We took another road back from Tokorozawa today. It was faster than usual. And the last I don’t know how many kilometers was in a tunnel. First we just went down and down and down until I could swear it was getting hotter 😉 Then it was upwards, ending in a upward spiral. And out we popped… In Shibuya. We had expected to come out at a slightly different place but sometimes it is good to have a GPS enabled navigator system in the car 🙂
Today Chie and I will deliver our first batch of supplies to Ishihara-san. She is arranging for trucks to go to the Tohoku area every week. Bringing food, water, and whatever other things that are needed.
She has got in contact with a small town called Kobuchihama on a peninsula in the Miyagi prefecture, which is the prefecture where Sendai is located. The peninsula lost contact with the main island of Japan for two weeks after the earthquake so they could not get food or water supplies.
We got in contact with Ishihara-san through KotoKoto. The owner of KotoKoto and Ishihara-san seems to be friends. And we made contact with Ishihara-san about 2 weeks back, knocking on her door a Saturday morning. In a very unusual way for a Japanese she opened up her home for us without knowing who we were, and we agreed to help out.
Since then we have collected food and water little by little. Water especially is hard to come by in any larger amount at one time as there is limits on how much you can buy. Usually 1-2 bottle per person. Rice that you can heat either in microwave oven or by putting the box into hot water also have limitations in some stores. So little by little we built up to this point where we will drop by Ishihara-san to deliver the supplies.
Mash-san, as you may recognize from our Radior Nation Parties and trips to San Francisco, also sent us some money that could be used for renting the trucks and for gas.
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Maybe most of you are getting tired of all the talking about earthquakes. Still I would like to try to explain why people here in Japan is talking about the Tohoku earthquake.
Not only was it the biggest earthquake that have hit Japan in modern time (9.0 in magnitude). It also resulted in the biggest crises in post-second World War era in Japan. And has had about 4 times as many after-shocks over 5 in magnitude as any of the other big earthquakes that have hit Japan earlier. The image below can give some perspective on this.
Of course most of these after-shocks we have not felt here in Tokyo. But you can imagine the people living in the Tohoku area. First they are hit by a 9.0 earthquake, followed by a tsunami. During the same day they have another 132 earthquakes of 5.0 or higher. 32 of these are 6.0 or higher and 3 are 7.0 or higher. Anyone of these would be enough to scare many people. They had 132 of them. After they had lost homes, family, friends, pets, everything.
It is quite difficult to imagine what they have experienced. And as one guy said that visited the area, we cannot tell them to fight it out. They have already done all the fighting out that you can expect from anyone. Now we have to fight for them.
I am running out of funny words to write when informing about earthquakes. We had another one that we felt here in Tokyo at 10:41 pm. It felt like a 3 on the JMA intensity scale. And it was. It was a bit closer to Tokyo again, outside of the Chiba prefecture.
Today was a busy day. Chie has been working a lot lately so to help out I have cooked all food today. Break fast and dinner. Besides that I have updated all our iPads and iPod Touches, though that is more fun work than hard work 😉
In between breakfast and dinner, Chie and I also went to Tokyu Store for grocery shopping. And after that we went to Don Quijote to buy groceries, water and other things to bring to the Tohoku area. Actually we have been doing this during the whole week as some things like water is limited to 1-2 2L bottles per person.
These things we will bring to a person we have come in contact with, Ishihara-san, that has organized collection of groceries and other items to ship them to the Tohoku area for people that are now living in shelters after the earthquake. After our vacation to Hawaii in little over a week I will try to engage more in this kind of activities. Ishihara-san is arranging for trucks to go to a small place in the Tohoku area once a week so there will be plenty of opportunities to help out.