Children of the tsunami

From the BBC, an extremely heartbreaking documentary. It's the story of last year's March 11 earthquake and tsunami - nearing it's 1st anniversary - as told through the eyes of children. It's beautifully done but at times was very hard to continue watching.

Narrated by Dominic West, better known as McNulty from The Wire. Thanks to Barry Lancet for sharing this.

Setsuden

From yesterday's New York Times:

After a long, hot and dark summer in Japan, the days are cooler and the nights are brighter. For this the Japanese can give thanks not just to September, but also to setsuden, or “energy saving,” an ambitious and strikingly successful campaign to conserve electricity after the March earthquake, tsunami and nuclear-plant disasters.

The destruction of the Fukushima Daiichi plant led Japan to shut down all but 15 of its 54 nuclear reactors. This was a huge blow to a country that depends heavily on nuclear power and has made scant investments in renewable energy. As summer approached, the only way to avoid a national energy emergency was through drastic conservation. And so the Japanese powered down.

And boy, power down they did.

One of the first things I noticed when I got into Tokyo was how dark everything seemed to be. Complete contrast from the sea of neon lights I was expecting. Other than the necessary street lights and a few lights in buildings here and there, everything else was shut off.

In my office building there's a bank of 4 elevators. Two had permanently been closed while next to the other two there was a sign politely asking you to take the stairs if you could help it. Generally if people had to go up 3 stories or less, they'd take the stairs. And on the way down almost everybody took the stairs. Since it's only a 6 story building, it didn't require that much effort.

The thermostat in the building was turned up and air conditioning hours were reduced.  To accommodate this the suit-and-tie dress code was relaxed. Most hallway lights were turned off. The kitchen light stayed off unless you needed to use it.  On the ceiling, alternate rows of tube lights had been turned off. In fact, not just turned off, in some areas building maintenance had come and physically removed them so that you couldn't even be tempted to turn them on. People were also asked to come in to work early and finish early, thereby reducing the need to have lights turned on in the evening.

In most train stations and department stores, down escalators had been turned off. If you wanted to you could still take the elevator in cases where you had a lot of bags to carry. This would usually involve a bit of a detour to get to the elevator, but I suppose on the list of inconveniences this would be pretty minor.

The diligence with which all this was done was simply amazing to observe. And it wasn't all just because there were government directives you had to follow or because people wanted to avoid having to go through blackouts or load-shedding. You got the feeling that Tokyoites were doing this because it was a way for them to show solidarity with their compatriots in the Tohoku region. Tokyo itself received very little damage from the earthquake and since it sits in a bay there were no tsunami fears either. So relatively speaking people's lives here had hardly been disrupted other than the initial shock and aftermath. Taking part in the setsuden campaign then was a way for them to sacrifice a little and share in the misfortune of millions of people in the northeast.

Most of these steps are things that would seem to be common sense. They don't really require one to give up all that much. But with everyone chipping in just a little bit, collectively it has had a huge impact.

After Three Months in Tokyo (Part II)

Here's the second part to my three-month Tokyo recap. You can read Part I directly below or follow the link here.

Earthquakes
On my first day at work, among other things like instructions on how to access my email etc, I found this sitting on my desk.

For a second I wondered if we were going on a build somewhere. But no, as it turned out this was for earthquake safety. Everybody keeps one of these hardhats under their desks. In the event of a major earthquake you're supposed to put this on and hide under your desk. So far we've had numerous tremors though luckily none that have required us to put our hats on. Still it's a constant reminder of the everpresent danger.

To get a sense of the size and number of earthquakes that happen in this part of the world, here's a time lapse map of every earthquake greater than 4.0M that's occurred since March 11. As of today, there have been over 1500 of these. Pay close attention at around 14.45 JST on March 11, that's when the big 9.0M quake struck.

Today (yesterday, technically) Japan marks the six-month anniversary of this earthquake - one of the five most powerful ever recorded, which lowered the coastline by a meter and pushed the island two meters closer to the US. The resulting tsunami - with waves in some areas reaching as high as 40m - was what caused most of the damage and loss of life. You can see some pictures of the devastation here and here.

Cleanup and rebuilding efforts are well underway and the speed at which things are progressing is quite impressive.

Fukushima and Radiation
Of course the third disaster after the earthquake and tsunami was the meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The situation in the area immediately surrounding the plant is not so great. Tens of thousands have been forced to evacuate their homes and it is feared the area will be uninhabitable for decades to come. The plant itself is scheduled for a complete shutdown by January.

Outside of a 15-20 mile radius of the plant, things while not completely normal are relatively under control. Tokyo for example is far enough away that there is no direct threat from radiation. The problem arises due to secondary causes, however. Fukushima is an agricultural area so a lot of produce comes from there, as well as dairy products and seafood. There have been cases of radiation being detected in Fukushima produce, enough to deter people - foreigners especially - from buying anything from that area. (Some are avoiding Japanese produce altogether, and instead only buying imported goods.) Another example of this secondary effect is that beef produced from cows outside Fukushima was found to be contaminated, because the feed they were given was from Fukushima. This led to a brief cattle shipment ban last month in the areas where this beef was found, though this has now been lifted.

This is not to scare any of you away from visiting. As I said there is no direct threat from radiation in Tokyo. One can take simple precautions when it comes to things like food. Water levels in the city are regularly monitored and so far there has been nothing to worry about.

Safety
The best time to bring up public safety is probably not immediately after talking about earthquakes and nuclear fallout. But anyway, in general Japan is very safe. There is virtually no petty crime. If you ever lose your wallet, for example, chances are pretty much 100% that it will be returned with everything intact. The perfect example of this comes from this recent report about how close to $50 million lost during the tsunami was recovered and returned. (The only thing I've heard is considered acceptable to 'borrow without permission' is umbrellas. It's raining constantly in Tokyo, and every establishment has an umbrella stand outside usually with a bunch of spares that you can use if you forgot to carry your own.)

On the subway every day I'll see little kids on their way to or returning from school completely unattended. Nobody bothers anybody, they're all extremely well-mannered and polite. This is something that matters a lot to some of the expats I've spoken to that have kids, because there are very few places where they can raise their children in such an environment.

Food
The Japanese love rice, or gohan. So much so that the words in Japanese for breakfast, lunch and dinner literally mean morning-rice (asagohan), noon-rice (hirugohan) and evening-rice (bangohan), respectively.

While I can't say I have rice three times a day, it is definitely one of my favorite things to eat. I particularly enjoy going to this sushi-go-round restaurant near the office. You sit at a bar and either pick stuff directly off of a conveyor belt doing the rounds, or call out to the chef what you'd like to eat, which he'll make fresh, usually two rolls at a time.

Other food I enjoy is donburi, which is a bowl of rice served with food on top. 'Food' in my case means either seafood or vegetables. You can see pictures here, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post them directly on the blog. I will try and do a better job of taking pictures as I go along.

On the desi food front I lucked out with having this place be directly in front of my office building:

While the sign says "Indo Restaurant" in Japanese, the place is actually run and owned by Pakistanis. You'll find me here every Friday tucking into the all-you-can-eat lunch buffet.

The best part though was being able to go for iftar during Ramzan.

The pakoray, dahi phulki, and fruit chaat were enough to make me feel right at home.