Japan News (3/22)
Mar. 22nd, 2011 11:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mbarker3/21
Apparently announcing that they are monitoring milk from one place and spinach from another has caused some panics. People are refusing to buy milk or spinach.
The governor from the area where they are growing spinach and the spinach farmers have made an appearance, along with experts saying that the spinach is OK to eat. There's a farmer with his cows who is dumping milk because he says the company that would normally pick it up is refusing to buy his milk. One of the experts pointed out that they could use lettuce or other vegetables just as well for monitoring -- I'm not sure that was as reassuring as he thought it would be, if people are panicking simply because they are using spinach for monitoring, pointing out that there are alternatives may simply scare them away from all the vegetables. One of the experts said that he and his children are still drinking milk and eating spinach, which I think is perhaps more reassuring. They keep trying to point out that the monitoring so far shows negligible levels -- that means it's OK.
They flipped through a series of headlines from foreign media. It is kind of strange seeing the mirror of local reporting. I get the impression that the foreign media sees more of a crisis and panic, especially in regard to the nuclear danger, than seems to be reported locally. Of course, that might also be the selection of foreign media that they're showing.
They've got Steven Gibson, a foreigner living in Tokyo who apparently teaches at Tokyo University about radiation -- maybe a physicist? They asked him about the reports of the foreign media, which seemed to stress the nuclear crisis, panic over a meltdown, and so forth. He says the real story is the thousands who have drowned or disappeared. He also has a map showing the various evacuation circles recommended by different countries embassies. It's like a dart board centered on Fukushima, with the 20 and 30 km of Japan in the middle, then jumping to 80 km as recommended by the US and various other countries, while at least one country has recommended that its citizens evacuate 100 km. They ask him why so many different recommendations, and he says different countries have different expectations about safety levels, ability to evacuate further if needed, and so forth.
4 PM -- the refinery fire is out. Back on the day of the quake or just after, a petroleum refinery complex producing gasoline, heating oil, and so forth started burning. There were some early very dramatic pictures, but it had kind of faded from the news. Apparently they've been battling the fire there ever since, and it's finally been quenched today. Some very dramatic pictures of huge pipes bent and twisted by the quake and tsunami, and then burnt.
Pictures of a town with piled cars here and there. The cars have a circle with a cross or an X in it spray-painted in red on them, indicating that they've been checked. Just keeping track of what you've checked in this kind of search and rescue effort must be difficult.
At another one of the shelters, what I think are middle school kids gather in a room, and are handed graduation certificates. After the principal and teachers talk to them, they walk back into the auditorium where the crowd cheers them, and they bow. Then they get chairs, and set up, and sing for the crowd. Furosato -- my home country? -- it's an old one, and you can see people in the crowd wiping tears away.
A 61-year-old construction company man has gathered his crew and is starting to clean up. He reminds the workers that the debris is people's homes, and that they need to respect that. He's also going around to the bulldozer and crane, asking them to be careful of the gas, they don't have much. Then there's a bonanza -- he finds drums -- big 55 gallon size -- scattered across a field. It's marked as SDF supplies, gasoline. He says it must have washed up here in the tsunami. He starts opening them, and siphoning the gas into his equipment. He's sleeping in a car nearby. He tells the reporter that he's working for this -- and shows him a video mail message from his grandson in Tokyo.
Pictures of a line of maiko -- geisha in training -- in Kyoto who are collecting money for the relief effort. In Nagoya, there's a wheelchair group who have collected and are sending a truck full of stuff. The mayor of Christchurch has a video message for the people of Japan. And various people in America, Los Angeles, New York, etc.
There's a man in one town on the coast who works in the town hall. He's been helping to organize the local relief and shelter. When he can, he checks his cell phone trying to get in touch with his wife and two children who were in their home at another town up the coast a little bit. He hasn't been able to contact them. However, he has been in touch with his brother in Tokyo. His brother in Tokyo has been trying to use the cell phone to look at cell phone pictures of the lists of people in shelters that have been put up on the internet. But they are handwritten lists, and the cellphone pictures are too small to read easily. There's another young man who saw the problem, and used his computer to blow up the pictures so he could retype the names, and reposted those lists cleanly typed.
The brother found the typed lists, and saw the wife and children listed -- and sent email to the man who has been working at the shelter. Yeah!
3/22
Minamonte, the morning talk show, has a wall of pictures and messages. The host is just reading the names and messages.
They are reminding us of the power blackouts in Tokyo. Apparently they plan to rotate the times, so that an area that has an early blackout today may have a later one tomorrow.
Many of the ads that have appeared -- including the one of the young man climbing the stairs and helping the old woman -- have been from AC. They've repeated so many times that people are asking what AC is, and why it has so many ads. Today's news explains that when the stations started to resume ads, many of the sponsors asked not to start yet, apparently to avoid associating their products and companies with the disaster. AC -- the Ad Council or something like that -- has a line of "feel good" filler ads that are usually used at such times. But there are only a dozen or so, and with the amount of missing advertising, we've all seen the AC ads many, many times.
That's pretty impressive. There's a young man, 23 years old, who is running around with a camera and notebook up in the devastation area, then running back to his laptop and typing, and... hand-delivering bundles of his newspaper to the shelters and other groups. Basically a broadsheet, although yesterday he had two pages! They explained that before the disaster, his newspaper had six employees, but they have all left. So right now he's a one-man newspaper. However, the people in the shelters are really happy to see that single page (front and back). One of the people in the shelters said it's like getting fresh air, to read the news. They didn't explain how he's getting it printed -- it's a big sheet, A3 or B3? He might be using a computer printer, I guess.
A reporter at one of the shelters was very impressed. A carpenter in the shelter had built an outhouse, set up pipe and a catchbasin to collect water from a nearby creek, and even put together a small bathhouse. Burn some wood under big drums full of water, then use buckets to pour the water into a catcher that runs into a pipe into the bathhouse, and... inside is a steel bathtub. The reporter told us that the carpenter put the outhouse together in just a day, and was thinking about what else to build. I have to admit -- I'm a little surprised that there aren't more people doing stuff like that. After all, some of these people are farmers, and most farmers have to make stuff for themselves. To me it's not so surprising that a carpenter could throw up temporary stuff like this -- what's surprising is that there doesn't seem to be more such DIY efforts.
Miyagi prefecture, Onnakawa town -- there's a little pixy of a girl, maybe four years old, busily trying to help. She's got a cut-down broom, and with her grey long-sleeve shirt and pink jacket, she's joining the women in sweeping up. There's a middle-aged couple, and an older woman, plus two other youngsters -- 16 and 11 -- who are taking care of her. The reporter asks about her parents, and the middle-aged couple says, "Probably drowned." The three kids, older woman, and couple are not relatives, but they are staying together in the emergency shelter. And the pixy smiles at them all.
And a little child will lead them?
Apparently announcing that they are monitoring milk from one place and spinach from another has caused some panics. People are refusing to buy milk or spinach.
The governor from the area where they are growing spinach and the spinach farmers have made an appearance, along with experts saying that the spinach is OK to eat. There's a farmer with his cows who is dumping milk because he says the company that would normally pick it up is refusing to buy his milk. One of the experts pointed out that they could use lettuce or other vegetables just as well for monitoring -- I'm not sure that was as reassuring as he thought it would be, if people are panicking simply because they are using spinach for monitoring, pointing out that there are alternatives may simply scare them away from all the vegetables. One of the experts said that he and his children are still drinking milk and eating spinach, which I think is perhaps more reassuring. They keep trying to point out that the monitoring so far shows negligible levels -- that means it's OK.
They flipped through a series of headlines from foreign media. It is kind of strange seeing the mirror of local reporting. I get the impression that the foreign media sees more of a crisis and panic, especially in regard to the nuclear danger, than seems to be reported locally. Of course, that might also be the selection of foreign media that they're showing.
They've got Steven Gibson, a foreigner living in Tokyo who apparently teaches at Tokyo University about radiation -- maybe a physicist? They asked him about the reports of the foreign media, which seemed to stress the nuclear crisis, panic over a meltdown, and so forth. He says the real story is the thousands who have drowned or disappeared. He also has a map showing the various evacuation circles recommended by different countries embassies. It's like a dart board centered on Fukushima, with the 20 and 30 km of Japan in the middle, then jumping to 80 km as recommended by the US and various other countries, while at least one country has recommended that its citizens evacuate 100 km. They ask him why so many different recommendations, and he says different countries have different expectations about safety levels, ability to evacuate further if needed, and so forth.
4 PM -- the refinery fire is out. Back on the day of the quake or just after, a petroleum refinery complex producing gasoline, heating oil, and so forth started burning. There were some early very dramatic pictures, but it had kind of faded from the news. Apparently they've been battling the fire there ever since, and it's finally been quenched today. Some very dramatic pictures of huge pipes bent and twisted by the quake and tsunami, and then burnt.
Pictures of a town with piled cars here and there. The cars have a circle with a cross or an X in it spray-painted in red on them, indicating that they've been checked. Just keeping track of what you've checked in this kind of search and rescue effort must be difficult.
At another one of the shelters, what I think are middle school kids gather in a room, and are handed graduation certificates. After the principal and teachers talk to them, they walk back into the auditorium where the crowd cheers them, and they bow. Then they get chairs, and set up, and sing for the crowd. Furosato -- my home country? -- it's an old one, and you can see people in the crowd wiping tears away.
A 61-year-old construction company man has gathered his crew and is starting to clean up. He reminds the workers that the debris is people's homes, and that they need to respect that. He's also going around to the bulldozer and crane, asking them to be careful of the gas, they don't have much. Then there's a bonanza -- he finds drums -- big 55 gallon size -- scattered across a field. It's marked as SDF supplies, gasoline. He says it must have washed up here in the tsunami. He starts opening them, and siphoning the gas into his equipment. He's sleeping in a car nearby. He tells the reporter that he's working for this -- and shows him a video mail message from his grandson in Tokyo.
Pictures of a line of maiko -- geisha in training -- in Kyoto who are collecting money for the relief effort. In Nagoya, there's a wheelchair group who have collected and are sending a truck full of stuff. The mayor of Christchurch has a video message for the people of Japan. And various people in America, Los Angeles, New York, etc.
There's a man in one town on the coast who works in the town hall. He's been helping to organize the local relief and shelter. When he can, he checks his cell phone trying to get in touch with his wife and two children who were in their home at another town up the coast a little bit. He hasn't been able to contact them. However, he has been in touch with his brother in Tokyo. His brother in Tokyo has been trying to use the cell phone to look at cell phone pictures of the lists of people in shelters that have been put up on the internet. But they are handwritten lists, and the cellphone pictures are too small to read easily. There's another young man who saw the problem, and used his computer to blow up the pictures so he could retype the names, and reposted those lists cleanly typed.
The brother found the typed lists, and saw the wife and children listed -- and sent email to the man who has been working at the shelter. Yeah!
3/22
Minamonte, the morning talk show, has a wall of pictures and messages. The host is just reading the names and messages.
They are reminding us of the power blackouts in Tokyo. Apparently they plan to rotate the times, so that an area that has an early blackout today may have a later one tomorrow.
Many of the ads that have appeared -- including the one of the young man climbing the stairs and helping the old woman -- have been from AC. They've repeated so many times that people are asking what AC is, and why it has so many ads. Today's news explains that when the stations started to resume ads, many of the sponsors asked not to start yet, apparently to avoid associating their products and companies with the disaster. AC -- the Ad Council or something like that -- has a line of "feel good" filler ads that are usually used at such times. But there are only a dozen or so, and with the amount of missing advertising, we've all seen the AC ads many, many times.
That's pretty impressive. There's a young man, 23 years old, who is running around with a camera and notebook up in the devastation area, then running back to his laptop and typing, and... hand-delivering bundles of his newspaper to the shelters and other groups. Basically a broadsheet, although yesterday he had two pages! They explained that before the disaster, his newspaper had six employees, but they have all left. So right now he's a one-man newspaper. However, the people in the shelters are really happy to see that single page (front and back). One of the people in the shelters said it's like getting fresh air, to read the news. They didn't explain how he's getting it printed -- it's a big sheet, A3 or B3? He might be using a computer printer, I guess.
A reporter at one of the shelters was very impressed. A carpenter in the shelter had built an outhouse, set up pipe and a catchbasin to collect water from a nearby creek, and even put together a small bathhouse. Burn some wood under big drums full of water, then use buckets to pour the water into a catcher that runs into a pipe into the bathhouse, and... inside is a steel bathtub. The reporter told us that the carpenter put the outhouse together in just a day, and was thinking about what else to build. I have to admit -- I'm a little surprised that there aren't more people doing stuff like that. After all, some of these people are farmers, and most farmers have to make stuff for themselves. To me it's not so surprising that a carpenter could throw up temporary stuff like this -- what's surprising is that there doesn't seem to be more such DIY efforts.
Miyagi prefecture, Onnakawa town -- there's a little pixy of a girl, maybe four years old, busily trying to help. She's got a cut-down broom, and with her grey long-sleeve shirt and pink jacket, she's joining the women in sweeping up. There's a middle-aged couple, and an older woman, plus two other youngsters -- 16 and 11 -- who are taking care of her. The reporter asks about her parents, and the middle-aged couple says, "Probably drowned." The three kids, older woman, and couple are not relatives, but they are staying together in the emergency shelter. And the pixy smiles at them all.
And a little child will lead them?
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no subject
Date: 2011-03-22 04:15 am (UTC)My sense is that we are hearing a lot more panic in the U.S. and not so much of how people are coping, etc. The dramatic rescues over the weekend got air play, but there are an awful lot of "nuclear disaster" and "meltdown" stories. No one here really talks about whether people are getting necessities: food, water, shelter, sanitation. The sensationalism of the reactors has taken attention away from people. I sort of wish we were getting more of that sort of story, but I think panic plays better to an American audience.
Baths, newspapers, graduation - these are the important things. None of us can control what happens with the reactors. We can help people get rebuild, get to school, fix a road or a rail line. I can get a sense of the horror of losing home, family, all that is familiar, but it is very personal. The horror of nuclear disaster is less personal and perhaps less painful for viewers. I don't know.