Earthquake Diary 05

Wednesday, March 16
Starting here I will make daily entries, so this information will be relaltively fresh when I write it. The entries for the previous five days were all written after the fact from memories which are admittedly a bit fuzzy.

I woke up as usual at about 5:30. I found that my wife was already up and she had made bread dough. Things like bread, milk, eggs, and meat are not available in any of the stores that we have been to or have heard about.

We are worried about the nuclear reactors possibly having a melt down. I was just watching CNN and heard that there was another fire. This time in the reactor that had been shut down at the time of the earthquake. There is no accurate information about radiation levels so we hesitate to go out in today's snow.

There was another large quake this morning in Shizuoka Prefecture. It was large enough to do some damage but we have not heard how much. Because of Tomone, we have not been watching the Japanese news while she is up. We all decided that, since she understands so much, we would protect her as much as possible from all the horrors.

We heard from our daughter's husband, who is in Kanagawa, part of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, that he is having trouble buying food. He is going to work and can not stand in line in the morning and, when he is finished work at night, the stores have all sold their days allotment. He also said that he waited in line for 30 minutes to buy gas and could only get 10 liters because they were limiting the amount that each person could buy.

We just realized that the supermarket next to our building was still sell things and the line was not very long, so my wife and I rushed out to see what we could get. We decided that since the wind is blowing toward the reactors, there would be no problem with the radiation, at least for now. Today it was only a half an hour or so waiting in line. We got two prepacked bags of boxed, canned and bottle things for 500 yen, at least 20% off the usual low price. We also got a bag of fresh vegetables,  two large daikon, and six boxes of tissues.

While we were there, we met the old lady who lives on the sixth floor in the next building. She lives with her husband but he has bad legs and can not climb up and down the stairs. The elevators will not run again until the aftershocks have finished. When we had a car, my wife used to take the woman around to the doctors and places like that. The woman had bought one of the prepackaged bags but said that there was nothing in that she and her husband could eat. She gave us her bag and went to get fresh vegetables. Right now my wife is in our kitchen dividing up what we got and in a little while will take a bag of things to the old lady.

My wife's bread was cooked in an electric pan. It just finished and we had a treat of hot bread. Too bad we did not have butter to go with it. It really tasted good.

We had just finished going through our apartment and taking the batteries out of everything possible, when we got a telephone call from the people who lived across the street from us when we lived in Shizuoka. She said that everything was okay. There was no damage to their house from this morning's earthquake, but a tree in the garden fell over. They are a little worried about shopping because there is only one large store in the area, but for now everything is acceptable. We took the batteries out of everything because they are predicting that there will be more power outages, either because of repair work, aftershocks, or because the system can not support the demand. In the area around Tokyo and in some of the prefectures around us, they are having planned outages for as much as three hours at a time. Much of the power grid is damaged and a lot of the generating plants are either not operating or operating at a reduced capacity.

Just returned from another foraging trip and again had good luck. We waited in line at the local drugstore Daruma (named for the famous Zen priest).  While waiting, my wife started chatting with a woman behind us. It turned out that she, her husband and two grown children were looking for diapers for her brother's grandchild. My wife said that we had extra diapers, having bought them yesterday and the day before. We invited them to come to our apartment after shopping. The man in front of us had been listening to this and finally turned around and took out a notepad and started asking questions. He was a reporter from the local newspaper and said that he was going to submit a piece about how we were sharing. After two hours they opened at exactly the stated time. This has constantly amazed me. The stores will put up a sign saying that they will open at a specific time and, although everything is ready, they will wait until that time. Again normality rears its beautiful head. The long line of people do not complain at all, thinking that it is normal. The Japanese tend to insist on keeping this kind of schedule, while social schedules are extremely 'flexible'.

The system at Daruma was quite interesting. The manager came out with 200 slips of numbered and stamped papers, then in order gave one to each family group. When the opening time was reached, they let in the first 20 groups, handing each a shopping basket and telling them to please limit their stay to 15 minutes but not limiting the amount they could purchase. Then as one group left, the now empty basket was given to the next family in line.

We found a lot of things we needed or wanted - medicine, batteries, toiletries, even a couple of toys for Tomone and instant coffee that was on sale. Everything was placed in one bag and we left the store. We waited outside to say goodbye to the family. They did not come home with us because they were able to buy diapers and the rest of the stuff they needed, and they wanted to get back home. The prices were the normal price but Daruma was the only place we have seen where there was not a limit on how much you could buy.

The family told us that they lived in a little coastal village with about 200 houses and that only six or seven of them were still standing. A number of their neighbors had died in the tsunami. They had been saved because they saw the color of the sea change and ran up the hill behind their house. The tsunami reached at least 20 meters up the hill but they were higher as was their house.

We said goodbye to the family and started home. As we did, we heard a man with a loudspeaker saying that they were again selling food and clothing at the supermarket. We were headed that way anyway, so we went to see. They were selling bags of packaged goods, bags of vegetables, bags of fruit, and clothing. We each bought the three bags and lugged everything home.

We unpacked and made coffee. I watched CNN for a while and the others played with Tomone and her new toys.

Since we had no electricity for three days, we did not see many of the early pictures of the devastation. Anyone who watched the international news will have a much better sense of the overall destruction than I have, but since the power came back on I have found time to watch some of the coverage on CNN and find it almost incomprehensible. We were very lucky to only have relatively minor damage and no injuries.

We have enough supplies that we do not plan to go out tomorrow. Our project for the day is to move the big stuff out of our standup closet and look for more candles. We may not have to use them as the electric company is saying that our prefecture may not need to have scheduled blackouts. However, we want to be prepared. Also I want to reread 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Ring' and those books should be in the bookshelf at the back of the closet.

Tonight I will have supper, watch some American dramas on TV, do my 40 minutes of meditation, and then go to bed and read until I am ready to fall asleep. Tomorrow should be much less stressful both physically and mentally. We have more than enough food, drink, etc, for two weeks so we should be okay until the system gets sorted out and we find out what the future may look like. There is one more thing that I am looking forward to and that is the internet which has yet to come back on line.