DD and I have been planning a trip to Japan for well over a year now.  In January we decided on when we’d travel (Springtime, for hanami, or cherry-blossom viewing season), bought our plane tickets and began to make concrete plans as to where to go, what do do, where to stay.

On the 6th of March we also ordered our Japan Rail Pass – an all-you-can eat train pass that enables you to travel all over Japan by Shinkansen, or bullet train.  Note that it’s available to foreigners only, sold in increments of 7, 14, and 21 days.

4 days later, on Thursday evening, (March 10th) as we were getting ready for bed, reports of the Tohoku earthquake hit the news.  When we rose the next morning, we listened and watched with horror at the unfolding news of the crisis, of the ensuing Tsunami, of the ominous damage to the nuclear power plants in Fukushima, the possibility that the Tsunami might reach Hawaii and the shores of the US West Coast.

Wait-and-See

Over the course of that dreadful first week, we’ve been on wait-and-see mode, staying on top of the news, scouring the internet for first-hand accounts of the situation in Tokyo and other parts of Japan.  I was definitely struck by the copious amounts of information that was available, or made available by numerous bloggers, Japanese news sites and especially, Twitterers. There were accounts by numerous private citizens, official agencies (the Japanese Prime Minister’s Office; the US Ambassador to Tokyo, John V. Roos) and various news reporters.  We were especially glad to see that NHK, Japan’s Public Broadcasting Network, had begun streaming live, 24-hour news.  And I’ve also been glued to my Japan Twitter list for timely updates.

Danny’s post on Metafilter sums up our thought process over the last week; our initial plans had us spending a few days in Tokyo first, but to assuage our families’ concerns we decided to skip Tokyo for that first week and head west instead.  When we land in Narita we’ll make our way to Osaka and remain in Central/ Western Japan until the 10th of April.  By all accounts, and through responses to the inquiries we’ve sent, Central, Western and Southern Japan remain largely unaffected by the events in the North/ Northeast.  However, we currently have plans to be in Tokyo during our last week – from the 10th to the 15th.

What’s Going on in Tokyo?

Blackouts?

Yes, blackouts are still in effect; however, from the beginning most of central Tokyo (where we would have been) were deemed exempt from the rolling blackout requirements.  In some areas, blackouts were even cancelled due to citizens conserving enough power during the day.  Yes, we do know that public transportation is still not operating at full capacity but have hopes that the ensuing 3 weeks will just bring increasing levels of operation.   If anything, this would mean being slightly more inconvenienced had all systems been operating at full capacity.   Nothing even close to what the poor souls in Sendai and other parts of the Miyagi prefecture are/ have been experiencing.

Food Shortages/ Hoarding

By some accounts, there are still incidents of  panic buying/ bare store shelves in Japanese supermarkets.  In the initial days of the quake, roads and transportation were damaged, resulting in a disruption in the supply chain, causing delays in deliveries of food and other supplies.  And naturally in the initial days the reports of supermarkets running out of certain essentials like bread, rice, eggs and toilet paper in the greater Tokyo are were true and became news, sometimes misleading folks into thinking that this was the case throughout all of Japan…  For the most part — at least for the greater Tokyo area — there appears to be no lack of supply, but rather, fuel shortage + transportation/ delivery delays + the demand from folks nervous about more potential quakes stocking up on supplies.   And things appear to be getting better all the time.

Check out some of these reports of the actual “food shortage” in Tokyo – reported by folks on the ground:

• Danny Choo, Tokyo, Wednesday, 16 March.
• Mike Roberts in Tokyo- report from Wednesday, 16 March.
• Michael Keferl in Tokyo – report from Thursday, 17 March.
• Shizuoka, about 30-40 minutes south of Tokyo – one of my favourite foodbloggers posts about his local market on 18 March.
• Dave, a photoblogger taking daily photos in Tokyo.  This set from Monday 21 March shows some nice food shots – restaurants, bakeries, even McDonald’s is still clearly in operation.
• An account by a traveler from 21 March.

What about the Radiation?

Yes, during those first few days, the situation at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant looked grim indeed.  Explosions and fires broke out, and levels of radiation rose (and fell) and a skeleton staff of about 50 workers struggled mightily to cool down the overheating reactors whose cooling systems and backup generators were knocked out by that 1-2 punch of the earthquake and tsunami.  As of Sunday (19 March), power was restored to at least 2 of the reactors, and it was reported that 5 & 6 are completely stabilised. Today, 22 March, Tepco announced that power had been restored to all 6 Fukushima reactors.

Radiation levels in Tokyo still remain normal, as reported by our own embassy in Japan, citing the numerous radiation monitoring sources such as the WHO, IAEA and Japanese Ministry of Education:

Farther from the reactor site, radiation monitoring by the Japanese government, U.S. government assets, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) all indicate that levels of radiation measured in Tokyo as well as Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa prefectures remain at background levels, well below levels which are dangerous to human health. The Japanese Ministry of Education, Science and Technology is providing regular updated radioactivity measurements by prefecture, available online here. This data appears consistent with measurements generated by WHO, the IAEA and the U.S. government. WHO information is available at www.wpro.who.int and IAEA data at www.iaea.org. U.S. government experts have also continuously monitored radiation levels on Embassy grounds since March 14, using sophisticated radiation detection meters including high-volume pump samplers that collect information on a 24-hour basis. We have consistently observed normal background levels of radiation.

Other radiation sources:

• Metropolis Magazine – English magazine based in Tokyo with its own Geiger Counter; see its Facebook page here.
• Useful PDF from the Japanese Ministry of Education
• Dr. Hiroshi Ishikawa’s Geiger Counter readings – Western Tokyo – Compare levels today with those from December, 2010. Negligible differences. (To translate this page, put it into Google’s handy tools here: http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=EN)
• MIT’s Nuclear Information Hub
• Mutant Frog’s excellent analysis of Radiation levels and effects
• And of course, the xkcd Radiation Chart

In Tokyo, radiation levels have been trending at anywhere from 0.1 – 0.3 microsieverts/ hour. 1 Sievert/ hour would indeed cause nausea, fatigue; perhaps death to a number of people; 0.0000001 Sieverts = 0.1 micro Sieverts = eating 1 banana in one hour.

What about radiation food contamination? What about those reports of spinach and milk? Read NPR’s interview with a researcher at Renssealaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.:

To reach the radiation dose limit for a power plant worker, you’d need to drink 2,922 eight-ounce glasses of milk. To raise your lifetime cancer risk by 4 percent, you’d have to drain more than 58,000 glasses of milk. That would take you 160 years, if you drank one 8-ounce glass a day.

The corresponding am0unt for contaminated spinach is something like 820 pounds – around 2 lbs/ day for a year.  I do like my horenso no ohitashi, but not that much!

How Do I Help?

DD and I hope that our upcoming trip and tourist dollars will help somewhat.  We’ve also taken advantage of our companies’ generous donation-matching policies and have donated to the Red Cross for Japan Earthquake Relief.  In the meantime, here’s a list of other possible donation avenues.  And here’s another list from The Tokyo Post – a group blog that launched early due to the earthquake.

**post-script: yes, that’s a photo of me in Nara, Japan from May or June of 1982.