Over the weekend the television has been running nothing but disaster coverage non-stop on every channel. A close eye is being kept on the nuclear reactors, and a series of rolling blackouts will start in eastern Japan today and continue for what could be as long as several weeks. My friend in Chiba reported that their water has been stopped, and that they only get a few hours of electricity a day. Luckily his family is OK.
Having heard nothing to the contrary I’m preparing to go to work this morning. Although I’ve heard that some factories in the Tokyo area will be closed, I’m sure that mine will be open and everyone will be twice as busy as they were before. When you already work 15 hour days there aren’t a lot more free hours left, however. It should be interesting to see the reaction to the disaster through the eyes of my students this week.
Although power and water conservation is on the menu for eastern Japan, here in the west we’ve heard nothing about any kind of change in utility service. We’re doing small things around the house to save power just in case, but according to the news the energy grids are completely separate between eastern and western Japan.
One bright spot was this morning’s TV news – there were actually commercials every few minutes. I haven’t seen a commercial on Japanese TV since the disaster, and maybe this is a sign (albeit a weak one) that things are shifting towards normalcy.
OK, I’m off to work to see what happens… should be an interesting day.
