Around 3:30 pm we got a message from HR to leave office early if possible and not to come back until further notice. Most work has been handed over to the other sites and many people have not been able to come to the office due to the irregular train traffic.
I always listen to the company directives… Especially when they tell me to leave early and not to come back 😉 So I did.
Once at home Chie and I went to Yasaka. Yummy!
Almost every night now we wake up by one or a few after-quakes. This night was no exception. We had two at 5:02 and 5:09 in the morning. Just outside Tokyo, but not more than 3 in magnitude. Still enough to wake us up.
Looking at JMA’s earthquake information it seems there were quite a few after-quakes along the whole nort-east coastline. All in the same magnitude as the two outside Tokyo around 5 am.
In all that has happened I almost forgot that it was White Day today. In Japan it is a bit backwards on Valentine’s Day compared to many other parts of the world. On Valentine’s Day girls give chocolate to the guys.
White Day (today) is the day when they guys have to pay back 🙂
So I bought chocolate and gave to all the assistants that help me in the daily work at Sony Ericssson. Then I took Chie for dinner at KotoKoto.
It was wonderful. The food was great as usual. And we had a great talk with Fujiwara-san, a guy sitting at a table next to us. We laughed a lot while covering a lot of different subjects from the earthquake to Sweden to 9/11 to food and back to the earthquake.
And it was really nice feeling to not “having” to watch the news broadcasting for once in a few days. And the night was still quite warm when walking back home. A perfect White Day.
As you may have seen from news reports many convenience and grocery stores are getting emptied, but not in the sense of looting just in the sense of that people are starting to build up private storage of dry food, cans, water and the like.
I quit job early today as there was not much to do. The few people that could get to the office (roughly estimated about 10-15%) were not really in the mood for working it seemed.
When I got home Chie and I went to Tokyu Store to buy groceries and water. Though some groceries were still available like fresh food (fish, vegetables, meat) and frozen food shelves were dry food (noodles, pasta, rice) as well as cans and water were empty or almost empty.
Bread is another thing that seems to be difficult to get hold of. Shelves in Tokyu Store was empty as was the bakery that is located next to the grocery store.
I guess that it is a few reasons for this: i) consumption of these groceries has gone up because people feel uncertainty, ii) production may have gone done as people cannot get to work properly due to cyclic blackout which affects train transportation and, iii) transportation may not run on 100% capacity as people cannot get to work properly due to cyclic blackout which affects train transportation.
Waking up today to the news that there will be 輪番åœé›» (rinban-teiden) or cyclic blackout/power outage. We are divided into 4 groups in Tokyo and each group will take turns in getting a controlled power outage as to prevent overloading the electric power system.
This is due, as I guess most know, to the problems with the Fukushima nuclear power plants. The power production has been significantly reduced to that. In addition, people are asked to reduce conserve power as much as possible.
Chie and I are lucky as we live in one of the few areas in Tokyo that is not part of on any of the rinban-teiden groups. This means no power outage for us.
And as I am writing this the building is shaking gently by another after-quake. Epicenter is closer to Tokyo but “only” 1 in magnitude [JMA] .
[Update] They seem to have changed the cyclic blackout scheme since the morning and we now have a fifth group. It is not clear if our area of Tokyo is included in any of the groups or not. I guess time will tell anyway.