Yesterday afternoon (JST), Professor John Beddington, Chief Scientific Officer for the UK government, officially stated that Tokyo was entirely safe from the threat of radiation, even in a worst-case scenario.

The UK embassy in Tokyo confirmed that there was no threat outside of the immediate vicinity of Fukushima.

A statement released this morning by the US embassy in tokyo agrees with the above and confirms it sees no threat beyond the 20km exclusion zone.

The French embassy in Tokyo will get back to you as soon as they stop running for their lives.

After the short and factual update of last weekend, time for some more random notes and observations about the current post-seismic events unfolding in Japan.

Beware: it is slightly rantish. But one can only take so much uninformed stupidity by foreign media and unproductive, if well-meaning at times, panicky news and concern spread through social networks… Brace yourself for some pissed-off soothing anger. All brought to you from the safe comfort of my Kyoto abode: hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometers away from the nearest active fault line, sea front or failing nuclear reactor.

So… First and foremost: if you are a Japan-residing foreigner who does not live in the directly-hit Tohoku area or within walking distance of Fukushima nuclear reactors (both unlikely if you are reading this): chill. the. fuck. out.

This was one of the biggest earthquake in history, but it did not occur in Tokyo (thank the gods). Shindo 5 quakes as the one that was felt in Tokyo are not a once-in-a-century event, they happen all over Japan at least once a decade. And this is why destruction was minimal in Tokyo. If you live in Kanto and are unsure of what real destruction means: take a look out your window, now have a look at NHK feeds from the Sendai area. Notice a difference? Perhaps the lack of 50m-long fishing boat couched in the middle of the street, or the fact that every single building around you is still standing. My point is not to say it wasn’t a bad one in Tokyo, just that it wasn’t the one. And people living where it happened had it much, much worse. So please can we avoid the tearful airport arrivals of foreigners freshly repatriated from their minato-ku apartment, bawling on international news as if they had just survived World War 3.

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To anybody with friends or family in Kyoto and worried about them:

The quake was very minor in Kyoto (some 800km away from the epicentre). It was felt as a 2-3 (out of 7) on the Shindo scale: things got shaken a little bit, but no real damage. Tsunami warning was low for the region (and of course non-existent for land-locked Kyoto).
Everybody you know in the Kansai area is most likely fine.

Tokyo was still rather far from the epicenter (nearly 400km) and was shaken more seriously (upper 5 on the Shindo scale), but there wasn’t any major damage. If you have friends over there and haven’t heard back from them, it is most likely due to cellphones, electricity and transport being down for many hours (nuclear reactors are automatically stopped when major earthquakes occur). but they should be fine too.

Of course, the region north of Japan (Tohoku, particularly Miyagi-ken and the city of Sendai) have been hit most violently: the earthquake occurred about 200km off the coast of Miyagi-ken and registered a 7 in that area (the highest on the Shindo scale: about the same as Kobe during the Great Hanshin earthquake of 95). The ensuing tsunami (over 10m) and many large-scale fires have led to massive destruction in that region. But I am sure you have seen all this on the news already.

If you cannot reach people in that area or haven’t heard from them in a while: do not panic. Infrastructures are badly damaged, large parts of the phone and electricity grid are still down or saturated… And a lot of people may have had to leave their house in a rush without grabbing their cellphones. This doesn’t mean they aren’t OK.

Thanks for worrying and let’s hope the final toll isn’t too heavy.