So… Are Jast branch in japan okay or what? =o
Good luck fellas, coz from seeing the pictures it seems to be one heckuva big disaster occurred.
Both the folks at J-List/Jast and the guys at MangaGamer posted that they were alright on their Twitter accounts. While that’s all well and good though, it’s a shame to see the sheer amount of damage this thing caused.
That’s good to know xD but unforunately I don’t use twitter >.>
Wow, that just makes a bad day worse. I hope everyone’s OK. The official death toll is 413, with about 750 still missing right now … I can’t say that’s “good” really although it could have been much worse.
Other reports are that ten thousand people from one town are still missing…
Terrible! Just terrible. I am very saddened by this. Think of all the innocent lives lost and their poor families. An event of this magnitude is bound to change the lives of all Japanese forever.
It’s only a partial meltdown right now, ie only small escapage. However, the risk continues to rise.
In other news there’s 70% risk of an magnitude 7 aftershock.
The lady in the cubicle next to mine has a son who teaches English in Gunma Province and naturally she’s worried about him. And I’m not surprised, because all the news coverage about the problems at the nuclear power plant these days seems to imply that all of Japan is going to blow up or be poisoned by atomic radiation any day now. But he writes back that except for the backouts and a few things disappearing from store shelves, things are going along pretty much as normal. And I suggested to her that the distorted panic-inducing, chicken-little news coverage we are getting over here is pretty much worthless and probably misleading.
Not that it’s not serious. Atomic energy is no joke and who knows what could happen? But there are not–as I’ve heard–clouds of death covering Tokyo and stuff like that. And those people in California who are buying up iodine pills like crazy? Well, they’re crazy. I hear the term “melt-down” used in the news all the time. It sounds sooo scary, doesn’t it? But what does is mean, beyond the panic-inducing sound of it?
Let’s not forget that the real story here is the thousands of people who have lost their homes, their families, their livelihoods and are going to be suffering in the days and months and years ahead.
This is a really unfortunate incident. I wish all those who were hurt by the chain of events all the best.
What is really amazing is that how soon the Japanese started to rebuild and get on with things. It takes a very strong character to do so.
Look who got quoted on BBC:
0850: Peter Payne, an American living in Gunma prefecture, also thinks some journalists have been overdramatising events in Japan. He tells the BBC: “There’s a big difference between how some outside journalists have been presenting the situation and the reality here is. Some US journalists in particular have been using the most sensationalist language as if an imminent catastrophe is going to affect the whole country. People in Japan are concerned of course, but life goes on. We are running a business, shipping bento boxes. We’ve been in touch with all our distributors across the country - they are all open to business. The post office has been functioning every day.”
0851: Peter Payne adds: “The main issue for have been the blackouts, but we try to adjust our working lives to them. There are bulletins about the blackouts, trying to be very positive about them - in a very Japanese way - like saying: ‘Isn’t it good that when there’s no TV, the families can sit together and talk?’ They are always trying to be positive, the NHK broadcasts feel like a calm hand on your shoulder.”
I think ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’ in this earthquake was the sheer scale: 9.0!!! Insofar as probability is concerned, a lot of folks would have considered around 7.0 to 8.0 even in their worst-case scenarios. This is not something statisticians and actuaries can anticipate. Literally out of the blue.
In the mid to long term, I am concerned about negative image of nuclear powerplants in the aftermath of the Fukuyama disaster. I find the mass media rather annoying in that it is using cheap shot to generate revenue by playing up the public’s fear of nuclear power, real or imagined. Not a whole lot in terms of actually doing a reality check. Japan, as well as scores of other industrialized powers must import oil, whether they like it or not, and the only known way to lessen dependence on oil (insofar as generating electricity is concerned) on a massive scale has been investing in nuclear power. Not to mention that, while hydrocarbons lack the kind of sudden impact radioactive isotopes possess, the former scores big in pollution down the stretch. Not to mention that oil price is going to become even more volatile down the stretch: A combination of political mess in Middle East plus developing countries demanding more oil. (Up until 2008, the US alone imported more oil than the rest of the developing countries together. No longer. The era of dirt-cheap oil and auto-love is over!)
A report just came out detailing how the science indicated the potential risk for a tsunami at the location, and outlines multiple instances where something should have been done, but wasn’t: