So Encouraged

Tonight Koko and I met for dinner a Bulgarian who has been in Japan for over a decade, his wife and baby. This guy is part ambassador, part community organizer, and part hacker. I'm gonna call him Vlad because that's what I thought he said his name was. Vlad and his wife were both trained rescuers for nuclear situations so they know the risks and how to protect themselves from radiation, and they are staying put in Tokyo.

A few days after the nuclear reactors started having serious problems, he and his wife prepared a bathtub worth of drinking water, in case radiation reached groundwater or tap water (as it later did). He urged other people in the community to do so just in case, because the people mistook emergency preparedness as a sign of an actual emergency, and fled Japan.

Vlad said that there were mainly two types of people who left Japan:

1) People who came here temporarily, such as teachers on one-year contracts
2) People whose multinational employers shut their offices down and paid for them and their families to leave the country for two weeks and paid for their stay abroad (and who wouldn't take a paid vacation when the typical vacation time at a company in Japan is 10 days a year?)

When asked why he didn't flee in the days after the earthquake, he said that if there were another earthquake while he was on the way to the airport, he would have been stuck on the train. Also, lots of people were getting into fights at the airport over tickets or stuck there, waiting for the next available flight, and he didn't want to put his wife and baby through that.

When asked why he didn't flee in the week after the nuclear reactor situation was getting serious, he said that even if there was a meltdown, it would take days for it to reach Tokyo, and that rather than going outside into the open air, or getting on a train where everyone else is getting on or trying to get on, and basically making it extremely difficult to get out, he would actually be safer at home, which is built partially into a hill (like so many buildings at Binghamton University), and where he has enough food and water for three weeks.

I'm so encouraged by the fact that he knows the facts, knows what's going on, and is prepared rather than panicked.

As he serves as the de facto organizer and liaison for the Bulgarian community here, he is often contacted by schools back home that send students to Japan on exchange programs to serve as their guide and to lay down the ground rules of what is permissible or not in Japan.

Vlad is also contacted by Bulgarian media seeking to get a Bulgarian perspective on happenings in the land of the rising sun. He and another compatriot were recently interviewed by a Bulgarian news station, and both said that outside of the areas hit by the tsunami and Fukushima, everything else was fine, radiation in Tokyo wasn't at a dangerous level, etc. Neither of their interviews were aired.

Instead, the station aired an interview with a frantic exchange student who panicked because she tried to call her school to cancel something, and no one picked up, so she had to go outside (in the radiation, she said) to the school itself to cancel the class, and so on.

More and more, I am doubtful that much of what is reported in the media is actually true.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am also very encouraged that he and some friends are:

* Building solar lanterns (maybe something like these) to send to the evacuees. They meet on Sundays, but one guy went to the States to get more solar panels.

* Building phone chargers (now that cell phone towers are working again up north) to be hooked up to car batteries, which can easily be found in car battery disposals, abandoned cars, or cars destroyed by the tsunami. Such a battery can charge up to 100 phones.

* Turning a school or other building in Chiba as a temporary shelter for 100 refugees until they get back on their feet again. Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs because there are no more offices or factories to return to, or employees to run your company, or bosses to report to...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When I heard about what he's been up to, I felt, this is the kind of thing I should be doing! Anyone who hasn't left Japan, who can help in any way, should be doing these kinds of things. And I feel like, rather than run away like so many have, those who have stayed should help with the relief efforts, help rebuild in some way. I don't speak Japanese, don't know my way around, don't have carpentry skills, but still, I want to help!

Maybe one of the people on the solar lantern project can teach me how to solder so I can build those things too.