Greetings from Radiantly Sunny Fukushima
I arrived back in Fukushima (Lucky Island) last night. We are about 100 km west of the nuclear plant and upwind in normal weather.
We arrived about 9 am yesterday. The China Air flight which was scheduled for 4:30 pm was delayed until 4:30 am the next day. They put us up in a nice hotel but we had to get up at 2 am to get back to the airport. China Air did not want to leave its plane in Japan overnight for fear of contamination, a stewardess told us privately. We took a taxi to the Radisson hotel, where our car was parked, which had canceled our (and others') reservations.We were warned that buying gasoline (actually diesel in our case) would be difficult. We had half a tank (enough probably) but luckily, right at the entrance to the expressway there was a station open and we rudely pushed into the line of cars and filled up. We had contradictory information about the roads, but we went north along the coast road before turning inland.
The coast road at Oarai is high above the ocean and showed almost no sign of damage although the last section was blocked and we had to take a detour. There was virtually no damage visible to structures in that area. The only apparent damage was of two sorts: 1. Many houses in Japan date to the post-war period when Japan was very poor and construction was to very low standards. Many of these older houses had blue tarps held down with sandbags on the roofs. Apparently the shaking had opened leaks in the seams. 2. Bridges are built on stronger foundations than roads, so in many places the roadbed had sunk a few inches and no longer lined up with the bridges, so the roads were bumpy.
We had lunch at MacDonald's on Route 51 and then got on a new east-west expressway that took us to the Tohoku Expressway going north. North of Ichinomiya the road is closed to all but "necessary" traffic so we exited and headed west towards Nikko and then north through the mountains covered with fresh snow to Aizu on Route 121. Along the way we saw a big supermarket so we stopped and bought groceries. All the gas stations along the way were closed. It took us about seven hours due to four stops for food, shopping, and getting road information.
Our apartment was a complete surprise. Nothing had fallen except one picture and a mirror. The mirror wasn't broken. The digital clocks still showed the correct time and the gas heater was running. The electricity had never gone off even once!
My office at the university was not too bad; about 30 books and some papers were on the floor. An old computer monitor had fallen and the protective glass was slightly cracked. All my machines had been turned off at the time and all started up with no problem. Just before writing this the earthquake warning system went off. (The system detects ground waves and gives 5 to 10 seconds warning. It apparently was a false alarm, but it scared me!)
BTW, the CNN reporting I saw from the Philippines bordered on the idiotic at times. Reporters who plainly spoke not one word of Japanese and were probably visiting for the first time in their lives, said that there was damage to "retirement communities" in the NE. Believe me, the gritty blue-collar coastal towns may be populated by a lot of elderly people, but they do not resemble Florida in the least.
Instead of doing real information gathering and analysis, they do Oprah-News. One stinking foreigner who lost his teddy bear gets five minutes as he passes on his personal story. Lazy, stupid reporting.
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Comments :
Nov '10
Re: Greetings from Radiantly Sunny Fukushima
Sounds about right.
I'm glad to hear everything is better than the news had led us to believe! Do keep reporting on what you find there.
May '10
Re: Greetings from Radiantly Sunny Fukushima
How do the Japanese news media handle things? Are they stoic and strong like the people seem to be? Hope so.
Thanks for representing us well, outstripp.
May '10
Re: Greetings from Radiantly Sunny Fukushima
Jan-Michael Rives
Sounds about right.
I'm glad to hear everything is better than the news had led us to believe! Do keep reporting on what you find there. · Mar 22 at 2:23am
The earthquake did surprisingly little damage given its force. Perhaps the rolling, side-to-side motion is less dangerous than an up-and-down earthquake. People here said the scary part was how long it lasted, and, of course, you never know if it's going to get worse until it's over. Tsunamis, which are relatively rare, are a different story. Some of the little fishing towns will probably never recover. No one will go back.
May '10
Re: Greetings from Radiantly Sunny Fukushima
Scott Reusser: How do the Japanese news media handle things? Are they stoic and strong like the people seem to be? Hope so.
Thanks for representing us well, outstripp. · Mar 22 at 3:43am
Japanese are normally reticent and dependent and when trouble happens they tend to expect to be helped rather than aggressively helping themselves. To an outsider this appears stoic but they are really more passive than stoic. My friends say it's culture but I believe it's DNA.
The Japanese news is more formal and more meticulous than western news. They do not engage in ad libbed smalltalk. They also will tend to report that exactly 537 persons have have been identified as killed, even though the actual numbers are obviously higher. In fact only 537 have been OFFICIALLY IDENTIFIED as killed and that is all they report. Fear of making an error also leads reporters and gov. spokesmen to speak in vague convoluted language, which is further mangled when translated.
Oct '10
Re: Greetings from Radiantly Sunny Fukushima
Thanks, outstripp. I hope you can find time to put up more posts on your observations and impressions of what is going on around you. This would be much appreciated.
May '10
Re: Greetings from Radiantly Sunny Fukushima
Indeed, Japan seems to have weathered this enormous earthquake quite well, a testament to their excellent engineering practice. The tsunami, of course, is another matter and will require other solutions. I suspect that the coastal towns were protected against the typical tsunami but this monster was too much.
Media misreporting is no surprise. I have noticed one-thing in watching both the US news networks and the internet feed from NHK (Japan). The American reporters grab at any ambiguity and assume (and report) the worst. The Japanese news outlets are more careful to only report what they actually know, and will report ambiguity as an unknown. Not a lot of wild speculation, which is refreshing.
Dec '10
Re: Greetings from Radiantly Sunny Fukushima
Konbon wa. Outstripp, at least from here in the eastern U.S. Please get back with us.
Oct '10
Re: Greetings from Radiantly Sunny Fukushima
where did you stay in the philippines, outstripp?
May '10
Re: Greetings from Radiantly Sunny Fukushima
Carmen, Cebu.
There are now big food and water problems since radiation has been detected all over the place, but not where I am. I am just west of the 80 km zone and the wind is blowing from the west. The TV is giving radiation readings for various cities almost constantly and we are are still very low.
Food supplies are irregular since there has been considerable hoarding. The hiways will be completely opened at 6 am tomorrow, so fuel and food supplies should slowly return to normal, barring a big surprise.
There are numerous minor earthquakes everyday.