…for a while at least. I have noticed that there is less and less about Japan in the foreign media. While I am still looking up stories, I probably won’t have a chance to update for a while. Here are the stories that focus on the people involved in the disasters. (And Ban is the dog rescued after three weeks on his roof. As everyone knows, Ban is now reunited with his owner.)

About the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant:

• An unnamed 31-year-old contractor tells about how events unfolded at the plant when the earthquake struck.
• The BBC reports that Kazuhiko Kokubo, 24, and Yoshiki Terashima, 21, were two workers who died at the plant.
• Some refugees were going from shelter to shelter as the evacuation expanded, according to the Mainichi newspaper.

From Iwate:

• An 84-year-old geisha Tsuyako Ito (stage name Chikano Fujima) was planning to celebrate her retirement at 88 with a final party, but lost her kimonos and shamisen, along with her house, in the tsunami. She’s still confident she will be ready for the party.
• Another senior, 83-year-old Tami Akanuma recounts how she escaped with her shih tzu, Babu.
• Some more incredible footage of the tsunami from the BBC.
• City PR official Masakazu Sasaki lost his wife and three daughters, in this very sad article.
• Sake maker Yasuhiko Konno is missing eleven workers and his prize-winning sake brewery is destroyed.

In Miyagi:

• Here’s a Japan Times article on the massive clean-up, looking at Miyagi specifically.
• This Asahi story is a little grisly, but shows how the search for the missing started (it’s a few weeks old now).
• This other Asahi article looks at one town that was isolated and without food after the disaster.  Students were washing canned food they scavenged for something to eat.
• Town official Jinichi Sasaki, after closing a floodgate, had so many near-death experiences on the day of the tsunami that he will hopefully win a lottery soon to make up for what he went through.
• Unfortunately, this other Japan Times article points out that there has been looting. City official Yoshihisa Sasaki says “The city…has heard reports of looting of smashed cars and properties and of fraudsters posing as bank officials offering to help distressed locals ‘manage their funds and lost credit cards.’” Plus “around ¥40 million was reportedly stolen from a bank in Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture.” There have also been stabbings and a rape.
• A sad story about 9-year-old Toshihito Aisawa who couldn’t find his family: he escaped from the car his family raced to outrun the tsunami.  A few days later, he at least found some relatives including a cousin who was with him in the car when the tsunami hit.
• Yet one of the best stories comes from Miyagi, where super-cool Hideaki Akaiwa put on his scuba gear, jumped into the waters and swam to save his wife. After rescuers couldn’t find his mother later, he again donned his wet suit and plunged into the water to go rescue her next. Then he went out to look for more people.

There’s also some news on cultural properties in Japan and how they have been affected.

Some photos and general news from Japan:

• This set from the New York Times mostly has photos of Yamada, Kessennuma and Rikuzentakata towns. Photos #10, #37 and #45 show just what an impact a disaster can have on food distribution. Here in Vancouver, we’re quite reliant on food that comes to us from far away; we also have fewer roads than Japan, so I wonder how we’ll do when the big earthquake happens here.
• Meanwhile, on Miyatojima Island in Miyagi, the Japan Times reports that the islanders, though trapped on their island, were ready for the tsunami and are surviving by helping each other.  They also apparently have famous seaweed.
• Another Japan Times article examines the plight of the elderly during the tsunami and at local evacuation centres.
• The US and Russian governments express some frustration as they try to help Japan.  Also, a good round-up of the extent of different countries’ evacuation zones in this Daily Yomiuri article.
• Rob Gilhooly reports on the Japan Times website on Sunday about his visits to the communities in the disaster’s aftermath.  Also check out his blog.
• Comfort woman activist Song Shin Do in Onagawa, Miyagi, survived the disaster.
• In Kessennuma, Eriko Ohara, a young mother gets a final gift from her husband – a present he was saving for White Day on March 8.  There are also some details about life in the evacuation centre, things like babies sharing bottles and lack of diapers for young children.

News on the situation in Minamisoma:

• Minamisoma is a city of 70,000 roughly about 26 km from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station; as reported in this New York Times article. most people are trying to evacuate with some moving to Gunma (near where I used to live) or Yokohoma and some just trapped there, because they are elderly or they have no means of escaping or they are caring for those who cannot escape.
• Another story from Minamisoma is on the BBC site: reader Dai Saito tells his story and how hard it is to evacuate, with no gas available for civiians’ cars.

News on the situation in Rikuzentakata:

• Both the Mainichi Daily News and the Yomiuri reported on Chiba University professor Hirotaro Iwase initial autopsies in Rikuzentakata that many people had managed to reach what they thought were safe spots or were caught by the tsunami as they tried to escape.  Many of the victims had seven or eight layers of clothing on tehm, bags health insurance papers, their hanko seals (people in Japan use these instead of signatures), jewelry photo albums, and emergency food like chocolate.
• Two children and their mother search for the father in Rikuzentakata in the BBC video.  The surviving family members find a photograph of themselves together in happier times.

There are now more stories about the heroic workers inside the Daiichi plant:

• An Asahi Shimbun article says that the workers are on a biscuit and rice diet, and going without sleep. On March 11, after the earthquake, they even tried to jump-start the plant’s emergency core cooling system with a car battery.
• One of the Fukushima 50 still in the plant was Michiko Otsuki, a 22-year-old who blogged about what was happening. The blog has since been taken down and Otsuki issued an apology.

Evacuees are streaming into the Kanto area of Japan (the part of Japan around Tokyo):

• Miyagi Governor Yoshihiro Murai urged residents to move to other parts of Japan for 6-12 months as there is not enough temporary shelter for them, as reported in a Japan Times article.
• Refugees are arriving in Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma and Kanagawa prefectures.  A Japan Times article focuses on the Saitama Super Arena: “The arena can accommodate up to 5,000 people through the end of March. The prefecture is providing blankets, towels and facial masks, but evacuees have to figure out on their own where to buy food and bathe”

Here are more stories I’ve been following.

First, some of the general news stories:

• These BBC photos include some terrible news, such as the evacuation of Minamisanriku Hospital failed when some of the patients couldn’t move fast enough to escape the tsunami.
• The Boston Globe also has some photos: luckily the four-month-old baby in photo #2 survived with her family and photo #13 presents an interesting solution against panicked food buying with a Sendai supermarkets limiting purchases to five items (I don’t think Canadians would be this understanding).
• And a video from the BBC showing the tsunami’s power. It’s shocking and makes me worried as we are in an earthquake area here and close to the water.
• In this BBC article about the situation in Tokyo, Austria is reported as having moved its consulate to Osaka.
• Interesting LA Times article about trusting the Japanese government. When I lived in Japan, the government’s responses to the mad cow disease epidemic were misleading. The last paragraphs about contradictory NHK radio announcements reminds me of 1984.
• Not Japan specific, this US Geological Survey website my friend K. recommended documents earthquakes around the world. K. says she checks this whenever she feels a tremor.
• In another BBC article, the fifty brave workers who remained at the Fukushima Daiichi plant were evacuated (I need to find some articles on these people). The article has a map of evacuation and no-fly zones around the plant.
• Tokyo governor, the ever-tactful Shintaro Ishihara, apologized for his remarks that the disaster was divine retribution.
• Now Akita, Aomori, Yamagata and Niigata prefectures will start rationing electricity, according to the Japan Times.

Some sad stories:

• One of the saddest stories is about poor Yoshikatsu Hiratsuka in Onagawacho in Miyagi, who survived while his mother and his wife died nearby and his son was swept away. Hiratsuku visits their bodies each day for tearful reunions.
• This New York Times article focuses on the plight of the elderly and the increased fatalities in this age group. The beginning of the Yuriage Junior High School story reminds me of what I’ve heard about the Holocaust gas chambers. Hisako Tanno’s father had a great escape that was a relief to read (her description of the wave was as a “mountain of garbage”). From a practical standpoint, this article points out how survivor Yuta Saga “[measured] the wave’s advance by the clouds of dust created by collapsing buildings.” (Also, this is frivolous, but I much admire the furoshiki in the first photo.)
• LA Times reporter Mark Magnier talks to the Otomo family from Natori as they try to find their belongings in the rubble. I wish more stories would focus on the individuals and I wish there was some way I could help them personally. It makes me sad that they have no insurance.
• Here’s a Mainichi story on the conditions survivors face in one evacuation centre in Ofunato in Iwate.  The photo taken from a helicopter of people washing their clothes in a river demonstrates how conditions are.
• Another really sad story from the Asahi Shimbun, about a mother, Mika Sato, who finds her kindergartener’s body in the burned school bus in Ishinomaki. It’s especially sad because the kindergarten where little Airi was is on a hill and was spared in the tsunami.
• In Yuriage, Tatsuya Suzuki’s wife Izumi managed to save her two children and her mother-in-law before she was swept away.

And some incredible survival stories:

• In this other New York Times article, Akiko Sato – who compared the oncoming wave “like almost hundreds of thousands of horses running towards me” – was saved by her down jacket.
• Yet another LA Times article by Mark Magnier, who tells some of the incredible survival stories from Minamisanriku (where about 10,000 people out of a pre-earthquake population of 16,000 are missing): Emiko Chiba surviving in her Subaru as it floated on the wave; how later Emiko and her husband Kazahiro managed to salvage their blue pail, a black thermos, an umbrella, a sun visor and a windshield scraper; the escape of two older women, Mitsuko Koshi and Shizuka Hoshi, stranded on a hill up to their waists in the water; and that Japan waived its animal quarantine laws to allow foreign rescue dogs to help with the rescue effort.
• An unnamed woman, her child and the child’s classmate had a lucky escape, when the mom backed the car into a back alley in Yamadamachi in Iwate to when they couldn’t outrun the tsunami, as reported in the Daily Yomiuri.

It’s been a while since I read blogs, having had little free time in the last few years. Yet, with the Japan situation, this is when blogs really demonstrate their worth. I wanted something more substantial that Twitter feeds (which are far too repetitive anyhow) and more personal than what we’re getting from journalists who fly in with no knowledge of Japan, snap a couple photos, then board a plane for home. Look at all the amazed editorials about the Japanese not looting – obviously have no clue about Japanese behaviour. The blogs to which I subscribe are almost all by North American white people living in Japan (and specifically in Tokyo): this is when I regret not having been a better language student while in Japan.*

Here’s what the Tokyo residents have to say:

Amy Nakazawa of Blue Lotus reports how responsible stores like her 100 yen shop use only a third of their lights. There is a rumour that pachinko parlours are still guzzling all that electricity. Amy also explains the ubiquitous face masks as seen in all the photos – I thought it was because of fear of airborne pathogens from the dead or the smells or the usual East Asian common-cold/allergy prevention strategy – it’s because “earthquakes can kick up a lot of dust, and power outages can create quite a stink.” Also check out her shopping cart contents: iodine-rich seaweed protects against radiation sickness.

Kristen at Media Tinker wrote about conserving electricity yesterday (my favourite is unplugging the heated toilets; Japan is more civilized than we are but my years back in Canada have made me accustomed to cold toilets); inventoried what’s missing on Tokyo supermarket shelves; and wrote a weirdly humourous post about how she and her spouse got through the earthquake.

Mari Kanazawa of the Watashi to Tokyo blog wrote about some of the nice things businesses were doing to help stranded Tokyo commuters: vending machine companies made their drinks 0 yen, restaurants let people use their toilets and even gave away free onigiri and some electronic stores helped people charge their cell phones.

*For the record, I was exhausted. I’d just finished eight years of intense Chinese study. My brain needed a break and I moved to Japan right after Taiwan.

According to the Japan Times, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has asked people to “be creative in protecting yourselves from this blackout,” as nine prefectures will begin having three-hour blackouts on Monday. According to Tepco President Masataka Shimizu, the blackouts will continue until the end of April.

The blackout schedule will be:

6:20 am – 10 am: Group 1: Utsunomiya, Saitama, Matsudo in Chiba Prefecture, Yokosuka in Kanagawa Prefecture and Nishitokyo

9:20 am – 1 pm: Group 2: Kunitachi and part of Yokohama

12:20 pm – 4 pm: Group 3: Kasukabe in Saitama Prefecture and Narita in Chiba Prefecture

1:50 pm – 5:30 pm: Group 4: Mito in Ibaraki Prefecture and Tokyo’s Arakawa Ward

3:20 – 7 pm: Group 5: Machida in Tokyo, Kawasaki, Ito in Shizuoka Prefecture

4:50 pm – 8:30 pm: Group 1: Utsunomiya, Saitama, Matsudo in Chiba Prefecture, Yokosuka in Kanagawa Prefecture and Nishitokyo

6:20 pm – 10 pm: Group 2: Kunitachi and part of Yokohama

Update: Someone else made a good chart on the blackouts.

I heard back from my best student (and now friend) from Japan. There are electricity and food shortages, which hopefully won’t last too long.

Meanwhile, here’s some more information coming in about the disaster:

• Before and after photos of Natori City, Sendai and Minami-soma City on the BBC site.
• Also on BBC, Minami-Soma resident 60-year-old Hiromitsu Shinkawa was rescued 15 km out at sea from the floating wreckage of his house. His wife was swept away.
• Sendai resident Natsuko Komura tells how she lost her horse after the earthquake, while reporter Damian Grammaticas accompanies a rescue team. (BBC again.)
• The LA Times has a series of photos of Natori (photos #68 and #69 are doubly frightening), Otsuchi in Iwate, Minamisanriku in Miyagi, Hachinohe (picture #26 is startling), Kisenuma in Miyago prefecture (picture #28 just makes me sad for everyone there), Rikuzentakata (photo #34 is depressing – if I didn’t know how resilient people and places are – having had a friend who survived the Kobe earthquake – I would despair in those circumstances), and other areas.
• From the Vancouver Sun, here’s some information on what could happen in terms of insurance in Japan.

This blog started in Japan, my home for a few years, and I have been very worried as I watch footage from Japan. Most of my friends are in the Tokyo and Saitama areas, and I hope they are ok (I’ve only heard back from one friend so far). I knew one woman from the affected prefectures so I am very sad for her and her family.

Someone posted a video from inside Sendai Airport just as the tsunami swept by.

I am relieved for those people as they seemed to be ok.

Look what the downtown mall toilets have:

I had heard that thieves are reaching over stall doors to snatch purses hanging on the hook while the owner is, um, busy with other things. Glad the mall is helping shoppers avoid theft.

My friend Maikopunk moved next to an abandoned children’s mental hospital called Woodlands. The times I’ve visited Maikopunk, I kept expecting some Session 9 creepiness. Maikopunk herself has never experienced anything supernatural.

Notorious locally for the treatment of the poor kids who were imprisoned within, the patients lived with rampant physical and sexual abuse. Some youngsters were committed permanently by parents who thought their kids were only going in for a weekend. Other children had their teeth removed if they were violent (or perhaps scared and bewildered). One nurse who tried to report the sexual abuse she witnessed, was herself incarcerated in another mental hospital. Woodlands closed down in 1996.

The government sold the land to the Onni development company, who built condos on the site, surrounding the remaining hospital buildings. The asylum buildings were classified as heritage buildings, which in the local Vancouver parlance means structures that may or may not be one day as valuable as Europe’s venerable examples. Eventually, as Onni’s deal with the City of New Westminster went, the company would spruce up the old hospital buildings.

Instead, they sat behind fences for years (my photos are from 2006) and housed a sizeable squatter population.

Maikopunk and I once went for a walk on the grounds once to find the headstones of BC ghost lore. The hospital’s graveyard was torn down a few years back, resulting in a ghost story that most readers of Robert Belyk’s Ghosts: True Stories from British Columbia remember.

In the 1970s, a Burquitlam apartment block – this area is a few kilometres north of the hospital – got itself some new garden stepping stones. Children flipped over the stones to find out that they were the headstones of Woodlands’ long-forgotten patients. Poltergeist activity then creeped out enough residents that the headstones were removed.

When Maikopunk and I finally found the remaining headstones, they were clustered behind a fence, waiting to be turned into a monument.

I’ve since passed the monument a number of times, but never got out of my car to photograph it yet.

As of last week, there’s no danger of ice picks to the eye on the Woodlands site any more. Good old Woodlands has burned down.

Maikopunk had to evacuate her building for one night. She reports that her place is alright, not even any smoke damage. The blame for the fire goes to the homeless people living inside the building. Of course, we’re all waiting to see what the arson investigation turns up.

Oops.

Onni got permission the next day to demolish what was left of the burned husk.

Conspiracy theories, anyone?

Vancouverites, whether they hated the idea of Woodlands as a heritage building or not, all have an opinion on what really happened.

On tonight’s BBC:

Ah, more on the great tit:

From the original article:

Although Vane Farm has several CCTV cameras on nests around the site beaming images straight into the coffee shop, staff are unable to view the “Butt Bin” family as the box is sealed up and made of metal.

The Butt Bin is home to four baby great tits.