Year end update

Recently my schedule has changed somewhat and I haven't been able to keep up with as much of the Japanese news as I would like to, but here is a little info that I heard at the end of the year.

If I understood correctly, I believe that the last refugee shelter was closed on December 28th. Never the less, 350,000 people are living in temporary shelters. A lot of these communities are made up of residents from many different areas, so they are being encouraged to make bonds with their new neighbors.

After the quake many volunteers came to the affected areas to help the locals rebuild. Since then the number of volunteers has dropped quite a bit, but there are still people coming to help those in need. I just saw some footage of people helping a farmer pick plastic, glass and other bits of debris from his crop land.

The number of self defence force personnel being deployed has been reduced as well. This has worried some communities that have lost of lot of manpower for labor and police forces.

Work continues to clean up the Fukushima nuclear reactors. After the accident, there was talk of a "cold shutdown" planned to take place within the first nine months. That may have been achieved already, but at that time no one knew how badly the reactor cores had melted down. Last news I heard was for a 30 to 40 year plan to clean up the reactor cores. But this too is probably only a guess since it is not known yet how the core material will be disposed of. Not only that, the technology to do this does not even exist and needs to be developed. The following is a newspaper diagram explaining a proposed method of extracting the core material...

The most recent side effect of this disaster regards construction companies who unknowingly used concrete making ingredients which had been polluted with radiation. This has caused some streets and buildings to have been constructed with radioactive materials. Last I heard, this investigation is still under way, but residents in some of these places have been relocated. It sounds like last May there was a proposal for a government regulation on the radiation levels in construction materials, but somehow this regulation was never created.

There was one other unexpected occurrence related to the nuclear disaster. Because of the fear of radiation, many people started carrying around their own radiation detectors. There were actually a few incidents of people finding radioactive hot spots that were totally unrelated to the Fukushima disaster.

That's all I can think of to report on for this year. Happy New Year and lets hope for the best as Japan continues to rebuild in 2012.

Fukushima and Chernobyl Comparison

The nuclear disaster in Fukushima has been called the second worst nuclear disaster following Chernobyl. For the amounts of radiation released, the Fukushima disaster was quite serious, but in terms of radioactive material spread, Chernobyl was much worse. The following is a chart comparing the spread of radioactive cesium 137. It shows that the levels released from the Fukushima reactor were much less.

Tsunami pictures from the Fukushima Reactor

Here are a few images of the Fukushima nuclear reactor during the tsunami.

Animal rescue in the nuclear evacuation area

Soon after the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster, the evacuation order was given for people living close to the reactor. Most residents didn't have time to prepare for this resulting in many abandoned pets and farm animals. All of these towns became virtual ghost towns except for all of these animals running free. There was actually footage of livestock running free through residential neighborhoods. Unfortunately there were many pets that died of neglect, but once some of these areas became safe for people to enter for short periods of time, humane society groups initiated missions to retrieve as many pets as possible.

Aquarium Sea Creature Refugees

In addition to the many thousands of people who had to take refuge after the earthquake and tsunami, sea creatures from the Aquamairne Fukushima Aquarium had to be relocated to other aquariums throughout Japan.

The aquarium in Fukushima was flooded by the tsunami and many of the fish died, but the larger animals were able to survive. Since conditions at the aquarium were not suitable to keep it in operation these animals had to take refuge at locations that could accommodate them. A seal from there was relocated to the aquarium next to where we live.

Convenience Stores

To the people of Japan, the convenience store is not just a place to get daily necessities at any time. They also are centers for mail and shipping, have bank ATMs, and all kinds of bills and purchasing can be paid for in cash from any local neighborhood location. So the Japanese convenience store is a hub of a lot of community activity. In the most heavily damaged areas of Japan, many convenience store companies did their best to continue providing service to their customers. In places, they even conducted business without even having a building...
Some places used mobile trucks...

Eventually temporary structures were erected to house the new store....

Chiba Prefecture

Here's some more old news regarding the effect of the earthquake in Chiba Prefecture. One of the scariest incidents was the fuel depot that caught on fire. A friend of mine lives in Chiba in the next city over from where my wife and I lived when I first moved here. She said she was able to see the smoke clouds from her home. The following picture is of the fuel depot after it cooled down and was safe enough for people to get close to it...

A lot of the populated area of Chiba, including Tokyo Disney Land, has been built up on wetlands. To build up the land, the ground was made more stable by injecting sand into its lower layers. Since the area was still very close to the water table, this building up process was disturbed by the earthquake and cause an unusual phenomenon where the ground itself took on the properties of water. In a few places, you could see sidewalks or rows of hedges next to the street bobbing up and down as if it were a boat floating on water.

Because of the shifting of the land, the foundations of many houses became tipped to one side or another. Now a lot of homeowners are having to go trough the trouble of resetting their house on a level foundation. The property values dropped dramatically as well, causing a lot of worries for people invested in a home there.

Speaking of Tokyo Disney, a friend of a friend was there when the earthquake happened. Of course all of the rides stopped immediately. The people that were on the rides had to take the little service routes to get out of the attractions. For fear of further disaster, Disney customers were not allowed to leave the premises. In addition to that, since the stability of the buildings was uncertain, the people had to stay outdoors until about 3:00am the next morning when they were allowed to leave. It has taken Disney several months, but they finally reopened.

Health problems after the earthquake/tsunami disaster

I'm just doing a little catching up with this old news story. It goes back to right after the big earthquake and tsunami occurred. In addition to the obvious injury and loss of life, there were many other health problems that accompanied the survivors in the following days and weeks.

The first was a large outbreak of colds and flu among the people living in the refugee shelters. Most of these locations were school gymnasiums or other auditoriums where there were many people living very close together without proper medical supplies or sanitation. To make the matters worse, most of the damaged area was still in the winter season. In addition to the physical difficulties, the close quarters and lack of privacy caused a certain amount of mental stress as well.

When the evacuees had to go to the shelters, it was of course on short notice and people were not able to take their medications with them. This lead to a number of deaths especially in old people from hypertension and diabetes complications. After the quake, there was a breakdown of transportation between medical supply distributors and the hospitals if they still existed. And from there, the doctors had a hard time finding where their patients were.

Many of the people who's homes were still standing had no water, electricity, natural gas or garbage collection. Many people were using gas powered electric generators and unwittingly had the machines running in the houses which caused some carbon monoxide complications.

After the water had receded, a muddy sludge was left covering the ground. As this sludge dried, it turned into a fine black dust which caused respiratory problems for the people living and working there.

In the following months after the earthquake, refugees were relocated outside of their original communities. There were a few sad incidents of elderly people passing away because they had no family or known neighbors nearby to check on their daily safety.
Note: Since this last news story originally came out, a system of signal devices were created for elderly people to call for help in an emergency.

Cardboard Toilets and More

The large scale disaster that happened on March 11th caused many shortages and people had to rely on limited resources for their daily needs. On one talk show instructions were given on how to create a toilet out of cardboard, tape and plastic bags. Basically, one box was used as the body of the toilet while a seat, lid and weight supporting bracing was attached to it. The plastic garbage bag was place into it to retain the waste products and then removed when necessary. Of course they recommended using non transparent black garbage bags for obvious reasons.

In the months that passed after the quake, designers developed makeshift "rooms" out of cardboard. Basically these are a form of partitioning that could be set up in auditoriums, gymnasiums, etc to create private spaces for refugees to live in.

Weddings

Because of the earthquake, many scheduled events had to be canceled or postponed. This included many weddings. A number of engaged couples from Miyagi prefecture who's weddings had been postponed, decided to get together and have a large group wedding. I think there were at least ten or more couples getting married at this time.

A bit of good news.

I just checked today's news paper and it showed that there are 15,680 people confirmed dead and 4,830 people still missing. This combined total is much less than was predicted earlier this year. The good news being that some people are still being found after their displacement from the quake. These days, the paper is not listing the people still living in evacuation centers on a regular basis, so I don't know the total of that. There are a lot of people who have been moving into temporary houses. The cities near the nuclear power plant are still inhabitable so there are no people moving back there for a while.

Summer in Japan

I've been back from my trip to America for over a month now. The trip went well and I enjoyed being back home for a bit. Now in Japan the dog days of summer are starting. The area where I'm at is very hot and humid.

The big deal for this summer is the shortage of electricity because of the nuclear reactor accident. Even though the electricity might be short, it was decided that the scheduled blackouts should be avoided since it might caused fatalities and other problems if people were deprived of air conditioning, etc. So the government decided to have companies reduce their power use by 15% from the previous year. This restriction for companies is being enforced through giving fines, however, this restriction will not apply to households, although individuals are being urged to do what they can to conserve energy as well.

What some of the larger companies have decided to do is change their work schedule to distribute the electricity usage. For example, instead of having Saturday and Sunday off, they work those two days, but then take two weekdays off. This shifts the power use from the high demand work week to the lower peak times of the weekend.

On the television, the reports show that the total power use has been between 75 to 85 percent of the maximum output for the first half of the summer. I haven't seen if this has changed much yet since the weather started heating up this last week or so.

Trip to America

For those who haven't hear yet, I'll be making a trip back home for the last half of June to take care of some business and to see family and friends. I hope to work on some more news posts when I get back and while I'm in the states, I can tell you in person some of the interesting stories from Japan.

Self Defence Force

Ever since the end of WW2, Japan has singed a non aggression treaty stating that they will not take part in any international military actions. So instead of having a regular army, they have what is called a self defense force. At times the government has been criticized for spending the money for troops like this if they will not be needed for military action. But after the big earthquake and tsunami, they showed their worth by playing an important part in the nation's recovery.

Directly following the disaster, they provided the manpower needed to search for and recover people who were lost. They also helped secure valuable property from the damaged homes and rubble. This included safes and strong boxes where people held their valuables in their own homes. In addition to that, the also collected items of great personal value such as diplomas and especially photo albums.

The self defense force medics were a great help to people who were separated from their hospitals and needed medical treatment. They also provided mobile kitchens to make food for people in evacuation shelters who had no other resources. They were even able to provide mobile shower/bath houses which were greatly appreciated by those in the areas with no running water who were not able to take a bath for two to three weeks.

Due to the severity of the emergency, self defense force members have been called out of retirement to support the recovery.

What to do with all those wrecked cars and debris?

Part of the cleanup includes collecting all the cars that have been scattered everywhere by the tsunami waters. Some cities have resorted to stacking them up three of four high just to get them out of the way. Other cities have decided to not stack them but instead to line them up on the level out of respect for the owners who may want to retrieve items from the car, etc. In this situation, the city looks up the owner by the licence plate number. Then they send a letter to notify the owner and ask for permission to junk the car. However, many of these letters come back because the owner's homes were destroyed or the owner had to evacuate and can not be found.

It will likely take at least three years to clear up all the debris left from the disaster. It is estimated that the total volume of the debris will take up the space worth about twenty years of usual garbage collection. So it is a dilemma where to put all of it. Many places are working hard to separate the debris for recycling or burnable disposal. Other places are making plans to use the debris to build up a better sea wall to protect communities from future tsunamis.

More reactor shutdown news

Since the quake, 35 of Japan's 54 reactors have been temporarily shut down for safety inspections. Perhaps even more will need to be closed for inspection in the future. The general public has become very concerned about reactor safety and there is growing interest that nuclear energy be discontinued completely.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company has just revised their plans for bringing the Fukushima reactors under control. Their goal is still to have things to a cold shut down within 9 months, but they've had to change their tactics. There has been news that reactor 1's pressure vessel has been damaged by melting fuel and is causing the leaking of highly contaminated water into the containment chamber. And from there it is leaking into other areas. There's more talk about cleaning and recirculating the water back into the reactor so less water has to be disposed of.

Also, they're getting a lot more robots into action.

Reactor shutdown news

The president of the Chubu Electric Company has just announced that it will be shutting down some of it's nuclear reactors in order to improve safety conditions. The reactors that will be shut down are in the Hamaoka reactor complex in Shizuoka prefecture. These reactors are only about 100 miles from us in the other direction from Tokyo, so it was big news for us.

For about a month after the big earthquake, there were many aftershocks, but there haven't been many recently. However, it has been predicted that there may be another big quake in this region within the next 30 year. So at the suggestion of the government, the power company will be shutting down these reactors until it can build better sea walls and back up protection. A lot of valuable lessons have been learned from the nuclear disaster in Fukushima.

The shutdown of these reactors will be affecting areas in Shizuoka and Aichi prefectures. This will include the city of Toyota where we have a lot of friends and family. This of course is also the headquarters of the Toyota Motor Company.

There's some other news about the evacuation area around the Fukushima reactors. The government has announce that it will be safe enough to allow people in the restricted area to come back to their homes for a short trip only so they can get personal possessions etc. However it will still be six to nine months or more before they can move back into their homes.

Still a lot of cleaning up to do

It's been quite a while since the big earthquake, but it's still going to be a long time time before the communities are fully recovered. I've heard that it's probably going to take about three years just to clean everything up. Watching the news it's just amazing to see the mile after mile of rubble and debris left behind.
After looking at this picture you can really get the idea of how much work it's going to take to rebuild some of these towns.

As of last Sunday, there have been 14,877 confirmed dead, 9,960 still missing and 119,656 people living in refugee shelters. I'm not entirely sure, but I think there are still some places where water and electric have not been restored yet. On the good side, there has been a lot of support coming in the form of living goods being donated from all over the place. Also, there are a lot of volunteers donating their time and services. These may range from people just helping clean up to doctors coming to check on people in the shelters and barbers to cut hair. Even entertainers have been traveling to the disaster locations to give moral support and cheer people up.

The city officials of these towns have also been working hard to keep there communities together. This has been an extremely difficult task since in many places the records of citizens have been destroyed in the tsunami flooding. In addition to that, the residents have been scattered to many different refugee shelters and it has been taking time to find out the status of all of the city's citizens. Of course even the distribution of mail has been difficult without knowing where the mail needs to be delivered to.

The biggest problems that people are facing in these communities consist of finding jobs, housing, raising children and schooling. Some of these communities even had to decide weather the whole town should evacuate/relocate as a group of if the citizens would be better to relocate separately. Many people have strong connections with families and neighbors making these decisions very difficult. It also has been difficult for children to be separated from their friends and schoolmates.

Testing fish for radiation

I just saw on the news today that the Japanese government will be increasing it's testing of sea food for high radiation levels. The testing locations will be increased from what it is at now (about 45) to over a hundred points ranging from where we live in Kanagawa prefecture all the way up the northern coast of Japan. The tests will be done once per week. If high levels are found, the fisheries will be not be able to harvest any fish until the readings have dropped to a safe level for three consecutive weeks. The results of these tests will be available to the public so other countries will be reassured of Japanese sea food.

Reactor News

Since it was just the 25th anniversary of the nuclear accident in Chernobyl, I thought I'd write a bit more about the reactor situation. Thankfully, the situation in Japan is nowhere near the disaster of Chernobyl, it still appears that it will take a very long time before things are resolved. The current timeline is about six to nine months to clean everything up, but they're constantly running into new problems and challenges.

There's a lot of information regarding this situation, but I'll try to sum things up in short order. Maybe this will be a little more detailed information than you are getting in America.

At the Daiichi nuclear power complex, there are six reactors. Reactors five and six didn't get as much damage and their main problem was that the power went out, but now that the power is being restored again, there's not much in the news about them. Reactors one through four are the ones that got the major damage.

Reactor four was not in operation because of servicing, so there was no nuclear fuel in the reactor chamber. It did have a lot of used fuel rods being store in a pool. The water leaked out and these caught on fire. Since then water is being pumped into the pool. The level is still low, but all the rods are completely submerged and are in a relatively safe state although they still could need more cooling.

Reactors one and three were both in use. When the power and the pumps went out, the water inside the reactor started to vaporize and the fuel rods started to heat and possibly melt. On these two reactors, steam was vented to help reduce the temperature, but there was a lot of hydrogen being vented too which caused both of the reactor's outer buildings to explode.

In reactor two, the hydrogen gas in the containment vessel that surrounds the reactor seems to have exploded in a lower area of the structure causing some kind of internal damage.

Right after the earthquake, water from outside the reactor building was pumped into the reactor chambers to keep things cool. Unfortunately, because of the damage, contaminated water is leaking out which has to be treated and put somewhere. The main dilemma being that they can't stop pumping water because the reactors will over heat, but at the same time they can't fix the damage because of all the contaminated water that is leaking into the reactor and turbine buildings.

They've been getting international help including robots from America to check things out in the dangerous areas, and water treatment systems from France. Even with the help it looks like it's going to be a long time before they figure out how to clean everything up.

In the meantime, local residents are getting very angry about being told to leave there own homes without any way of knowing when they can return. Farmers and dairy producers in the area have come to the Tokyo electric headquarters to protest because they can no longer sell their products. All of the above groups are demanding some kind of compensation. In addition to that, the recovery of earthquake and tsunami victims is being hampered because workers can not be in the radiation danger area for long periods of time. In nearby areas, just outside of the evacuation zone, new regulations are being made about how much exposure school children can receive. Therefore, many of the schools have to do physical education and recess indoors.

That's about all I have time for now. We'll just have to wait to see how things turn out. In the meantime, the radiation levels in our area are still extremely low and staying at a stable level. It will be a relief when this situation gets fixed just the same.

GIANT Bikes for earthquake refugees

Being a bicycle fan myself, here's a story I thought was cool. The international bicycle company GIANT is going to be donating 1,000 mountain bikes to earthquake and tsunami survivors to help in the recovery. These are mountain bikes that were specially outfitted for people to get around the disaster areas where gas and clear roads are scarce. They come with a rack for carrying supplies and front suspension for riding in rough areas. A spare tire tube, tube patch kit and air pump are also included. The bike will also have a special decal because of the occasion.

New Blog reports on Japan start here

Hello,

Thanks once again to all of you for the kind words of support. There have been quite a few tremors this last week, but we're still doing fine.

Starting from now on I will be making all of my updates on this blog. I think it will be a lot easier for me to update with both news and interesting bits as events occur. Also, I hope it will be easier for you to check things out when you get the chance.

I've reprinted all of my emails starting from the day of the earthquake for those people who got in on the reports only part way through and for anyone else who wants to look back on the events.

Wish me luck. I'll try to keep this updated as best I can. There are so many interesting things going on over here. I might have to go back in time to report a few things so please bear with things if they seem to be out of order.

Bye.

April 12, 2011 Getting Back to Normal

Hi there,

I suppose things have been getting back to normal, at least until recently. There have been a few major aftershocks in the past few days, but we're OK where we're at. In general, all of the major activity has been two to three hundred miles away form us, more or less. We usually can feel the earthquakes where we are at, but it's not causing any damage.

Same thing goes for the nuclear reactor business. We are right on the outer fringe of the above normal radiation readings. I'm attaching one of the daily newspaper clippings of the radiation reports. These levels have been going down as time passes. As you can see Chigasaki has one of the lower readings on the chart.

Now this situation is being compared with Chernobyl, but the amount of released radioactivity still has been much less than there. Also, the major difference being that at Chernobyl the reactor core exploded. In Fukushima, the containment structures are largely in tact and in a basically stable condition. They still have a long way to go to fix the problem though.
Other than that I've been back to work for the past three weeks. Business isn't too bad either considering all the events. Right after the big earthquake, there were a lot of people going out and stocking up on things unnecessarily, which caused some shortages, but supplies are pretty much back to normal in our area. For some items, stores limited the number of items people could buy at one time to help control the problem. Most of these items included bottled beverages, instant noodles and canned goods, batteries, diapers and toilet paper.

For the first week after the earthquake, we had power outages once or twice a day. It was about every other day by the second week. From the third week on we haven't had any power outs. Businesses are doing a lot to save energy. Most stores and train stations turn on only half of their lights. Some of the trains have the interior lights turned off during daylight hours. The electronic stores turned off most of their display televisions. Even vending machines have their display lights turned off.

Of course the communities that have been affected by the tsunami are still struggling to recover, but I might have to write about that at another time. There are so many stories to tell which you might not be getting in the American news these days.

Gotta go. Take care.

March 28, 2011 Nuclear News

Hello from Japan,

Hope all of you are doing well. We're doing OK over here. Haven't been writing much lately. First our internet was out for about three days before we tracked the problem to our computers. Apparently it had something to do with the power going out. Also, I've been back to work for the last week. Due to the power outages, the schedule has been fairly mixed up on the weekdays.

I'd like to thank all of you for the messages of support. It's very reassuring to know we have people to call on if the need arises.

It seems that the big news still coming to America from Japan has been about the nuclear reactors. So I'll start from there.

The best we can do is to keep as well informed as possible and not to panic. Some days it's seems to be two steps forward and one step back. Other days it's one step forward and one step back. I think the news television and newspapers are doing a very good job of trying to inform the public about what the situation is and getting the opinions of many professionals and scholars. As you can imagine, ever since World War 2 there has been a lot of research being done in Japan about the effects of radiation. So far, there have been daily reports about the condition of each reactor and the progress that is being made. I've attached a newspaper clipping for you to check out.

Another interesting thing they've been showing on TV are the reports of the radiation levels in the area. It's almost like getting a daily weather report for radiation. The nearest checkpoint to us is in Yokosuka which is about 15 miles away from us. The readings from there are slightly above normal, but the readings from the next point on the other side of us are normal, so we're just on the fringe of the radiation exposure. Here's some trivia... Yokosuka is the home of the US Naval base in Japan, and a few years ago the nuclear aircraft carrier the USS George Washington was deployed there. Of course, there were some protest about having a nuclear powered ship being stationed in Japan. Kind of ironic.

You may have heard reports of radioactive iodine being found in the Tokyo water supply. Although we are about 50 miles from Tokyo, our water is supplied from a different system, so we still are OK. The Tokyo water returned to safe levels after a few days, but where my friend Musashi lives in Ibaraki, there still are radiation warnings for the water there. The problem with this is that it's very bad for infants under 1 year and may lead to thyroid cancer, so you can imagine we are watching this very closely.

There also has been radiation leaking into the environment and into farm products such as milk and vegetables. These are being monitored very closely as Japan has very strict regulations for food safety. In general, the government sets very high standards for personal safety on many different levels. It's disappointing that the farmers are not able to sell their products and loosing a lot of business. An expert was explaining that this low level radiation affected mostly the outer leaves and some of it could even be rinsed off with water.

It's also a big deal for the city and local governments to take care of all their citizens in the evacuation zones around the reactors. Not all of the people want to leave. It's difficult to get supplies in these areas since the shipping companies don't want to send their drivers into the affected areas.

Basically to sum up a lot of the reports, this low level radiation is not harmful for short periods of time and we shouldn't worry about it. On the other hand, the news from the Tokyo Power Company say it may take a long time to get these reactors properly under control. So it's any one's guess how things will work out. Now that they're getting the power back on line and trying to get the machines running again, they're getting a better idea of what's really going on inside.

Finally, let's all give a big hand to the brave power plant workers, firemen and self defense force workers who are going into harms way to get this problem under control. They've even been getting help from the US armed forces on certain missions.

I guess that's enough of a report for now. Take care.

March 16, 2011 Japan Update

Hello,

Hope you don't mind getting these reports. I actually have something to talk about these days.

Don't know if I mentioned it, but the big earthquake had a magnitude of 5 where we are at. Last night there was another one of about 4 and one of 3 tonight.

I've been off from work since Saturday. Hopefully my location will be back open by next Saturday. It's kind of nice being around home to help take care of my family during these times, but my company made me use three paid holidays since they're not making me go to work a the Tokyo locations. Since there still are a lot of train delays, I'd hate to get stuck somewhere a long way from home.

We've had the power out the last two days. Fortunately it's planned so that the area is divided into groups. Each group is given a time slot. If the power needs to be cut at any time, it will be cut in the assigned area for the assigned time. This way, people can plan on when to expect the power outages to happen and schedule their business accordingly. Also, the power is out for no longer than three hours at a time.

Next thing, I'm sure all of you have noticed the news about the damaged nuclear reactors. Seems like all the units in the Daiichi complex have developed some kind of problem. In case you were wondering, we are about 170 miles from the reactors as the crow flies. It actually sounds like there has been a trace of radiation that has made it as far as we are, but was incredibly small. For example, on the scale that is being used, an x ray like you get at the doctors would be about 50. The radiation that we got was 0.16 I think. Here's some trivia, on a jet flight from Tokyo to New York, because of the high altitude's lack of atmosphere above, you actually get more radiation than in an x ray.

Sounds like a water cannon just arrived at the reactor site and it's going to be used to cool the reactors from the outside. Let's hope this helps.

Other than that we're doing OK. My best friend over here, Musashi, lives in Ibaraki prefecture much closer to where the big earthquakes were. He and his wife also just had a baby about five months before Lynn was born. Fortunately they're unhurt. They weren't near to the ocean or tsunami, but they still had a fair amount of damage from the earthquake. In addition to that, they live about 90 miles away from the reactors and are pretty worried about it as you could imagine. So please keep them in mind too when you think about us.

That's about it for now. It's only been five days since the quake, but we're looking forward to life getting back to normal as soon as possible.

Take care.

March 13, 2011 Japan News

Hello,

Sorry for the group mailing, but I wanted to get in touch with all of you.

We're still doing OK and in good health. Hopefully the nuclear reactors will be taken care of soon. It already seems that one of them is "under control" enought that it shouldn't be a danger anymore. There still is another one that is in serious shape, but it seems that resources are being sent there to stablize it. Maybe you're getting all of this news in Amreica (or other areas of the world) already, but starting from tomorrow, since Chigasaki is in the Tokyo Elecetric company's range, our power will be shut off for about three hours each day. Don't know how long this will go on for, but it might be a matter of weeks. So I might have difficulty replying to my emails for some time.

The place were I work was closed for the last few days. Since there still is a chance for a very large after shock earthquake within two or three days, things may be shut down even longer since we are next to the ocean. (Just in case of another tsunami.)

Take care.

March 11, 2011 We're OK

Hello,

Just wanted to let you know we are OK over here.

I made it safely home at 10:00 tonight. I was at the aquarium drawing customers when the earthquake hit a little before 3:00 pm. It was pretty scary, but I don't think anyone was hurt. In one part of the aquarium, there were some hanging lights that were swinging and broke against the wall, but other than that I don't think there was much damage. For safety reasons the aquarium was closed at that time. Also all the trains were stopped for the rest of the day. Because of the danger of tsunami, all the aquarium staff had to go to the 3rd floor of a nearby school building. We had to wait there for a few hours. Then everyone had to return to the aquarium to get our things and then go back to the school building. Shortly before 9:00, the aquarium people arranged a shuttle to take staff to a location where they could get home from. In my case I was able to get a bus from the Tsujido station.

There was a slight tsunami in our area. The water flowed backwards from the ocean into the river area. I don't know if it was big enough to cause much damage. I didn't get to see it myself, but I heard it looked pretty strange.

My cell phone and email wasn't connecting properly either.

A lot of things will be closed tomorrow for safety reasons. Especially checking buildings for structural damage.

I was just checking out the TV and I didn't know until now how bad things were in the northern part of the country. I'll be at home tomorrow and looking after my family.

Wow, just felt another aftershock just now.

That's about it for now. Better go.