rolling blackouts

I was already awake but still in bed this Tuesday morning at 630 when my earthquake alarm went off: earthquake (aftershock) in Akita prefecture. Sure enough, 10 seconds later, my bed started shaking, not a whole lot, but definitely noticeably. 

The scheduled rolling blackouts will hit my town this week. They are scheduled from 5-8pm on Wednesday through Friday, but also may not happen. The woman at the gym told me that we would only have a blackout on Thursday, but then the butcher told me that Thursday, we WOULDN'T have one, and we would only have them Wednesday and Friday. hmm. In any case, I am prepared with flashlight, candles, radio, book, ipod, and a few movies pre-downloaded to my computer. I think as long as I make it into a fun, weird, game, it won't mess with me mentally any more than this entire experience already is.

Here's a pretty good summary of what's been going on in Fukushima the past 36 hours. Just keep in mind reading it though that the English phrasing the authors chose at every juncture makes it seem much more dire than it probably is. Words like "catastrophe," "strain to regain control," "working at tremendous personal risk," etc. They were showing clips of Edano Yukio's 4-hour press conference today, and he looked like the most tired cabinet secretary there ever was.

seriously, go to bed

Anyway, I talked to my friend Megan in Niigata City for an hour tonight, and we agree that giving up three hours of our electricity a day is the least we can do; and we have even stopped using our electric heaters voluntarily... there are people who have been outside for five days, they need my electricity far more than I do!

Right now on the news they are talking about a level 6 earthquake In Shizuoka. Let's put this in perspective: the earthquake that destroyed Christchurch three weeks ago was a 6.3--smaller than some of the aftershocks here. I don't want to diminish the scale of the tragedy in New Zealand, but man, they could really learn a thing or two about constructing earthquake-proof buildings from Japan.