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Tokyo Exodus Part 2: Thriving Metropolis Or Ghost Town?
A stunning report from Reuters on how the crisis has transformed one of the world's most populous cities.
Areas of Tokyo usually packed with office workers crammed into sushi restaurants and noodle shops were eerily quiet. Many schools were closed. Companies allowed workers to stay home. Long queues formed at airports.
As Japanese authorities struggled to avert disaster at an earthquake-battered nuclear complex 240 km (150 miles) to the north, parts of Tokyo resembled a ghost town.
Many stocked up on food and stayed indoors or simply left, transforming one of the world's biggest and densely populated cities into a shell of its usual self.
"Look, it's like Sunday -- no cars in town," said Kazushi Arisawa, a 62-year-old taxi driver as he waited for more than an hour outside an office tower where he usually finds customers within minutes. "I can't make money today."
Radiation in Tokyo has been negligible, briefly touching three times the normal rate Tuesday, smaller than a dental x-ray. Wednesday, winds over the Fukushima nuclear-power plant gusted out to sea, keeping levels close to normal.
But that does little to allay public anxiety about an ailing 40-year-old nuclear complex with three reactors in partial meltdown and a fourth with spent atomic fuel exposed to the atmosphere after last Friday's earthquake and tsunami.
"Radiation moves faster than we do," said Steven Swanson, a 43-year-old American who moved to Tokyo in December with his Japanese wife to help with her family business.
He is staying indoors but is tempted to leave. "It's scary. It's a triple threat with the earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear radiation leaks. It makes you wonder what's next."
A number of major events have been canceled, including the World Figure Skating Championships, Japan Fashion Week and the Tokyo International Anime Fair whose organizers cited "extreme circumstances."
EMPTY RESTAURANTS, SHOPS
Some foreign bankers, flush with money, are fleeing fast, some on private jets. BNP Paribas, Standard Chartered and Morgan Stanley were among banks whose staff have left since Friday, according to industry sources.
Thousands of people have inundated private jet companies with requests for evacuation flights, sending prices surging.
"I got a request yesterday to fly 14 people from Tokyo to Hong Kong ... they did not care about price," said Jackie Wu, chief operations officer at Hong Kong Jet, a newly established private jet subsidiary of China's HNA Group.
A chartered plane from Tokyo to Australia, one way, was $265,000, 20 percent higher than usual, he said.
Mike Walsh, chief of Asia Jet, said they had run three evacuation flights to Hong Kong from Tokyo by early Wednesday.
Electronics shops are selling out of small, portable Geiger counters that measure radiation. Strawberry Linux, a Tokyo-based company, is out of stock, said its owner, Masahiro Ochiai.
Some areas of Tokyo were hit by rolling blackouts and reduced train services as the nuclear plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, struggled to make up for a drop in power capacity.
At Sony Corp's headquarters in Tokyo's Shinagawa district, only 120 staff of the usual 6,000 were working. Staff were told to stay at home as much as possible due to difficulties with train transportation, said Sony spokeswoman Mami Imada.
In Akasaka, normally packed with office workers, sushi restaurants and noodle shops, streets were quiet into the night when the area usually becomes a neon-lit entertainment district.
"Akasaka has been dead quiet since the quake. We should be thankful we are alive but if this continues, the economy will be a disaster," said Akihiro Sumitani, owner of a shop that sells kitchen utensils.
"I seriously worry how many shops can survive."
People stocked up food, milk and other supplies, emptying some shelves at convenience stores and supermarkets. Some residents towed suitcases. Thousands showed up at nearby airports without tickets, hoping to book flights out of Tokyo.
Anthony Blick, an expatriate in Tokyo working from home since the earthquake, said he would prefer to leave.
"I'm worried about the nuclear reactors in Fukushima. There's a lot of information out there but unfortunately a lot of it is conflicting. Ideally, I would like to get out of Japan but that isn't practical at the moment."
Many schools were closed, but one mother interviewed outside an open kindergarten said she preferred her children in school.
"I want them to do everything that we are allowed to do as long as it is safe," she said. "If I show them that I'm nervous, my children will get nervous."
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There are two kinds of people in this world, Chris. There are bullies and there are nerds. And there are hot Asian chicks. They'll do what you want. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You better believe it, buddy. They will do what you want because they know, they know what you want. Oh, oh, oh, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. I won't hurt you. I won't hurt you. Me big American man.
Hot Asian chicks...+1 Not hot or rare enough to make me want to stay in town though.
Hot Tokyo chicks? When I was there, men used to visit brothels in Russia's Far East. I can tell you Ukrainian chicks are even hotter.
Should have put that in quotes and attributed it to Peter Griffin to avoid the junks.
Ha, I guess you're right.
Probably not actually. It was kind of insensitive.
Great update.
Keep up to date with a real time JP blog here:
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/live/asia/japans-nuclear-emergency-live-blog
http://www.infowars.com/alert-fukushima-coverup-40-years-of-spent-nuclea...
According to Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer at Fairewinds Associates and a member of the public oversight panel for the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, which is identical to the Fukushima Daiichi unit 1, the failure to maintain pools of water that keep the 20 years worth of spent fuel rods cool could cause “catastrophic fires” and turn the crisis into “Chernobyl on steroids.”
...that keep the 20 years worth of spent fuel rods...
That's the part that most don't know.
ALL Nuc plants have TONS of New, Old, Spent fuel ON SITE, Just Sitting there....
(No where to move it. )
This ain't ANYWHERE near over kids....
And this is why we built Yucca Mountain---to store all this stuff in one place as opposed to the 100 or so places it is now. However, we can't use it because of politics (Dingy Harry Reid) and because of the environmental nut-cases.
Its better to have all your spent fuel in a secure place in the middle of a desert where no one live than to have it within 50 miles of any urban area.
oly crap Sherlock. Ever heard of the Yucca Mountain seismic zone?
The Bow Ridge Fault line?
HEre is an extract;
Yucca Mt. adjusts to fault line Nuclear dump moves structures to account for geologic finding. September 25, 2007|From the Associated Press
las vegas -- Engineers moved some structures at the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump after rock samples indicated a fault line unexpectedly ran beneath their original location, an Energy Department official said Monday.
Allen Benson, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Energy in Las Vegas, said project adjustments were made in June.
"In the spring we discovered the true course of the Bow Ridge fault line. As a result we moved locations several hundred feet" to the east, he said. "That's why we do studies, to come up with information to make the repositories safer."
And here is a Link:
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/sep/25/nation/na-yucca25
The level of Kool Aid drinkers in the world is pretty damn shocking.
Nuclear power is poison. There is no way to safely dump waste with 10,000 year half lifes. Reprocessing is expensive and in-efficient. Shooting it into space is not an option.
Good Grief!
ORI
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/american-cross-nuclear-rumbles/
I figure in another 100 years or so, the technology will be developed to safely reprocess the spent fuel rods for (a) reuse and (b) safe, low-rad leftovers.
The 10,000-year (or more) bogeyman is a canard.
In another 100 years, horse traction will be the fashion, if the last horse hasn't been eaten 50 years earlier by some of the 9 billion starving crowd.
Small chance any technology will be developed beyond that point, if there's no energy left to run it.
This is the time to revive the project and push it forward.
Any political opposition will suffer a considerable public scolding.
http://seenoevilspeaknoevilhearnoevil.blogspot.com/
http://seenoevilspeaknoevilhearnoevil.blogspot.com/2011/03/14-reasons-why-economic-collapse-has.html
The smart money is dumping real estate in Canada's western provinces, where the brunt of the radiation fallout from the Fukushima reactor is headed.
Just remember...never forget...that within hours of this catastrophe occurring in Japan, criminal syndicate Wall Street bankers lined up at the Ministry of Truth [CNBC] to explain to everyone how bullish the catastrophe was.
When we talk about the kleptocratic class of bankers in this country, that class which is destroying America with its greed, its immorality, and its lawlessness, we must remember such chapters as this.
And while they said one thing to us:
You nailed it Cdad. Money no object, get me to Phuck out of here.... Lower class? Let them eat Plutonium....
Preferably, plutonium powered iPads.
Those Wall Street bankers need sheep to buy their overpriced shares when they decide to sell.
Amazing that people would argue this unfolding disaster in Japan is bullish. I suppose we should just destroy the whole world and enjoy decades of prosperity thereafter...
I'm thinking we wrap the reactor containment vessels with the CEO's of the TBTF banks. Their hearts are cold enough to help dissipate the heat, and they otherwise add little or no value to society. A strong argument could be made that they already are mutants, so no harm done. Plus, they'd act as canaries in a coal mine: if Jared Lee Loughner's doppelganger Lloyd Blankfein grew hair like a Chia Pet, that would indicate the radiation is still too high for humans. Just to complete the circle, we could have AIG write life policies on them all. It would be poetic justice if AIG defaulted on the payout.
You're a true poet, chindit13.
Make it rhyme.
Time to get out. No telling how long the reactor will hold or the favorable winds.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1366670/Japan-earthquake-tsunami-French-claim-scale-nuclear-disaster-hidden.html
the french don't believe the all is good propoganda
Daily Mail always has great pictures. The picture of reactor #3 is crazy.
Maybe because someone contracted french engineering firms to build a maginot-like container for those reactors.
Nice quote from the article:
Charter companies reported charging as much as $160,000 for a flight to Tokyo. with one saying it had a request from 14 bankers who 'did not care about price.
Nice quote from the article:
Charter companies reported charging as much as $160,000 for a flight to Tokyo. with one saying it had a request from 14 bankers who 'did not care about price.
Rats are the first to bail if there's any way out:
"Some foreign bankers, flush with money, are fleeing fast, some on private jets. BNP Paribas, Standard Chartered and Morgan Stanley were among banks whose staff have left since Friday, according to industry sources."
That's because they are "insiders".
And what "insiders" know for 100.00000000% certain is that all official information is a LIE.
The masses of naive fools who continue to believe what the authorities tell them even though 100% of what they were told before is eventually proven to be false. Unlike the naive masses, the "insiders" know for certain that every official announcement is a lie, and therefore they cannot trust any reports. So they play it safe and get out of dodge. Any realist would.
Fool. Whistling in the dark and using your children to do it.
Cognitive dissonance in all its glory. The Darwin Award nominees will be/are overflowing over the next few months and years.
Japan crisis reaching worst case scenario-RussiaWell, if anyone knows the outcome(s) it's the Rooskies, eh?
UK Chief Scientific Officer briefing to Tokyo embassy personnel.
Basically, absolute worst case is 30km dead zone. No measurable effects outside of that zone, none.
The problem with worst case scenarios they often keep turning into best case scenarios. The design of the power plants thought they had thought of it all, the worst case.
The Japanese have fucked over a LOT of people in the past... Just saying... Maybe time for some payback? Not that "I" would mind you...some may...
Go DIAF.
Their country deserves this? Give me a break.
Basically, you're "just saying" that you have zero understanding of your own history. If you did, you'd not "just say" anything quite so stupid as that.
total ghost town
Shibuya Station (Tokyo) live webcam EDT +13hr
http://www.sibch.tv/share/contents/livecamera/ekimae.html
I've never seen so many ghost cars and ghost people
wonder if this signals the end of post WW2 american occupation of japan
more guys freed up for afghanistan....woohoo
This may have serious foreign policy implications.
This disaster shows that there is an ongoing risk when spent fuel is forced by political factors to be retained onsite rather than to be taken to some remote storage facility. Tell me again why the Yucca Mountain storage project was canceled.
This is why:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/tokyo-exodus-part-2-thriving-metropolis...
ORI
Wind and solar then?
RIP Japan