Fear of Food

The things up north promise to be a lot of trouble and heart ache for a long while, but will get better day by day.  Japanese are type A  people and will peck away at it and make it right.  Thought they have not seemed to be able to do the same politically yet.

Ginza sans neon

Ironically, things in Tokyo for me have been better than usual, probably because I have been mostly on vacation.  But in reality many changes are good changes.  People wasting less electricity, less cars on the roads, shorter lines at the movies.  Ginza all dark, but the pizza ovens are still gas fired and the pizza is better than 90% of the stuff you get in NY, thought my kids prefer a big slab of tomato cheese and dough and that's it.

For me it is mostly good.  It is a little like my feeling of the US housing crisis.  I would feel differently if my life savings were tied up in a house that went to shit.  But I like cheaper houses.  I think houses are for people to live in and not to pay the bank 1/3 of your income over 20 years - the cheaper the better.  I know there are a lot of economic shocks involved.  But they were too damned expensive and prices should fall.

One bad thing in Tokyo now is fear of food.  People hoard and people fear.  People are afraid of the water, of spinach, all greens really, soon it will be the meat and fish.  And not unreasonable fear.  Real answers about food safety are hard to get.  The government will sometimes talk about iodine, but cesium is not mentioned.  We know it is there but where and how much?

No one trusts the government to protect or even monitor the food supply, so we run on rumor and fear.  This is the country that came up with Minamata Disease, the poisoning of a whole population of people with mercury to protect the industries involved.

Tokyo announced the levels of Iodine in the water when it went over the legal limit, since then no numbers released, "Safe"  safe by 1% point, safe by a mile?

And again, when they announced iodine levels Cesium was not mentioned.  Cesium imitates potassium, your body takes it in and it never leaves.  It stays radioactive for 200 years, as opposed to iodine which is gone in a month.

I did notice at the National Ministry yesterday they had a cop out front on the sidewalk with that scary big stick they hold while on guard, and inside a cop with a gun, both firsts in my 20 years working in the ministry.  This Ministry is in charge of Nuclear safety and information.  I guess they think some one may have cause to be unhappy with them now.

Life goes on.  We will watch the vegetables, milk, fish and water, though how one does that I do not yet know.

A muddle

My life continues to be a muddle.  Yesterday I accomplish very little.  All this earthquakeing has thrown me off direction.  I managed to clean up a part of a hall way I had piled high with papers and notebooks, old lessons and test results for the last couple of years anyway.  Found some treasures I apparently don't really need not having seen them for over a year and not missing them.

Guilty

I had a an interesting time in the pub last night, connecting with friends returning to Tokyo, getting tired of the scare, and feeling intensely guilty about running away.  I do not think there is anyone here that would blame anyone for voluntary evacuations .  We all felt like it more than once.  I sent my family away and almost went with them. 

But I think there is an intense feeling of guilt, not necessarily from embassy or company workers that just come here for their 3 year tour living in the foreign compounds, complaining that their gardens are not big enough, but from residents, Japanese and foreign that left.  No one blames them.  We all were pretty scared.

And as I said at the time, if a big wave is coming at me I will always run up hill.  It was just so hard to measure or judge the nature and depth of the danger in Tokyo.  You can't blame people for trying to protect themselves and families, and I don't think anyone does.  But people that leave seem to take on intense feelings of guilt.


I feel guilty complaining about Tokyo when I think of the horror people in the North have and are continuing to go through.

Humans are funny animals.

part of my letter to a friend in New York today

The slow steady drumbeat of gloom and doom goes on in Tokyo and will continue for a while.  I got some real good news in that front yesterday from NPR.  They said that the radiation so far emitted is overwhelmingly radioactive Iodine.  Which means, as they said in the article, even the effected area will be about the same radiation readings as Denver Colorado in a month or two.

That is if they can get the 6 nuclear plants in Fukushima under control which is not yet a done deal, and which were spewing out more shit yesterday,

Foreign press headlines are terrifying (selling papers).  Japanese press is reassuring (a government tool).  But places like the Scientific American on line magazine are very helpful explaining what this stuff really means.  So few people have a science background.  My kids, though educated for tests here have no idea about radiation or nuclear energy.

Anyway, things in Tokyo are not so bad as they sound.  Though there was a shocking development yesterday.  There seems to be a beer shortage. 

The Japanese personality if funny.  No riots.  Not complaints really. People are kinder and more civil in the street and in lines, sometimes long lines.  But they are hoarders.  One minute the stores are full of beer, I mean full to the top.  Then word of a shortage, shelves are empty in minutes.  Japanese are hoarders.

Maybe it is in the social DNA from generations of oppression by the ruling classes, from floods, fires, wars, and quakes.  Remember in the 7 Samurai movie, the farmers eating mullet, ready to starve, but under their floors, rice, sake, swords and treasure.

Too bad about America in terrible debt, but still being the cops of the world.  It is an addiction, as you and Eisenhower have both said.  A hard habit to break.  Will the American people ever get wise to it and complain?  Will the Japanese get wise and stop electing the same money eating, nuke building fools?  I wish I could say I was optimistic.

Anyway I have no plans to leave.  Though it might be a good chance to get Yuki out, get her going on a new direction in America, though I am afraid she wold not go without Sumi and Sumi has a brand now school she worked so hard to get in about to start, first gathering tomorrow.

We are drinking bottled water, staying away from milk and spinach for a while.  But it will get better soon, or it will get a whole lot worse, depending upon the nukes and the fools and heroes trying to cool them.  Time will tell.

And a friend lent me The Thin Man films from the 30's and 40's, great fun, though all 5 are about the same movie.

an e-mail from Germany

It was nice to get an e-mail from a friend in Germany this morning.

It was nice to hear of two generations there protesting together against nuclear energy.  With global warming nuclear energy was about to be popular again.  As she said there are also political reasons, American companies and America trying to help it's trade balance (GE and Westinghouse make lots of the nuclear plants here).  And it is big money for construction and for politicians and probably for local governments too.

But now they see the price.  There will be a 30 or 50 Km dead zone for 200 years in Fukushima I think.  It is horrible but it is good timing to remind people that nuclear energy is very safe until it isn't safe.  Such powerful poisons are created, and so long lasting.

Poor people have to leave their homes.  Farmers loose their farms and their way of life.  I wonder how much of this radioactive cesium and iodine is going to appear in fish.  And fish can swim.  They so not stay in Fukushima.  They do not stay in Japan.

Japanese people are better about trusting the government, or anyway they are not so good about changing it.  Maybe these troubles will change Japan.  But I am not optimistic.

Tokyo water is safe, it comes from a different direction.  Probably food will be OK.  But I wonder how much they will start to screen for radiation in fruit, vegetable, milk and meat markets and Tsukiji.  America has wonderful radiation detectors from worry about Terror.  I do not know if Japan wants to use them.  It has always been a problem.  The top government protects itself and treats Japanese people like animals.

The constant drum beat of fear

Lots of new panics around town, all seem trivial and rumor, but it got to the U.S. State Department.  They are evacuating families from the American Embassy in Tokyo which set off teh army to do the same, voluntary relocation they call it on the army news.  Things like this do not make anyone feel more comfortable.

And the contamination stories have started, spinach, milk, now even the Tokyo water.  We are well outside the evacuation area so I expect short of a giant blasting meltdown (which could still happen, but I doubt.)  We are fine.  I think the Japanese government is starting to restricted vegetables etc. from the evacuation area (morons, why would they think it was OK to sell irradiated food from the evacuation area in the first place).  The local market guy said to expect a shortage of vegetables, which is fine with me as long as they are not sell the hot ones anymore.

I expect such news and stories to continue like a low constant drum beat for months if not years.  I still think it will be safe enough, but high stress and less than all the time convenient.  And it is a distraction fom the people who really need our attention up north.

What's it about?

I hear people are getting sick in the states overdosing on iodine tablets.
A few days ago it was about panic.  Today it is about heroes: Dave fast on his motorcycle when most of us were still shaking in town, going up to dig for his good friend's family in the north.  Dr. S who says to me, "Oh, we are OK.  Really, Tokyo is OK, But if it comes to the worst with the nukes, you can take your family to my little cabin in the mountains.  I and my wife have decided, we will go to the affected area to help."

There is a town in Saitama who relocated a little town whole from the evacuation zone, to keep friends and neighbors intact.

There is a great rice pot that at one time was used by a Yanaka temple to feed people in need.  Now is a decoration used to catch rain water.  We pray now that our priests will step up and be heroes again too.