Scotland Holiday Day 1/11

Today is the first day of our holiday traveling around Scotland. We left home at 11:38am and drove for about an hour slowly northwards and stopped in Dunblane where we were foiled in our attempts at purchasing 3 meal deals in Tesco's due to our choosing the only two sandwiches on the shelves that were not covered. 

   According to the guidebook Dunblane Cathedral was worth visiting so we walked up there and had a look at the impressive old building.

   About another 40 minutes' drive took us to Crieff which seems quite different from how I remember it from when we visited Crieff Hydro with my parents some 30 years ago. The town seems to be slowly closing down, with a lot of shops to let and 50% sales, broken windows and empty churches. Beautiful views and great big detached houses - for sale.

   The B&B is very nice, though, and it should be about £100 per night.

   In saying that though the Italian restaurant in the bank Avanti's was very good albeit noisy with kids' screams echoing off the high stone ceiling. I had a Fabrizio with anchovies and olives, and it was one of the best pizzas I'd had, probably second only to the Four Seasons pizza in the YesBar in Glasgow.

   Lunch £15    Tea £5    Dinner £30     B&B £100    Miles : 58    Fuel £23.

Total cost Day 1 £173

Photos & Text © Chris R Young 2021

Great Eastern Japan Earthquake Day 5

 I found a blog of an independent non-Japanese with a Geiger counter who was taking radiation readings off the roof of his apartment block in Tokyo (which ranged from normal to 22 times normal (still harmless) and posting it online in English. I began following this website closely.

I woke up this morning to a message on the phone from my Dad saying that he'd heard I'd failed to get my family out of the capital yesterday and that I should give them a call as soon as I woke up, no matter if it was the middle of the night there time - if they heard the phone they'd pick up. This didn't put me in the best of moods, as I have a bit of a thing about my parents using words like 'fail' when referring to myself, but I tried to shrug it off, because basically he was right. Then I went into the kitchen and heard about the other explosion at the plant and that rods had been left uncovered in various reactors and must have experienced a partial meltdown. After breakfast I set out to do something, anything, if only just to keep busy until I woke up properly and then at least I'd be in a better position and with more information to think. 

I was the first group in line at the local drugstore and succeeded in getting some eggs and bread which I handed into the flat, and then headed up the 100 yen store to try and get some other stuff only to read that due to the power outages they'd open at 11:00am. So I mosied over to the hardware store (a surprisingly reassuring place to browse around in a crisis) looking for a weathervane, because I'd realised that with the blackouts - no internet - no wind direction information. But after wandering through the aisles looking for one I decided a long stick with a bit of ribbon would probably work just as well. But my eyes paused at the variety of meters they had behind the glass case - voltmeters, lightmeters, sound meters. I wanted to ask if they had any geiger counters, but it was just too damned apocalyptic. Although if they'd had a cheap one that could hang around your neck or something for ￥2000, I would have bought it.

The idea I'd had yesterday about a last ditch way to leave Tokyo, was germinating in my brain and I asked if they had any maps. They didn't, but suggested the 7/11 over the road. I looked into buying a couple of bicycles, one with a front seat for our son to sit in, so that if the worst came to the worst we could cycle south west down to Itami. But in the end I went to Machida bus station and was able to buy a couple of tickets for the overnight bus to Osaka.

At the Fukushima nuclear plant more problems arose, one of which was a fire breaking out at Unit 4 involving spent fuel rods from the reactor, normally kept in a water-filled spent fuel pool to prevent overheating. Radiation levels at the plant rose significantly but subsequently fell back. Radiation equivalent dose rates at Unit 3 were recorded to be 400 millisieverts per hour. People are recommended not to expose themselves to more than 1 millisievert per year.

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/)

The Great Eastern Japan Earthquake 11/3/2011 Day One

 Earthquake : 2:46pm, Magnitude 9.1, 450 km NE of our location

Epicentre of the quake

We were in Sagami Ono (near SW Tokyo) after looking for a new buggy for my son in Machida and failing, as the old one had chosen the exact moment that I was pushing him across some train tracks to fall apart. We'd basically given up and decided to separate - my wife would push my son around in the Dept Store buggy until he fell asleep and then go home, and I would go back to Machida by train to figure out some movie scheduling (Ripped).

I went down under the department store building to the platform and as I stepped on the train I noticed everyone was glancing up the carriage towards the driver's area. I thought the train had jerked a bit due to an electrical fault and they were looking up to confirm, but as I got on and sat down, the carriage then started jerking around as if it was a kind of fairground attraction. I thought at first the driver was doing something with the controls, but then it dawned on me that it must be an earthquake as trains don't tend to have 'sideways thrusters'. 

Safer on train or off? I decided to leap off onto the platform and stand next to a pillar, although in retrospect it was probably safer to stay on the train to avoid falling panels etc, but fortunately nothing fell down from above. I waited for a while for the shaking to stop and then ran upstairs and out the gates to try and find my wife and son. It's funny, but I didn't feel scared or worried, I just thought right, this is it : find the brood and check they're all safe. So I ran around while trying to contact them by email or calling, all the while my cellphone flatly refusing to be any use whatsoever, like, 'you're having a laugh, right, mate?'

People had flooded out of the department store but others were still in the supermarket milling around finishing their shopping. There was hardly any damage except a water pipe had burst in the ceiling of one of the lower floors and on one outside corner of the building some of the decorative tiles had crumbled off. I wandered around both main exits, inside and outside the supermarket, and tried to think where she would have gone. The lifts had already stopped, and I hoped everyone had been taken off them but was unable to ask an official to confirm, as that would have been a nightmare. Still, I decided it was unlikely anyone was stuck in a lift as there were no-one panicking nearby any of them. I tried to gain access to an upper floor, but was then asked to go back down by a shop assistant. I told them I was looking for my family and he said that everyone was being asked to leave the building so they'd be outside.

I went to check if the tricycle was still where we'd left it, because if it was gone it would have meant they'd left and gone home already and I could stop worrying, but to my dismay it was still there. I ran back to the department store complex, where a tonne of people were still milling about outside. No-one was panicking, just waiting. Some talking on cellphones but mine was still nonfunctional. I went back up to the doors to see water dripping out of the ceiling from the burst pipe and wandered around some more trying not to panic.

Eventually I decided to check a wider circle and helped another woman with a buggy down some stairs to ground level (as I know what a pain it can be to carry them when there's no lifts working) and walked round trying my phone again, when finally I heard my wife call my name from near the convenience store. Thankfully she and my son were both fine.

We returned to our apartment talking about what happened, seeing the odd wall that had fallen down, but as yet still unaware of the magnitude or location of the epicentre of the earthquake or what would come next. 

When we arrived at our small apartment which was on the first floor of a four apartment block, the rooms were a complete mess. Things had been thrust off the shelves and scattered around like it had recently played host to a poltergeist convention. Satisfyingly the anti-earthquake measures I’d installed above the tall glass cabinet to stop it from falling over during this exact kind of eventuality (four curtain rods screwed in between its upper surface and the ceiling) had worked and it was still upright and in one piece.

My room after the earthquake 

A year or two before I’d watched a Japanese disaster movie called Japan Sinks, in which thousands of people die by earthquake, flooding, tidal wave, erupting volcano etc as Japan is pulled under the sea by shifting tectonic plates, and I immediately went out to stock up on emergency equipment from Tokyu Hands including a white safety helmet. As we began tidying up I put it on my wife’s head despite her joking laughter, and soon enough when she opened an overhead cupboard above the sink a metal flask fell out and bounced off her helmet.

Fortunately we were far enough from the coast to be out of reach of any possible tsunamis but nevertheless I tried to keep an eye on what was going on in the media. Compared to many others, we were extremely lucky. We didn’t know it yet but we’d just experienced the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan and fourth biggest worldwide. 

What we also didn’t know was that a 14m high tsunami had washed over the walls at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and knocked out their emergency generators whose job had been to continue cooling the reactors after their fission reactions had been automatically shut down on detection of the earthquake. 

Day Two

Free at last!

Graduated from St Andrews University with a 2:1 BSc in Physics & Electronics.

Released at last from the education system I was now determined to make some of my own choices and see where they lead me, come what may. Little would I know until much later that a liver-related diabetic condition would be one such repercussion. A small baby growing into a young adult would be another.

I often look back and think, why on earth didn't I just get a well paid and stable physics-related job?

And in another dimension no doubt I look back and think, why on earth didn't I just throw caution to the wind and travel the world?