Onegai
If you can't help Japan, please at least remember us. If you don't want to help Japan, fine. But please don't say Japan doesn't need help. 170,000 people are still in emergency shelters. There is a nuclear reactor that needs deactivating.
"But what about stuff happening at home?" You are absolutely right. Tell you what, you do your part for an issue happening in your home country while taking a moment to think about what is happening in mine, and we'll say you're good.
Ichiro would need help walking if he had a broken leg. Please don't say Japan doesn't need help, because it's just not true.
"Songs for Japan", the compilation charity album on iTunes, sells for $9 in the USA and 1,500 yen in Japan. I guess I am supposed to feel lucky for the chance to contribute that much more to a worthy cause, but I wonder how the large difference in cost came about...
Showing posts with label quake aftermath. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quake aftermath. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Karoshi
Karoshi
(I had no idea it had its own English Wikipedia entry...)
This past weekend, I passed a gas station. There was no long line snaking along the road for half a mile. There was a line of 3 or 4 cars for each of the 4 pumps. I saw the 16 cars at the gas station and thought "wow, no wait at all!"
The scheduled blackouts are still scheduled, but they're cancelled with increased frequency. There hasn't been one since Friday, and tomorrow's blackouts have been cancelled, so that will make 6 straight days that Group 5 has been blackout free. This is a good thing, because one of the generators at work died. We have yet to hear repairs have been successful. We've been only half joking that it was karoshi. I'm not an engineer, but I can't help but wonder if that generator was really designed to run four, sometimes eight hours a day for 2 weeks straight.
On Yahoo! (original USA flavor and Australia/ New Zealand) and BBC websites, the direct aftermath of the quake/ tsunami is no longer to be seen on the short list of current news. The Fukushima nuclear reactor remains. Yes, it is important, but I suppose nice people trying to do their very best to keep their wits and trying to figure out what to do to get their lives back isn't nearly as eye catching as something straight out of a disaster movie. In one of the most developed countries on the planet, 2 weeks after the quake and evacuation shelter residents still only get a slice of bread and a rice ball per person. A day. I wish I were making this up, but I saw it on Japanese network TV. I personally find this far more outrageous than me and my family receiving 1/ 100,000 the amount of radiation in a single session of radiation therapy over the past 2 weeks or so.
Heroic workers, government and otherwise, are working around the clock to try to change this (both the food issue and the radiation issue), but people are just not designed to work around the clock. I hope we don't see any karoshi from these people, either. The generator was bad enough.
(I had no idea it had its own English Wikipedia entry...)
This past weekend, I passed a gas station. There was no long line snaking along the road for half a mile. There was a line of 3 or 4 cars for each of the 4 pumps. I saw the 16 cars at the gas station and thought "wow, no wait at all!"
The scheduled blackouts are still scheduled, but they're cancelled with increased frequency. There hasn't been one since Friday, and tomorrow's blackouts have been cancelled, so that will make 6 straight days that Group 5 has been blackout free. This is a good thing, because one of the generators at work died. We have yet to hear repairs have been successful. We've been only half joking that it was karoshi. I'm not an engineer, but I can't help but wonder if that generator was really designed to run four, sometimes eight hours a day for 2 weeks straight.
On Yahoo! (original USA flavor and Australia/ New Zealand) and BBC websites, the direct aftermath of the quake/ tsunami is no longer to be seen on the short list of current news. The Fukushima nuclear reactor remains. Yes, it is important, but I suppose nice people trying to do their very best to keep their wits and trying to figure out what to do to get their lives back isn't nearly as eye catching as something straight out of a disaster movie. In one of the most developed countries on the planet, 2 weeks after the quake and evacuation shelter residents still only get a slice of bread and a rice ball per person. A day. I wish I were making this up, but I saw it on Japanese network TV. I personally find this far more outrageous than me and my family receiving 1/ 100,000 the amount of radiation in a single session of radiation therapy over the past 2 weeks or so.
Heroic workers, government and otherwise, are working around the clock to try to change this (both the food issue and the radiation issue), but people are just not designed to work around the clock. I hope we don't see any karoshi from these people, either. The generator was bad enough.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Getting through it
Norikiru
A couple days ago, I was driving right when the blackout hit. I knew it was coming, but I stayed at work a little longer than I planned. I was driving knowing it could hit at any minute, and it still made me jump in the driver's seat when the green traffic light in front of me suddenly went dark.
Something sad I read in the news: a woman in her 60's was hit by a car at an intersection during a blackout (the traffic light was out, and there was no traffic policeman). So someone dialed 119, and the ambulance came within a reasonable amount of time, and took her to a good-sized hospital because she seemed to have a head injury. Well, the hospital couldn't take a CT because of the blackout, so they had to transfer her to a different hospital that was in a different blackout zone (and had the electricity to get a CT). She is currently in serious condition. Based on the information I have, I don't know who is to blame for how much, but it is probably fair to say that she might not have been hurt at all if the traffic lights were in order.
Otherwise, people are starting to get used to the whole thing, scheduling work and food preparation and baths around blackouts, and finding creative ways to get through them when they hit. My friend got a camping trailer battery and rigged it so that he could charge it while he had electricity and use the stored power during blackouts. He gets enough power to have the lights on while watching TV, which is so much better than total darkness. I have another friend who actually moves operations to his camping trailer parked outside. It would have been a great plan if he'd remembered to clean the stove. He had heat, lights, TV and a working toilet, and it would have been great if it weren't for the smell of a year's worth of dust burning. Another friend has solar cells on his roof, which is fine when it's light out but not when it's dark and you need it most.
Of course, some areas are blackout free. The area around the local Japanese Self Defense Forces base gets power during blackouts (duh, how are they supposed to run quake relief operations if their home base does not have power). And then there is where I live...probably because we're on the same grid as the local train station that gets its fair share of traffic. So when people start talking about iceboxes and rigging camping car batteries and living in trailers, I kind of sheepishly slink off...
They've re-zoned the blackouts so that there are 5 subgroups for each group, and promised to give more precise and detailed blackout schedules. Makes sense, most people can probably handle one or two 3-hour blackouts a week if they know exactly when they are coming.
And I will now sheepishly slink off.
A couple days ago, I was driving right when the blackout hit. I knew it was coming, but I stayed at work a little longer than I planned. I was driving knowing it could hit at any minute, and it still made me jump in the driver's seat when the green traffic light in front of me suddenly went dark.
Something sad I read in the news: a woman in her 60's was hit by a car at an intersection during a blackout (the traffic light was out, and there was no traffic policeman). So someone dialed 119, and the ambulance came within a reasonable amount of time, and took her to a good-sized hospital because she seemed to have a head injury. Well, the hospital couldn't take a CT because of the blackout, so they had to transfer her to a different hospital that was in a different blackout zone (and had the electricity to get a CT). She is currently in serious condition. Based on the information I have, I don't know who is to blame for how much, but it is probably fair to say that she might not have been hurt at all if the traffic lights were in order.
Otherwise, people are starting to get used to the whole thing, scheduling work and food preparation and baths around blackouts, and finding creative ways to get through them when they hit. My friend got a camping trailer battery and rigged it so that he could charge it while he had electricity and use the stored power during blackouts. He gets enough power to have the lights on while watching TV, which is so much better than total darkness. I have another friend who actually moves operations to his camping trailer parked outside. It would have been a great plan if he'd remembered to clean the stove. He had heat, lights, TV and a working toilet, and it would have been great if it weren't for the smell of a year's worth of dust burning. Another friend has solar cells on his roof, which is fine when it's light out but not when it's dark and you need it most.
Of course, some areas are blackout free. The area around the local Japanese Self Defense Forces base gets power during blackouts (duh, how are they supposed to run quake relief operations if their home base does not have power). And then there is where I live...probably because we're on the same grid as the local train station that gets its fair share of traffic. So when people start talking about iceboxes and rigging camping car batteries and living in trailers, I kind of sheepishly slink off...
They've re-zoned the blackouts so that there are 5 subgroups for each group, and promised to give more precise and detailed blackout schedules. Makes sense, most people can probably handle one or two 3-hour blackouts a week if they know exactly when they are coming.
And I will now sheepishly slink off.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Stocking up
Kaidame
Bread, milk, eggs, rice, batteries, toilet paper.
Actually, I think milk will come of this list of things that are hard to find in stores. They found trace radioactivity in milk from Fukushima about two days ago, so you just know people are going to stop buying milk from Hokkaido...
Something to add to the list: diapers (for both babies and adults) and feminine hygiene products. I've got 1 1/2 packs of diapers for the Pumpkin Prince in the closet, and I expect things will have died down by the time I need to get more. I can deal with the lack of feminine hygiene products if that pack of sanitary napkins went to some poor girl sleeping in her school gymnasium, but somehow I think it went to some local lady who tossed it with about 10 other packs of sanitary napkins in her shopping basket because she "doesn't know when she'll be able to find them next".
Bread, milk, eggs, rice, batteries, toilet paper.
Actually, I think milk will come of this list of things that are hard to find in stores. They found trace radioactivity in milk from Fukushima about two days ago, so you just know people are going to stop buying milk from Hokkaido...
Something to add to the list: diapers (for both babies and adults) and feminine hygiene products. I've got 1 1/2 packs of diapers for the Pumpkin Prince in the closet, and I expect things will have died down by the time I need to get more. I can deal with the lack of feminine hygiene products if that pack of sanitary napkins went to some poor girl sleeping in her school gymnasium, but somehow I think it went to some local lady who tossed it with about 10 other packs of sanitary napkins in her shopping basket because she "doesn't know when she'll be able to find them next".
Monday, March 21, 2011
The spinach is gone!
Hourensou ga nakunatta!
They pulled the spinach off the shelves of my local supermarket, because there was spinach grown in our area found to have trace radioactivity. Why spinach? Probably because of the few vegetables being grown outdoors this time of year (which include but are not limited to broccoli, cabbage, scallions, and various greens including spinach), spinach has a large surface area exposed to the air (so that the radioactive debris has somewhere to fall on, for example, most of a cabbage is not exposed to air, and if it were, you could always peel off the outer leaves and everyone and the Geiger counter would be fine with it), and spinach is the most popular.
I guess milk will be next...
They pulled the spinach off the shelves of my local supermarket, because there was spinach grown in our area found to have trace radioactivity. Why spinach? Probably because of the few vegetables being grown outdoors this time of year (which include but are not limited to broccoli, cabbage, scallions, and various greens including spinach), spinach has a large surface area exposed to the air (so that the radioactive debris has somewhere to fall on, for example, most of a cabbage is not exposed to air, and if it were, you could always peel off the outer leaves and everyone and the Geiger counter would be fine with it), and spinach is the most popular.
I guess milk will be next...
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