Fear Itself

It does bring to mind when the people of Westchester,  all around my sister's house, were putting plastic over their windows and doors to save themselves from poison gas attacks after the World Trade Centers were destroyed.

at the end of the line

It is hard to be in the center of fear.  People watching news overseas are full, full of panic.  Foreigners in Japan also.  I went to the Tokyo Immigration office yesterday.  The line of foreigners who wanted to get re-entry permits were around the block, and around the next block.  People do not have faith in the Japanese government to handle a crisis.  And we do not trust that we are being told the truth.  Untrue, slow, and unclear information makes a perfect place for panic.

Hard to make a rational decision about how to take care of yourself and your family in this situation.

All this feels selfish and callous when hearing the sad stories of people in the tsunami.

It is a perfect storm of stress and trouble.  And all of this on a sunny day in Tokyo, a really nice day.  An otherwise perfect day to enjoy another day of life.

Nuclear Panic

Today's painting, Fukushima Daiichi

People are prone to panic with new technologies.  No one complains when 10,000 people died coal mining. last year in China, or about the real increase in deaths from lung disease from surfer dioxide and other particulates the coal burning plants kick out.

But if there is a tiny leak that isn't actually dangerous to public health and people pull out their hair an howl.

I do not mean to that say I am pro-nuclear energy, or weapons.  I am not.

I am just saying people panic, and dangers are most often overblown.

All that being said, today I reached my tipping point today.  I am afraid.

I do not think Tokyo is about to to be consumed in a fireball of hell, but for the first time I start to fear that there is a real possibility that we will be exposed to radioactive cesium and Iodine, and god help us, something worse.  From what the NY Times says they are really in deep trouble up in Fukushima. they have had multiple meltdowns of fuel rods, and it looks like one breach of a containment tank.  It is possible that it will soon be too dangerous for anyone to be in or near the nuclear sites to continue trying these last ditch efforts to contain the problem.  What then?

Real Bad.

The wind mostly keeps blowing it all toward California, but it did shift once today for a few hours.  Tokyo radiation levels went up 20 times normal.  Not dangerous, but it does give an indication what could happen if all hell breaks loose up there and then the wind changes and blows towards us again.

It then becomes the worst case.

Short time should tell, in the next 3 days or so.  But so far every bit of news from up there has been bad.  It could get worse fast.

What should I do?  I have kids here.  Worse than that about 10 million people have kids here.

How selfish are we?

When the first big shake happened I was in a bookstore in Nohonbashi.  It started small and was not a surprise, but at some point I realized it was pretty big and worse than usual.  I also noticed that it was slow and rolling, so it meant that the center of the quake was far away.  But at the same time it was terrible big for a slow roller.  My next thought was, “god help the people at the center of this.”

It is not a selfish thought.  But it was not followed up.  I was truly concerned about people at the center, but what could I do?  I was in a bookstore shaking.  After that I also did nothing.  Not easy to help from here and not easy or reasonable to go there.  I would just be in the way.

It is easier to worry about helping a person in my family, or living next door, or very near.  A person in front of my house.  But people in a tsunami in Bangladesh?  Folks in the middle of tribal war in and African country?  Rebels fighting in Libya?  I am concerned for all, but basically do not help.  When in our sorry earth is there not a disaster happening somewhere?

There is some hope and expectation that governments that I directly support with my money will give assistance.  But I do not help.  Maybe I will give a little extra money, donate clothes, or an old blanket, not complain when the power company blacks my house out for a few hours to save power.  OK.

Mostly, people in these situations have to suffer.  They have to help themselves.  And professionals have to help.

Selfish?

Here is my selfish worry.  This last earthquake was terrible for the people living northeast of here.  Horrible.  Many people lost their lives, or had homes, whole ways of life destroyed in a wave, in a minute.  Horrible, sad.  But on a national scale, Japan can handle it.  Aid will get there.  Professionals and local volunteers will be pulling people out of rubble rescuing them from house tops.  Water will get through, food, blankets.  People will have to sit in cold community centers, eating cold rice balls.  Not happy, not easy, but help really is on the way.

What about Tokyo?

If this kind of a thing, rather, When this kind of a quake does hit Tokyo – Who will come?  Who will help?

Tokyo is the center, communications, government, roads, trains, airports - 12 million people, more!  When the tsunami is rolling up through Nihonbashi, Ginza, Kasumigaseki, up here as far as Ueno mountain, when the landfill much of this town is built upon liquefies, when the giant gas tanks catch fire and the fires rolls like an express train through the low lands, which is most of Tokyo. 

Who will come to help?

I can’t imagine the scale of it.  Who can?

cell phone warning of a quake already in progress

It is why bread is sold out at the local store today, people buying as many bags of rice as they can carry, flashlights are all sold out.

It is why people in Tokyo walk so softly this morning, as if they were afraid of setting off the big one with a heavy step.

It won’t come this week, or next.  It will not come when we are all looking.  But everybody knows, every scientist, every kid in school, knows it will come, and sooner rather than later.

Who will come to help us then?

What to do?

People outside think we should all get on a plane.  "I will send you money.  Fly out!"

Japanese do not think of this.  It is their home.  Where would they go?  Why?
I have lived here in Japan over 20 years.  I guess it is also my home now.  I do not think about getting on a plane and flying away.


It is pretty dangerous here too.  Have  20, 000 people died this week in the quakes and tsunami?  Probably more.

How many people died in the World Trade Center?  I know two of my friends did.  How many people died from gun accidents and gun crime in America this year?  How many people in cars?

Yesterday's Earthquake

Up north they got the real trouble.  So terrible.

 Mine is just another little story.

I was just coming out of Tokyo station when the second quakes were hitting.  The little building across the street had the  4th  floor glass out and already tumbled to the street.  People trying to evacuate, but glass still falling, ladies screaming running holding their heads, me in the center of the street watching the tall buildings bending and swaying like rubber, wondering if this was going to be the big one, streets to narrow to escape in that part of town.

Quite a few moments for reflection. 

Luckily only some small glass from some older building broke.  Funny how it only popped the glass in the middle floors.

Then a 2 hour walk home with the rest of Tokyo all on the sidewalks, every one using a cell phone, or trying to.  I stopped for ice cream half way. 

Someone had tried to take my bicycle in Nippori where I had left it, but only managed to drag  it around the corner to a darker spot and bend the lock a little.  I worry about Japanese sometimes.  A New Yorker would have had that lock snapped off in seconds.

I stopped in the local pub for a pint.  they reported only one bottle of gin as breakage.  Good botle though.

It has been shaking off and on all night and now today.  Sometimes I wonder if it just me shaking. 

Yap

Sunny day yesterday, good for walking around.  I rediscovered the yap coin in Hibiya Park.  Worth 1000 yen in 1924, or so said the little note beside it.  Gift of the mayor, though at that time I expect the mayor of that Yap Island was Japanese.

Nice coin.

New School Year

April begins the new school year.  My youngest enters high school.  Today I was filling out the forms.  Questions like Father's occupation, phone numbers, home address.  At the bottom bottom I was confronted by the same question that surprised me and gave me hope when my children entered Japanese elementary school - "What is your hope for your child's education?"

What a wonderful thing, asking a parent's hope, dream for his child entering a new school.  It seemed a great and very Japanese thing to do.  It gave me hope at a nervous time.  And of course it is a frightening time, sending one's child to strangers to, "educate," to mold one way or another.

I was confronted by this question again today, "What is your hope for your child's education?"

I wrote the same thing I wrote on the elementary school form.  It shows that I am a fool, at best very optimistic considering the reaction my hope received the first time.

My hope is that my child will learn to love learning.  That is what I wrote.

The elementary school teacher read my hope and laughed in my face.

And it was, in retrospect, funny for what the school does, what is mostly taught is to hate education, to hate the idea of learning, to stop questioning.

The goal of education in Japan (and from what I recall in America as well) is to send another generation of unquestioning TV anesthetized morons, another box of cogs, into the world.

Girls Day in Japan

Today is girl's day, Third day of the Third moon, the Peach Festival, a pretty time in the early spring before the cherries blossom.  It is a sunny AM in Tokyo, hard cold wind.  Kids are finishing up their school years, wondering what the next year will hold, maybe thinking about a week or two of break before it all starts up again.

Soon graduations will start happening, kimonos and toasts of congratulations, then April fools' day and the new year will begin.

I forgot to pay the rent on the studio, better get up and out to do it.