plants and previous nuclear disasters basically acquiring a poor man's non-sanctioned small minor out of it during that month.  Most of this was focused on figuring out if things were getting better or worse and determining if any radiation could possibly have any effect on Tokyo.  Most of this was for projecting what would happen and giving us enough time to escape even if things got disastrously bad.  Based on what I researched, there wasn't really a possibility of there being danger in Tokyo unless contaminated food was sold there.  Only one time was I caught by surprise and became a bit nervous of the situation.  The first rain showed an increase of radiation at one of the water treatment plants that supplied Tokyo water.  I expected radiation would be higher because the airborne radiation from the plant would come down in the rain the first time.  What I didn't realize was there being water treatment plants to the north of Tokyo as I thought Tokyo's water source was from the south-west only.  Obviously, the plants in the north could present a problem as the rivers that fed them would be coming from the north.  All this did was require a notification warning about using the water for infants.  This didn't even mean it would be specifically dangerous, just a notice set up by Japanese law.  For consideration, Japan's Iodine-131 limit in water is 100 becquerels per kilogram for infants and 300 for adults.  The international agreed level according to the World Health Organization is 3,000 becquerels per kilogram. [4]  This was the most dangerous / worst it got for Tokyo and the only time I even somewhat considered the possibility of leaving Tokyo and even then most likely for western Japan.  That day caused a water scare, with a ridiculous line at the grocery store before opening and the only way I was able to get water was a store ration of 1 bottle per person.

That was the low point and since then the news got steadily better (with setbacks here and there of course) until it had reached a more controlled situation.  While the after effects of the earthquake showed me the fragility of cities and the danger of herd mentality, the nuclear crisis really showed me the failings and danger of media.  The coverage was basically terrible and biased on all sides.  On the Japanese side, news was very slow to come out and lacked too much information.  Maybe the biggest problem was the government reliance on Tepco for information.  Obviously the problems at the nuclear plant made it too dangerous for news to cover the site, but the government seemed all too willing to accept whatever Tepco reported when they could have done more independent verifying.  It basically allowed Tepco to present reports on the situation when and how it wanted to leaving things in the dark and with a positive spin.  Even at one point getting bad enough that the Prime Minister had to yell at Tepco for not getting information for what was happening quick enough. [5].  I also remember during the crisis the Japanese media was also getting increasingly frustrated at Tepco's reports and question answering.  Also not the best way to handle it considering Tepco's history of covering up accidents.  The nuclear industry also made this worse by basically only giving best case scenarios and dismissing any worst case scenario as impossible.  While some of it was obvious to counter the ridiculousness of the doom and gloom sayers and maybe even somewhat warranted, their focus only on positives and best case scenario as the probable outcome was more politicking for their industry than helpful reporting.  It wasn't until a couple weeks into the incident when it was painfully obvious that things were much worse that they reported more accurately to what was happening.  So this reporting already created some skepticism, but was made worse upon the introduction of foreign media into the story.

While the Japanese media reporting wasn't great, the worst of the media was far and away most of the foreign media.  The basic reporting was doomsday far beyond worst case scenarios or even anything within the realm of possible scientific outcome.  Some highlights (lowlights?) from this reporting included people getting sick from taking potassium iodide pills to supposedly protect themselves from radiation that wasn't there, also making them more susceptible to thyroid problems they were trying to protect themselves from in the United States. [6]  Even worse in the case of China when people started to hoard iodized salt, because they thought it would do the same thing as potassium iodide. [7]  Or the mistaken reporting of the presence of a nuclear reactor in the main part of Tokyo itself with ShibuyaEggman. [8]

[9] Fox News realizes that Dr. Eggman isn't in charge of Tepco or a nuclear reactor in Tokyo and is a fictional video game villian , right?

Joking aside, a lot of the foreign media was very alarmist and sensational; whether using disaster and fear to create ratings or some other motivation.  The reporting was basically irresponsible and dangerous, that forced me and I'm sure many other people to fact-check and correct information people would email me from back at home worried due to hearing or seeing bad information.  It made figuring out any truth in the situation confusing and difficult, especially with the local reporting being almost the opposite.  Not only did it make it confusing, but created a situation where no one could trust any of the information that was coming out.  Even information that was accurate could be misleading and cause problems.  Specifically in media's reporting of radiation levels as times above normal.  With the normal levels at such a insignificant amount, even many times above that are still very small numbers.  What would have been better reporting of the radiation levels would have been comparing it to commonly known radiation exposures, such as x-rays or cat-scans, or comparing it to what are dangerous levels.  I ended up figuring out my information about it from U.S. government / military reports, monitoring a host of geiger counters, Reuters which had relatively decent coverage and NHK world, but only for basic facts and observations.  A lot of times, I needed to piece together pieces from different reports and then use the science I was learning while researching to figure out something that might make sense.  Maybe even worse was after the two week news cycle the media stopped reporting or caring about the story.  Right after the Libya bombings, foreign media stopped reporting and with no foreign pressure for information, domestic news also dried up.  I think the problems with some foreign media reporting added a lot to the 'flyjin' effect.

'Flyjin' is a new word created out of the aftermath of the nuclear power plant disaster.  Jin (人, じん) in Japanese is person or people, so the word basically means fly person.  It's a reference to all of the foreigners who left Japan after the earthquakes because of the problems with the earthquakes and more likely radiation fears.  Over 500,000 foreigner left the country during the first month. [10]  While some were relocated along with their company, others quit their jobs or left girlfriends / boyfriends, spouses, family or life behind to escape Japan.  I can't make the decision that someone leaving was the wrong thing to do, as people have a right to determine what is safe or unsafe for them, especially if they have other people to take care of besides themselves.  However, I think the foreign media really made things worse in this regard and some people became too scared to rationally think through the situation and properly decide what the risk was.  To make matters worse, I'm sure many people had people back at home telling them to get out of there due to receiving wrong information through foreign media viewpoints.  This would have made things difficult for some people to stay even if they wanted to.  The hardest to not follow and stay in Japan would have been when foreign governments started intervening and suggesting people leave Tokyo and Japan. [11].

Basically France jumped the gun and went too far, possibly for political benefit and trying to be safe as the world's 2nd largest nuclear power user.  Since France acted in this way, it basically forced other governments to act for no other reason than to not look like they didn't do enough in case things went really bad.  The government mandates basically gave people no choice but to leave Japan after they were issued.

Thankfully the U.S. didn't do more than increase their evacuation zone to 80 km.  If it had take the action France and other nations had taken, I would have probably had to leave Japan for good as that time was right before the main hiring period for teachers and not having a job combined with the expense of a round-trip flight would have been too much to overcome to return here.  I'm sure a lot of people who left felt very foolish and lost a lot of money when things were not the doomsday that was getting reported.

Living in Shibuya, Tokyo, I'm pretty used to seeing foreigners in the area as it's a relatively desirable spot.  However, the two weeks following the earthquake, I didn't see any foreigners, whether walking about or getting errands done.  Fore those couple of weeks, I felt like I really stood out compared to how it normally is.  In Tokyo, the foreign exodus was very noticeable and easy to see how the word flyjin could have been created out of this environment.  For people who were making their lives in Japan to leave when Japan could most use the support at signs of trouble, I'm sure has created a bad enough impression to popularize a disparaging term.  I'm not suggesting that people should have thought about impressions their actions were making when deciding upon their personal safety, nor that the use of the term is justified or right.  At the same time though I can understand why it was created, and the negative impact it will cause for foreigners living in Japan that already didn't need the help of giving a bad impression.  If anything, this plays into already made assumptions about foreigners by some in Japan and it will now be even harder to make a good impression or at least a non-negative one.  I can already imagine jobs will be harder to find, as why would a company want to hire someone who might dump everything and run at the first sign of trouble over a Japanese worker who would stay here.  The bigger impact is on the impression of foreigners in general and its hard to see what the full damage will be.  It's also disappointing that with the gains that have been made with Japan and foreign soft power interaction and the interaction with tourists and English teachers in Japan has made big growths, but now that takes a huge step back and provides the other side some "told you so" ammunition.  I hope that Japan can make a full recovery from the earthquakes, tsunamis and nuclear problems to be better than it was before and through people helping and giving support, such as the U.S. military clean-up and rescue Operation Tomodachi (友達, ともだち, friend) as well as continued positive interaction between foreigners and Japanese that relations can become better than ever before too.

References:

1. "Japan Bans Entry Into Fukushima Evacuation Zone," BBC.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13153339.

2. "The Instructions Associated with Food by Director-General of the Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters (Restriction of Distribution in Fukushima Prefecture)," Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
http://www.mhlw.go.jp/english/topics/2011eq/dl/Instructions0530.pdf.

3. Juro Osawa, Yoree Koh and Daisuke Wakabayashi, "Japan Finds Radiation in Fish," The Wall Street Journal.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703712504576244251331137870.html.

4. Michiyo Nakamoto, Gwen Robinson and Lindsay Whipp, "Tokyo Tap Water Alert Deepens Fears," Financial Times.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/512fa9fe-5527-11e0-87fe-00144feab49a.html#axzz1R8AWTzNA.

5. "Kan Berates TEPCO for Tardy Response," The Daily Yomiuri.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110315004235.htm.

6. JoNel Aleccia, "Popping Potassium Iodide Already? Really Bad Idea," MSNBC.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42135438/ns/health-health_care/t/popping-potassium-iodide-already-really-bad-idea/.

7. "Panicked Chinese Mistakenly Hoarding Iodized Salt," MSNBC.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42133596/ns/health-health_care/t/panicked-chinese-mistakenly-hoarding-iodized-salt/.

8. Simon Maloy, "Fox News Discovers Nuclear Reactor in Japanese Disco," Media Matters.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201103140036?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d84088d20552601%2C0.

9. "Dr. Eggman from Sonic Colors," Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eggman_pose_29.jpg.

10. "531,000 Foreigners Left Japan Since Quake; 244,000 in First Week," Japan Today.
http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/531000-foreigners-left-japan-since-quake-244000-in-first-week.

11. Gwen Robinson, "Expats Leave Japan in Increasing Numbers," Financial Times.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/724b48e6-50ae-11e0-9e89-00144feab49a.html#axzz1R8AWTzNA.

Tōhoku Earthquake Part 3 (東北の地震パート３)

Maybe this is the post everyone has been waiting to read.  The earthquakes and tsunamis also led to a failure of cooling systems at Fukushima's Dai-Ichi Nuclear Power Plant, which has caused a disaster and on-going problem in the region.  I'm going to try and clear up what happened and what is still happening now regarding the situation.  I'll also be talking about the media impact and the development of the term 'Flyjin'.  The nature of the situation and how information could be gathered, news's coverage and the stigma behind radiation and nuclear power has created a lot of confusion.  I will be adding more information / research than the previous posts to try and clear this up.  Contrary to popular foreign news opinion this didn't happen:

"Mount Fuji in Red" Akira Kurosawa's Dreams 1990

The film is a series of shorts depicting dreams Kurosawa had.  It's really worth watching and there's even an appearance by Martin Scorsese as Van Gogh in one of the shorts if that helps peak any one's curiosity about it more.

The information regarding the reactors is still changing even now.  Here's the information on the status of the reactors.  The plant had 6 reactors at the time, but only reactors 1-4 were either in operation or had recently spent nuclear fuel.  As such, reactors 5 and 6 were able to be put in cold shutdown relatively quickly and didn't have the same problems that the other 4 had.  Here is the information regarding Reactor's 1-4's problems and current status:

The current status for all of the reactors is they have proper cooling with fresh water being supplied to each of the reactors.  This means the situation for each of them is stable in that there won't be more melting.  The more concerning problems are now due to radiation release.  Reactor 1's reactor core has fallen to the bottom of its containment vessel and the reactors core's of 2 and 3 have also melted during this time.  The housing structures of Reactors 1, 3 and 4 have had damage to the upper part and Reactor's 2 has possible suppression chamber containment failure. [1] In simpler terms, this means that all of the reactors are now stable in cooling to prevent further melting, but there is still containment issues of radiation and contaminated cooling water in reactors 1, 2 and 3.

First for some background about the plant itself.  The nuclear power plant is in the Prefecture of Fukushima.  Fukushima is in the Tōhoku region, where the earthquake and tsunamis caused the most damage.  The prefecture is the southern-most prefecture in the Tōhoku region bordering the Kanto region, which Tokyo is a part of.  However, the plant isn't close to Tokyo with it being about 140 miles (225 km) away.  Fukushima Prefecture is just south of Miyagi Prefecture, which was hardest hit by the earthquake and tsunamis.  Dai-Ichi means Number 1 in Japanese so it doesn't mean anything special.  I think the reason the name has been used in the media reports was to distinguish this plant and Fukushima's Dai-Ni (Number 2) plant which was also having cooling problems in the beginning, but was able to be brought under control quickly.  The plant at the time of the earthquake had 6 reactors and 2 more were being built at the plant, which upon building and completing them in 2016 and 2017 would have made the plant one of the largest in the world. [2]  The other important factor leading up to the earthquake was Reactors 4, 5 and 6 were not in operation due to planned maintenance.

A simple summary of the disaster at Fukushima is the tsunamis that followed the earthquake destroyed backup power generators to a plant without power from the earthquakes and tsunami damage.  Without any power, the reactors had no way to cool the nuclear fuel.  While the nuclear reactors stopped immediately following the earthquakes and nuclear fuel rods secured as designed for security measures, the fuel rods need months of continual cooling to achieve cold shutdown and be safe from melting.  With no electricity to pump in water for cooling, it eventually got hot enough to boil the water that were in the cooling pools and left fuel rods exposed to air.  This caused fuel rods to heat up more, melt and release radiation.  This would continue until a variety of drastic measures were used to refill the cooling pools and get electricity back to the plant.  After the situation was more under control, the main problems have been containing the radiation, specifically the irradiated water used as emergency coolant and properly disposing of irradiated materials / cleaning up the site and surrounding areas.  

Here's a more detailed timeline of the events of the disaster at the plant that gives a good rundown of the events at Fukushima by the Nuclear Energy Agency. [3]

So how was all of that able to happen?  Well, besides the disaster itself, there were a combination of poor planning and decisions not to upgrade safety measures before the disaster that made things much worse.  While backup plans were obviously in place, they weren't enough to stop what happened and a few additional actions could have prevented a lot of the problems.  The first factor was this plant being an older one.  Reactor 1 had begun producing Nuclear Power in March of 1971. [4]  The older plant models need electricity for the water coolant to operate.  What happened at Fukushima showed the exact reason why this is a bad idea.  If electricity is lost for a long enough period, meltdown will occur.  However, newer reactors don't use this kind of cooling system.  Now gravitational cooling systems are used, where the cooling water reservoir is higher than the nuclear plant, allowing gravity to deliver the cooling water.  This system would work even if electricity was to be lost.  It's something that could have been upgraded at the plant that would have prevented what happened but wasn't.  The other major failure, at least in my mind was the position of the back-up generators.  They would have been able to provide electricity to the plant even after the power failed, but the tsunami wiped them out.  The generators were on the ground because they assumed the tsunami protective wall would block any wave that came in. [5]  If the generators were on a platform they could have survived and kept the electricity going.  The things that I think is more hindsight being 20/20 than serious lapses in planning was the planning for the worst case scenario for earthquakes and tsunamis for the area.  The earthquake was the worst in probably 1200 years in Japan and would have went far beyond the levels of confidence used in good engineering planning.

The bigger question now might be why build nuclear plants in Japan, which is seismically active or in an area that is prone to tsunamis.  For the first question of why use nuclear power in Japan, the answer is until recently there have been few other options.  Japan is a small island nation with few resources and 75% of the land too mountainous to be habitable.  With many of the plants built at a time when alternative energy also wasn't viable there was no other choice.  Even now due to immediate need for electricity, Japan will still be looking to nuclear power.  However, the accident might be creating a change to that.  There's currently talk of proposing a law to make all new housing have solar panels by 2030.  [6]  This could work really well as Japan gets a lot of sun, architecture codes already have rules in place to prevent buildings from casting too large a shadow on other buildings so almost all buildings still have access to sunlight and buildings are rapidly replaced here, which would make for quicker implementation than other countries.  Other viable ideas that I haven't heard much talk of would be geothermal, wind and wave hydroelectric power.  As for the second question, I have less answers.  The nuclear plants need to be close to the coast, because it's the only place where enough water can be drawn in to cool the plant.  What I don't know is why they were built along the Pacific Ocean side near the fault lines and not on the Sea of Japan side where tsunamis wouldn't be such a risk.  However, I'm sure there are other factors that I don't know about and makes my conjecture into this relatively of limited use.

After disaster had struck there were also some troubling problems about trying to fix the situation.  None of this is due to the workers who have and continue to do an incredible job and have been the very definition of heroic throughout this ordeal.  The general disaster response and planning by Tepco (the electric company in charge of the plant) and the government was pretty bad.  First, I'll talk about Tepco.  Tepco has a monopoly on electricity supply in the Tokyo / Kanto area and really strong political connections.  They've also had a history of cover-up and problems most notably in 2002. [7]  There has been some talk of the government acquiring and dismantling Tepco, but it seems to only have been talk and not very serious.  What would make this difficult is two-fold being:  a. it's strong political ties which might also explain some of the political beating Prime Minister Kan has taken the last few weeks, although the extent of either I don't know and b. the government not wanting to take over Tepco before it pays as much as possible for the containment, cleanup and reparations to those affected so it won't be paid for by tax payers.

Next for the government side.  Here's an incredibly basic Japanese political overview pertinent to government context before the nuclear plant crisis.  The Liberal Democrat party was in control of Japan from 1955-2009, when the Democratic Party came into power and has been in power since then.  The other major factor is throughout the past 6 years, 5 different prime ministers have been in power; 3 on the Liberal Democrat side and 2 since the Democratic Party  coming to power in Japan.  It has been a time of relatively weak leadership in Japan and even the current prime minister, Naoto Kan has had to deal with a vote of no-confidence and low poll numbers the past few weeks here.  Besides the political dysfunction / ineffectiveness of its recent history, the Japanese government comprises of a large bureaucracy making decisions slow and deliberate.  These two factors showed themselves at the worst possible time during the crisis.  It wasn't that actions were slow to be carried out, as they are usually quite efficiently done here, but nobody was seemingly willing to make decisions that needed to be made.  To give an idea of some of the struggles in decision making, the clean-up and restoration of operations at Sendai airport was taken over by the U.S. military stationed in Japan and then relief operations directed by American personnel for weeks before returning operation to Japan. [8]  Combined with Tepco previous problems regarding safety issues and cover-up could have lead to delays for a situation that couldn't have them.  Such as how long it took to get electricity to the plant and water into the reactors for cooling.  (Day 2 for any water, 4 days for water to reach all of the reactors and 11 days for electricity at damaged reactors to start testing.) [9]  This also forced the workers' hands on-site who had to think and enact unprecedented emergency actions to try and keep things under control for that length of time. This is especially bad in light of the recent findings of meltdown starting five hours after the earthquake and the fuel falling to the bottom of the containment vessel 11 hours after the earthquake. [10]

Lastly, I'll cover the other event that happened during the problems at the nuclear plant that needs some explanation.  The explosions that occurred to the housing unit buildings of the reactors were from a build-up of hydrogen that then exploded. [11]  The hydrogen can be created when the fuel rods start melting and probably mixed with the oxygen when the inner containment vessel was vented to the outer containment vessel to relieve pressure.  This is why there were explosions at the reactors during the crisis and were not as large a problem in the long run as originally feared.  

This basically covers most of the important parts leading up to and during the nuclear plant crisis.  The next part, and final part of the nuclear and earthquake coverage will be the impact from the nuclear disaster, as well as some commentary of the media coverage and of the term 'flyjin' created during this time.

References:

1. "Current Status of Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station (as of June 27, 2011)," Tepco.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/f1/images/f12np-gaiyou_e_2.pdf.

2. "Tepco Cancels Plan to Build 2 New Reactors at Fukushima," Nikkei.
http://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/tnks/Nni20110418D18JF399.htm.

3. "Timeline for the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident," Nuclear Energy Agency.
http://www.oecd-nea.org/press/2011/NEWS-04.html.

4. "Overview of Facility of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station," Tepco.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/outline_f1/index-e.html.

5. "TEPCO Details Tsunami Damage / Waves that hit Fukushima Plant Exceeded Firm's Worst Case-Projections," Daily Yomiuri Online.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110410003477.htm.

6. Tim Hornyak, "Japan Eyes Solar Panels on all New Buildings," CNET.
http://news.cnet.com/japan-eyes-solar-panels-on-all-new-buildings/8301-17938_105-20065704-1.html.

7. "Heavy Fallout From Japan Nuclear Scandal," CNN.
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/BUSINESS/asia/09/02/japan.tepco/index.html.

8. Martin Fackler, "Quietly, U.S. Troops Help Japan Reopen Sendai Airport," The New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/world/asia/14sendai.html.

9. "Timeline for the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident," Nuclear Energy Agency.

10. Brian Vastag and Steve Mufson, "Japanese Scientist: Fukushima Meltdown Occurred Within Hours of Quake," The Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/japanese-scientist-fukushima-meltdown-occurred-within-hours-of-quake/2011/05/26/AGYXSJCH_story.html.

11. Leika Kihara and Kiyoshi Takenaka, "Japan to Fill Leaking Nuke Reactor with Sea Water," Reuters.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/12/japan-quake-reactor-idUSTKZ00680620110312?feedType=RSS&feedName=hotStocksNews&rpc=43.

Tōhoku Earthquake Part 2 (東北の地震パート２)

For Tokyo, the after effects had much more of an impact than the earthquake itself.  The first couple of weeks afterwards showed me a lot about herd mentality and the fragility of large cities.  Tokyo, with all of its size, population and power in Japan came to a standstill the week afterwards.  Even though it was far from the earthquake and had negligable damage.  However, any large metropolis would probably experience similar problems.  While cities are the powerful centers of any place, there's also a fragility that gets forgotten until something like this happens.  Cities constantly need an influx of supplies to keep it running as it can't support itself nor has the space to produce its own needs.  If the supply chain was to ever be cut off, then...

For a few days this was the scene in every grocery store, convenient store and hyaku yen (dollar store) in Tokyo.

What happened to Tokyo was multiple logistic failures at once.  The first being the destruction caused by the earthquake and tsunami in the north and along the eastern coast of Japan.  It destroyed some of the production centers of goods.  The longest effects were egg factories and milk containers which caused both products to be off the shelves for a few weeks.  However, damage to other areas also caused delays in supplying Tokyo.  The next failure was a combination of destruction of road and rail systems and transport needed to send supplies to and from the disaster areas.  This led to difficulties and a shortage of getting the items to stores in Tokyo.  The last problem for supplies was entirely a societal failure due to herd mentality.  People overreacted to the situation and started hoarding supplies because of the situation.  What would have been minimal problems for the first two failures developed into a very big one.  Goods couldn't be delivered to stores fast enough due to a huge demand and a delay in supply.  What would have been a relatively normal situation quickly became widespread food shortages.  The now food shortages exasperated the situation and fully developed the herd mentality.  People now seeing no food in stores also started to hoard food that they found leaving nothing.  Government officials explaining the situation fell on deaf ears as people could only see empty shelves and weren't going to trust the government about it or think through the situation.  So for a few days, stores were empty to the point that they wouldn't open and people would wait for delivery trucks to come or a store's opening in the morning to rush in and buy the food they needed.

I wasn't really affected as I had done grocery shopping before anything happened.  Also, restaurants still had food to sell even if the stores didn't.  Nobody was going to starve and the crisis was over in a few days as delivery was able to get back on schedule and people had already bought anything they could need.  Seeing how quickly Tokyo could go bad without damage in the city itself was almost the biggest shock of the whole thing for me.

While the shortages were resolved quickly, the rest of the after effects are going to be much longer lasting.  Obviously the biggest one on the international news cycle was the disaster at the Fukushima Dai Ichi Nuclear Power Plant, however I'm going to leave that as its own post for next time.  Related though is one of the other large crisis for Japan.  After the earthquake and continuing until at least the fall will be energy shortages / an energy crisis.  A lot of the electricity used in the Tokyo / Kanto area is produced in the northeast or Tōhoku region, the area hardest hit by the earthquake and tsunami.  Many of the plants were damaged or forced offline.  Fukushima's Dai Ichi Plant supplied electricity to Tokyo and obviously its 6 reactors are permanently shut down.  Other nuclear plants in the area that supplied Tokyo were also shut down due to safety concerns.  Making things worse is there has been little rain in the area and hydroelectric plants are also below usual production.  This led to an energy crisis very soon after the earthquake.  The first couple weeks were a huge problem, but everyone has figured out how to conserve energy and it's no longer the problem it was presently.  The first couple weeks, a widespread grid failure with random blackouts seemed possible.  To save the region from the chaos of widespread unexpected blackouts, planned blackouts were instituted.  Every area was divided into one of five groups that was given a 3 hour planned blackout, where they would turn off the juice for wide areas.  For a few days, some of the groups had to go through 2 blackout periods in a day.  This affected the whole Kanto region, except for areas deemed vital.  The area I'm in was actually one of those areas and while I feel bad about not sharing the burden, it was fortunate to not have to worry about the refrigerator.  That and the laptop were the only things I ever had on at home even though the still cold weather and typical Japanese insulation (basically none) made things uncomfortable for a while.  At first, lots of companies didn't take what was happening so seriously, although the electric company was also downplaying the situation so it initially didn't seem so bad.  After a few close calls to widespread blackouts, both started to work a lot more on fixing the situation.

Shibuya 109: A famous department store on one of Tokyo's busiest intersections.  These spots are usually a sea of neon.

The huge video advertising screens silent for once.

The first thoughts that come to mind when thinking about Tokyo are the bright neon and the mass crowds of people.  That first month, Tokyo had switched to a strange alter-ego.  During the day, it had become quiet like a town with nobody out.  A far cry from its usual bustling metropolis.  At nights, it had changed from a sea of neon to incredibly dark.  Only the first floor was allowed its usual light to help people on their way.  Over time things have gotten more back to normal for the moment.  This was due to more supply getting to the area along with better conservation.  Other regions have sent excess power to the region and many of the trains and stations are supplying some of their own power.  Conservation has also gotten better with large companies working with the electric company and the natural byproduct of spring arriving and people no longer needing their heaters.

However, the situation isn't over yet.  With the electrical infrastructure unable to be rebuilt by the summer and the increase demand due to the hot and humid summers, the energy crisis this summer might be worse than it was initially.  At least there will be more time to plan for this, but I imagine this summer could be unpleasant.  Already the trains have been hot and humid a couple of days and this was only in May.

The train saving electricity campaign / awareness poster.  These are on posters in train stations and stickers  inside the trains.

The other major impact being economical.  First being the money in damages lost and the costs of rebuilding along with the loss of production.  The two other big ones being taxes raised to pay for the cost and the impact on the yen due to everything.  The sales tax has been 5% in Japan, but that is likely to change.  A proposal has been in place to raise it to 7-8% soon for the next few years and for it to go to 10% after that. [1]  The yen has also felt a strong impact.  While at first, I thought the yen might get weaker due to everything, the opposite has taken place.  The yen is at 80 yen to the dollar now, where before it was at the 90-100 yen to the dollar and a few years ago at 130 yen to the dollar.  This is even after Japan, United States and EU market intervention.  The explanation for this is monetary investors have speculated Japanese businesses will be buying yen to help the rebuilding process of Japan, so investors have been buying yen making it stronger.  While painful to exchange dollars to yen, it could work out for me making yen if it stays like this when I go to exchange back.  It has added another headache for the Japanese economy as demand for Japanese exports (now more expensive due to exchange rates) has dropped.

While the first few weeks had some serious after effects, most things in Japan besides the disaster areas have returned to normal now.  Summer will bring a new set of problems due to energy shortages, but after that the energy crisis should be solved.  What hasn't really been felt much yet, but what will be the longest lasting effect will be economical.  The next part will cover the other long lasting problem dealing with the problems with the nuclear plant.

References:

1. "Japan Eyes Sales Tax Hike, Using Reserves for Budget," Reuters.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/17/japan-economy-noda-idUSL3E7HH03N20110617.

Tōhoku Earthquake (東北の地震, とうほくのじしん)

2:46 March 11, 2011


It's been 3 months since the Tōhoku earthquake.  I've decided that enough time has passed now to write about it without being insensitive writing about my experiences.  One that pales in comparison to people directly affected by the earthquake.  Nor will it cause worry or be sensational talking about the events at this point.  This is going to be a mixture of my experiences, what has actually happened and some commentary on the ongoing situation and what has happened.  It will most like be broken up into 3-4 posts.

Earthquake: (地震, じしん, Jishin)
Tsunami: (津波, つなみ)

The Tōhoku Earthquake was the largest in Japan's recorded history and probably of its past 1200 years.  In the world's recorded history, it was the 5th largest.  The 9.0 quake was off the coast of Miyagi Prefecture, 232 miles (373 km) from Tokyo.  Not only did the earthquake cause damage on its own, but the worst of the damage occurred from the tsunamis created by the earthquake.  Waves reaching at least 30 1/2 feet (9.3 meters) [1]  have wiped out whole towns and cities, while devastating the coast of Eastern Japan.  With 15,467 losing their lives and 7,4822 people missing [2], it has been the worst disaster in Japan since World War II.  Most of this information isn't new for any of you as I'm sure you've seen the news and video of the disaster (which is why I won't be adding any here).  However, the rest of what I will be writing will be my experiences of living in Tokyo during the past few months and commentary about how the situation has unfolded, as well as the ongoing aftermath.  Hopefully this helps in understanding what has and is happening with me and the rest of Japan, along with some idea of the personal impact something like this brings.  Again, being in Tokyo is nothing like actually being in the disaster.  Tokyo has been fine throughout this whole time except for some minor inconveniences.

When the earthquake happened, I was sitting at my desk as I could feel the beginnings of an earthquake.  I've experienced a few earthquakes before this one; it's part of the territory.  Being on top of 3 different plates in the Ring of Fire tends to make the ground a bit active, but the earthquakes have always been very small and only happen once every couple of months.  They were always around a magnitude of 3 or 4, just enough to feel it but not enough to do anything else.  When you're by yourself when it happens, the earthquake registers and you take a quick mental note and then continue whatever you were doing.  When near others,  everyone looks at each other to see if everyone else felt it and then continue working.  Up until this one, that was basically my reaction scale.  Afterwards, here's my new reaction scale giving my reaction and impact on the apartment from this earthquake.

3.5-4.0
Nothing.
"Oh, earthquake"

4.0-4.5
Light rattling noise.
"Heh, that's a strong one"

4.5-5.0
Loud rattling noise, Noticeable shaking.
"Hmm"

5.0-5.5
Stuff Starts Falling.
"This isn't good"

5.5-6.0
Lots of things falling.
"Time to bail the house?"

In Shibuya, it was somewhere around 5.5-6.  Considering the 232 miles (373 km) from Tokyo the epicenter was, it was an incredibly powerful earthquake.  The other shocking part was the length of it.  I'm guessing it was very slow to reach its full power due to the distance travelled.  At first, it was the same as any other; but it kept going and was also slowly building power until 2 1/2 minutes in, it had reached full strength.  I went from continuing to chat with friends ignoring the earthquake, to being concerned, to preventing things from falling and finally to standing next to the front door debating on bailing or not.  After a minute of the worst, it calmed down a little to still shaking but not as violently.  The ground still shook for over 2 hours straight and aftershocks happening every 15-30 minutes after that.  That first day the ground shook more often than it did not.

My reaction was probably different than what you might expect and even what I was expecting.  Maybe because it was slow in developing, but more likely being a natural reaction.  Once the earthquake started getting strong enough to knock things over, I went into damage control mode.  Moving things away from the edge, catching items falling and moving fragiles onto safe areas on the ground.  At the 5.5-6.0 level, it was strong enough to knock over smaller items and narrow based items.  All of the small knickknacks in the apartment had fallen on their sides and it knocked most of my books and some small items unto the floor.  Luckily there was no damage, as the closest that came to happening was the glass that holds our chopsticks fell over, but the chopsticks inside of it wedged the glass between the space behind the stove.  I also still have no idea how some of the frames hanging on the wall survived as they were rocking a good 3-5 inches off the wall and then crashing back into it.  Somehow they stayed intact and on the wall.

At the strongest point, I grabbed my stuff and waited at the door running through the scenarios that would make me leave.  However, after a minute of everything violently shaking everywhere, it finally started to calm down a little.  At this point I sat back down and started to search for news about what was happening.  At this point it was no longer violently shaking, but the ground was still moving.  The power and duration of the earthquake was equally astounding.  After the big initial quake, the ground movement was side to side action. My guess (Warning: not a seismologist) is due to those waves being the only ones that could last the distance to Tokyo.  The best way I can explain the rest of that day and much of the first week was like living on a boat.  For an earthquake of this size it's not something that is a one and done.  The past few months have had numerous earthquakes with 5 over magnitude 7, 82 over magnitude 6 and 502 above magnitude 5 [3].  Since the aftermath it has been almost like a cooling down effect where the aftershocks have gotten smaller and less frequent gradually.  Although there are still bad days of high activity every once in a while.  The end of the first month still had at least 2-3 noticeable earthquakes in Tokyo a day.  At this point it's maybe a couple a week, but now it depends more on active periods and more dormant periods.

In terms of any damage in Tokyo, it has been incredibly minimal and only of things must susceptible to earthquake damage as the pictures should be pretty easy to see why.

Hatsudai, Tokyo: The closest noticeable damage near my house.

Shinjuku Gyoen

Besides the wall in the first picture, stone lanterns were the only things I saw that took damage from the earthquake in Tokyo.

Tokyo has been less affected by the direct effects of the earthquake, but has had some difficulties due to the problems created by the earthquake.  These have included shortages, an energy crisis, the failed nuclear reactor in Fukushima and its impacts.  I will discuss about these in the next parts along with commentary about the media coverage, the 'flyjin' effect, how things are currently and of the future of Japan.


References:

1. "The 2011 off the Pacific Coast of Tohoku Earthquake," Japan Meteorological Agency.
http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/2011_Earthquake.html.

2. "Damage Situation and Police Countermeasures Associated with 2011 Tohoku District - Off the Pacific Ocean Earthquake June 20, 2011," National Police Agency of Japan.
http://www.npa.go.jp/archive/keibi/biki/higaijokyo_e.pdf.

3. "The 2011 off the Pacific Coast of Tohoku Earthquake," Japan Meteorological Agency.