Post-Disaster - Dawn of the bottom feeders

Our resident Badboy mentioned it earlier in his blog as well (see here), but it is something that I feel is important to bring up as well. Foreign media is very keen on simplifying things and make it black and white; still talking about the "doomed Fukushima 50 trying to keep the Fukushima plant under control even though they know they will die" because of the great dramatic setting that this scenario sets even though the connection with the reality is very fleeting.

Also, racism is something that is bound to annoy me. Positive racism is no exception. The foreign media loves to focus on how everyone is behaving calm and orderly with no looting or exploitation of the survivors of the disaster in the worst affected regions. Ok, in terms of magnitude, I think that the Japanese situation has been very mild, partly due to cultural reasons, but also due to the situation. However, stories of looting are now becoming more frequent with people returning to half wrecked homes to watch over their belongings due to a rash of looting in the partially ruined towns.

Something that I consider as bad are the other type of bottom feeders that are now coming the surface now preying on people's fears. Promoting Potassium Iodide as a miracle radiation vaccine for outrageous prices, people collecting money for "charity" (with the concept of "charity begins at my own home") and chain e-mails created just for the purpose of promoting fear with false information.

I think that the people in Japan (foreigners and Japanese alike) can and should take some pride in how calmly this crisis has been met, but to completely portray the situation as "no looting or exploitation at all" is wrong to begin with and in the longer run, does more harm than good to the image of Japan and the Japanese. When there is disasters like this, there will always be scavengers and bottom feeders around to try to take what they can get from people that have already lost almost everything and Japan is no exception.

(this week, baby Sunshine has savagely looted and extorted almost all of my precious sleeping time so I have not been completely shielded either!)

Disasters outside, disasters inside

Little Baby Sunshine has recently started to be able to move on her own accord, granted it doesn't seem like she's in much control of the direction where she ends up, but somehow she can move really quickly now twisting and turning on her butt.

After Mrs. Sunshine left her unsupervised for one minute to go to the bathroom (don't worry, we've removed most of the poisonous stuff we keep on the floor), this is the sight that met her when she came back... No point in worrying too much about the disasters outside since we seem to have a little 10kg disaster inside the house.

(ok, everyone, feel free to go wild with "oh, so cute" and "she's adorable" in the comments section!)

Whatever you do, don't panic! DON'T PANIC!!!

With things as stable as they are now in the Tokyo area, I think you all are getting bored with these earthquake related posts, but there are so many bizarre events and stories that came out of this whole event that deserve to be told...

The last two weeks, quite a few foreign companies temporarily evacuated some functions to the West Japan area out of nuclear fear (there is something about the words "nuclear meltdown" that seem to trigger panic and prevents some normal sensible people to actually check on facts before they act). While the Japanese companies soldiered on as close to normal as was possible, with the main difficulty being the "planned" rolling blackouts.

In my little company as well, emergency evacuation plans were drafted out and for reasons I'm not quite sure of, I saw the "evacuate Tokyo now" message that had been drafted out by the people in charge of the employees safety, to be distributed immediately in case of a perceived need for everyone to run away. The message looked something like below (although in Japanese):

EVACUATE TOKYO NOW!!!

THIS IS AN EMERGENCY EVACUATION ORDER, THE AREA IS NOT SAFE, EVACUATE TO SAFETY IMMEDIATELY!!!

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Please remember to act in a calm and orderly manner

As you might understand, I am particularly fond of the "calm and orderly manner" part which was added as an afterthought in considerably smaller letters compared to the panic inducing evacuation message. It's during situations like this you can see who you can really rely on during an emergency...

"Ok, I accept your excuse"

Yesterday, an e-mail was sent out to representatives of several countries at once from one of my colleagues in head office, a guy I get along very well with and have known for many years now, asking for a certain data to be submitted as the deadline now was drawing close.

Obviously, due the recent disasters in Japan I have not had the chance to even start thinking about it and sent back a reply that went something like this:

"Hey there, considering that Japan has just suffered a horrible earthquake, followed by a devastating tsunami and a nuclear meltdown, I think that we need another week of extension to the deadline at least?".

The answer came quickly "Well, that is about as good as an excuse can ever get, you guys get another month to submit the data, but don't fret it, if you need more time just let me know".

I might have come across the ultimate excuse here to, now I just have to figure out how to best keep milking it!

(Disclaimer: This post is made with black humor and doesn't mean that I will actually mean to exploit the horrible disaster just to be lazy)

Earthquake Helmets (Pro-tek yo Head!)

As most salarymen and office ladies in Tokyo, we have our own little earthquake helmets that we only used for the emergency drills and were perceived as a bit of a joke. Up until, of course, Friday two weeks ago when I put it on in earnest while grabbing my can of biscuits and bottle of water, huddling under the table with Cpt. Awkward fearing for the safety of myself and my family back at the Salaryman base of operations.

I actually also brought out the instructions for use pamphlet at one point and flipped through it just in case there was something I needed to know about how to wear a helmet. In the IFU were some great illustrations on how the helmet should look like (see the picture, click to enlarge). The text is basically talking about a number of checks you should do; one I particularly like is "check to make sure that there are no holes in it other than made by the manufacturer" and "check that there are no cracks in the helmet".

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But what really caught my attention in this is the expression on the faces of the people wearing these defect helmets. I particularly like how they went through the effort of making individual expressions for each case and I also wonder if I need to take the facial expressions into account when trying to find out the severity of the defects. For instance, guy number 3 "check that there are no scratches on the the helmet" looks a bit sleepy while guy number 10 "check that the helmet is not shaped oddly" looks closer to panic, guy number 4 with the "check that there is no dirt on the helmet" mostly looks pissed off.

I also wonder if the facial expression illustrate how one should feel about each particular problem? Well, in any case, I hope I can put away the helmet again for quite some time. As far as my check went, it looked fine, but not sure which facial expression would be suitable for this?

Preparing for the Apocalypse - Toilet Warrior

The earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima pland disaster and the consequences they have had to the Tokyo region has brought many important lessons. One scary thing to consider is that this quake is not the long overdue Kanto area earthquake, that one is also bound to come sooner or later. I think it's important to keep in mind that Tokyo actually wasn't hit particularly hard by the quake, sure, it was scary and confusing for a while, but there only were a handful of unlucky victims here (I think the death count ended up at 5 in Tokyo, nothing compared to the thousands in the prefectures hit worst).

As a Westerner, I have grown up picturing the post-apocalyptic world as something from Mad Max, where gasoline would be the most valuable resources and trading chip. However, it has become clear that this would not be the case for Japan, the most sought after resource would be toilet paper (and tissue paper to a lesser extent). Sure, gasoline was hard to come by and bottled water was also sold out (the ongoing "low levels of radioactive iodine found in Tokyo water" doesn't really help either) but plenty of other bottled drinks were available all the time during the aftermath. In the post-apocalyptic world of Japan, the person with the most toilet paper will be calling the shots. I can see a scenario where people are divided into classes depending on how dirty their assholes are; perhaps people would greet each other through sniffing butts to quickly identify their respective social statuses?

So now I'm considering to start hoarding toilet paper in huge amounts to be able to come out as the Mr. Big in my local area after the apocalypse and have people bring me food, drinks and serve my family for some filthy used strips of toilet paper. You have to think ahead!

I was wrong! JRC not in Mori Tower

Ooops! Sometimes I get a bit confused, actually I must have mixed some stuff up earlier, the Japanese Red Cross are not located in the Mori Tower!

I apologize for the mistake! Please forget all about it and move on with our lives and keep donating to them!

...is anyone left in Tokyo?

Last Sunday, Mrs. Sunshine got a mail from her friend who had been "forced" by her French husband to leave everything behind and run away to france (read here) asking her "have you guys also gone to Osaka now, is there any people left in Tokyo?". Just as things were really starting to go back to almost normal life here in the Tokyo area. Mrs. Sunshine quickly replied back "Yes, we're all here and it's calmed down a lot now on the quakes, supply of stuff and the Fukushima is scary, but it doesn't seem like it will affect Tokyo in any case, we're not going anywhere".

A few minutes later a reply came again "Really? Crap, I'll call my boss, maybe I can make it back to Japan and come into the office on Tuesday if they haven't fired me!". Maybe she explained that her husband is French and that was the reason they ran away in the night or they just really liked her, because they apparently had not yet fired her in the absence and welcomed her back and even gave her an extra day off since she had problems finding a flight on so short notice.

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I guess there's a lesson in here; even if a French guy tricks you into running away with him, you can still run away back to where you came from!

Earthquake Press Conferences - The truth told in the margins?

The whole earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima power plant disaster here in Japan have been accompanied by a parade of press conferences and I must admit that I have had problems following exactly who is what and from what perspective that they're talking all the time as it's been from various government functions, Tepco, Tokyo Power etc.

One of my "favorites" in the press marathon press conferences have been Nishiyama-san, a bureaucrat from the Ministry of Finance. That his understanding of the nuclear crisis was limited was clearly visible in his hesitation to answer questions, frequent pauses and then leaning to the side so one of his peons could whisper to him what to say. He has also gotten the nickname "Nobita-kun" due to a perceived likeness to the boy in the Doraemon comics.

I was watching one of the press conferences on the Fukushima struggle to cool down the reactors last Friday, streaming on the computer. On the right hand side of the tv window a chat/message board was available with a constant stream of comments from the Japanese audience watching it online. Most of them were not particularly interesting or amusing, but one nugget came from someone watching just as the press conference started:

"How can you trust someone who hides his own baldness to be open about a nuclear disaster!?"

A very insightful analysis indeed. However, I'm not sure that the fundamental analysis is correct, since it looks to me like Nobita-kun have a very rich hair and doesn't do a comb over? Something to ponder indeed.

Earthquake Tales: Cpt. Awkward and the Biscuits

Things are now almost back to normal here in Chiba, gasoline is available and the supermarket was well stocked and people were no longer panic buying like they had done earlier in the week. The local Aeon department store was still not operating 100% but I assume that they will be fully up and running early next week. The whole nuclear plant situation is still hovering in the background and still in crisis, but I do not fear for mine or my family's safety anymore. For the first time in several days there came one of those "earthquake imminent" emergency mails, but it too, ended up as a minor fart that we didn't even feel. The risk for a major aftershock according to the news has now also been downgraded to 30% until tomorrow where it used to be 50%.

With that situation report out of the way, I think I could delve a little deeper into the events of the earthquake day of Friday the 11th. The whole story of that day you can read here, but the little tale I'm about to tell you takes place at 10PM when me and the finance guy just came back to the office after our futile excursion to find a way home to the outback of Chiba.

As we come back, Cpt. Awkward and one other guy are still in the office, Cpt. Awkwards is working on some documentation like nothing irregular had happened and seemed quite comfortable in the office (it's more like a second home to him than an "office" in any case and he is known to stay the night quite frequently for no apparent reason). I sat down at my desk again and tried to get more info on the trains and the quake on the Internet and as I happen to glance over to my right where Cpt. Awkward is sitting, I see him open the box of biscuits we had in our individual emergency kits. It should be noted that there was no lack of food in the office as someone in the administration had shown a bit of initiative and procured quite significant amounts of food for those who would not be able to get home and would need to stay in the office.

Cpt. Awkward notices me looking at him as he's merrily throwing biscuit after biscuits in his mouth, chewing with an open mouth and staring out in the distance.

Cpt. Awkward: What?

Salaryman: (puzzled) ...it's just... why are you eating those biscuits?

Cpt. Awkward: Oh, I just got a bit curious on how they tasted and thought I might as well eat them?

Salaryman: (feeling like I have to ask) Well, ok, how are they...?

Cpt. Awkward: (still eating them) They're ok I guess, a bit dry though

As went back into the night to hunt for a taxi, he was still eating the biscuits and humming to himself...

The Earthquake and the French

One of the sources that I have been following post the earthquake has been information from the British embassy and the British governments Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir John Beddington (very British name indeed). They have kept up providing calm and levelheaded updates on the situation and what should be done. Yesterday another very informative summary was released via the British Chamber of Commerce (read it here).

One thing I found amusing in particular is how he can't avoid kicking a little on the French and their more drastic recommendations to leave Tokyo and shipping French nationals out of Japan. I quote from the transcription:

"Q: Why is the French giving different advice?

Sir John: Their advice is not based on science."

Nice one indeed Sir Beddington!

A Japanese friend of Mrs. Sunshine married to a Frenchman saw her husband going into panic and literally made his wife and kid run away in the night with him to the first flight out of Tokyo last Tuesday, with no intention of ever coming back, leaving everything behind as it was and stopping the wife from notifying her company that she wouldn't be back to work, ever.

Seems like the French government did a great job fueling the panic while the Brits maintained a stiff upper lip! I'll keep listening to Sir Beddington, thank you very much.

One Week Post-Earthquake - Illusion of Normality

Again, not a particularly fun post perhaps, but more of a status report for those of you who for some reason check in to get a glimpse of how people in the Tokyo area are coping.

Today was a sunny great day, albeit a bit chilly, spring is supposed to return in force from tomorrow and get the Tokyo temperatures up to almost 20 degrees Celsius. As the Salaryman family headed out on foot today to get some groceries in the local supermarket (just to be safe, we try to save the gasoline we have in the car since it's still difficult to get) things almost seemed back to normal. All the small shops close to our house was open for business and to our great joy the fantastic (but expensive!) local bakery was open for business allowing us to get hold of some good bread for the first time in a week. The supermarket was reasonably well stocked and we managed to get hold of some diapers and the other stuff we needed (toilet paper, tissue paper and rice was still sold out, but we had secured some at least earlier).

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The situation in the Fukushima plant is still worrisome, but the worst doomsday advocates seem to have calmed down a little bit; perhaps because the reality is bad enough and some foreign media was playing up the "the situation is beyond critical" angle so hard yesterday that instead of trying to trump it, they went with Libya instead and other news that had more drama in them.

Minor aftershocks keep on coming, but my impression is that the frequency and intensity is calming down a little bit and at this stage, a 3 or 4 on the Japanese scale from 1-7 hardly grabs my attention anymore as long as I know that the Baby and Mrs. Sunshine are with me. Planned power outages are announced and said to be rolling in the greater Tokyo region, but either they have forgotten our little hidden valley or we have something very important that we don't know about next doors, because power has not been interrupted in the Salaryman base of operations.

The Japanese media is not as extremely focused on the Fukushima situation as overseas and a lot of tragedy and desperation is coming to the surface with stories of survivors who have lost everything and people who are desperately waiting for help and supplies in isolated "safe zones". The total death toll has now surpassed the Hanshin earthquake and is sure to rise further as "missing persons" will need to be added to the death roll. But in all this, there is also a sense of returning "normality" and as I'm writing this, I'm drinking a beer and finally relaxing after a week of constantly trying to learn more about the situation, about earthquakes, about tsunami, about radiation and about the extent of death in this tragedy.

I know that strong aftershocks might follow, but I'm ok with that and realize that it doesn't mean that the whole thing will repeat itself again. For now, I feel like I can relax a bit for the first time in what feels like an eternity and after finishing this, I will enjoy a big whiskey.

The Earthquake - Worst Case Scenario

Things have started to settle down a bit now and I feel safe as I've been working from home this week to not risk getting stuck somewhere away from the family again and I feel safe in our newly built house and neighborhood without nuclear plants and dangerous factories in the immediate vicinity. We do have a "plan B" of relocating temporarily to Grandmother Sunshine if things get really bad, but at this point, I feel that home is the safest place to be.

We're of course concerened for our own safety with the situation with the Fukushima plant, but we're still over 200kms away from it here in the Salaryman base of operations with enough supplies to last us quite long (that huge shipment of Swedish hard bread came timely a few days before the quake!) and even the toilet paper crisis seem to have been resolved as the in-laws managed to scavenge up one package for us and the diaper situation is still manageable. Now also, the real tragedy is coming up as lone survivors of whole families wiped out are shown on TV (making me a bit worried about the mentailty of our Baby Sunshine as I came down stairs to find Mrs. Sunshine in tears while Baby Sunshine was happily laughing at her).

The situation in the most affected areas isn't made better by winter coming back to northern Japan with temperatures below freezing and snowfall. The big challenge now is to get the infrastructure up again so supplies (including toilet paper) can reach those in need, for those wanting to help out a bit more directly, the Red Cross should be a reliable organization and the Salary family have donated through the Japanese organization and web-page which accepts credit cards making it a little easier.

Well, with that little more serious status update out of the way, one thing that has made me quite annoyed is the news reports, particularly in some foreign media, discussing the "WORST CASE SCENARIO". First of all, I find the whole concept of "worst case scenario" disturbing to say the least, since you could put anything in there unless you put up some probability check.

A WORST CASE SCENARIO for the Salaryman family could look something like this;

I wake up with a hangover and itchy body only to find that baby Sunshine has pooed out her entrails due to a new and extremely infectious virus while Mrs. Sunshine has gone mentally insane and tries to kill me, meanwhile another huge quake has cracked Japan in two and all nuclear power plants in Japan has exploded while my mom back in Sweden has fallen down and broker her leg and my brother's car has run out of gasoline, and at the same time, one of my closest oldest friends tells me that he never really liked me to begin with, toilet paper has of course run out.

But that all of this would happen is probably not very likely, but I can not completely rule it out in a worst case scenario. And if I still find a roll of toilet paper, at least I will have avoided the WORST case scenario.

So, no, I'm not preparing for a worst case scenario, but I am following the news closely and trying to get an understanding for what a reasonable worst case scenario is.

Earthquake Aftermath - Hoarding, Salaryman family in deep shit, real fast

First I can just start off with saying that if you're looking for real helpful advice on the situation currently in Japan, this is probably not the best place to go. Instead, I would recommend you to head over to some of my links on the blogroll on the left side, personally I've found quite a few helpful tips in there, primarily Japanprobe, but also fellow Swede Martin and his blog Kurashi as well as Japan Now&Then. Not that I have any aversion to spreading information, but these guys and gals are doing quite a good job of it (and probably many more that I just haven't come across).

The Salaryman family are now entering the 5th day post the earthquake and things are quite calm apart from some minor (and slightly bigger) aftershocks and the hovering nuclear power plant issue in Fukushima (but still, after reading up on above sources and their links, I feel quite calm of the situation since we're 300kms away from plants).

One thing that has been quite the annoyance in recent days is the hoarding that people are setting out on. On our excursion to the supermarket the other day, they were very well stocked in most areas, plenty of food to go around, fresh vegetables and fruit, bottled water, canned foods and most importantly, the My Boom Chili oil mix. However, the most aggressive target of hoarding showed to be toilet papers and diapers... Even though we hit the supermarket at opening hours, the shelves were completely cleaned out and the supplies at home running dangerously low...

It seems like the Japanese people prioritize their toilet habits first, but leaving us who had other priorities in the shitter, so to speak. This is no joke anymore, toilet paper is now being used carefully and in moderation (no more binges!) and if we can't scavenge or loot any soon, things will get really shitty really soon... Earthquakes are no joke...

Earthquake foodstuff - Hey Lawson marketer, think about this!

These last days there have been difficulties getting some basic foodstuff, bread in particular, but due to people hoarding up and supply difficulties for the companies, some shelves have been quite empty.

During the night of the quake last Friday, trying to get any food in any convenience store was basically an impossible mission as basically everything edible apart from candy and snacks had been completely sold out. As I was wandering around in the Tokyo night together with my fellow traveller in the finance guy, we at one point went into a Lawson to use the bathroom.

This is a picture of one of the shelves, normally stocked with salads and other "fresh" foods. At 9 PM Friday night though it looked like this. What I do find very interesting though is that apart from the salad dressing on the top, one poor little salad didn't seem to be able to find any customer, and it was also a new great product from the Lawson food R&D and Marketing. Now, I don't know about you, but if you come into a convenience store where basically everything edible is sold out and people scavenge for food wherever they can, but still one little salad (and a new innovative product as well!) is not touched; I think it's fair to say that it's a big failure.

The guy/gal leading the development of this product probably should be back to stocking the shelves. And no, we didn't buy it either.