A few days ago was the first time I've been able to actually breathe normally and start concentrating on things besides the news. I'd just discovered Japan's Ministry of Science and Technology were releasing daily reports of radioactivity in the air and water, by prefecture, and it was such a relief to see Gifu's levels were "not detectable"...Sure, maybe we're getting a slight increase, but not even enough to make it on the chart - unlike, say, Tokyo, or many of the other regions surrounding the plant. It was a full moon outside and I just went out without a mask and felt an incredible rush of being alive and safe, and for the most part I've been feeling that way ever since. Guess now all my old, less dire worries can come flooding back...
But for now, it's vacation! No work all week. Going to go to Naoshima tomorrow - it's an island filled with a bunch of contemporary art exhibits. My friend Jenn says it's really neat, but other than a couple pieces from Yayoi Kusama, I don't really know much about it. Should be fun though!
I feel like when I started this post I had some more things to write about...will probably try and finish that Bali post I started way back when, pretty soon - if only so I can remember my trip in the future...also have some pictures of Kinkakuji (otherwise known as the Golden Pavilion) from when I went to Kyoto for New Year's.
So make sure you check back soon, now that we've returned to our regularly scheduled programming. It's good to have things back to normal!
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011
Special Earthquake Edition, part 3: After Shock
It's been about 5 days now since panic really set in, and as more information has come out, things have gotten a little less stressful. My friend Jenn, who studied phyiscs at MIT, told me she believes we are safe, so long as there is no major sustained fire/explosion to hurl the really dangerous radioactive particles our way. Fortunately for us, we are some 270 miles from the plant, on the other side of a large mountain range, so - barring any major worsening of the situation - we should be relatively unaffected. Even levels in Tokyo, which is on the same plain as the plant and about twice as close, are only 10-20x higher than usual. With sustained exposure at that level for an entire year, its populace would only be receiving about the level of radiation a nuclear power plant worker might be expected to receive in an ordinary, non-crisis year of work - ie higher than usual, but well within "safe" limits (for perspective, we're talking between 20-50 milliSieverts a year; 100 milliSieverts is the lowest level at which an increase in cancer rates becomes observable).
Still, considering how many catastrophic, unexpected events have already taken place, it is certainly not out of the question to believe such a fire/explosion could happen. I talked with my boss about the possibility of taking a temporary leave from work, and he said this is pretty much out of the question. We're only allowed to stop working if a family member becomes tragically ill/dies, so for everyone screaming "come home! come home!" I would simply like to remind that, though I would obviously rather be safe than sorry, I'd also rather stay here another year if I can, and would prefer not to just leave all my things behind, or totally abandon my responsibilities. So for the time being - until/unless the State Dept. says all Americans should leave the country, or things get so potentially catastrophic that I simply can't take it anymore - I'll be hanging around here.
On a final note, I would like to thank everyone for their concern. I know in America, it seems foolish to stay here when I could leave the country, especially without a full understanding of the situation (not that anyone could ever understand it enough to make a 100% perfect choice), but I'd just like to reassert that, should I perceive myself to be in serious danger, I will definitely return. Until then, please continue to keep your fingers crossed, and do keep talking to me - I promise not to be morbid if you promise not to freak me out. Sound good?
In the meantime, feel free to enjoy this video for a fun, friendly reminder of why everything will be a-ok.
Still, considering how many catastrophic, unexpected events have already taken place, it is certainly not out of the question to believe such a fire/explosion could happen. I talked with my boss about the possibility of taking a temporary leave from work, and he said this is pretty much out of the question. We're only allowed to stop working if a family member becomes tragically ill/dies, so for everyone screaming "come home! come home!" I would simply like to remind that, though I would obviously rather be safe than sorry, I'd also rather stay here another year if I can, and would prefer not to just leave all my things behind, or totally abandon my responsibilities. So for the time being - until/unless the State Dept. says all Americans should leave the country, or things get so potentially catastrophic that I simply can't take it anymore - I'll be hanging around here.
On a final note, I would like to thank everyone for their concern. I know in America, it seems foolish to stay here when I could leave the country, especially without a full understanding of the situation (not that anyone could ever understand it enough to make a 100% perfect choice), but I'd just like to reassert that, should I perceive myself to be in serious danger, I will definitely return. Until then, please continue to keep your fingers crossed, and do keep talking to me - I promise not to be morbid if you promise not to freak me out. Sound good?
In the meantime, feel free to enjoy this video for a fun, friendly reminder of why everything will be a-ok.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Special Earthquake Edition: Update
Feel like I should update this thing, if only because it is so difficult to focus on anything else, I may as well be productive in my worrying. Had trouble sleeping last night, as worrying has exponentially increased. Did not think I could be in harm's way before, but with potentially 1000 milliSieverts of radiation emitting from the plant, it is clear that even 300 miles away, we'll probably get some of the radiation. Thankfully, winds are blowing westward until at least Saturday...and we have the mountains as a sort of barrier between us. Furthermore, though radiation levels have increased up to 200km away from the plants, we still seem to be talking relatively low levels of radiation in these distant areas. However, this of course is measured per hour of exposure. I don't think it is a stretch to say that we will see millions of people develop cancer once this is through.
It's 1:13am. The night time is the worst time, as it's hard to sleep not knowing what the next day will bring. Being here right now...it's like watching 9/11 in school and just feeling like "Oh my God what's happening." You can't even really fathom how things might be different. Except that was over in a few hours, and then it was like "ok well at least the attack is over - it could happen again, but at least right now things are ok." But here you don't know. We have no idea what kind of radiation we are receiving and what the effects of that might be. Except you know it will be bad. It's kind of like what being on the deck of the Titanic as it sank must have felt like. Or how the Simpsons felt when they dropped the dome over Springfield. Except that was a cartoon and this is real life.
At around noon today it was reported that all remaining workers had left the power plant. Honestly, considering it's pretty well-known now that these workers are going to be martyrs for the cause, this didn't strike me as terribly surprising. It's kind of like knowing everybody dies at the end of a movie, and you're just waiting for the plotlines to play out. Still, it was pretty depressing. They've since been ordered back in (bless them), but it feels like we're just delaying the inevitable now. In fact, there's been kind of a dearth of news since then, which it doesn't take much imagination to fill in with the worst possible scenario. I guess the emperor went on TV for the first time ever. Considering the way Japanese society works, that probably means it's pretty dire.
There was some talk today at work about leaving the country. Seems to be on all of our minds. Talked with my boss after work about the possibility - said if the U.S. State Dept. orders all Americans should return, then we would almost certainly go. Says we should operate in a group though, which sounds good to me. Everyone is saying I should go, and I'm certainly not averse to the idea, but it's like - how? Am I going to abandon my job, my life? Abandon everyone else who isn't fortunate enough to be a foreigner to suffer their fate here? If things are bad enough to necessitate evacuation 300 miles away, it feels like just acknowledging that is to condemn the Japanese people to die. This is so horrifying I don't want to acknowledge it as possible.
My head hurts from all this thinking. It's kind of like a dream, and I just can't fathom anything terrible could be happening, here, even though it seems more and more likely to do so, if it's not already. Gonna pack an emergency bag (at my boss's suggestion) and hope for the best - though at this point, regardless of what the news says I think the only safe way forward is to leave as soon as possible. If you're religious, please keep Japan in your thoughts. Until then, all we can do is watch this and hope.
It's 1:13am. The night time is the worst time, as it's hard to sleep not knowing what the next day will bring. Being here right now...it's like watching 9/11 in school and just feeling like "Oh my God what's happening." You can't even really fathom how things might be different. Except that was over in a few hours, and then it was like "ok well at least the attack is over - it could happen again, but at least right now things are ok." But here you don't know. We have no idea what kind of radiation we are receiving and what the effects of that might be. Except you know it will be bad. It's kind of like what being on the deck of the Titanic as it sank must have felt like. Or how the Simpsons felt when they dropped the dome over Springfield. Except that was a cartoon and this is real life.
At around noon today it was reported that all remaining workers had left the power plant. Honestly, considering it's pretty well-known now that these workers are going to be martyrs for the cause, this didn't strike me as terribly surprising. It's kind of like knowing everybody dies at the end of a movie, and you're just waiting for the plotlines to play out. Still, it was pretty depressing. They've since been ordered back in (bless them), but it feels like we're just delaying the inevitable now. In fact, there's been kind of a dearth of news since then, which it doesn't take much imagination to fill in with the worst possible scenario. I guess the emperor went on TV for the first time ever. Considering the way Japanese society works, that probably means it's pretty dire.
There was some talk today at work about leaving the country. Seems to be on all of our minds. Talked with my boss after work about the possibility - said if the U.S. State Dept. orders all Americans should return, then we would almost certainly go. Says we should operate in a group though, which sounds good to me. Everyone is saying I should go, and I'm certainly not averse to the idea, but it's like - how? Am I going to abandon my job, my life? Abandon everyone else who isn't fortunate enough to be a foreigner to suffer their fate here? If things are bad enough to necessitate evacuation 300 miles away, it feels like just acknowledging that is to condemn the Japanese people to die. This is so horrifying I don't want to acknowledge it as possible.
My head hurts from all this thinking. It's kind of like a dream, and I just can't fathom anything terrible could be happening, here, even though it seems more and more likely to do so, if it's not already. Gonna pack an emergency bag (at my boss's suggestion) and hope for the best - though at this point, regardless of what the news says I think the only safe way forward is to leave as soon as possible. If you're religious, please keep Japan in your thoughts. Until then, all we can do is watch this and hope.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Special Earthquake Edition
So, I was in the process of writing up a long entry on my trip to Bali, but it's hard to fondly recall vacations on tropical islands in the midst of potential nuclear catastrophe. So I've decided to just inform you all of life here the past however so many days it's been.
I was at work on Friday, preparing for the day. It was a little before 3pm. I was just thinking how I should probably vacuum the rooms before class started at 3:30 (and not exactly looking forward to it), when my coworker Kyle suddenly spoke up.
"Do you feel that?"
My Japanese coteacher Rika and I stopped talking. Neither of us had noticed anything, but in the silence I could hear slight creaking noises, as if someone were walking around really loudly on the floor above. Then there was a shake.
We looked at each other.
"Earthquake."
In itself, this wasn't terribly frightening. Slight shakes like these were fairly common. I'd been woken up once in the middle of the night when my apartment lurched a little bit many months before. This is Japan - earthquakes are pretty common. We waited for it to stop.
But it didn't. It only got worse.
After a couple minutes of intensifying swaying, we started to wonder what we should do. Nothing was clattering, nothing was moving on the shelves or anything, but the building was definitely moving, and it only seemed to be getting worse. Furthermore, quakes don't usually last for minutes at a time. Not faraway ones, anyway.
"Should we get under the desks?"
"...Should we go outside?"
We looked out into the hall. No one was there, but the elevator had shut down. We came back inside the classroom. The shaking continued, slightly, with larger tremors every ten or twenty seconds.
"Are we...are we really gonna get under the desks?" Even as we asked it, we'd begun crouching underneath.
For the next few minutes we sat there. The quake neither got better, nor worse, so we got back out and kind of remained there, paralyzed, wondering if we should move. Kyle, in his 5 years of living here, had never experienced such prolonged shaking before. Our 30 year old Japanese coteacher hadn't, either. We were unsure what to do, so we just kept our eye on the hall, waiting to see if anyone else in the building (we share the 5th floor with some other companies) was going to make a run for it. They didn't, and soon enough the shaking (mostly) subsided, though for the next 30 minutes the rumbling continued, on and off, at slight levels.
At this point - the main fear behind us - we started to laugh it off. The internet informed us that the quake was far away. It wouldn't be an issue for us, here. We probably only felt it because we were on the 5th floor. The building was designed to sway, a building manager told us. That meant we were safe. Another coworker had just come in, and said he hadn't felt anything while he was riding there on his bike. It was nothing. With every slight shake the rest of the afternoon, I laughed, enjoying the experience, as if I were bobbing in a pool without being in the water.
***
My American boss called work at around 8:30 that evening, after I'd just finished with classes for the day. A new American coteacher had just arrived a few days ago, and he was wondering if he was still there at the office with us. He wasn't, we told him. Why?
"He should use the internet there to contact his family back home, and tell them everything is alright."
I laughed. Poor guy - remembered how it took a month or so to get internet installed in the apt. I imagined my parents having sent me messages, as well. Any time anything happened over here, it seemed people back in America always freaked out. Even when it was hundreds of miles away.
I logged onto the computer to see if I had any. Sure enough, there was an email from my mother. And one from my father. And another from my mother. And a message from my brother.
Whoa, what?
My parents I could understand, but my brother? He wasn't the type to send me stupid "I hope you're safe!" messages over every little thing. I became dimly aware that perhaps this was big news over in America. I logged on to CNN.
DEVASTATION IN JAPAN
The CNN headline (I'm guessing as to the exact wording) was in all caps, blaring across the top half of the screen in the special size and font reserved for major catastrophic news. As I was still at work, I didn't stay to read too much about it, but I quickly gleaned that it measured an 8.9 Richter scale, and was the largest earthquake in Japan's recorded history. Larger than Kobe. Larger than the Kanto quake of 1923. The fifth largest in the world in the last 100 years. I giddily informed my coworkers of these facts, excited by the enormity of the day's events. Then I closed the browser.
***
When I got home, I found my computer screen flooded with gchat messages. I've never felt so cared for in my whole life. A ton of friends back home were concerned with my safety, and more messages continued to pour in throughout the night. It was a nice feeling, but when taken with a closer look at the devastation that had happened about 300 miles north, I began to really feel kind of bad about the whole thing. I watched videos of tsunami waves destroying fields and cities. Boats floating down streets, careening into buildings. A parking lot of cars washed into a pile. Buildings fallen down. Typical earthquake damage. And I read a little bit about potential nuclear reactor fears. Still, it's all so far away, and it was Friday night. I went over to my coworker's apt and got drunk while watching episodes of Bob Ross. The day's events had been bad, but seemed firmly in the past.
The weekend was pretty normal. Japanese lesson and band practice on Saturday. Went out with some coworkers that night. Nobody seemed particularly troubled, though mentions of potential nuclear disaster continued to occasoinally pop up in conversation. And despite CNN's sensationalist news coverage, a number of experts seemed to believe that the danger from nuclear meltdown was practically nonexistent. No worries.
Monday continued in this vein, though with every new explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, I began to grow a little more concerned. My friend in Tokyo had been flown home. Another friend left me a gchat message with the explicit warning: "Yo git out there's mad radiation." And suddenly the radiation fears began to spike. I also began reading about the potential for another large quake happening sometime in the near future...
A friend of mine had been scheduled to go back to America for a week, but she found it would be so difficult to get to the airport in Tokyo (with the blackouts and everything) that she cancelled her ticket. If we had to get out of here in a hurry, I wondered, would we be able to? There were closer airports, but if things were so bad as to require evacuation here, 300 miles from the power plants, would the entire country essentially be thrown into chaos?
Tuesday brought worse news. A fire had broken out at the plant, and radiation levels had spiked. Evacuation within 30 miles of the plant. The airspace overhead was ordered not to be used. By Tuesday evening, levels had dropped, but with word that the fuel rods had been fully exposed for much longer than previously indicated, the idea that perhaps things were much more serious than we'd been told began to take hold.
As I ate dinner, around 10:30pm, my apartment shook. Once, twice. My heart leapt to my throat. Such slight tremors would not have caused too much concern before, but now...who knows what trouble it could be. The "Big one," the Tokai earthquake that I just learned is long overdue to devastate the Tokyo region? Could it even be a potential nuclear plant explosion, rocking the atmosphere even here? Panic took hold for a minute as I tried to tell whether the shaking had stopped or not. It had. My friend told me it was another quake, a 6 over in Shizuoka, halfway between here and Tokyo. Pretty close. What if the next one hit even closer?
I'll be honest, I've got enough to worry about without this kind of crap, but it does kind of put things in perspective. It also makes me want to smoke a lot of cigarettes, though, and listen to the A-Frames' Black Forest. Speaking of which, you should go do that right now.
No people, no trucks, no cars
No movies, no TV stars
Humanity is erased
Black forest left in its place...
Ah. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go smoke another cigarette and fantasize about nuclear fallout. In the event that everything turns out alright, maybe I'll finish that Bali post sometime in the near future. Can't make any promises, though. You know how these things go. In the meantime, keep your fingers crossed - and for heaven's sake, don't send me any more messages about nuclear meltdown!
I was at work on Friday, preparing for the day. It was a little before 3pm. I was just thinking how I should probably vacuum the rooms before class started at 3:30 (and not exactly looking forward to it), when my coworker Kyle suddenly spoke up.
"Do you feel that?"
My Japanese coteacher Rika and I stopped talking. Neither of us had noticed anything, but in the silence I could hear slight creaking noises, as if someone were walking around really loudly on the floor above. Then there was a shake.
We looked at each other.
"Earthquake."
In itself, this wasn't terribly frightening. Slight shakes like these were fairly common. I'd been woken up once in the middle of the night when my apartment lurched a little bit many months before. This is Japan - earthquakes are pretty common. We waited for it to stop.
But it didn't. It only got worse.
After a couple minutes of intensifying swaying, we started to wonder what we should do. Nothing was clattering, nothing was moving on the shelves or anything, but the building was definitely moving, and it only seemed to be getting worse. Furthermore, quakes don't usually last for minutes at a time. Not faraway ones, anyway.
"Should we get under the desks?"
"...Should we go outside?"
We looked out into the hall. No one was there, but the elevator had shut down. We came back inside the classroom. The shaking continued, slightly, with larger tremors every ten or twenty seconds.
"Are we...are we really gonna get under the desks?" Even as we asked it, we'd begun crouching underneath.
For the next few minutes we sat there. The quake neither got better, nor worse, so we got back out and kind of remained there, paralyzed, wondering if we should move. Kyle, in his 5 years of living here, had never experienced such prolonged shaking before. Our 30 year old Japanese coteacher hadn't, either. We were unsure what to do, so we just kept our eye on the hall, waiting to see if anyone else in the building (we share the 5th floor with some other companies) was going to make a run for it. They didn't, and soon enough the shaking (mostly) subsided, though for the next 30 minutes the rumbling continued, on and off, at slight levels.
At this point - the main fear behind us - we started to laugh it off. The internet informed us that the quake was far away. It wouldn't be an issue for us, here. We probably only felt it because we were on the 5th floor. The building was designed to sway, a building manager told us. That meant we were safe. Another coworker had just come in, and said he hadn't felt anything while he was riding there on his bike. It was nothing. With every slight shake the rest of the afternoon, I laughed, enjoying the experience, as if I were bobbing in a pool without being in the water.
***
My American boss called work at around 8:30 that evening, after I'd just finished with classes for the day. A new American coteacher had just arrived a few days ago, and he was wondering if he was still there at the office with us. He wasn't, we told him. Why?
"He should use the internet there to contact his family back home, and tell them everything is alright."
I laughed. Poor guy - remembered how it took a month or so to get internet installed in the apt. I imagined my parents having sent me messages, as well. Any time anything happened over here, it seemed people back in America always freaked out. Even when it was hundreds of miles away.
I logged onto the computer to see if I had any. Sure enough, there was an email from my mother. And one from my father. And another from my mother. And a message from my brother.
Whoa, what?
My parents I could understand, but my brother? He wasn't the type to send me stupid "I hope you're safe!" messages over every little thing. I became dimly aware that perhaps this was big news over in America. I logged on to CNN.
DEVASTATION IN JAPAN
The CNN headline (I'm guessing as to the exact wording) was in all caps, blaring across the top half of the screen in the special size and font reserved for major catastrophic news. As I was still at work, I didn't stay to read too much about it, but I quickly gleaned that it measured an 8.9 Richter scale, and was the largest earthquake in Japan's recorded history. Larger than Kobe. Larger than the Kanto quake of 1923. The fifth largest in the world in the last 100 years. I giddily informed my coworkers of these facts, excited by the enormity of the day's events. Then I closed the browser.
***
When I got home, I found my computer screen flooded with gchat messages. I've never felt so cared for in my whole life. A ton of friends back home were concerned with my safety, and more messages continued to pour in throughout the night. It was a nice feeling, but when taken with a closer look at the devastation that had happened about 300 miles north, I began to really feel kind of bad about the whole thing. I watched videos of tsunami waves destroying fields and cities. Boats floating down streets, careening into buildings. A parking lot of cars washed into a pile. Buildings fallen down. Typical earthquake damage. And I read a little bit about potential nuclear reactor fears. Still, it's all so far away, and it was Friday night. I went over to my coworker's apt and got drunk while watching episodes of Bob Ross. The day's events had been bad, but seemed firmly in the past.
The weekend was pretty normal. Japanese lesson and band practice on Saturday. Went out with some coworkers that night. Nobody seemed particularly troubled, though mentions of potential nuclear disaster continued to occasoinally pop up in conversation. And despite CNN's sensationalist news coverage, a number of experts seemed to believe that the danger from nuclear meltdown was practically nonexistent. No worries.
Monday continued in this vein, though with every new explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, I began to grow a little more concerned. My friend in Tokyo had been flown home. Another friend left me a gchat message with the explicit warning: "Yo git out there's mad radiation." And suddenly the radiation fears began to spike. I also began reading about the potential for another large quake happening sometime in the near future...
A friend of mine had been scheduled to go back to America for a week, but she found it would be so difficult to get to the airport in Tokyo (with the blackouts and everything) that she cancelled her ticket. If we had to get out of here in a hurry, I wondered, would we be able to? There were closer airports, but if things were so bad as to require evacuation here, 300 miles from the power plants, would the entire country essentially be thrown into chaos?
Tuesday brought worse news. A fire had broken out at the plant, and radiation levels had spiked. Evacuation within 30 miles of the plant. The airspace overhead was ordered not to be used. By Tuesday evening, levels had dropped, but with word that the fuel rods had been fully exposed for much longer than previously indicated, the idea that perhaps things were much more serious than we'd been told began to take hold.
As I ate dinner, around 10:30pm, my apartment shook. Once, twice. My heart leapt to my throat. Such slight tremors would not have caused too much concern before, but now...who knows what trouble it could be. The "Big one," the Tokai earthquake that I just learned is long overdue to devastate the Tokyo region? Could it even be a potential nuclear plant explosion, rocking the atmosphere even here? Panic took hold for a minute as I tried to tell whether the shaking had stopped or not. It had. My friend told me it was another quake, a 6 over in Shizuoka, halfway between here and Tokyo. Pretty close. What if the next one hit even closer?
I'll be honest, I've got enough to worry about without this kind of crap, but it does kind of put things in perspective. It also makes me want to smoke a lot of cigarettes, though, and listen to the A-Frames' Black Forest. Speaking of which, you should go do that right now.
No people, no trucks, no cars
No movies, no TV stars
Humanity is erased
Black forest left in its place...
Ah. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go smoke another cigarette and fantasize about nuclear fallout. In the event that everything turns out alright, maybe I'll finish that Bali post sometime in the near future. Can't make any promises, though. You know how these things go. In the meantime, keep your fingers crossed - and for heaven's sake, don't send me any more messages about nuclear meltdown!
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