Update On Circumstances

[a_cubed]

So, people have been asking how things are on a regular basis, so I thought I’d give an update on the situtation here. Everyone must know y now that the earthquake has been measured/estimated to be 9.0 on the richter scale. By far the most powerful measured in Japan since they started keeping records and measuring in the late 1800s. The earthquake itself caused some structural problems and injuries and deaths but the tsunami on the Tohoku coast about 250 miles North of Tokyo and where the epicentre was, caused huge amounts of destruction. Whole towns and villages seem to have been swept away, some losing half their residents as well as all of their buildings. The TV in Japan just keeps showing the footage of these terrible events.

We’re having continued aftershocks, which is disconcerting but nothing worse personally. Both TOmoko and I are getting “phantom quake” syndrome (quite usual in these circumstances) where our bodies for some reason report a non-existent quake. The Japanese Met agency estimated on Satuirday that there was a 70% chance of an aftershock of 7.0 magnitude or greater within the next three days, which passed without such an event. I’ve been using this nice online mashup to see what and where the events have been, after the fact. Sometimes we get a warning via a mobile phone app that a quake is coming, though we didn’t get one of those for the big one on Friday.

Last night saw a 6.2 quake inland in Shizuoka, which is worrying because that’s a different fault line and the line that is overdue for a big shift according to some reports. That one could hit Tokyo much more directly than the one on Friday.

Day to day life in Tokyo is rather disrupted. I was working at home anyway on Friday, and have been staying at home since. I can’t say I’ve been getting much work done. It’s hard to concentrate at the level I need for the stuff I need to do just now when the world shakes every hour or so.

Due to various nuclear power plants being offline at present (they’re checking the safety of others in the region affected very carefully as well as the Fukushima plant) Tokyo Power (TEPCO) have instituted rolling blackouts and are asking people to reduce their power consumption as much as possible. The blackouts aren’t occurring mostly, due to the reduce load that is being asked of the system. An exaple of this is that larger installations are running with many fewer lights. Our local supermarket has only half their sets of fluorescent tubes going and the Kinshichou JR train station probably had only a third of their lights on yesterday afternoon.

As some of you know I’ve been working on losing weight for the last couple of years and go swimming almost every day as part of that. Apart from Friday itself my local pool has mostly been open. They re-opened at 13:30 on Saturday and closed slightly early on Sunday and Monday to conserve power (they’re also on fewer lights than normal). They’re closed Tuesdays but said on Monday that they expect to be back on normal operation today, unless Sumida is scheduled for a blackout (which is hasn’t been so far). On Tuesdays I normally go to Kinshichou pool one stop East along the Chuo line, but their movable pool floor was damaged by the quake so the pool there is out of service for the meantime.

Some of my friends have left Tokyo or Japan due to the power plant at Fukushima, but I’m not really worried about that. They seem to have it under control and the danger is localised only.

What is worrying me is the food supply situation in Tokyo. I haven’t been out yet today Wednesday, but yesterday the supermarkets and convenience stores were all running out of much of their supplies of fresh and semi-fresh goods. There was just about no milk available anywhere yesterday, and very little in the way of vegetables. Bread has very limited availability. Meat is running out. Instant Ramen noodles were gone by Sunday or even Saturday. Eggs are mostly gone. My wife thikns this is over-buying and hoarding by people, but the pattern seems more like shops not getting re-stocked to me. There is a problem with fuel deliveries which is hampering deliveries up to the disaster sites as well, because the petrol refineries are mostly shut down. This is not getting any news coverage really, probably because the nuclear power plant is more sensational, but to my mind is a potentially bigger problem. Because Tokyo apartments are so small and shops so distributed, most people don’t stock large amounts of food in the house and if supplies don’t start flowing soon, there will be people starting to go hungry. We’ve got a few days of supplies in before we have to start living off dried food stocks and that’s the point at which it’s a matter of nutrition starting to be a problem rather than just choice disappearing. Tokyo is a very modern city but it depends very heavily on significant logistic chains. I’m surprised how easily this has been disrupted. I can understand the fresh things like milk being disrtupted, particularly as the area worst effected is one of the largest dairy areas in Japan, but the lack of any real re-stocking in our local supermarkets and covnenience stores suggests that very little supply is happening. I did see a 7-11 truck doing some deliveries to their local store on Sunday, but that was just one truck.

Current Mood:  nervous

Current Music: Much Ado About Nothing Soundtrack

Originally published at blog.a-cubed.info

Comments

[dianec42.livejournal.com]

Thanks for writing this, Andrew. I never know what to believe of the news here, we're so far away that coverage is either hysterical panic or near-silence.

I hope everything returns to normal soonest. Take care.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I should try to update here more regularly.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Thank you for updating us! As you may know, I work as an engineer for a supply-chain management company, and when I was in Japan for N2007, I was fascinated at how they managed to keep their supply chain running doing things that would almost certainly not be economical in the USA (because there's so much more space here, mainly; tall warehouses make no sense when land is cheap), and when I heard about supply-chain disruptions, I could see how troublesome this could get. Hope things stabilize for you!

The biggest earthquakes I've been near were only in the 6 region, which is but a pop-gun by comparison.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

The (urban) geography of Japan does make logistics here rather different. Particularly within the megalopolis itself there are things that operate that don't make sense elsehere. Shipping things around Tokyo is very cheaper by comparison with similar services in the UK for example, but the population density of Tokyo is so great, and the total population in effectively a single metropolis covering Tokyo, much of Kanagawa, Yokohama, Saitami City, and parts of Chiba means that there are always sufficient deliveries to make it economical to take deliveries around the place, lowering the price to something sensible (< Y2000 for shipping a suitcase from Narita to home in Eastern Tokyo). However, these thigns also make the place more vulnerable to disruption. The Japanese do not deal well with unforeseen events, and in fact they seem to be pretty poor at planning for foreseeable events and how to deal with them, even. When there is an accident or suicide on a train line, for example, they often seem to shut down the whole line (they did today on the line that goes past us) instead of taking the station in question out of operation and at least running trains to/from the stations on either side. Sure, the has problems for those needing a through route, but today there was an accident about 10 stops further East of us, and we were at the place two stops further West. We only needed to get two stops East and didn't need to go anywhere near the accident zone, but the whole line was stopped for a while. Luckily by the time we'd finished our shopping and had a coffee, the line was running again, albeit with a further disrupted timetable (the timetable is disrupted due to the quake aftermath and power issues anyway). I've seen a number of these issues, such as being stuck on a Shinkansen train in Yokohama for hours despite the typhoon already having passed, and without sensible information (even in Japanese) just telling people there are local lines which will almost certainly get you there faster and noting that they'll honour your shinkansen ticket at the manual gates even.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

The idea of running trains to and from stations requires the ability to switch tracks pretty much anywhere on a given set of rails so the incoming train can be sent back the way it came. It is not a good idea to run a train down the same rails another train may be approaching on and the switches needed may not be available everywhere on a particular system.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Minor nit; the Richter scale is obsolete -- it doesn't work well above about 7.5. The quake was therefore a Magnitude 9.0 on the (not named after a person) scale that superseded Richter's, and which is presumably more accurate.

The supply chain thing is worrying. All the car manufacturers have shut down because they depend on JIT inventory deliveries -- they have less than 24 hours' worth of spare parts stashed at the factory gates, so they can't start up again until all their suppliers are ready to restart.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I wasn't aware of the Richter scale replacement. That explains all the news programs simply saying magnitude. Just to confuse matter the Japanese have this separate scale they use which measures effect at a position as well as at the epicentre, and is on the Japanese Met Office quake website (http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/). They do give the epicentre magnitude in the international scale, but often on the TV news they use the Japanese scale - e.g. lower 5. Confusing.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

Seen on the BBC website:

"UK nationals are being asked to confirm their safety by contacting the Foreign Office (FCO) on +44 (0)20 7008 0000. That is also the helpline number for people concerned about friends and relatives in Japan, and 5,480 people had called it as of Tuesday night."

You might want to give them a call so they can check your name off any sort of a list they have.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

I'm registered with their "locate" online system and have emailed them to confirm my safety, as they indicated on their latest bulletin.