Old times, new times

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I pick up a Japan Times at the 7-Eleven convenience store near Nippori Station. I glance at the headlines as I buy it – no mention at all of last night’s aftershock. I guess the Japan Times gets printed long before 11.30 pm. As I enter the café nearby, I see a Japanese paper on a rack, so I take it with me to the seat I’m shown. Cafés and coffee shops in Japan usually offer combined sets for breakfast, just as they do for lunch. In this café it’s called モーニングサービス (mouningu saabisu), or ‘morning service.’ For 120 yen on top of the price of my coffee I get a soup – which I don’t quite fancy at this time in the morning – and a toasted sandwich made with the thick slabs of bread and egg and bacon. Japanese newspapers are still printed in the traditional way, with the first page where our last page is, and the last page at our front page. The writing runs from the top to the bottom and from the right hand side to the left hand side. I can understand the headline in Japanese – a huge number 6 in red, the kanji for ‘strong’, the kanji for ‘again’ and then the kanji for ‘Fukushima’. Everyone associates the word ‘Fukushima’ now with just the power plant, but it’s also the name of a prefecture. The people there must feel as if fortune is against them.

Mika and I are walking around Ueno Park. It’s early afternoon. People are promenading down the avenue with the sakura. It’s very blustery today, the wind whipping round in various directions as it often does in Britain but never in Bavaria. A shower of cherry blossom petals comes down. Mika says the cherry blossom lasts for an even shorter time when it’s windy like this. We see a large group of people clustered round a tree taking photographs. Is it exceptionally beautiful blossom, framed against the almost black branches of the tree? As we draw closer, we notice a cat, seemingly asleep on a branch of the tree, in amongst the cherry blossom and totally oblivious to everyone photographing it.

Further on we pass more open spaces under the cherry blossom. There are a few small groups of young people sitting on their blue plastic sheeting. Mika says that usually at this time of day the park would be solid with groups of people sitting under the cherry blossom, but this year is different. I remember being told yesterday about the concept and practice of ‘jishuku’, self-restraint, making cut-backs out of solidarity with the disaster-hit areas.

Mika and I have so much to catch up on – we’ve always had such good times together. Where was she when the earthquake happened? In her flat, the earthquake went on for such a long time, about two minutes, she wondered if it was going to be the end. It happened just as school had finished. One of the school buses had already set off to take the small children home. When the earthquake struck, the bus stopped. It was thrown violently up and down, which happens during a strong earthquake if a vehicle is stationary. The teacher on the bus quick-wittedly pretended to the children that it was fun, like at the fair. When the earthquake had finished and the children got off the bus, they were laughing, having had a good time. In the next days after the earthquake, there was aftershock after aftershock. It was hard to sleep at night as they kept occurring. It's never happened like that before.

We’re walking up the hill from Nippori area to explore the area around my ryokan. Mika says that it’s hard to relax as she keeps on thinking there’s another earthquake, and she doesn’t know if it’s really happening or if it’s just inside her. That’s just what Tanaka-san told me. We stroll down Yanaka Ginza Street towards my ryokan. I love this street which is narrow and pedestrianised. It’s not beautiful as it’s made up of two storey buildings which aren’t particularly attractive and there are wires all over the place. But it’s full of character with independent shops selling fish, vegetables or pottery and crafts, cafés, tea shops, bakers, convenience stores, stalls with take away food. Mika says it’s like Japan used to be when she was a child.

We stop to look at a shop where the vegetables are displayed outside. Each vegetable shows which prefecture it comes from. Many of the vegetables are cheaper now as people are wary of them depending on where they are from. We pass a shop selling fish. Mika says that the clams which are now selling at 300 yen would normally be about 500 yen.

Mika notices a tiny shop selling coffee. We enter and order some coffee to drink, sitting at a narrow bar near the entrance. There are baskets of light brown beans. Puzzled I ask Mika what they are. She explains that they are unroasted coffee beans and points to the oven in the tiny shop. Japanese people like to have their coffee roasted when they buy it so it’s fresh. I choose a type of coffee for Neil, and as we sip our drinks, it’s roasted in the oven, and then poured into a packet.

I’m sitting on my futon, leafing through the Japan Times. The number of killed stands at 12,596 and the number of missing at 14,747. As the radiation levels have stabilised, police in protective gear began searching yesterday for people missing within a 10 – 20 km radius of the Fukushima plant. Some 160,000 people are staying at about 2,300 shelters in 18 prefectures. The population of Oxford is about 150,000 – imagine trying to provide shelters for that many people.

According to another article the Foreign Ministry said that Tokyo has been asking foreign media to report objectively on the crisis at Fukushima, as sensationalist or factually incorrect reports are believed to have fanned fears and led to import restrictions on Japanese products. Further on in the paper I read that India has imposed a blanket ban on food imports from Japan over radiation fears. Another article reports that 23,600 hectares (236 sq km) of farmland, mostly rice paddies, have been damaged by flooding in the tsunami-hit regions. Rice is a sensitive crop, and even small amounts of salt in the paddies can harm its growth. Removal of salt will require the paddies to be repeatedly cleansed with fresh water, but destroyed irrigation ditches and sewerage systems will need to be repaired before this can be attempted.

The ohanami parties may be more restrained in Tokyo than other years and some escalators may not be running, but life is very much resuming as normal, which is far more smoothly and better organised than most other cities in the world. But in the tsunami-hit regions, it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by the huge size of the challenge ahead, and with the terrible loss of life.

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