Sensory Overload

Rikuzen-takata

As we’ve done previous years, my wife and I went up the village of Takizawa just outside Morioka city in northern Iwate, to visit her parents during Golden Week. Getting tickets was challenge this time, as Tohoku Shinkansen was out of service until just a week before the holidays. Worryingly long lines quickly formed outside the ticket offices on the day tickets finally went on sale, but after patiently waiting in line for an hour, we finally got our Hayate tickets to Morioka.

We saw surprisingly few traces of earthquake damage on the way up. Probably a testament to how quickly repair work has progressed rather than the extent of the damage, as JR East Japan have reportedly had to repair no less than 1200 sections of the track. All we noticed were blue, plastic sheets on a few dozen roofs, as a temporary replacement for missing tiles, around Sendai.

During our last day, we decided to visit the disaster struck coastal city of Rikuzen-takata in southern Iwate, to see with our own eyes what had happened. On our way down, a three hour ride from Morioka, we stopped by at a Komeri “home center” store and stocked up on supplies we knew were needed in the evacuation centers. I literally bought every shirt in the shop.

Rikuzen-takata looked like any small, peaceful Tohoku city at first: Mountains and valleys, farm houses and paddy fields. No visible damage. The only thing unusual was the heavy JSDF truck in front of us.

A few kilometers later, the landscape changed. Greenhouses at the lowest levels had lost their white, plastic covers, and what just a few meters earlier had been impeccably kept rice paddies suddenly became junk yards filled with broken cars, glass, tree branches, and even a piano.

After the next corner, a complete wasteland appeared. Every wooden house had been reduced to rubble, and the few remaining larger structures were mere skeletons. Piles of scrap everywhere. Whole trees were sticking out from the broken windows of an apartment building. At the central Takata Hospital, only the top floor had been spared. On the roads were mostly military transports, civilian trucks, excavators and other heavy earth moving equipment, and the whole seafront was covered in a dust cloud.

The tsunami had thrashed the lower levels of the city with what seemed to be brutal precision: A fine line separated the unscathed buildings higher up from the debris below. A few meters below a small residential house with no visible damage were the remains of what may have been a Buddhist temple.

We asked around for the directions to the Dai-ichi junior high school evacuation center. Most people we met were from out of town, some from Aomori and other distant prefectures, and had come to volunteer, provide food and other necessities, or just witness the destruction. Everyone just as shocked as we were.

Eventually we managed to find to the seemingly newly built, light yellow colored school building, atop a large hill. The parking lot was almost full. I was worried that they would see us as some kind of disaster tourists, perhaps rightfully so, but they seemed genuinely happy about people visiting, not just to provide supplies, but to actually see what had happened to their hometown.

Before we left, we were asked to visit one more place. Rikuzen-takata is known for its many pine trees lined up along the beach, one of the so-called one hundred scenic views of Japan. While the scenic view is no more, one tree miraculously survived the tsunami and now stands defiantly on the shore as a symbol of hope.

Rikuzen-takata has been through an unimaginable disaster and survivors will need all the help they can get for years to come. Whether the city itself survives remains to see. Just clearing all the debris will be a monumental challenge, to say nothing of the effort required to actually rebuild. However, I left thinking that perhaps this is the one country where it can actually happen.

Words

• 圧力 — pressure
• 圧力抑制室 — suppression pool
• 過熱 — overheat
• 緊急事態 — state of emergency
• 原子力安全・保安院 — NISA
• 原子力災害対策本部 - nuclear emergency response headquarters
• 原子炉 — nuclear reactor
• 災害対策 — disaster prevention
• シーベルト — sievert (Sv)
• 自衛隊 — JSDF
• 水素 — hydrogen
• 東京消防庁 - Tokyo Fire Department
• 東京電力 — TEPCO
• 燃料プール - spent fuel pool
• 燃料棒 — (nuclear) fuel rod
• 白煙 — white smoke
• 破損 - damage
• 放水 — dousing
• 福島第一原発 — Fukushima nuclear power plant #1
• 防衛省 - Ministry of Defence
• 放射性物質 — radioactive material
• 放射線 — radiation
• 冷却 — cooling
• 露出 — exposure
• 炉心 — nuclear reactor core

Moscow

The Aeroflot adventure took an interesting turn when we landed on Moscow airport, half an hour late. The transit desk looked at our tickets and casually told us that “They will not take you on your connecting flight. Too short on time. You will now go to a hotel and take another flight tomorrow”. The prospect of a stay-over at a Russian Aeroflot provided hotel, without any luggage and with only a few diapers left, wasn’t enticing. But we didn’t have much of a choice.

The Novotel hotel’s impressive atrium and the front desk’s promise of free dinner and breakfast—in the room no less—made us think our initial skepticism was unwarranted. However, it soon became obvious that we weren’t ordinary hotel guests: We were escorted to the hotel and even to the room by murky, muscular security guards who I’m sure had dusty KGB badges hidden somewhere.

The reason why room service was included was simply that we weren’t allowed to leave our rooms. The third floor of the hotel was a special “no visa zone” reachable only from a service elevator, and a guard prevented anyone from leaving this floor. We were pretty much imprisoned.

Our room was worn down and short on amenities, but the shower, toilet, and beds were at least serviceable—especially considering the fact that we didn’t pay anything. The dinner, friend chicken with lots and lots of potatoes, wasn’t too bad although the presentation was something you’d expect from a Siberian prison rather than a business hotel.

The next morning we got a call at 7am. Probably an automatic wake-up call, couldn’t tell, as the message was in Russian and Chinese only. We had been promised that an Aeroflot representative would pick us up 8am, but no one showed up. One hour and four calls to an unconcerned front desk later, we were finally allowed to take service elevator down to the lobby, were we were greeted by immigration agents who had probably never seen a smile.

With only five minutes left til boarding time, we finally got into a car and headed back to the airport and straight to the runway, and made it just in time.

A painful decision

I am writing this onboard flight SU576 from Tokyo to Moscow, with final destination Stockholm. We made the difficult decision to leave Tokyo and Japan, mainly out of concern for our newborn son’s safety.

Up to and including Monday, we had felt relatively safe and convinced that the nuclear situation in Fukushima was stable and under control. However, on Tuesday morning we woke up to the news that there had been an explosion at the Fukushima I plant’s second reactor. Two explosions had occurred days before, at the first and third reactors. Unlike the previous harmless (if an explosion at an already malfunctioning nuclear power plant can ever be characterized as such) hydrogen explosions, this time the suppression pool had been damaged.

Much has been written about the developments at Fukushima, and mostly by people who neither understand Japanese nor nuclear physics I assume. I am certainly no expert, but what little I knew and had researched was enough to be convinced that a leaking suppression pool was a far greater danger than a hydrogen explosion outside the containment. A first sign that the Tepco might be losing control and that this could possibly end in a catastrophe.

My wife and I came to the conclusion that staying any longer was too risky for our newborn son, even though Tokyo hadn’t seen any significant increase in radiation and was officially deemed safe. I quickly searched for flights to Stockholm, and found that the airline industry was now doing its best to cash in on this disaster. Flights were available but at a premium I’ve never seen before. This wasn’t the right time to be frugal though.

Once we had next day tickets, we needed to actually get to Narita airport, which is quite far from central Tokyo. The two express trains, JR Narita Express and Keisei Skyliner, were not in service, and neither were the local trains. We tried to buy an airport bus ticket, but weren’t able to reach the ticketing office by phone, and online booking was no longer available. Taxi all the way to Narita was the only option.

Choosing what to bring with us was difficult. We weren’t going on a holiday or business trip. We were going to leave Japan without knowing when to return. You can’t pack your entire home into a suitcase—especially not one with a max weight of 20 kilograms.

As Japan and Tokyo was already suffering from a gasoline shortage, we didn’t encounter much traffic, even though the highway was partially closed due to a fire. After one hour and a half, we arrived at the airport. Almost immediately we got a call from a friend of mine who was staying at a nearby hotel with his family. He offered to share the room with us, as all hotels in the area were fully booked. We gratefully accepted and took a taxi to the hotel.

Unwilling to spend more time outdoors than necessary, we decided to have dinner at the hotel. The ground floor restaurant was almost devoid of people, yet had a “manseki”, or no tables available, sign up. When asking the concierge if we could still get a table, he asked how many we were, made a quick call to someone, and then escorted us to one of the many empty tables. It wasn’t just gasoline that was in short supply.

We went to bed early but woke up less than two hours later to another aftershock, the strongest one so far. The hotel swayed for several minutes. Turning on the TV, we found out that the epicenter was in Shizuoka not too far away, and that it was a strong six on Japan’s seven grade scale. Minutes later everyone was asleep again.

The checkin at Narita the following day went smooth, with no sense of panic at the airport. The US and UK bound flights had far longer checkin lines than our Stockholm-via-Moscow one, and apparently also had long waiting lists.

We’re now in an Aeroflot Boeing 767 somewhere over the Ural mountains. This small, noisy airplane looks like it could be a cold war era relic, the chairs are uncomfortable, and the only TV apparently broken. But we’ve left Japanese soil for now, and our son is safe. That is all that matters right now.

I truly hope we can return to Japan soon, within days or weeks. We have our home, friends, work and colleagues, my wife’s family and relatives—our lives—there and it does feel terrible to leave everything behind.

Monday

First weekday since the disaster. Not entirely business as usual: Closed train stations, warnings from Tokyo Electric about blackouts during the day, and worries about everything from nuclear fallout to large aftershocks kept many at home. Stock market did open and punished all but the construction firms.

NHK’s programming is still unchanged from the weekend: Press conferences, expert panels debating nuclear meltdown risk and impact, and reports from disasters and recovery efforts in the Tohoku area. Every once in a while, an alert flashes on the tv screen, warning that an aftershock has just hit some part of Japan and will be felt elsewhere within seconds. It does get a bit unnerving after a while.

Surreal to see scenes from Sendai. I lived and studied there for two years and have vivid memories of imoni barbecues under the Ushigoe bridge, hanami picnics at Nishi-koen and Tsutsujigaoka, day trips to Matsushima bay, ekiden marathons around the Aobayama campus, and lab bounenkai parties at izakaya bars in Ichibancho. Sendai is a lovely place and it hurts to see how badly damaged the city now is. Wish I could help.

Earthquake

We’re used to minor earthquakes here. Happens all the time. No one really paid attention when it started. I was at work and in a conference call. People just smiled and kept talking for a while, until we realized the tremors were getting unusually big.

Offices here tend of have earthquake survival kits, containing a helmet, flashlight, and other necessities, under each desk. We all took cover under our desks, opened the kits—most of us for the first time ever—and took out the helmets. The scene looked like a drill of some kind. The office building, which is built like a tank and probably as wide and deep as it is tall, kept swaying for minutes.

Everyone, except for a few battle hardened traders, left the building as soon as the first tremblor was over. Mobile phone networks quickly got overloaded, unable to handle the millions of people trying to call or send messages. With no means to contact friends and family, most people decided to leave. However, all trains had stopped, busses were either out of service or already packed with people, all taxis were immediately taken, and traffic jam was building up everywhere.

Many people, me included, decided to walk home. It was as if the whole city suddenly turned into a gigantic marathon walking course. For some people the distance was just too great, and the city offered temporary shelters in parks and arenas for those.

Aftershocks continued during the evening, night, and the following morning. News about one, then two, malfunctioning reactors in Fukushima caused even more worry, and it was—and still is—hard to get in touch with people up in the Tohoku area due to a major power outage.

Tokyo is slowly returning to normal, but Tokyo Electric Power warns about possible outages, we keep hearing ambulances and fire trucks rushing by, and the local supermarket has longer lines than I’ve ever seen before, as if people are lining up to get the latest and greatest iWhatever.