Japan, now, part II

Sorry for not writing ya’ll your own personal entry but here’s what I’ve sent to my family and friends. They are all flipping shit. I’ve gotten plenty of panicked emails begging me to come home but I’m still feeling safe here so I’m not going to leave.

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Hello, everyone.

Just want to send out a missive and let you all know that I am still alive and well. I’m back in Murayama-shi, and have been going to work as usual since Monday. However, I haven’t been going to schools, though this has nothing to do with the earthquake and everything to do with the fact that school is over for the year and won’t start up again until next month. So I have had a lot of time at work to do two main things:

1) Study Japanese incessantly

2) Keep constant tabs on local, national, international, professional, personal, scientific, speculative, and every other kind of news report I can get my hands on.

There is a LOT of news flying around out there. And I have to say, out of all of the sources I’ve been accessing, the American media is doing the worst job of accurately and rationally reporting the situation. ALL of the American news I’ve seen so far has elements of speculation and sensationalism seeded throughout. Now, this email isn’t a diatribe against American news sources (don’t even get me started!) but it’s important to point out because I realize that that’s what you all back home are receiving as far as what’s going on over here. But let me exemplify the difference in reporting styles:

This morning, RE: the fire at the Fukushima reactor:

1) American news source: Explained that there was a fire and clouds of smoke coming out of the reactor. Gave a picture of the past events leading up to the fire and the whole nuclear situation. Concluded the article with lots of scary admonitions about how there was undoubtedly, because of the fire, unknown and scary amounts of radiation entering the atmosphere that may or may not be poisoning us all. Throughout the article, several references to Chernobyl and the danger that this is currently posing to the American public, not to mention Japan, which might just explode in a few seconds.

2) Japanese news source: Explained that there was a fire at the Fukushima plant and clouds of white coming out of the reactor that could not be identified as smoke or vapor. Explained the difference between what it would mean if it was clouds and what it would mean if it was vapor. Reiterated that they didn’t yet know. Gave a brief lead-up of the events leading up to the situation. Concluded the article with, “We do not know at this time if there is radiation leaking from the plant, but it is likely. We do not currently know whether the levels are dangerous to human health. Please take precautions (here they linked to a website that outlined the basic precautions to take at different levels of nuclear fallout) and continue checking news sources. They then listed the areas that were to be evacuated and let everyone know that if further evacuations were necessary, the concerned persons would be notified as soon as possible by television, radio, and policecar broadcasts.

OK. You see the difference? When the Japanese reporters don’t know the answers, they just say that! Instead of saying AND ITS DEFINITELY REALLY REALLY BAD they present the situation realistically and rationally. They provide the information that they have, avenues to seek more information about how to stay safe, and a promise to report again when they know more. It’s really a beautiful thing.

Anyways, that being said, I have had my worries today about whether I was in a worsening situation RE: radiation danger as the day has proceeded. However, I’ve finally nailed down some really, really helpful resources. My cell phone company is now sending hourly geiger-counter reports from Yamagata City (about 45 minutes from here and closer to Fukushima) and I’ve done enough research to know what the numbers they are sending me actually mean. I’m also blessed to be surrounded by an amazing network of other JET’s who are doing much the same as I am – sniffing out information and parsing it down into rational, sensible, realistic approximations of what is really going on. In fact, one very awesome JET made this fantastic graphical representation of the radiation that has been occurring in Yamagata City for the last day or so.

Here’s the link!

When you click that it will take you to the chart that includes five-ish lines. These display the current levels of radiation in Yamagata, normal levels, level you experience on an airplane, level at which radiation sickness occurs, and level which sort of means instant death. Please note the x-axis… the units over there are logarithmic! You can click back over to “Chart 1” to see a close up of the two lines that I find most interesting – “Yamagata’s current radiation reading for the past day-ish” and “Yamagata’s average radiation reading on a normal day”

Long story short, there are the numbers and the numbers aren’t lying. I am safe. I will continue monitoring all the information available to me in order to ensure that I remain safe. And I’ll be staying in Japan until it is unsafe for me to do so.

Thank you so much for all of your love and concern from far away. (And this counts you, opendiary friends!) I feel so blessed to have an incredible network of people scattered all over this globe who love and care for me so much. Please, consider donating to the Red Cross Japan fund. There are hundreds of thousands of people whom the earthquake has rendered homeless and they need food, water, transportation to safer places, and much more, and all of those things cost money.

Clea