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Nuclear situation - do your own research

Expats tiptoeing back to work....

according to a recent WSJ article, the flight of "gaijins," or better "flyjins" to safe havens - in part due to the more alarmist tones taken by the foreign media in the coverage of the disaster has polarized some offices in Tokyo. These "flyjins" are now allegedly facing the challenge of how to cope with ostracism (村八分) :eek: and anger from their colleagues who worked through the crisis and feel they were abandoned...
 
Yep that's very true..... many people are actually going to lose their jobs over this due to breach of contractual agreements.
Also those that didn't panic and held their grounds will most probably find themselves fast tracked on the promotion ladder.

BTW….. Any jobs going…. My skills include keeping a clear head during emergencies.:D
 
Byejins

I agree. Walking around Tokyo last week was a strange experience. Normally cosmopolitan neighbourhoods like Azabu and Roppongi were almost devoid of non-Japanese. I even overheard people saying "gaijin wa mada irun da" when they saw me.

Living in Tokyo, we should count ourselves lucky at having escaped major damage. If one actually takes a little time to understand the reality of the situation, one would realise that we are in no immediate danger here. I have enormous respect and gratitude for those who are working at the plant though, who are taking incredible risks for the benefit of all of us. They deserve to be rewarded.

Living and working here, I have a certain loyalty and commitment to Japan and its people and I feel that to up-and-leave as soon as there's an issue is irresponsible to say the very least.
 
I agree. Walking around Tokyo last week was a strange experience. Normally cosmopolitan neighbourhoods like Azabu and Roppongi were almost devoid of non-Japanese. I even overheard people saying "gaijin wa mada irun da" when they saw me.

Living in Tokyo, we should count ourselves lucky at having escaped major damage. If one actually takes a little time to understand the reality of the situation, one would realise that we are in no immediate danger here. I have enormous respect and gratitude for those who are working at the plant though, who are taking incredible risks for the benefit of all of us. They deserve to be rewarded.

Living and working here, I have a certain loyalty and commitment to Japan and its people and I feel that to up-and-leave as soon as there's an issue is irresponsible to say the very least.

Boy I could not agree with you more :D

I may take some arrows for this, but I say "don't let the door hit you on the butt on they way out!"

I've heard these people called "Tokyo Runners" "Fly-jin" "Bye-jin" and my favorite "Bye-Bye-jin" :D

I have some tenants who just simply left, they have not paid April's rent, they have not paid their bills, cell, electric, gas, water etc and they contact me after they get to their home country and they want me to box up their stuff, and send it to them, taking the cash to do so out of their damage deposit. :eek:

Damage deposit.....?

They left without notice, have not paid their bills, have not given their 30 day notice to leave and they want me to give them the damage deposit back, clean up their apartments and ship their stuff to them......ha ha ha, very funny.... :D:D:D

Do you think I'm being too harsh...? :confused:
 
No, donate it all out from under them.

Also, I know of a local lawyer who has dealt with possibly similar cross-border issues. PM me, and I'll pass along his contact details. He'd probably then refer you to someone in tokyo, but it'd be a start.
 
They left without notice, have not paid their bills, have not given their 30 day notice to leave and they want me to give them the damage deposit back, clean up their apartments and ship their stuff to them......ha ha ha, very funny....

Stu - I'm no lawyer but I don't think you're obliged to return their deposit. If I were in your position, I'd eventually send their stuff to them (let's face it, there's nothing you'd be able to do with it here). But keep the deposits, and after your costs, donate the rest to the relief efforts - they deserve it a lot more than the thoughtless half-wits who left your property.
 
I think we are in serious need of a "alla - mada takusan gairin irun da!" ride.

Tim has organized something for tomorrow. If not too late, please join!
 
I am delighted this thread is being used to promote a madness ride! I wish I could have joined you guys but currrently en route to Fukushima to do some independent testing with a NGO team. Yes, I am wearing the right gear and no, the bike is not a part of it. Gotta keep it safe.

The bye bye jin talk is amusing. And Stu, do send their damage money straight to the relief efforts up north, it is only right.

However, I dont think it is any better staying behind, completely trusting everything coming from authorities and TEPCO, than to move house for a while. No, I dont think it applies to anyone at this forum but it certainly goes for a huge number of other folks.

It should be pretty fucking clear by now that the info coming from the middle aged or older TEPCO and NISA men are either too little or too late. Everything they said would not happen have happened. This society has many amazing aspects but transparancy, accountability and questioning are not among them. I believe that that is a big challenge, in particular in situations like this.

I also know many Japanese that have a great understanding for leaving but few of them can. Employers that would not understand, families that would think it is overreacting and of course the guilt of leaving loved ones behind.

So it is a quite a bit more complex than by bye wimp jin and the rest of us doing the right thing by staying behind.

/Frode
 
To Stu

Wow! it would be really hard to help someone after they just left without telling you. I would ask them to pay for shipping and for the time you put into the effort, and also charge them for april rent and a fee for jumping ship without notifying you, maybe half months rent. I dont think this is unreasonable and they were completely disrespectful. As a renter you need to put it to scum like this. I understand the situation, but they should have told you, period. Sell there stuff and try to recoop your cost of dealing with there BS or keep it for yourself. And charge them the garbage bill too.

I just dont have it in my heart to help people like that, maybe your different though
 
Frode, obviously people are scared, and it has not been clear what will really happen up in Fukushima.

But one thing is clear - even if all the reactors blew up, we in Tokyo would take no material harm. Even in the worst case, the exposure to radiation here would still be too low. People forget for example what kind of radiation they expose themselves to when they undergo 20 x-ray shots of their stomach, another one of their lung, all without protection of their sensitive organs, but the operators still insisting that they not spend any moment inside the room with you. How safe is this?

Now suppose this was different, and there was a real risk. In this case Japanese feel rightly upset that foreigners (and also a few Japanese BTW!) evacuate themselves while expecting their colleagues to continue working as normal.

In my company, we gave everyone the option to evacuate at our cost, irrespective of position, background etc. Though it was not forced either. Hence I stayed all through...

Good luck up there. I doubt though you will find any surprises that have not been reported yet... Of course closer to the plant things are not pretty, and we can all be glad we are not living there.
 
I think we are in serious need of a "alla - mada takusan gairin irun da!" ride.

I'm in! ...But only if on the east side, gotta save gas and all... :)

This topic has sort of come up on Facebook, as those of you who are on there know, but only obliquely. Funny thing is, most of my cycling shiriai are still here, as far as I can tell, while amongst my professional colleagues (translation broadly, games specifically) there are a lot who have scarpered, either within Japan (er, going for vacation to Osaka, suddenly) or back home. Maybe it's because cyclists already have a skewed sense of risk, riding bikes on roads and all.

On the one hand, it's annoying to see foreigners take off as soon as the going gets a bit rough, but at the same time, if I didn't have a Japanese kid, home that's bought and paid for, and wife who's family is living in an evac center up north, maybe I would too.

But as Ludwig says, the short-term risk to anyone in Tokyo is pretty much zero. The thing I worry about personally is if Cesium gets into the soil in the area, and the agricultural landscape I've grown to love will be poisoned for years. The iodine stuff is serious, but short term and easily avoided (in Kanto).

Frode, good luck in Fukushima, many kudos to you for going. But while I agree that maybe the information coming out of the plant itself has been sparse at times, and few people in Japan are talking about possible worse-case scenarios, here in Chiba I'm getting daily hard figures on atmospheric radiation, water radiation, etc etc. I'm not sure any of us would do better back home.
 
I've had three CT scans in the last six months, due to my cancer, and a few x-rays as well.

The other thing is the panic buying done by people still here, toilet paper, water, smokes and now beer.

Japan Tobacco was hit hard, some of their brands will be wiped out for quite some time, this was on the news and the papers, so last night we sold something around $2000 of smokes, people coming in and buying all the stock of a certain brand they like, sometimes $400 or $500 bucks worth.....:eek: With the water we we limiting it to one person two 2L bottles, and we also have held back water that we will only sell to the young mothers with infants, but with the smokes, we are selling everything we have, I don't give a rat's behind, I'm not a big fan of smoking or smokers, I myself enjoy a good cigar on occasion, but that is a very different thing, IMHO.

Sapporo has also been hit, they have some serious damage to one or more of their factories and other breweries are having troubles due to the rolling black outs. Sapporo will become a bit scarce and other breweries will drop some of their brands, not like they don't have a dearth of brands anyway:rolleyes:

The panic buying and the stress related to it is something that I guess we cannot avoid, but I sure with the media would try to tone down.
 
WHO have announced the lifting of the tap water restrictions on infants in Tokyo. For people living in Kanagawa Prefecture radiation levels have been non-detectable.

Sir John Beddington, Government Chief Scientific Adviser: "The other thing I would comment on is that radiation levels that the Japanese use in developing their recommendations are more cautious that the ones we have in the UK or Europe more generally."

Jill Mearer [UK Department of Health]: "I would like to say that levels that were found were below any where we would be making recommendations in the UK not to drink water. They are more precautionary than the UK. If we had these levels in the UK we would not be advising people not to drink the water. Also, we must remember that the doses that we use to define these levels are based on 2 whole months of consumption. Now there are things happening in Japan and increased levels of radioactivity occasionally found in food and water. But you can see yourself that the Japanese authorities seem to get on to deal with them within a matter of hours. And there was only one day when the advice was for babies to not drink water. So again you have got a big level of precaution there. It seems completely unlikely that something would go amiss for 2 months when the authorities are being so vigilant. "
 
Nice info James, thanks.

Even in the worst case, the exposure to radiation here would still be too low. People forget for example what kind of radiation they expose themselves to when they undergo 20 x-ray shots of their stomach, another one of their lung, all without protection of their sensitive organs

Was just thinking this morning that my 2010 radiation exposure was several orders of magnitude greater than 2011 will be, thanks to multiple, largely redundant x-rays of my collar bone. :warau:
 
I got on the train this morning and it was very much back to the normal life of being crushed to death by salarymen.

As I said to the missus a couple of days ago, this nuclear cloud hanging over Tokyo the past week or two has actually made it a rather nice place to live. Fewer people, no barging, even some smiles here and there - smiles are typically extremely unusual in Tokyo. Of course, this is just putting a positive slant on negative events but the hysteria that some people fell pray to really made the city a nicer place. I hope that more people decide to permanently settle down in Kansai or Fukuoka, or whereever they may be.
 
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