As any sane person would point out, now certainly isn’t the time to have a wide-scale debate about civil nuclear policies. Decade-long policies should not be decided in the middle of a day-to-day disaster…
Unfortunately, that is not how some people see it: the debate is alreadyhappening. I have no particular animosity against the die-hard anti-nuclear types1see: Germany and other countries with similarly contentious domestic policies on nuclear energy and strong anti-nuclear groups. who have seized on the occasion for their own political purpose: I know they sincerely mean well2Keeping in mind that meaning well and being sincere has never meant you can’t be an irrational loon, far from it.. But I do certainly find it distasteful when any side uses the emotion generated by such a tragedy to advance points of questionable relevance. It’s also a bit insulting when reports of anti-nuclear demonstrations trump reports on actual earthquake/tsunami-related fatalities on the front page of German newspapers (yes, I am looking in your direction, Spiegel).
Now, since we are having that debate. Allow me to raise one single point, based on very easily verifiable facts:
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.
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.
by Dave·Comments Off on Un momento… Estoy hablando japonés!
(context here, if you have never seen the original movie)
Yesterday, a friend emailed me about a New Year Party thrown by some friends of hers. I hastily misread the description of said friends from 狂言 (きょうげん: stage actors) to 狂信 (きょうしん: religious fanatics) and was, understandably, slightly less excited by the prospect than I should have been.
I could of course play that silly anecdote as yet another illustration of my terminally inept Japanese skills. But in the end, even though I had to quickly look up 狂信, the fact I instinctively knew its reading and felt confident enough to make that mistake makes me feel surprisingly happy about the shape of my Japanese.
About 8 years ago, I decided to learn Japanese. Or more exactly: I hurriedly learnt a dozen Japanese words, fragments of grammar and notions of kana reading, landed in Japan, promptly got drowned in an ocean of linguistic helplessness, then decided that, one day, a visit to my local bank would not turn into low-grade stand-up comedy (at my expense).
When you think about it, 8 years is a pathetically long time for someone who still can’t read a newspaper without a dictionary (and lots of spare time)… Slightly less shameful, I guess, if you account for my constantly travelling back and forth over that period. Also: while I have come to appreciate countless aspects of Japanese culture and developed a perverted obsession with matters of kanji writing, I did not grow up obsessed with Japan. I never had a strong personal interest in learning this particular language (or living here, for that matter) and might just as happily have taken on Russian (maybe will, who knows). It slowly grew from a mix of absolute happenstance, necessity, frustration and stubbornness when confronted with near-impossible challenges (yes: I am the kind of asshole who will devote a sizable share of a decade to learning a language, just because: fuck-it-I-can-do-it).
