Blog
EARTHQUAKE in Tokyo
Page 2
page 1 | page 3 | page 4 | page 5 | page 6
^^^^^^Local Tokyo Time^^^^^^
Direct link to start of quake photos - You can return to the main site by clicking on the 4WARND logo at the top of the gallery pages.
12:41am 3/18/2011 - Missed putting anything yesterday since I caught in a rolling blackout at 12:30pm-3:30pm. Previously our building posted notes about the blackout at the elevators the day before but not this time. Good thing it came back when it did because I had to catch a taxi to go to the airport about 4pm and lugging my stuff down 12 floors wouldn't have been a great way to start the trip. Actually the first taxi got lost and burned about 25 minutes and he had to call another taxi with navigation so I could switch. Had a couple of "reminder" quakes just to give me a farewell jostling (like I need reminding that the ground has been shaking for the last 6 days.). We got in pretty late but are staying at the ANA Gate Tower airport hotel so it was an easy ride to get to our room and kick back. Had a very late dinner at the izakaya (drinking/eating pub-like for lack of a better term), the only place still serving food. We were there with other refugees from Tokyo and parts North; fair number of non-Japanese. I think we'll be going to another hotel in the city proper tomorrow since I think it's a bit of a haul to get back and forth from out here.
12:40pm - Finally got some decent sleep last night though I didn't get to bed till 2:30am. We're repacking our stuff to go to the next hotel in town. Hopefully its internet will be as nice as here. I'm getting 20Mbps down and 24Mbs upload speeds using a server in Korea to test. Believe it or not we had a client call yesterday and wanted models for an upcoming job. Mind you our office phone explains that we are closed until Monday next week. Guess that old saying "come hell or high water" needs to be changed to "come hell or high water, or earthquake, or nuclear fallout" we are expected to keep working. Don't know if I mentioned it before but we also had a client call on Saturday after the quake on Friday asking about a job the following Monday. (sheesh!)
1:05pm - Running into some coding problems so created this "page 2" in hopes of fixing it. Also the first page was getting a bit long.
1:03am 3/19/2011 - Long story short, at the Hotel New Otani Osaka not the best internet, slower and not free, but the room is better. Not going to be much to tell while I'm here I think. I've not been able to watch the local news since I left Tokyo so any info I'm getting is the same as what you guys are seeing. If anything changes I'll post here. In the mean time I'm going to try and convince myself this is actually a vacation. (Don't know how successful I'll be.)
Geiger Counter - From a buddy of mine "This guy is running his own environmental monitoring station from his house in Hino, Tokyo. Apparently he's been doing it since 2005. His historical baseline is around 15 CPM, which I believe translates to 0.15uSv/hr."
Brave New Climate - Pretty good site for info.
1:17pm - Looks like today will be sort of normal. Yesterday was filled with computer and tech support stuff trying to get to the data needed for a job in Tokyo. My laptop might have some internal damage to go with its new battle scars from the quake (cracked case behind the monitor, broken latch). I couldn't get it to boot a few times yesterday which concerns me a bit. Guess I'll be in the market soon for that new Thinkpad X220 I've been reading about; all tricked out they look pretty slick. Didn't really need an earthquake to motivate my interest in it but hey. ;-)
1:33pm - [on soapbox] One extraneous gripe: Could the Media at large (and small for that matter) please pick one standard for radiation measure?! I'm tired of converting Grays, Rem, Seivert, Rad, and all their associated milli and micro measures across articles. No wonder there is confusion about what kind of fallout we are getting over here. [off soapbox]
9:36pm 3/21/2011 - As expected not so much going on since the earth isn't moving here; reading news, waiting, cogitating, and waiting some more. Spent most of my time recovering the office server full backup to an external drive so we could work here as needed. It was a creative process that took over 12 hours but I'll spare you the boring details; glad they have Yodobashi here. Also spent some time looking at the possibility of opening an office here in Osaka but that's just one of our contingency plans. Based on what we've been hearing about the increasing control they are getting over the reactors there is a good possibility that we will be headed back into Tokyo later this week. Of course like all plans of late, this one is also written in quicksand rather than stone.
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology - Look here for the reading of environmental radioactivity level by prefecture and other information.
10:22pm 3/23/2011 - Back into the lion's den; we are going back to Tokyo tomorrow. We have been thinking long and hard on this since we came to Osaka and have decided that, for the moment, the potential for a major worsening of conditions is outweighed by the need to take care of business and our people. (The 25th is payday here and we have our obligations. It is also the day we send out bills to our clients and incoming coin is a good thing.) We have done enough leg work since arriving that in the event of a second evacuation we will be much better prepared. We already have the information needed to get an apartment here, set up a remote or second office, and a list of new potential clients. In fact all of this research may lead to another office here in the future regardless of any further 'acts of God'.
We tried to get some of the necessities for our guys here in Osaka but even Costco and Yodobashi were out of all that we would have sent. Costco was an absolute zoo with at least 100-200 people lined up to get memberships, the check out lines went nearly to the back of the building, and much of the staff had that 'deer caught in the headlights' look. Yodobashi, the electronics store, is even bigger than the monster store in Akihabara in Tokyo and it was stripped of many batteries and only had maybe a dozen mismatched flashlights in a basket with twice that many buyers hovering around it. At least at Costco I could get 3 dozen D cell batteries (for lights I've yet to find) and 30 boxes of Kleenex in lieu of toilet paper. I also picked up a computer case for my destroyed server.
12:06am 3/24/2011 - OK, well I'm still going back to Tokyo today but I've just been reading/hearing about the radioactive Iodine (I-131) they've found in the water there so I'm contemplating what other measures I might have to take in the near future including iodine tablets. This is starting to feel like those bad slasher movies where they can't seem to kill the bad guy, he just keeps getting back up; it's one new problem after another.
NHK- High levels of iodine in Tokyo tap water
Pretty good article in The New Yorker
1:15pm 3/25/2011 - We're "safely" back in Tokyo. It was quite an ordeal, nothing to do with the quake however. We were to leave from Kansai International Airport at 3:45pm but after boarding the StarFlyer Ninja plane (no I'm not making this up, they had an emergency procedures video featuring ninjas and the plane was mostly black with a black interior) and backing from the gate the left engine made sounds like a team of carpenters sawing through wet plywood. Back to the gate then we rushed to a bus that was supposed to be taking us to the other airport, Itami (which is over 1 hour away, flight to Tokyo is only 50-60 minutes), in town to board another flight. Thing is they took quite a while to get the busses, didn't lead us there very well and didn't have someone waiting at Itami to tell us were to go.
They also had not created another flight, as were led to believe, for us but were trying to get us on existing flights. When we made our way, unguided, to the ANA counter they said we had 8 minutes to run upstairs, go through security, then run to the gate for the flight. We decided to take the next flight available which didn't leave until 8:20pm rather than running only to miss the earlier flight and having to start the whole ticketing process again. Unfortunately, and I'm still mad about this, we missed our model's wedding party that evening.
This morning or rather noon time there was a grass fire out by the Tama River that had about 8 firetrucks show up. The last 4 showed after the fire was already out. While the sirens from the trucks were running the public address system that informs us about the rolling blackout times was trying to let us know what's up with today's schedule. You guessed it, between the racket of the sirens and the echo casused by multiple speaker systems I couldn't understand a thing. I'll let you know if we suddently go dark. Things just keep coming our way, a real page turner.
Forgot to mention previously that my Thinkpad's battery gave up the ghost (died) just before my return to Tokyo. It was working that afternoon and when I got back to the hotel it just failed, the battery light was just flashing and it wouldn't work without AC power. I'm going to back it up in case it goes completely. It's been a good box but perhaps this has been its last adventure. Maybe I'll retire it to a nice safe desk job at the office. We're all getting too old for this kind of excitement. ;-)
TEPCO - Tokyo Electric Power Company - This is where I'm supposed to find out about the rolling blackouts but sometimes the site is down and sometimes the guy on the public address system has the latest info. I was in group 3 last week, group 2 this week and I have to ask one of my guys in the office since I've yet to find that info on the English site.(also this site displays oddly in some browsers)
Before and after satellite photos of the worst areas. - Move the slider in the middle of the photos.
News On Japan - Another good source of news. Also covers non-tech items, human interest, businss and others.
11:59am 3/27/2011 - They canceled the rolling blackouts for this weekend so I'm taking advantage of it to clean up and try to temporarily rebuild the crushed server. I picked up a new case in Osaka and I've moved the old parts into it. I'm checking data now and it looks like I'll end up having to replace most of the parts; drives clicking, slots broken, fans buzzing, and other weirdness. At least I've got it into a functioning state so I can pitch the old case and other parts that were too badly mangled to recover. They're talking about rolling blackouts through the Summer so I'm going to look into ceiling insulation since this place is on the top floor and has none between me and the roof. Our supplies we shipped up from Osaka have arrived and we parceled them out to our guys. The stores are still rationing toilet paper and other supplies since the horders have been circling like buzzards.
NHK - Record 52 foot tsunami hit one area.
Yakuza Salivate Over New Construction Paradise
Yakuza among first with relief supplies in Japan
Quake activity rises sharply around volcanoes - This isn't good, I can see Mt. Fuji from my window.
10:25am 3/28/2011 - Had a little bit of a shake this morning, largest since I've been back I think. Guess I'll leave my cabinets and refrigerator taped when I'm not in the apartment for a while longer. The morning blackout failed to materialize but I'm still slated for one from late afternoon till evening. I need to shut down the PCs because the UPS battery backups won't run for that many hours.
Songs for Japan - I'll be getting this CD when it's out. You can also buy it digitally.
page 1 | page 3 | page 4 | page 5 | page 6