Great Eastern Japan Earthquake Day 4

 We were due to get the Shinkansen out of Shin Yokohama but heeding a feeling in my gut I went down to check the Machida JR station early only to find that all the shutters were down and the station closed, with no employees anywhere to be found. Taped to the shutters was a typed notice in Japanese explaining the situation, but I could barely understand a word. I was too angry and disappointed. What I’d envisaged was coming true. We were being trapped in Tokyo.

The train lines were supposedly being closed due to rolling black outs to try and save power due to many of the nuclear power plants being shut down for safety fears.

I went home and explained things to my wife. Then I began watching the wind direction to check if there were any NW winds blowing radioactive dust in our direction. 

On the website Wiki Questions I asked what the best way to avoid inhaling radioactive dust particles was, and one guy said a face mask with wet tissue paper on the inside, so that’s what I used most of the time I went outside. But whether or not it was effective I don’t know. I think my chest may have started hurting due to inhaling fragments of wet tissue paper.

In Fukushima reactor building unit 3 exploded injuring eleven people. The president of the French nuclear safety authority said that Fukushima should be rated a 5 (accident with wider consequences) or even a 6 (serious accident) on the INES.

While some people were arguing about what rating to give it, other people were making themselves sick drinking mouthwash containing iodine mistakingly thinking this would protect them from thyroid cancer.

Day 5

Great Eastern Japan Earthquake Day 3

 I woke up feeling relatively optimistic, but when my wife told me of the events that happened overnight about the extension of the evacuation zone and the explosion, I couldn't face eating my cereal, actually feeling like I was going to be sick. I left for a while and tried to walk it off and rehydrate myself.

While out in the streets it occurred to me how much I had fucked up. I had no health insurance, my family and I were inside a potentially life threatening situation, and I was ill. My head was pounding and I still felt the waves of nausea come and go. Even though I had a history of headaches and nausea under tired and stressful conditions, it occurred to me that I might already have radiation poisoning. This nightmare followed me on my walk for a few minutes. I was the only one drinking unfiltered tap water - my wife and son both used a filter system or boiled water. Could there have been a crack in the water pipes letting in some kind of radiation? The worry that this might be the case added to my stress levels. I looked around at the other people who all looked fine. This seemed to suggest that the illness I was feeling was caused by stress/tired/PC related eyestrain, but near the convenience store the inevitable happened. I was sick in the car-park round the back. Even while being sick a switch flicked in my mind - a kind of acceptance that things were not good. I accepted at least that I was being sick. So much for rehydration, but I did feel much better.

In the convenience store I was cogent enough to realise it would soon be White day and that I'd better get some chocolates for my wife now or never.

I made my way back home. Through the still dwindling head-ache and sickness I was able to say to my wife the words quietly that for some reason it was so difficult to say. 

"I think we should go."

My wife saw I was in bad shape and after booking a hotel in Osaka on the net (I couldn't face looking at the screen again) went out to the second hand store to try to pick up a buggy, and that I should rest. Weirdly, almost as soon as they left, my headache disappeared and I felt much better. Does stress really affect me that much? I got on my bicycle and headed unsteadily down to Machida station trying not to panic or look panicky. There was a long line at the JR Green Counter of other people with apparently the same idea perhaps, but I didn't get the sense of any major concern. For the most part it seemed like just another day. The Yokohama line was running fine. People seemed happy. I decided to try my hand at booking the tickets on the machine, which turned out to be surprisingly straightforward. I bought three reserved seat tickets for the Nozomi Shinkansen from Shin Yokohama tomorrow at 12:09 pm.

Feeling a good deal better I headed back home. I think I also canceled the Community centre rooms for our proposed movie shoot on the 14th, before heading up to the second hand shop to assist my wife in the buying of the buggy and the substantially more complicated task of removing our son from the toy section.

Meanwhile at Fukushima a partial meltdown was reported at Unit 3. The Japan Atomic Energy Agency rated the situation at Unit 1 as level 4 (an accident with local consequences) on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale. Chernobyl was  rated the highest at 7 (a major accident).

Day 4

Great Eastern Japan Earthquake Day 2

Kanagawa, Japan

 Saturday is kind of a haze for me to recall now. I remember that we were all just happy that we'd survived a major disaster and thought the worst was over. Aftershocks still rumbled through the apartment but they didn't cause any disruption. We kept the helmets, torch and radio close at hand. I heard about the reactor at Fukushima and imagined pretty much right away that it would cause problems, either by igniting panic in Tokyo, or else if the authorities were unable to get it under control soon that the radiation levels may get out of hand. I remember thinking that the worst case scenario could be another Chernobyl, with everyone in Tokyo either ordered to evacuate, causing a choke up on the trains, buses and roads out of the city, or stay indoors where we'd also be trapped, and the only way to escape such a situation would be to pre-empt it. I also pretty much decided straight away that the government would probably play down the disaster to avoid either panic or loss of face, and so I assumed that the situation was always slightly worse than they said it was. This had happened many times before, with NOVA for example, or FOI, the electronics company I taught English at, both pretending everything was peachy until it was far far too late and everything went pear-shaped. Plus there was always a time lag between when something harmful reaches the public and the government notices it and warns the public about it. I wanted to stay ahead of this time lag.

Unfortunately, due to watching too much internet the night before and not getting enough sleep, I had a bit of a headache and decided to take it easy for the day. I wasn't really in the mood for evasive action.

But I couldn't help be drawn back to watching things develop on the net. BBC was running a 24 hour news page on the strings of disasters, complete with video and twitter updates, but watching earthquake devastation on the news from an external viewpoint while actually still feeling aftershocks and still being inside the situation created a strong feeling of nausea and vertigo.

Slept with the family again, but due to my son still waking up every 90 minutes for milk didn't get much rest.

The Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant after the 2011
 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. Reactor 1 to 4 from right to left.

Unbeknownst to us a hydrogen explosion blew the roof off Fukushima Unit 1. The evacuation zone was extended to 20km around the plant and sea water was being used for emergency cooling, and the release of iodine 131 from a damaged reactor core led Japanese officials to distribute iodine pills to people living around the plant to avoid thyroid absorption.

Day 3.

(Photo from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster#/media/File:Fukushima_I_by_Digital_Globe.jpg under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)