Big society

I'm sure anyone following the situation here has their own source of news. Mine come from a lot from articles my coworkers share with me and information my wife brings home from work. If she's feeling patient enough, Kuri will sometimes translate the news for me off TV. I put up a new page which has some resources I think are accurate enough to share.

I pointed out in an earlier post how orderly the response to the earthquake seems to me. Two weeks later, the most amazing thing to me remains to be how people here are handling the situation. Most interesting is the fact that a lot of action is taking place completely independantly of government involvement. There's an article written by a fellow who I think described this well:

Japan’s schools and communities, its civil society, without exception played their own role to help with the disaster relief. Neither receiving nor needing executive orders, they seemed to have a natural cohesion, throwing themselves into the relief effort in an instinctively orderly fashion. Free public phones, free shelter materials, free food supply, the orderly and smooth flow of public transport. All of this was mostly unsolicited and occurred in a low-key fashion.

- Xiao Shu, Japan’s big society: a Chinese perspective on the earthquake

Original article in Chinese on iFeng.com

I do have a bit of uncertainty (not worry, just uncertainty) about the Japanese government. We all remember Wen Jiabao lightning fast dash to the Sichuan earthquake site. It's arguable whether this was propoganda or if his expertise in geomechanics made him an appropriate overseer. Regardless, it was something. If you were to ask me what role the Japanese government has in all this I honestly couldn't say. I'll admit, though, that as a foreigner this isn't something I could likely wrap my head around even if I had all the information. As a Canadian, there's an expectation I have that government action should be highly visible, even propogated. That might not apply in Japan. Regarding how well Japan's government is handling things, we'll just have wait and find out in hindsight.

Work is starting to pick up. I'm actually meeting with some success in my appointment booking. There are five or six people I'm going to meet with next week and I'm quite excited about this. The strangest thing is that I was known to deal quite harshly with telemarketers at my last job. While I'm not exactly selling anything, I am doing much of the same thing I hated before: cold calling. I don't like it much more now, but here I am doing it and I'm getting results. There's no conclusion I'm drawing here and you can take it any way you want. Just thought I'd point out the irony.

Flight of the gaijin

Before anyone points it out, I am aware of the irradiated water situation. The official opinion is that the water is no longer safe for pregnant women and babies. I'm really not too sure what to make of this. So the water is bad for them but okay for me? I might just stop bathing and brushing my teeth for a few days to see how this pans out.

Foreigners have fled Tokyo in masses. One thing I thought I would never see is a Roppongi without foreigners. Today and yesterday there were hardly any! The place almost looked... Japanese. This has had an impact on the teaching industry, which for the first time since 2007 is probably looking to hire. (The market since that time has been saturated with teachers, making it difficult to find work in that industry.) If anyone wants in, now (okay, not right now... soon) is the time.

When someone who is staying in Japan on a visa leaves and wants to come back, he has to get a re-entry permit, regardless of visa type. This can only be obtained at one office in Tokyo. My coworker went there the other day. There was a 5km line-up. One poor fellow had been waiting there for six hours and hadn't even entered the building yet. This week it's supposed to be less crazy, but still, that's what things are like now.

I don't think it's a bad decision to leave Tokyo. I'm not doing it myself, but I can't say anything negative about the people who have chosen to leave. Even my pastor's wife took the kids and headed over to Okinawa. Sound decision if you have children. For me, I simply just don't see any danger that exists outside the exaggerations of foreign media. Rest assured, though, I am monitoring the situation as closely as I can.

And back to normal?

Yesterday at work my boss pointed out that next week it's back to business as usual. He's correct in that at some point people have to at least start behaving as if things are normal. Today certainly seemed like that around Tokyo. People are still conserving electricity and it's still difficult to buy certain items but the mood around the city resembled that of any Saturday. Even television is sort of getting back to normal. I caught a few scenes from a travel documentary this morning.

I know this kind of behaviour is necessary and expected, but I hope that people don't start forgetting about the Tohoku region (the part that got hit by the tsunami). Not that anyone here can do much about the situation. It just seems a bit off carrying on as normal when there's a huge crisis not so far away.

Some feedback I've been getting from people seems to revolve around mixed messages from the media regarding potential nuclear disaster. Okay, I've got to say something about this...

Foreign news coverage of the Fukushima power plant does little good around here besides providing a punch line. Even my non-Japanese co-workers pass on it. Foreign reporters seem to have no idea what's going on a seem even less to care. As long as their story is freaky, it sells. Japanese media seems to be more on top of things and it doesn't throw in all the extra fluff to scare you into being impressed with them.

I know I'm missing something in the translation, but when I watch Japanese news I find it bland and unpersuasive. Seems more like a reciting of facts than a presentation. This is not a bad thing. When I was teaching essay writing in ESL, I found it very hard to get my students to make a point and stucture a convincing argument to support that point. Now, looking at foreign news and Japanese news, I'm beginning to see the advantages of a non-persuasive presentation style: it protects against hype.

Given all this, what Japanese news has to say isn't all that positive (although according to Kuriko, whose work lends her insight into this crisis, you should pay attention to what happens next week). It is, though, a far cry from the doomsday prophecies foreign news of pitching. So if you're afraid about radioactive steam floating all the way over the Pacific perhaps there is room for reconsideration.

Besides, the tsunami-hit areas are the ones that should be most worrisome.

Back to work... sort of

Today was my first full day back at work. "Work" is probably too strong a word, though, as no one touched the phone today. (For those of you who don't know, my job is phone-based executive search.) Got a lot of administrative tasks finished but I didn't actually get to work on business stuff. I think I've really got a good company as the management there has put a stop on their only revenue-generating activity for the sake of decency.

Radiation and possible meltdown of the Fukushima power plants tops the concerns of my coworkers. It seemed that everyone had a slightly different opinion as to how dangerous the radiation is. I'm quite confused myself. Those who were able to understand Japanese seemed to have a much better grasp of the situation, though, as they could get both information from Japanese and foreign sources. We were all able to agree that most English language media has hyped and over-speculated the situation. (It would surprise me if they didn't.)

If you're interested to know more about radiation levels and such, www.mext.go.jp/english/topics/1303717.htm is a good "official" source of information.

Do I think I'm in danger? Well, it's hard to say. I felt no fewer than seven tremours today, one of which lasted a good half a minute. The power plants are, of course, a more immediate but controllable danger. I'm lead to believe that a complete meltdown is not likely. If it comes down to it, though, I have all my essential stuff in one bag ready to go and it's only half an hour to the bullet train.

Power out

I've put pictures of Tokyo's earthquake experience (as seen from my angle) on the travel map. It's nothing graphic like the news coverage; it's just pictures of people being inconvenienced. I'm trying to show how out of the ordinary things are at the moment.

Tokyo has a huge power shortage at the moment. Last post I understated how scarce electricity is now that three power plants are down. It'll be a while until this improves, as one of those plants had an explosion and a near-meltdown this afternoon. I recall reading that they had to flood one of the plant's reactor with seawater to cool the thing down.

The rotating blackouts aren't the only form of power conservation; some of the trains are also down. I don't know if this is due to malfuntion or if it's on purpose. The fact of the matter is that the most important element of Tokyo's infastructure was running at a fraction of its normal capacity (its normal capacity being barely sufficient even at the best of times). Here's what it looked like at Shinjuku station:

At first glance, there's nothing out of the ordinary here for 9:30am. What you can't see easily is that most of these people are in the same queue due to most trains not running. This is what the JR train yard looked like just after peak rush hour:

 

This was Kuriko's train. Mine was no better. Mine arrived at less than half the frequency and the queue, while not quite as long, was long and slow enough that I chose to wait it out as opposed to lining up. In retrospect this was kind of stupid and it made me super late for work.

Being late wasn't so detrimental, though, as work didn't really happen today. I arrived to an office full of people checking the news and not saying or doing much. My boss came to me and told me not to make any phone calls, out of respect for the people on the other end. Shortly after that he dismissed the whole office. I was at work for less than half an hour, having spent three hours trying to get there. Tomorrow I'll probably not go in as there's not really anything I can do there without getting on the phone.

Pray for Sendai... please just do it

And it just gets more and more intense. I'm sure you've been watching / reading the news. In Sendai there are at least 10,000 dead. When I read this number in Japanese I checked the character for "10,000" twice, hoping I had misread the first time. By the time most people read this that number is expected to be even larger.

Tokyo's still a different world than Sendai. The most felt consequences are a food and electricity shortage. Tomorrow certain cities and parts of cities will be systematically shut down to compensate for (now three) malfuntioning power plants, one of which has had an explosion. The power outages are expected to last until the end of April. The aforementioned supermarket from my previous post has sold out of pretty much anything useful. This picture is actually from the kombini from Friday but there are a lot of shelves that look pretty much the same.

My church got it rather bad. It's still standing but I don't think I'd want to continue going if they don't get an inspector in soon. Here's what the wall looks like now:

Tomorrow is going to be a weird day at work. People are still coming to terms with things. I can't tell whether tomorrow will be "business as usual" or "everything's different now". Either way, it just seems a bit off to go back to the usual routine, even for a work-crazed city like Tokyo. We'll see if I'm over-analysing this.

Those of you who would, I ask you to continue in your prayers for Japan. There are too many areas of need to name, so please pray as you are lead. The most urgent needs I can think of are rescue efforts in Sendai, the 70% chance of another ~7.0 quake this week, and the possibility of some level of meltdown at the nuclear power station (Fukushima 1, I think). Also, please keep in consideration that the vast majority (over 99%) of Japanese are not Christian. There is an intense spiritual need in all this.

The day after

The city was in limbo today. I had to go by my office to pick up something and took Kuri with me so we could grab lunch nearby. It's in Roppongi, which as I mentioned in an earlier post is a really popular weekend place. The place was deserted, even moreso than on a weekday. I guess that people apprpriately stayed away from "happy" places out of respect for what had just happened.

Not too much happened after my update last night. I just hung around the office with a bunch of guys and headed home right after Kuri contacted me. It's three trains to get home and the second one was absolutely packed. Trains were running every 20 minutes and there was an hours-long lineup. Had to walk ahead one station to bypass the line. Got home around 2:00am (which is better than Kuri's dad, who actually did sleep at the office at got back at 9:00am).

I'll say this about last night: Tokyo certainly does take an orderly approach to disaster management, at least in the places Kuri and I witnessed. Everything flowed so mechanically, much like it does the most of the rest of the time. People lined up for food, even when it was running out, and took their place waiting for a train that they probably wouldn't get to board for hours. Remember those hardhats I was talking about? Turns out that those are company-issued. You just put on your helmut and find everyone else wearing the same one. Even Kuriko got one.

Things are still looking a bit bleak. For the last day there has been a radiation leak at a nuclear power plant and there are minor earthquakes expected for the next while. I would say the mood is predominantly sad with a bit of paranoia. The local supermarket was pretty much stripped bare, especially of water. Kuri's mother told her and me to stock up on instant foods. But that's just my corner of Tokyo. I'll hear about everyone else's at church tomorrow.

Please keep in prayer everything that is happening here.

I'm okay (updated)

Just in case you are wondering, I'm okay. Stranded at the office, where I intend to sleep, but otherwise okay. Can't get in touch with my wife but I'm not too worried. Going to post this before my internet connection goes down. I'll tell you all about it later, and there is indeed a lot to tell.

UPDATE (March 11 @ 8:30):

The full scope of the situation hasn't quite dawned on me. It's not that it's too much to take in at a moment; it's that I don't have much more information than anyone else does outside Japan. I'm in my office right now using my colleague's computer and haven't seen much of the city outside Roppongi, where I work. The building is still shaking. Feels more like being on a boat. It's either this or freeze outside.

I suppose the only thing I'm really aware of is my own experience. There was no sort of gradual coming to terms with things; it more happened in stages. There was a minor earthquake yesterday so when the tremour began I didn't think much of it. But then it didn't go away and I reached down to put my shoes on my feet, jokingly saying, "Better put my shoes on!" as I tied one lace. The shaking still didn't stop, but got more intense. I grabbed my jacket, wallet, and phone, having realised that this was not normal, and urged my coworker to the door. That's when the floor started jerking and everyone ran down the stairs. The girl in front was wearing heels so she slowed us down a bit. Everyone made it out without trampling anyone else.

I exited the building just as the shaking subsided. First thing I did was try and text Kuriko but couldn't get through. Figured that everyone else was trying to phone and that the lines were clogged. We all stood there, sort of wondering if anything would fall. Eerily, the sky had gone dark. I was trying to determine how serious things were. It was then that I looked up at a newly built apartment building, which was swaying back and forth. It kept on doing that for more than ten minutes. But I didn't yet think the situation was that serious, although I knew it wasn't going to be normal.

My satchel was still on my desk, so I thought I would go up and fetch it. I did so, taking a moment to send an email to cancel a meeting I had scheduled for 7:00 (foolishly thinking my interviewee would actually try and come). Then the second quake came and it was right back down the stairwell again.

Made it out okay. The police were really well organised. One directed us to the evacuation area. Stood there for a while taking pictures with my camera. Some people were wearing hardhats. Can't say why.

The office closed for the day. A few people actually went back in to do work. I didn't think that anything really terrible had happened yet, so my concern at the moment was that my meeting would be off. (I had made about 100 phone calls to book this woman in.) A few of us went looking for a bar and on the way saw a few images of the quake on a television. A wave had swept Sendai and a plant of some sort in Chiba had ignited. My awareness kicked up a notch, but not quite enough.

We sat down for a few drinks and chatted away. People kept on checking their iPhones to see if the trains were running. 7:00 rolled around and transportation was still down. Aside from that, the mood hadn't degraded to anything negative. I knew that the next day we would think very differently. I began to worry about Kuriko in a more serious way. My phone still couldn't dial out or send a message. Finally got a text out but as of now (8:30pm) I haven't heard back. (I'm not too worried. Where she works is pretty solid.)

We headed to the kombini (convenience store), where we found a 15 minute line-up and no food on the shelves. Everyone else was in the same situation as we were: no way to get home and nothing to eat. Now things started to feel a bit odd and I wanted desperately to read the news.

Went back to the office and quickly sent out several "I'm okay" emails. Then I went downstairs and saw the footage. 8.9 quake. Wow.

So now I'm just sitting here wondering how things are going to be tomorrow. Asked my colleague to take a picture of me in case I needed to look back and remember where I was this day. It might or might not be that bad. Don't know yet. But phones and transportation are still down so you never know.

I'm going to go pick out a place to sleep for the night. Maybe I want to get out of this office building should these shakes become quakes. Just remembered how old the thing is.

My first week

Just finished up my first week of executive search. It was mostly training and I haven't made a single phone call yet, so it's hard to say what my impression is. People kept on telling me what the job is like and how it changes after a few months. It's curious that the impression they give me isn't exactly positive, but that people seem to like working at this company. I'm sure it will all make sense in a while.

My area of specialty is pharmaceuticals. The word "specialty" is misleading because I don't actually know anything about pharmaceuticals. I am lead to believe, however, that this is not an issue. Most people begin their jobs with minimal industry knowledge. I'm lucky, though, because there's a pharmaceutical exhibit coming up that I'm attending. Three days of educational goodness... in Japanese!

Speaking of Japanese, my ability to read and write kanji is coming along alright. I can't say the same for my speaking ability. It seems self-defeating even to me that I'd learn Japanese in this manner, studying the written language before the spoken one. It's a lot easier for me to study something when I have some tangible, visible evidence in front of me that I'm actually learning something. When I speak the words comes out then they're gone forever. Besides, the real Asian way of learning language is by learning to read and write it. I figure, when in Rome...

So yeah, if you know any bilingual people in the pharmaceutical industry who want to come to Japan, just send them my way...