Dear all, I haven't really had time to settle down and reflect about what happened, but the aftershocks have receded for a while, so things are a bit more quiet. Because of the pending possible reactor meltdown(s) in Fukushima, an emergency power saving program may be enacted nationwide, so I'm not sure how long we will have power and Internet access here. So I'm giving you an update while the infrastructure still works.
The good news: I'm fine and I currently have access to food, water, and electricity. Everyone I know is more or less in the same situation (except for electricity, perhaps). In short, don't expect any responses or contributions to projects in the next two weeks, because things are still far from normal. Public services have mostly resumed in Tokyo, but if the reactor(s) melt down or explode again, this could trigger a new wave of problems. For mailing list readers: the rest will be off-topic but I hope the exceptional circumstances mitigate this list abuse. Our company has recently moved our offices to the headquarter campus in Tsukuba, over one hour (by train) from Tokyo. I was lucky to have attended a presentation in central Tokyo yesterday, because Tsukuba has been hit harder by the earthquake, and probably still has not completely received power back yet. Also, last time I checked, Tsukuba was still cut off from the train grid. While my schedule fortunately had me be in Tokyo yesterday, I was less lucky that the presentation was on the 20th floor. In Tokyo, I have experienced earthquakes in tall buildings before, but never something as extreme as this one. On the Japanese earthquake scale, which measures destruction, Tokyo got the forth-highest rating. This means items that are not secured will fall down. Luckily, it is illegal in office buildings to have any furniture that is not securely bolted to the wall or ceiling. So nobody was injured. (The areas hit worst by the earthquake got the highest rating, which means that even strong buildings may collapse.) If the epicenter had been close to Tokyo, 30 million lives could have been wiped out. So in that sense, we were lucky. The presentation was stopped after we noticed the extent of the earthquake, and how much the building was shaking. We had to brace ourselves against the wall as we were leaving the presentation room, because all buildings were swaying like a cruise ship in a storm. While we knew that Japan's building codes are very strict, nobody knew if the buildings could withstand what was to come. All you can do about earthquakes is prevention, so once the quake starts, you are completely helpless. I would rather have been in the first or second floor of a building in the countryside, because you would have had time to run outside. On the 20th floor, you are helplessly trapped and just have to wait and see. In this case, the first temblor lasted for a full seven minutes, which is seven minutes with the heart rate near the maximum, never knowing if the ceiling would fall down on you next. (I have to say that weaker earthquakes I have experienced so far have never made me nervous in the slightest, and all of my colleagues had the same experience.) Not yet knowing what was to come, we tried to get back to normal and resume the meeting, but frequent and violent aftershocks forced us to cancel it. I had another appointment after that meeting, and at that point, I still thought that I could maybe make it to the other place somehow (by train and taxi). I knew that the subways would be suspended for quite some time, so I walked 1 - 2 km to the nearest train station. As I had to see, many people were already flocking to the train station, only to see that all trains were suspended. I could not make any phone calls because the phone network was out of order. At least I was outside, the aftershocks, which kept coming every 5 - 10 minutes at high intensity, were not so easily felt there. I spent the next few hours in various public spaces, together with thousands of other people, trying to get Internet access with my phone. Internet access, amazingly, still worked, although only slowly and intermittently. Time passed, and eventually it was time for dinner; because of the presentation earlier, we had made plans for dinner near where I was waiting. At that time, the earthquake had already been upgraded to 8.8 or 8.9. (This is probably the only kind of upgrade Japan still gets, with its credit rating being downgraded more often than not.) However, some of the people who I could still reach agreed that while a big dinner was out of the question, we should try to find some food. This was actually easier said than done. At that point (6:30 PM), most of the convenience stores, and restaurants near the train station, had already closed down. Without any resupplies, they had sold out their entire inventory within one or two hours. Luckily, I knew a noodle (ramen) shop nearby that still served food. We were doubly lucky because just ten minutes after us, a long line started to form at that restaurant. So we had just come in time to get some energy before starting our long walk home. As it turned out, no public transportation service would still work for many hours, with all lines (trains + subway) but two being suspended until this morning or afternoon. So people come to the inevitable conclusion that a long walk would be the only option to get home that day. Tokyo probably has the best public transportation system in the world, and about 70 % of the commuters in the wider urban area use it to get to work and back. The Kanto area has 30 million inhabitants, and the busiest train line itself carries as many passengers as the entire New York subway system combined. The largest stations are frequented by about equally many people daily, 3 - 4 million. So it is very hard to imagine the scale of the chaos that ensued. Near the bigger stations with wide pedestrian zones, it felt a bit like attending a street festival, minus the festive atmosphere. All sidewalks were full with people, but it was not yet too crowded. I only realized how many people had to walk home after leaving the inner area of Tokyo, where the sidewalks became smaller and people were funneled into those sidewalks along large main streets. Nobody typically walks for several hours as a commute, so the large streets and highways were our navigation aids to get home. At the large stations, we could ask police for directions, but these would be the only directions we would get. Actually, police were doing nothing but giving directions to people, one after another. And while many public maps are displayed along sidewalks, their scale is too small for a walk that covers 10 - 20 km, or even 40 km, depending on how far people work from home. Pedestrians walked along streets filled with bicycles, motorcycles, and cars. The usual hierarchy among different ways of transportation was turned upside down: Cars were by far the slowest way to get anywhere, as they were frequently stuck in one place for several minutes at a time. Bicycles and motorcycles could maneuver between rows of traffic jam and were probably the best way to get home. Most people, like I, had none available, so we had to walk for a few hours to get back home. >From Tsukuba, the distance would have been prohibitive (a full day's march), so I was lucky to have been able to get home at all. On the way home, half-empty convenience stores, shuttered non-food shops, and busy restaurants made up the scenery between empty office buildings. Near about 10 PM, I was finally home. Luckily, family, friends, and loved ones are, as far as I can tell, all fine. It took over 8 hours for me to be able to make my first phone call, so it is not easy to confirm everyone's whereabouts. From what I can tell, though, within Tokyo, no major damage was sustained. This leads me to assume that everyone is alright. Still, the night was a short and restless one. Every few minutes, a minor vibration would shake the apartment, and earthquake/tsunami warnings for just half a day would quickly fill the entire page (containing 100 warnings). However, eventually the tiredness of having spend many hours in the cold night let me sleep. This morning, I tried to buy food in the nearest shop, which was the only one in the neighborhood that was actually open today. Unfortunately, I mistook the opening time by half an hour, and arrived 25 minutes after the shop opened. Except for the last half-loaf, all bread was already sold out, and several types of other foods were also getting scarce. Still, we are now covered for the weekend, in case another large aftershock should hit (I hope it won't). After that, it looked like life would, at least in Tokyo, slowly return to normal. After a bit more than 24 hours, the traffic jams on the highways leading out of Tokyo were finally dissolving, and there was hope that the supply chains of grocery stores can be re-established by tomorrow. However, not all is well; the destruction in the prefectures that were hit by the tsunami is hard to imagine, and everyone is still worried about the pending possible reactor meltdown(s) in Fukushima. (You know that sh*t hit the fan if you have to think about pending meltdowns in plural.) This may again trigger another wave of emergency measures. What makes things even worse is that we have the most severe winter in many years in Japan, due to a peak in the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO, see wikipedia). An icy wind has been blowing over northern Japan all winter. This, together with the relatively high humidity, makes the night temperatures outside Tokyo, usually slightly below freezing, feel like -10 to -15 degrees Celsius. I'm very happy not to be outside now. Watching the news, we still can't comprehend what happened at the east coast of Japan, and we have to wait and hope for the best. If nothing bad happens anymore, then you can reach me by e-mail (but probably not on my phone, not for a while). On the bright side, it is now unlikely that any major earthquake will hit Japan again in the coming years, so it's probably a good vacation destination for the future... Regards, Cyrille Artho
