A Day in Fukushima

A friend of mine who lives in a neighboring prefecture of Fukushima (so he was not required by the government to evacuate -120km (75miles) from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plants) releases his blog every week about his volunteer activities of rubble removal in Fukushima tsunami disaster area. I live in west Japan over 600km (370miles) from Fukushima, so I feel it is difficult for me to do such activities frequently. But I wanted to know about the real condition of Fukushima and learn what I can do for the Fukushima people. Many nuclear power plants are located in Fukushima, which is far from Tokyo, to generate a lot of electric power for Tokyo. They feature facilities that promote "the safety of nuclear power generation." I wanted to see them. Therefore, I asked him to guide me around Fukushima and he agreed to do so.


The first day - visiting facilities to promote the safety of nuclear plants

On the 5th of November, after a 6-hour train trip that was over 6 hours lomg, I met him in his home town. He drove me in his car to Tokai nuclear plant. It is not a Fukushima plant, and was not damaged by the tsunami, but it was the first nuclear plant in Japan. We visited two well-equipped facilities within a 10-minute-drive from each other. Both of them promoted safety and importance of nuclear power generation and plants, even to kids with some interactive attractions designed to learn about atomic power.

I don't have deep knowledge about them. But I realized one thing clearly -Nuclear power generation companies and electric power companies pay a lot of money for these facilities. They have strong reasons to do so.
I took all available brochures and textbooks from them. I'm going to read them to learn more about their story.


The second day - visiting an area which has been affected not only by the Tsunami but also by radioactivity

On the 6th of November, we went to Iwaki city, which is located in the south end of Fukushima prefecture. The distance from the damaged nuclear plants to the city is within 50km(30miles). The amount of radioactivity in the air (1m from the ground) is 0.2-0.5mSv of radiation, which is not large enough to have an affect on the human body. It is one one-hundredth the amount of radioactivity present at the edge of the restricted area, 30km/19miles radius of the damaged Fukushima plant. But some people, in particular parents who have small children, are nervous about the condition because it is double that of other normal areas.

Anyway, whenever people around the world hear the name "Fukushima", they generally think about the radioactivity, rather than the damage by the quake or tsunami. It may be a "natural" reaction these days. It is the same in Japan. However, I realized that this way of thinking is not entirely accurate.

It took about an hour to go from my friends town to Iwaki by car on the express way. He has a pass to go on the expressway without any fee, because the ceiling of his house was damaged by the quake (he and all his family were not injured).

Approaching Iwaki, the road condition gradually worse -like the shape of a wave. It is the result of the earth quake power. Except for that, the downtown of Iwaki (an inland area) looks very normal.

Was this a railway station in the disaster area?

When we went to the coast area, the landscape suddenly changed.

A damaged Seven-Eleven convenience store. The store remains open -selling things out of a store vehicle.

Leveled housing lots. Eight months ago, there were many houses here but they were washed away by the tsunami.

Rubble of destroyed of houses were gathered here at the former location of a school by volunteers.

The seashore was washed away, so there is a temporary embankment.

This grocery store suffered a lot of damage, but...

It is actually still opens for business!

Messages of encouragement from people to the shop.

I was surprised by the cheerfulness of the shop clerks... They worked with smiles and cheerful voices.

The harbor which is located at the back of the shop.

A flower in the rubble wilderness. It is the "work" of the artists of the project called "Let's make flowers bloom in the rubble field." They paint flowers on the walls of the wrecked houses which the municipal government has decided to tear down, to change the devastated landscape.

Flowers on the wall


After driving along the coastal area, we went back inland area and visited a temple. It was designed in the image of buddhist heaven and was established in 1160.

A Calm place. It was hard to understand that this garden and the wrecked coast were in the same city.


After this trip, I asked my friend what I can do for Fukushima people from far distant area except donation and purchasing Fukushima products. His answer was "remember them and this experience". At first, I follow the Twitter List whose member are the people in charge of reconstruction Fukushima. I read their tweets everyday. It is the first step for me. I'm thinking about the next step now.

iPhone4S Siri vs Me

I purchase my new iPhone(4S) and enjoy it, in particular, Siri(voice control personal assistant).
But my poor English confuses her.


These are my results:

Me "What is the weather of today?"
Siri "What is WeDah?"
My second try - Success

"Search for Paul McCartney"
"Such for Paul McCartney - Sorry, I don't understand"
I tried five times but failed...
"Tell me about Paul McCartney" - success

"Where is Nishinomiya(my hometown)?"
"You are always there and I'm here."(I forget Siri's exact sentences)

"Show me the way to Tokyo"
"Sorry, I cannot provide maps and direction services in Japan"

"Which do you like iPhone or Android?"
"I don't understand [Do you right]"
"Which do you like iPhone or Android?"
"It's on you, not me."

"You are excellent"
"I don't like such arbitrary sentence."

"Who are you?"
"I don't know. If you go Genius Bar you may know that."

"Sing Daisy" *cf. the movie"2001:A Space Odyssey"
I tried several times but failed.
ex. "Seeing Daisy","Think Baby", or something.
"Sing a song Daisy"
"I don't understand "Sing-a-song Daisy"


She is one of my teacher of English conversations.

If a cover band of the Beatles in 2010 time-slipped to the world of 1961...

If a cover band of the Beatles in 2010 time-slipped to the world of 1961 (one year before the Beatles debut), this may be what would have happened... This is the story of a controversial manga "I am The Beatles" ("Boku wa Beatles") by Tetsuo Fujii & Kaiji Kawaguchi


In Tokyo in 2010, the Fab Four, a popular Beatles cover band, faced a crisis which threatened to disband them due to conflicting future aspirations among the band members. Rei, on the part of John Lennon, Makoto (Paul McCartney) and Show (George Harrison), quarreled with each other and fell to a subway platform. Konta (Ringo Starr) also fainted with them. When they woke up, they were in 1961 Tokyo.

Makoto made a plan as follows; To play the Beatles' songs as if they were the Fab Four's originals in 1961, before the original Beatles' debut. The idea was that the Beatles would listen to them and then they would make greater songs. Show was hesitant at first but was persuaded by Makoto. They were discovered by a competent female manager like Brian Epstein and released the first single "I Want to Hold Your Hand". When they released their second single, Konta joined the Fab Four. Rei didn't join them because he thought what they were doing was blasphemy to the Beatles.

As they became popular, their manager sent their singles to a UK music producer. Their songs were played on air in the UK. After that, the manager went on a business trip to London for a contract to release records of the Fab Four. Having been asked by Makoto, she went to Liverpool and contacted fans of the Beatles. They told her that the Beatles had stopped singing their songs from the last month because "something shocking had happened," the Fab Four's songs began to play on air from that last month.

All members of the Fab Four were shocked very much and they became conscious of their obligation -to introduce the Beatles songs to the world. (to be continued)


My comment: This is a controversial manga among Japanese beatlemaniacs. Some fans admired the authors' unique idea and detailed description based on abundant data. Other fans think this work is blasphemy to the Beatles.

Some fans, myself included, feel this work is interesting, in particular, for taking up the theme of "a copier's identity". Rei said to Makoto, "When we copy the Beatles perfectly, even their misplaying, we are standing on the furthest point from the Beatles."

All creators might begin their career from copying their favorite artists and gradually adding their originality. But a cover band's aim is to copy other artists perfectly, not to make originality. The audience wants them to do so. Therefore, what is a cover band's identity?

I'm looking forward to what the conclusion of the theme of this work will be.

Househusband experience

I took three-weeks childcare leave to support my wife. She gave birth to a baby boy, our second son on 12th of May, 2011.

My days off had been already declared to my boss and he had approved it in March. So my work was so busy in April to manage my duties and for my co-workers to take over my routines. Anyway, I was able to experience househusband work. It was cooking meals for wife and our first child who is four years old, laundry doing, cleaning, shopping, playing with him and taking him to and from his kindergarten, all house duties except caring for our second child. The purpose of my days off was to help my wife concentrate on caring for the second child.

During the first week, it was quite harder than I had expected. There was no time for myself. I didn't get used to all of the work, in particular, cooking. I am a novice cooker - sometimes I forgot to put oil in the saucepan to fry something - so it took much time to cook everything. What's more, our first son and I had to go to the maternity hospital everyday. I felt pain on the bottom of my feet because I stood up much more than my office work.

After the second week and when my wife and our second child come home, my work was getting easier and easier. Thanks to my wife, who could watch our first child, it became easier to go shopping. I don't have to leave home with our older child. It made my everyday schedule flexible. I realized some basic ways to do housework effectively. My feet also got used to my housework, so I began feeling no pain. I could even enjoy my work.


I learned many lessons from my experience. At first, I realized that housework is physically hard. I imagined how hard it would be, but the reality of it is harder than I had thought.

Second, housework brings me delight directly. My office work is to negotiate my clients, to manage twelve call centers and to maintain clients' satisfaction and company profits. Such work brings me abstract delight - it shows on a PC display only. On the contrary, housework bears clear fruits - tasty foods, clean rooms and the smiles of family members.

Third, housework is easier than my office work on the mental side. I had no stress on my mind throughout my time off.

Fourth, our everyday life is supported by my earnings. I couldn't imagine such a simple thing, but I realized it because of my shopping for many things every day I was home.

My experience made me understand that both my office work and housework are important and fundamental to our families' life. Of course I already knew that but I learn it deeply through this precious opportunity.

My iPhone home screen

(Comments for English available apps) (From Top and Left)

-In the mood: Posting the music you are listening to on Twitter.

-RunKeeper: Tracking automatically your jog pace, time and distance ,etc. and playback of your selected playlist for jogging.

-Mercury: Web browser. It is easier to select tabs with than Safari and features many other gimmicks which Safari doesn't have available.

-Read It Later: Listing websites to read them later. My everyday habit is (1) On the commuter train, checking over 70 blogs by RSS Reader on my iPhone (mention at below article about Reeder) (2) Registering important or long articles are registered by Read It Later on my iPhone (3) At night, checking the articles listed by Read It Later on my PC at home.

-Simplenote: Text editor on cloud (allows editing anywhere: with iPhone, my office PC or my home PC) I use it for my ToDo list, my memorandum book, etc. As for cloud notebook, many people think Evernote is the best. In my opinion, it is excellent as the web clipper (it can make copies of websites on the Note) but not good as a text memo. Because Evernote doesn't feature "plain text" format (this application changes fonts, line feeds and line spaces of your plain text article without asking - it is irritating.)

-Reeder: RSS reader. It can be used to download new articles of your registered blogs automatically, you don't need to visit your interested blogs to check new articles. Many RSS readers are released at App Store, I choice Reeder because of its speed of download (therefore you are able to read articles when you are at non-internet-connected areas, for example in subway lines) and its intuitive design.

I admire iPhone for many reasons, in particular, for its possibilities: it is constantly evolving with such excellent apps.

Beer Lecture

I love beer. In my town, there is a bar which serves over 100 kinds of beer but no other liquor. In addition, the beer master of the bar announced that he would hold a lecture for beer-novices this month. Why don't I apply for it?

In Japan, beer is in a unique situation. It is doubtlessly the most popular liquor. It is a kind of "unspoken rule" to order beer for the first in a pub with friends or co-workers - everybody does so. Even though beer is so popular, only lager beer is available at supermarkets or pubs in Japan, for example, Japanese brands, Budweiser and Heineken and so on. Other types of beer, for instance, stouts (like Guinness), pale ales (like Bass) are rare (these days, Guinness has become a little popular, but many pubs don't serve it.). Very popular but no variations - this is the beer world in Japan.

I didn't realize this situation with Japanese beer, until when I stopped in the bar "Beer Café barley" (which I mentioned above) and read the menu lists. I was astonished by the vast world of beer. After that, I wanted to expand my beer-experience and to learn more about drinking beer. It seems that some Japanese common thoughts of beer are incorrect, for example, the more colder beer is better it tastes. No sooner than I checked the notice of the lecture, I applied for it.

The lecture began at the bar with eight students. At the front half of the lecture, the beer master passed out a test to check our common knoeledge about beer. The test revealed that our understanding isn't the world's understanding of beer. For instance, beer consists of two kinds, normal and black. Also all beer is bitter. Many people believe it is good for the taste to chill a glass in freezer. When serving beer, it is proper that you pour 30% head and 70% beer in the glass. All of these Japanese common thougts are actually not proper practices to taste beer better. Such information is good knowledge for a beer-novice like me.

In the latter half of the lecture, of course there was a beer tasting. We tried five types of beer: (from right) pilsner, pale ale, weizen (wheat beer), stout and barley wine. Every type of beer has its own unique characteristic (please visit the links). The beer tasting has widened my beer world like when a man who has only traveled in his country begins to travel abroad. For the most part, knowledge makes your world wider and clearer. The theory applies well to my new passion for beer.

A week has passed since Japan's 2011 quake occurred

My experience, far from the earthquake center

The massive earthquake came at 14:46 on Friday, March 11th in Northeast Japan. The quake center was about 1000km(600miles) away from my residence in west Japan.

At that time, I was on my business trip to a city which is located at more western area from my living place. So I couldn't feel the shock of the quake. When I heard that a member of telephone conference starting at 15:00 talked about the news, I realized what had happened.

I am a salesperson and a controller for my company's twelve call centers which are in charge of my client, so I exited the conference and contacted my client and stop operations of the call centers because they are sales promotion centers, not customer support ones. My clients' products are not living necessaries. Therefore my clients decided that sales promotion in confusing situation made the company's image bad. It was a busy work, but not serious. All offices and centers of my company are located in west Japan, far from the quake center (My company used to be one company but Japanese government divided it into east and west.).

However, I was shocked by my twitter timeline, not by the TV or newspaper websites. Broadcasters and newspapers told us only "a big earthquake occurred". On the other hand, my friends in Tokyo, only 200km (125miles) away from the quake center, tweeted their conditions via Twitter. They were frightened and confused. Many waves of quake shaking were coming. Most public transportation stopped. At last, some of them went home on foot even though it took three to six hours*, the others stayed at their offices. Tokyo people could tweet, but northeast people (near the center) couldn't tweet. My boss "predicted" that all victims would be counted over 100 at the same evening. My boss and I realized it was serious, but didn't realized its true condition.
*Those who use Twitter could exchange transportation information, but other people couldn't (mobile voice network broke in Tokyo at that time.). The next day, many friends of mine who didn't use Twitter began to use it.

From midnight to next morning, the news reported the devastation of northeast area. They said victims and missing persons would be over a thousand (a few days after, the counts was over ten thousand, and now over 20,000). In addition, nuclear plants near the center were broken. I finally realized that this earthquake is the worst and the most serious natural disaster in Japan, in these hundreds years even though my everyday life never changed. The only encouraging news were messages from nations all over the world. Formal messages of nation's leaders, articles of mass media like that, in particular world's ordinary people's tweets with the tag "#prayforjapan" encourage us.


What I can do

I think over what I can do. Of course, donation was off the top of my head. To know the amount the sufferers need, I researched the amount of the emergency budget for 1995 earthquake in west Japan (victims over 6,000), divided it by Japanese population and multiplied it by three (my family members' number). I donated the amount to the Red Cross as the result of the calculation.

Only that? The government restricts amateur volunteers for a while because they will be obstruction of professional rescue in infrastructure-broken area.

Tokyo people are under a hard condition – the lack of electricity because of many power station including nuclear plants are broken. Tokyo Electric Co. controls "planned blackouts", the company deliberately stops electricity some areas in rotation to stop all area blackout. It makes Tokyo people's life, business and other all activities confused. You might think that west power plants should provide electricity to Tokyo and northeast. But it is impossible. The reason why is the difference of the frequency of AC (alternating electric current) between east and west Japan. Why different? 120 years ago, in the beginning of Japanese industrialization, east Japan electric company purchased a 50Hz generator from Germany, west Japan company purchased a 60Hz one from the US. Around that time, Japan had no technology information. So now, people in west Japan can't support people in east Japan in a serious lack of electricity.

About the problem of nuclear plants, maybe I can only pray for the staff who devote all their energies to settle down the plants.

In my opinion, as for people who are far from northeast Japan, all you can do for the sufferers at present is to activate the economy by your jobs and everyday life, except donations. Do the best at your work, buy things your family and I need or want.

Furthermore, the most important point is imagination. I keep collecting information and imagining the pain, sorrow and inconvenience of sufferers and survivors.

In addition, it is also important and meaningful to expand my concern about not only this quake, but also other world's issues. I make this expansion my pray for victims.