『To survive the earthquake…』
As you know, in Japan, yesterday, 2:45 pm in Japan Standard Time, we had a huge earthquake.
[My family are all safe]
About my family… I was at my home w/ my staff to discuss the current project. Actually, my office is inside of my house so luckily I and my staff were definitely safe. And my wife was just back to home when the earthquake was happend. My brother had to walk back from his office and it took about approximately 5 hours or so. One of my sister-in-law had to stay in the aid station in Yokohama and other sister-in-law had to stay up in her office w/ her colleague.
[Earthquake brief]
This is the biggest earthquake in our whole history. Japan is known as “earthquake country" so, from the kindergarten days, we have a training program of evacuation from the building and safely back to the home at least twice a year. This program is applied to from kindergarten, elementary school, junior high school, high school to university. And in the office, we have a sort of “evacuation simulation". Without any exception, we have experienced lots of earthquake.
This time damage is so huge and spreaded to many part of Japan. Furthermore, not only the earthquake but also “Tsunami" : a big wave hit to the seashore of Northern east area of Japan. And to make the matters worse, tremendously huge fire are occurred in the area of Miyagi prefecture (also north-eastern part of Japan) and other area.
Damage toward those area is beyond our imagination.
In Tokyo, lost of people have to walk back to their home. Incredibly, 4, 5 hours are expected. Some of my friends told that more than 8 hours… However many of convinience store, retail shop, department store supplied their goods such as drink, foods etc for nothing and many of public school are opend 24 hours for the rest and stay.
“helping each other" is like a cacth copy among us. We are taught in school to help those who are facing the trouble. It is not the religious mind such as Buddhism or Chritianity but mirably dictu, this sort of thought is immanent in Japanese people, as far as I know. Actually, at the very time earthquake hit Japan, my staff and I were disucussing in my home (my company office is in my house) and my staff girl friend was wondering in the city centre of Tokyo and needed to be helped in the situation public transportation system were out of service. Without any words, I drove my motorbike to pick her up and let them stay at my house. This is not the only case of mine but many residents accepted those who had to walk back but gave up.
[Nuclear Power Plant explosion]
As for the nuclear power station in Fukushima prefecture, also a northern east part of Japan, due to the high temperature inside of the nuclear reactor, some kind of explosion of the power station building has happened. Fortunately, it is not the implosion of the atomic reactor itself therefore thermal exposure of the atomic staffs are not proliferated through the air.
[Emergency communication method: Smart phone]
We are livining in the “internet" or “Ubiquitous" world. We use the Andoroid mobile or iPhone to communicate w/ each other like e-mail, talk or to check the schedule upon it. But usage rate of so-called “smart phone" is 15-20% of total user of Japan (Estimated figure). This time we can say that “smart phone" is quite useful in the emergency situation. On the other side, “ordinary mobile" phone network is quite useless. Technically, to talk over the smart phone or ordinary mobile is exactly same but packet traffic in the emergency situation is completely different. “Ordinary mobile" phone depends upon the packet traffic but when we use the e-mail simultaneously, traffic becomes blowout. E-mail over the ordinary mobile phone can not function over 4-5 hours after the earthquake. On the contrary, such as Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, or some application through the internet or rather say “cloud service" upon the smart phone are perfectly performed.
I personally received the message on the Facebook and to the mailbox of Gmail. These message encouraged me so much. Fortunately, we can access to the internet therefore we can gather the necessary information. in our residential area, we are supplied the electoric power so we can continuously use the PC or smart phone. But we have to prepare for the blackout situation to use the electoric devices. We need to purchase the self-generator or emergency kit such as aid staffs or drink or foods.
There’s a typical saying in Japan. That is “Keep something for a rainy day." but we have to revise that phrase to this.
“Keep something for a earthquake day."
We go forward.