ONE MONTH +

One month since the quake-tsunami-reactor failure, and looks like they’re gonna Chernobyl the whole tangled, steaming, leaking, glowing mess, bury it under concrete, let it melt down if it wants to, isolate the whole area for whatever half-life has the most public appeal, because they haven’t got it under control, likely never will. Also they’re running out of technicians at minimum wage. Folks up there seem to think it’s safe though, as the govt keeps reassuring everybody. To add weight to their conviction, they've doubled the minimum acceptable radiation dosages and are expanding the forced evacuation zone to 30 km. Personally I’ve always found government reassurances to be a rich source of healthful inner laughter.

Tatsuya came down by train on Saturday evening for a big two-family confab, at which the majority felt that it really was safe up there: there was water, electricity, gas etc. all restored; Tatsuya swore it was all back to normal and anyway he had to work there, he missed his family, the girls were missing school there, which was back in session, so they all left Sunday morning and headed back up into only time will tell; I hope my own misgivings are wrong... Will feedback here any news from the intrepid quintet...

Another aftershock up there last night, powerful winds from the north all day...

Kasumi called from her apartment up north just now (Mon PM) at 5:15 and at 5:16 while on the phone she all at once stopped talking to Echo and yelled in panic to the trio: "Earthquake! Earthquake! Outside! Get outside! Fast! Hurry! Open the door and go outside! Out! Get out!" and the phone went dead. We turned on the tv at once and heard it was a 6+ magnitude, with tsunami warning announcements “...tsunami are expected in the following areas... waves up to two meters high, everyone near the coast must move to higher ground...” recycling over and over even now, for the first time in English, Chinese, Korean and Portuguese. Kasumi called back a few minutes later, is still on the phone. Will update later.

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Later: There have been tremors happening ever since they arrived back up there. Looks pretty severe on the webcams. Also they can’t buy bottled water anywhere around there and K doesn't want to drink the tap water until she is fully satisfied it's safe. We’ll send some from our stored stock to tide them over.

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“A week before becoming ground zero for the world’s biggest nuclear crisis since 1986, the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant offered $11 an hour for full-time maintenance work in an area of Japan that was lagging even before last month’s earthquake and tsunami struck.”