Saturday, March 19, 2011

Cancelled tomorrow, too

Ashita mo chuushi

The blackout has been cancelled tomorrow, too. I was thinking "fix lunch by 11:30, blackout at 12:20 until 16:00, start fixing dinner shortly after (but not immediately after) blackout is over..." so so much for that.

Before they cancelled tomorrow's blackout, I suggested we go out to dinner on a day we knew for sure there would be no blackout. The Pumpkin Daddy said he wanted sushi, so we went to the local conveyer belt sushi place. We were in the store at around 6:20 p.m. The belt appeared to have less sushi than usual. The Pumpkin Daddy ordered a plate of salmon sushi, and they brought a single piece (they usually come in sets of two) and told him it was the last piece they had, and since there was only one it was on the house. Good service, but it was concerning that a sushi place would run out of a cut of fish before 7 p.m. Part of the quake/ tsunami shortages...

Apparently, Brits have been advised to consider leaving parts of Japan further north than Tokyo. Just a couple of days ago, the British Embassy had released a transcript of a conference with the Chief Scientific Officer of the UK, so I was kind of surprised, but I guess it's more about shortages and traffic congestion than anything.

On network TV, they are running the same 3 commercials over and over and over again. They are for Advertising Council Japan. They're an organization that advocates the use of advertising to educate the public on things like cancer screening and bullying prevention. The networks are running these AC commercials because no regular corporations will sponsor the programs. The corporations don't want to be associated with quake related news, so the networks have pulled all the regular commercials and replaced them with the AC commercials. AC won't pay for the commercials, and they are usually public service related content, so neither the networks or AC make much money off of the commercials. So you're hearing the nuclear physicist say "NUCLEAR ARMAGEDONN!!!!!" and then they cut to a commercial where a pretty older woman talks about how she tells her pretty young daughter the importance of Pap smears because she doesn't want her daughter to get cervical cancer the way she herself did, and then people think CANCER and think I SO DO NOT NEED TO HEAR THAT RIGHT NOW, and...

...they get angry and complain to AC. Gosh, I wish I were making this stuff up.

The international media are saying how calm and collected the country has been the past week. I guess we are calm by most standards, but the toll does show in things like panic hoarding and lashing out in strange directions.

4 comments:

Kalamity K said...

On Belgian tv they showed a trainstation somewhre in Japan, where the trains had stopped riding. 'Panic and chaos', the tv-man said. I thought: gee, really? this looks just like Brussels North Train Station on a regular monday morning...
Ayako, thank you for writing this blog. I find very intresting. And I know that sounds weird, 'cause you're not exactly having an easy time. But I find what you write often more relevant than the stuff they show on tv. I hope you and your loved ones are and stay safe.

pumpkinmommy said...

Kiki! Thanks so much for checking in. Actually, there is panic and chaos in Tokyo train stations, mostly because they are canceling trains at the last minute. But, well, it's panic and chaos compared to the usual clockwork. I mean, you can usually set your watch by the trains here.

We are very safe. I could host a displaced family in my house, as long as they promise not to tell anyone that TEPCO has forgotten to give us our share of blackouts...

sheri said...

So glad to hear you're all safe and doing ok, and glad that you've been able to keep us up to date on you and yours!

pumpkinmommy said...

Thank you, Sheri. We are all just fine. Now, if I could just get my sister to stop freaking out...she works in a UK based company, so they are getting a lot of British news, which is NUCLEAR DISASTER!!!! I am not going to try to reason with her, because all this is beyond reason...never mind that I actually know what I'm talking about, as I am sure you understand.