Tsunami reflections and unusual info

So is this the new end all-be-all Japan/EQ/Tsunami thread? Would be nice if it was just one. Anyway, it's pretty much what everyone's been thinking, and it looks like it's going to be true:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110421/ap_on_re_as/as_japan_earthquake_elderly_deaths
Sum up: 2/3 of the confirmed victims were over 60 years old (another 1800 of indeterminate age). 93% died from drowning.

 

If it were night time it would have been even MORE tragic

 

That's too horrid to even think about.

 

The ironic thing is Kantou in 1923 was many fold worse b/c it was during the day. I don't know how those fishing villages work though. There could be more people close to the water during the day than night. Obviously the people in their houses would be in bad shape though.

 

How has this effected the rest of Japan? everyday living? perception of their future etc? What are the emerging political effects?

 

From what I've heard, it was business as usual in Osaka. In Kantou, however, where like 25-30% of the population lives, annoying would be a good word for it. It is still difficult to find some of your favorite products if they are bottled water or dairy. Other "obscure" brands have taken their place, or there is nothing there at all. Everyone checks to make sure they're not buying anything from north of Chiba as well.

Most businesses are now back to working normal hours, but many for the first month after the quake were closing down early, to conserve electricity. Most shops are still conserving electricity, which is the most noticeable change in an otherwise neon-friendly city. For example, if you walk into a grocery story, the produce/dairy/drinks section will be fully refrigerated, but the lights will be totally off. Most signs external to shops are off, and most vending machines are now turned off. This is supposed to continue until basically another reactor is made.

Political effects are, as of now, bringing up the sour old topic of moving the capital away from Tokyo. From what I understand, this never happened b/c it's hard to move a politician, his family, and his girlfriend out to the middle of nowhere w/o raising eye brows. They'd probably lose a lot of kick backs from being corrupt fuckers as well. Anyways, who cares about them? They are puppets, and don't have much control over anything. This should be a wake up call that Tokyo needs to repopulate areas other than Kantou, seeing as it's got 3 fucking fault lines that could blow any minute:

This is one of those situations where Assembler's patented alarmism that we saw when talking about radioactive dust moving to Tokyo,would be 100% true. 9.0 (or way smaller, even) hits close enough and shallow enough, and this city will crumble. The architecture is genius but it can only withstand so much. A tsunami would just be a fisting on top of that, as a large portion of the bay is reclaimed, and many high profile wards are very close to the water (Minato-ku, Shinagawa-ku, Chuo-ku). That cuts off shipping lines, the death toll would easily be 10x as if it were in Touhoku, large corporations could be derailed for weeks or worse if their HQ is effected. Small and medium-sized companies would be knocked out for much longer, if not wiped off the planet for good.

And what would all that entail? Who knows? Global depression? It fuck the world economy no question. I don't think people outside of the world can appreciate exactly how remote this one was and how huge effect it has had. While Tokyo shook like a mofo, it did little damage that wasn't only cosmetic. Only 5 people died in Tokyo, I believe. Yet, the entire region has been displaced for a month. In the event something catastrophic happened in the area, rebuilding procedures have to start from outside of Tokyo. It would be like a battle ship going to war with 10 tug boats, and the tug boats having to save the battle ship from sinking.

And the big kicker is that Kantou is overdue for an Earth-shattering adjustment by years: They supposedly happen every 75-years. The last one was 1923 and killed over 100,000 people. So, with all that, it's time to point fingers and start asking WTF? The above could easily speed up Japan's inevitable race to the bottom, and make it even harder to climb out. At the current rate there is some hope that things change, although very unlikely.

</soap box>

EDIT: and you can pretty much feel an Earthquake at least once a day.

 

As I live in Ibaraki which is the prefecture below Fukushima (although to be fair Miyagi is closer to the danger zone and there are other prefectures that border it) and it is just over 140km from the nuclear power site (and to be fair I came here well after the earthquake, tsunami), I thought I would give my opinion too.

Trains are getting back to normal, although services that go through the affected areas in Fukushima or near the north Ibaraki coast or south Miyagi coast are still not running and probably won't be for a long time.

Food is getting back to normal, now I do not have to fight housewives over a packet of Natto as there seems to be more delivered, although it is still less then it was and it is still has a 1 packet limit per person. Although they are now selling single packets (which they never did before) and you can buy 3 of these on top of buying a packet. Yogurt and Eggs are the only two other things that are in short supply but both are better then they were a few weeks ago. Bottle water generally has a limit on how many bottle you can buy, with a limit of 1 large bottle or 5 500ml in most shops, although most conveince stores do have stacks of 500ml water bottles clogging up the front walkways where you can buy a box for several thousand yen (something they never did).

A lot of Ibaraki, Tochigi and Gunma get water from underground sources so even though they are nearer to the nuclear plant they tend to have lower radioactive iodine counts then Tokyo does, which gets a lot of water from rivers and surface level sources (although the radioactive counts are tiny.).

As Gaijinpunch said, a lot of shops are closing earlier, normally one hour before they would normally close, although one of the major supermarkets near me has gone from closing at 10pm back to it's Midnight time. The post office ATMs are still closing an hour earlier too. Most are switching off banks of lights and fridges and vending machines also have lights switched off, although a number of rural vending machines which are on busy roads with no lights have very dim lights to illuminate them, although they would normally come on fully if you inserted money or pressed a button, but to my annoyance these have been turned off as well which makes trying to find small change a bundle of laughs.

Although a number of products in Fukushima have been stopped from being shipped to other parts of Japan, they have decided that the surrounding prefectures are safe, although some people in Tokyo and south have decided not to buy anything north of chiba. My girlfriends family do run a large farm in Ibaraki and they have been having record sales the last few weeks (and are still having their annual Takenoko (bamboo shoot) festival with no signs that it will have less people ten last year). They are not too far from Tochigi, Gunma, Saitama or Chiba.

Earthquakes everyday too, although there have not been any 5s for a while, although two days ago we had a 3/4 that lasted for around 10 minutes, most of the time the earthquakes last less then a minute with a few last a few minutes at most, so it was a little scary.

However life is continuing as normal.

 

In southern Honshu where I live life is normal. It never changed. no food oddities, no panic, no closed schools, no early work days, no energy saving, no nothing. Just life as normal as if I was in a different country.

Oh, actually, getting a parcel from Amazon now takes 3 days where is did take only 1 day. Strange that when the normal postal system is the same as it was.

Yakumo

 

I agree with everything GP said, but would say that though many buildings in Tokyo would withstand most earthquakes, it'd be a tsunami that unleashed the most devastation. That much is evident from the recent events.

There's little point moving the capital West, unless you go all the way to Kyushu (and ignore the recent volcanoes). A Tokai Earthquake is predicted to be imminent.

Earthquake prediction cannot be done without having a fully accurate model of the inside of the Earth, which won't happen in our lifetimes (if ever). Even just the Earthquake early warning system by itself, is fantastic and cutting-edge technology.

Any idea how long it takes to build one, these days? Around 10 years? I'll be long gone by then. Rather selfish of me, but it's just typical that I have been here for 5 minutes after wanting to be here for years, and then North Eastern Japan gets crippled, with a large impact on Tokyo.

Hopefully no more will sprout!

P.S. My friend in Fukuoka said that it's basically like watching another country, on the news. It's so far East and the difference in power supplies means that there's basically no impact at all. Same from my friend in Nagoya.

 

Deep down I want to believe this, but from what I understand, the threshold goes WAY down (like a level of a magnitude, maybe more) if it's a vertical Earthquake. The supports just can't handle it and buckle. Horizontal, they do much better. There's just so many small buildings here, and old ones... it won't be pretty if the epicenter is in Tokyo. A friend works for Tokyuu cable, who provide early warning system data. The predictions are nuts. They actually have projected body counts for each part of town depending on the intensity. From all our talks, I know that I will never live in Shimokitazawa.

Exactly. I made it a point a long time ago to not dodge Earthquakes. So pointless. Just better to get on w/ your life. However, the sense in moving the capital isn't to avoid any particular Earthquake, but to simply diversify the geography of the country. This has actually been mulled over many times. I remember hearing about it mere weeks after moving here and getting "in touch" with Earthquakes. I don't think moving the capital is the answer, but the start. Companies have to go to other cities, plain and simple. This will piss off land owners in Tokyo, but it's face it, it's too fucking expensive here already.

One friend of mine said going to Osaka during the nuclear scare was like climbing the Berlin Wall. Haha.

I heard a sad story today. Some collector in I believe Tochigi (who was fine, I might add) had a sick collection of PCBs... most of which were destroyed. Not sure if he had any one of a kinds, but I think he definitely had some rare ones.

 

I agree. If a massive Earthquake hits shallow enough, and has enough vertical displacement, there's nothing we can do. We can't do anything anyway, but I will just hope that most will be horizontal shiftings. I think a lot of buildings (especially big skyscrapers) will be fine, but 2-3 story mansions and apartments going back to the 70s... not so sure.

Can you ask about $B:y>e?e!!!V(Bsakurajosui$B!W(B :-0

 

If anyone is interested in volunteering, this is the shortest trip I've found:
Volunteer With Peace Boat

Must be able to hold your own in Japanese
1: Attend the orientation in Nishihara (close to Yoyogi Uehara/Hatagaya) on Saturday
2: Sign up (limited to 200)
3: Get your own shit (boots*, rain gear, cold gear, sleeping bag, masks, gloves, etc.)
4: Ride the bus (5000 yen, leaves Monday night)
5: Work your ass off for 3 days, making your host country a better place, maybe even change some lives
6: Ride the bus back (Thursday night, arriving Friday morning)

The majority of the work is sweeping mud. It is humbling, and not glorious at all from what I've understood. But, you will likely (hopefully) never get an experience to help a disaster zone so close to home again.

*This is the most important thing! You need those fish-guttin' boots like you see at Tsukiji Fish Market. You're basically standing in mud for the entire time.

 

how is the situation in fukushima? the news don't cover it anymore...

 

Yes they do, look harder.



http://www.japantoday.com/category/...ng-no-1-reactor-with-water-for-cooling-system


http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110506p2g00m0dm080000c.html


http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110506p2a00m0na017000c.html

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110506p2a00m0na020000c.html

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110507a1.html

 

To be fair, he was probably referring to mainstream English language media. And I was actually wondering the same thing

24/7 non-stop news about Japanese earthquakes, tsunami, nuclear explosions, end of the world etc for one week.

After one week? Completely gone from the airwaves as if it never happened in the first place, replaced by some other hot topic.

I guess that's what they call the news cycle.

 

Lol, did you really have expected something different? It's always the same, as long it's hot and shocking it get slaughtered if there was no tomorrow.
The peak was kinda reached, when they put the danger level up to a 7 (highest possible). So asks peeps, what more worse could happen after that?

 

No-one gives a shit now. There was a royal wedding, death of Bin Laden, a war in Libya and loads of other shit going on. Old news.

Unless a situation deteriorates, no-one really gives a shit about anything.

 

Exactly. It seems that every fortnight there is some major scandal that takes the focus away from everything else, then it in turn is forgotten.

The whole Wikileaks blow up seems like an age ago. Christchurch earthquake, Chile earthquake, Deepwater Horizon, that Icelandic volcano that no one can pronounce, all forgotten.

 

The BBC news website still mentions various parts of the earthquake, on the front page day it said that people from towns in the 20 to 30km area were being evacuated. On the Asia pacific part there are still various stories too.