Freezing in the Bright Light

I don't necessarily want to see a return to last summer's draconian power saving measures. Removing a third or a half of the lights in train stations wasn't a bad thing, in my opinion: they were too bright for my taste anyway, and are again now that they've returned to "normal". Shutting down most of the escalators in stations  was a different story, though, and contributed--particularly in some of the deeper underground station areas--to a lot more crowding in already crowded rush hours. Riding a crowded train with no (or only very little) air conditioning was not a pleasant experience, either, in the muggy Tokyo summer.

I'll grant that the confusing scheduled blackouts were not a palatable alternative. I sympathized with businesses, especially small ones, that were disproportionately affected by power outages and for which they were a real hardship. Shutting down a lot of the neon and garish display lighting was not a bad thing, though, and I wouldn't have minded seeing that continued in a lot of cases. It was taken a little too far in some, maybe many, of the train stations, though, and on the trains themselves, at least for a while. When trains are delayed while heat stroke victims are treated or taken to hospital by ambulance crews, power conservation has been carried a bit too far.

This morning I was almost wishing for a return to those days of sweltering trains, however. Even at a little after six in the morning, it was getting hot outside. The temperature was moving inexorably through the high twenties into yet another 30+ morning. People were walking around the (now eye-achingly brightly lit again) station, fanning themselves and wiping sweat from their faces and necks. But on the train, the air conditioning was evidently set to "arctic". Passengers--rather few at that hour, particularly on the train going out of Tokyo--were using their handkerchiefs, and newspapers, and brief cases, and even their spread fans, to shield themselves from the blasts of icy air, huddling in hunched horripilation.  That sweat that accumulated while shuffling along in the stifling heat of the concourse and the platform was now freezing over, or so it seemed, and I remembered Jack London tales of Yukon adventurers fearing over-exertion that would kill you when your sweat froze.

You can't open the windows on most trains these days, and even an uncrowded train becomes oven-like with no air conditioning at all during the heat waves that our summers lately have become. That doesn't mean, however, that a rolling refrigerated car is the best alternative.

I freely admit that none of my friends would hold me up as a champion of moderation. Nevertheless, I'd like to see the train A/C set to "cool" rather than "Fimbulwinter".

Beneath the Burning Sky

The local government disaster prevention authorities are once again broadcasting their cautionary message: "Avoid going out under the burning sky". Entenka (炎天下), as I've mentioned before, means "beneath/under the burning/blazing sky/heavens", and while poetic, is a distressingly accurate way of describing the weather in the latest heat wave. The announcement goes on to exhort citizens to drink plenty of liquid, get enough salt, and use cooling equipment.

Temperatures have remained high nationwide for the eighth day in a row, the Japan Meteorological Agency has reported, and are expected to stay high through at least early next weekend. On Sunday, the highest temperature was 38.4 degrees in Tatebayashi, Gunma Prefecture, up from 37.1 there on Saturday. The mercury rose above 35 degrees in more than 130 locations across Japan over the weekend, with temperatures over 35 recorded at 61 of the 927 observation stations across the country as of Sunday afternoon. I'm writing this on Monday, and I expect that similar data will be reported throughout the week.

Five people died and 1,525 were hospitalized for heatstroke on Saturday, and at least three more died and 900 were hospitalized on Sunday, according to reports from the Fire and Disaster Management Agency and Kyodo News.

On Saturday, the presumed heatstroke victims included an 87-year-old woman  found collapsed in her home in Nishiwaki, Hyogo Prefecture, a 43-year-old man working at a gilding factory in Isezaki, Gunma Prefecture, and an 84-year-old man farming in Ogaki, Gifu Prefecture. On Sunday, they were an 80-year-old woman in Kashima, Saga Prefecture, a woman in her 70s farming in Aizuwakamatsu, Fukushima Prefecture, and another 80-year-old woman found dead in her bedroom in Yamatokoriyama, Nara Prefecture, according to local authorities.

I understand that the Fire and Disaster Management Agency is urging elderly people to check that their air conditioning units have been changed from heating to cooling, since several elderly heatstroke fatalities have been found to have had their A/C units still set on heating from last winter. I'm still looking for further details about this, since I don't see how even thermostats set for heating would run the temperatures up beyond the high-30s outside temperature, and I would expect the people to have set the units' temperature controls to somewhat less, such as 28 or so even if they were trying to save energy. That would indeed be warm in winter, but considerably cooler than the days have been lately: last Friday it was already 30 or so at eight in the morning in Kumagaya, which still shares the record for high temperatures (40.9 on 8/16/2007) with Tajimi in Gifu Prefecture.

Perhaps I'm missing something here, but even high-end winter heating settings on air conditioning units would most likely be below ambient daytime temperatures lately.

The elderly seem to be especially at risk, for various physiological and psychological reasons, but at least one of the weekend victims was relatively young, and many of those hospitalized but surviving have been children, many of whom collapsed while engaged in athletic events. For example, two baseball players from Gifu Commercial & Business High School were hospitalized for heatstroke symptoms after helping their team win the prefectural district elimination round for the National High School Baseball Tournament. Far from being frail elders, these are high school kids in excellent physical condition.

The high school athletes  also almost certainly have been trained to get lots of water and keep their salt levels optimized. Sometimes good physical condition, knowledge, and training just aren't enough, though. I was in excellent physical condition and well aware of the risks and countermeasures surrounding dehydration and heatstroke many years ago when I nevertheless collapsed while camping. That was entirely my fault, though, since I carelessly drank a lot of beer and iced coffee instead of water, and the combination of diuretics and high temperature provided the consequences that I should have expected.

Theory and practical implementation aren't at all the same, and having been "burned" once, I've been extra careful since then. As we all should be, when we're beneath the burning sky.

Minamisoma Trip,: the Second Day, Part Two

We left Minamisoma around three in the afternoon (Sunday, 27 May) intending to return the truck by 20:00 if at all possible. Rather than retrace our route from the previous day, we set out to take a shorter and hopefully faster way back, entering Tokyo via the Joban Expressway rather than the Tohoku Expressway we'd used coming to Fukushima. This required us to use another set of mountain roads more to the southwest, in order to skirt "no go" areas and avoid being turned back at roadblocks. The idea was to use local roads until we could enter the expressway beyond the exclusion areas that still blocked part of it.

I was concentrating on driving, again leaving the navigation to Andrew, and things were going so smoothly that I cannot remember exactly what sequence of roads we took. The route was somewhat trickier than the previous day's, but it didn't present any real problem. The weather was holding up well, too, and it should have been a very pleasant drive. And it would have been, except for some of the scenery.

 In the morning, we'd traveled through farmland with some scattered pastures, from the northwest and north. We'd seen some signs of abandoned fields and farm buildings, and some earthquake-damaged buildings in and around the town, but nothing that could really be called devastation; that would have been very different had we been closer to the beach, of course. The saddest thing that I had witnessed so far was the conditions under which so many people--especially children--were forced to live in the temporary housing: adequate (just) but cramped and, while new and neat, hardly cheery and comfortable. Now, however, we were going mostly southwest and were passing through an area that had been in the path of wind-born radioactive particles in dust and rain that had blown toward the northwest from the Fukushima reactors. Here the scenery--though in a beautiful natural setting of valleys among forested hills--showed a very tragic sort of devastation if you knew what you were looking at, and how it should have looked.

Even though the area was now outside the exclusion zone--indeed, I believe parts of it had always been, despite "hot spots" that had been discovered here and there--it had incurred sufficient contamination that nobody could grow crops or raise animals in the area. I've lived in both very urban and in pretty rural areas of Japan, so I'm familiar with the way that a fishing village or a farming community usually looks at various times of the year. In particular, having spent many years surrounded by them, I know what rice paddies should look like at the very end of May (if you don't, this may be instructive).  While going through what I believe to have been the southern part of Iitate Village, north of western Namie Town, we were seeing something very different. These fields had been abandoned completely, utterly, kept company only by silent buildings beginning to show the evidence of neglect, and the occasional metal roadside sign, gently rusting, advertising Iitate beef that is very unlikely to be seen in markets anytime soon. We did pass one cattle farm that, judging by the aroma, was still functioning, but whether out of the owner's hope, or sheer stubbornness, or desire to save the animals, or lack of alternatives, I have no idea. Passing all those abandoned fields and pastures, thinking of the lost livelihoods that they represented, was very, very grim.

Eventually, we left the rural roads, and most of the mountains, behind us and came eventually to the expressway. Once again we encountered brief rain in one of the passes, and then it was a straight, uncomplicated run beneath mostly fair skies, and twilight fell a few hours later as we entered Tokyo.

As often happens at the end of a weekend with good weather, the returning traffic slowed dramatically to near-gridlock speeds once we got into town, and by the time we reached Roppongi the limited legroom and frequent braking was beginning to give my knee grief. I was pleased we were in the neighborhood, and only needed to fill the tank and return the truck.

I was less pleased when the first gas station we tried was closed (early closing, I guess, on Sunday evening), and much less pleased when an open one told us we couldn't get gas because the station was too full...of expensive cars that had been left for washing and later pickup, obviously to avoid paying parking fees during their owners' night out. You'd think that people who can afford to buy a Mercedes Benz could afford parking fees. We eventually found an open station that hadn't been turned into an impromptu parking lot, filled up, returned the truck, and went to the Black Lion, where we met with most of the others who'd gone along on the trip, had a few drinks, and finally finally went our various ways home.

It's good to know that we did something useful, and it was good to meet so many people looking out for one another in  whatever ways they can. It was saddening, and it was educational; it was disheartening, and it was encouraging.  I left the weekend behind me wishing I'd been able to do more, and looking forward to the next opportunity.

Minamisoma Trip: the Second Day, Part One

I had been a little dubious about getting up in time to depart by 06:30, especially because it was around 02:30 when I went to sleep. I needn't have worried, though, since I woke up at 04:30 feeling surprisingly refreshed, with plenty of time to take a shower and saunter down to the lobby to meet the rest of the crew. We left on time, cheered by beautiful weather, and headed for the first major waypoint for the day, Soma, to the east.

Andrew continued to navigate, using the GPS "navi" function of his smartphone in combination with his previous experience of the area and its roads. We made a smooth transition from the relatively flat area around downtown Fukushima City into the mountains, and soon I was driving on winding, up-and-down roads though beautiful vistas of wooded slopes and gorges, with here and there a glimpse of fields, mostly rice paddies with the occasional stretch f what looked like pasture. It would have been a great road for motorcycling, and I made a mental note to come back someday on a bike.

The truck handled reasonably well, though I wasn't able to devote as much attention to the scenery as it deserved: the road required much of my concentration. This was the first truck I'd driven with an automatic transmission, and it wasn't long before I was missing the ability easily to use lower gears for engine braking. The legroom was adequate but not generous, and since the brake pedal was three or four centimeters higher than the gas pedal, my right knee got a lot of exercise being drawn up and back to brake. I was driving very conservatively; the traffic both ways was very light, but some of the slopes were fairly steep, and there were enough  curves to keep things interesting. If you want to get an idea of the terrain, try Google Maps and look at Route 115 from Fukushima Station east toward Soma.

When we got closer to the coast and into the outskirts of Soma, we turned south and proceeded to our first rendezvous point of the day, in Minamsoma. Here, shortly before 08:30 and still on schedule, we met with a group of local volunteers, with another truck that had come from Yamagata with Daniel Kahl driving a full load of fresh Yamagata spring water, and with a busload of other volunteers who had come up from Osaka (!).  After introductions all around and a briefing on the days' planned activities, we got back in our various vehicles and followed a local volunteer's car to the first of five temporary housing areas.

After a short drive, we arrived and started the process that we'd repeat at each of the spots on our route. First find a place to park the trucks, not so close as to be in the way but not so far as to make unloading/reloading inefficient. Next, pull a couple of folding tables and some wheelbarrows out of a truck. Then, unload approximately enough of the supplies to fit the distribution plan for this area's residents/households, open crates,   set the stuff out on the tables arranged by item type, ensure someone is at each spot to count and hand out the predetermined amount, and start the distribution.

Most of the residents, with help from the local volunteers, were lining up as the setting up was done. When all was ready, each person came up, they gave the number of people for whom they were receiving food and water, handed in their pre-arranged slip, and walked along the the tables collecting the appropriate, pre-determined  number of oranges, potatoes, carrots, onions, soup mix, small and large bottles of water, etc., with the help of those handing them out and of other volunteers assisting with wheelbarrows, empty boxes, or sacks, and carrying the supplies to the homes of those unable to manage the weight or bulk.

As boxes emptied, they were put into service for carrying by the residents, or broken down and flattened to get them out of the way if not usable. As the stock by the tables depleted, more cases were unloaded from the trucks and opened. Meanwhile, everyone made an effort to engage the residents in conversation as much as possible, especially the children. Once everyone had received their allotment, everything was loaded back onto the trucks and  the little caravan of vehicles drove off to the next area.

This process was repeated four times, for little temporary settlements containing groups of people varied in numbers and demographics: some had more kids and a younger average age, some seemed composed mostly of senior citizens. The total for this run was a little over 800 people in a little over 300 households, and they all  impressed me with their cheerfulness and positive attitude. I didn't see a single glum face, young or old, among any of the residents of the adequate but cramped housing, nor among any of the local or "imported" volunteers.

We all gathered in the early afternoon for a quick lunch prepared by local volunteers, chatted a bit, and then departed for the return journey, a little before three.

Stay tuned for the final installment, covering the return journey and the aftermath, in the next post.

Minamisoma Trip: the First Day

Last weekend, I had an opportunity to do something I had been hoping to do for some time. Some friends of mine, patrons of the Black Lion pub in Meguro, have been doing volunteer work in Tohoku, most recently in Minamisoma, Fukushima, and this time I was able to go along. Previously, I'd contributed some time and money to help fund the project, but I'd been told that they sometimes need truck drivers, and had offered my services to do something more direct. I finally got my chance.

Early Saturday afternoon I met Andrew Coad, the expedition leader, at the Nippon Car Rental facility in Roppongi, where we got a two-ton truck, and then quickly set out to get it loaded and on the road.  The first stop was Metro Cash and Carry in Tatsumi, where we got about half a truck full of vegetables and fruit and several cases of snacks for kids. This part was relatively easy, since most of the stuff was on pallets and the warehouse workers got them quickly into the truck using hand-operated wheeled jacks (think man-powered forklifts).  The very energetic Andrew alternated between filling in gaps with loose cases and checking counts: in order to ensure fair distribution, it's necessary to have a good count, so getting numbers on, for example,  oranges (1680 of 'em) and the average number of carrots or potatoes per case was as important as confirming the number of cases. New to the game, I helped as much as I could, but I wasn't terribly useful in comparison with the warehouse pros and the indefatigable (he had spent the previous day/night moving, and had returned what was probably the same truck just a few hours before!), efficient Andrew.

Then it was off to Second Harvest in Asakusabashi, where we met Philip Duncan, who is in charge of distribution logistics for the Save Minamisoma Project, which in this case meant that he had arranged for the truck and he helped Andrew and me to transfer enough cases of assorted food and beverages from a truck parked nearby to fill up ours. It was a warm day, and he must have been less comfortable picking up and passing heavy boxes in a shirt and tie than we were in casual clothes. He was still smiling, though,  when we finally locked the truck up and set off for Fukushima.

Meanwhile, the rest of our group had left in two private vehicles from  Meguro, to go up separately and rendezvous with the truck at our destination for the day, close to Fukushima Station.

The first leg of the journey was easier than expected. The weather was good for most of the trip, and the roads were less crowded than I'd anticipated. We took the Tohoku Expressway once we'd cleared the Shuto (Tokyo Metropolitan) Expressway and its environs, and made good time for the next 250-odd kilometers, with relatively little traffic all the way, and just a flurry of rain in one of the passes close to our destination. We reached Fukushima Station and the nearby Grand Park Hotel  at just about the planned time, virtually simultaneously with the other two vehicles. Here, in trying to park the truck in a lot designed for rather smaller vehicles, I had an unfortunate altercation with the awning of the lot's payment machine, bending it pretty thoroughly and creasing the top of the truck's cargo compartment.

The rest of the evening was spent in checking in, going out for dinner and a few beers, parceling loose kids' snacks into individual plastic pouches, and, eventually, talking to the local police--one of whom turned out to have relatives in Minamisoma--and to the owner of the parking lot...who also owns the hotel, and who was an astoundingly nice fellow, very decent (almost apologetic) about the damage to his awning, and who even gave us a cash donation for the project! After a nightcap or two, most of us turned in relatively early; the plan called for a 06:30 departure.

Stay tuned for a description of the rest of the trip, in the next post.

Losing to Fate and the Weather

This last Golden Week, eight climbers died in the Japan Northern Alps. The weather during the holidays was very volatile even in the predominantly flat Kanto area, and except for a day or two when it seemed to be suddenly summer, overall it was pretty cold and gloomy. Some of the deceased climbers were described in the media as being "experienced", yet many or most were wearing only T-shirts and light windbreakers, with no gloves.

It's not charitable to say so, but to me that's gambling with Fate without sufficiently understanding the rules of the game.

I've written about this kind of thing before. It's always sad to hear these stories, and there seem to be more of them in the last few years. Perhaps that's simply because the graying of society is raising the average age of folks on the mountains.

Mountain weather is very changeable, particularly this early in the season, although I've seen some sudden and drastic changes even in mid-summer. It's always better to be over- than under-prepared, if you intend to descend the mountains alive.

I suspect that some of the people who were mentioned as having  experience in, for example, the Himalayas may have been taking the Japan Alps too lightly, believing them safe by comparison. I can understand the reluctance to carry a tent or heavy coat on what is planned to be a fairly easy trek, but a good down jacket, while bulky, doesn't weigh that much, and it could save your life. The same is true for warm gloves and a knit ski cap or the like, neither of which add that much weight or bulk. Even a couple of negligible-weight, super-compact "space"/survival blankets added to your rucksack or stuffed into a pocket "just in case" might well be the difference between dying or surviving.

I'd really like, for a change, to start hearing more stories about climbing groups whose "just in case" preparations enabled them to survive and return safely even when the unexpected struck.

Thunderstorms with a Twist

Ibaraki and Tochigi experienced considerable damage from last year's Tohoku earthquake, including collapsed houses, but got much less exposure in the news than other prefectures did. The scale of the destruction and loss of life in Miyagi, Iwate, and Fukushima was much greater, and the scenes of liquefaction in Chiba provided very dramatic video as well as cautionary tales about what disaster insurance would and would not cover.

The two northern Kanto prefectures are receiving plenty of attention now, unfortunately, because of the tornados that ripped through them. The damage was considerable, including the death of a boy whose house, foundation and all, was picked up and set down upside-down. That was in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, where as many as 200 homes had their roofs blown away. In Moka City and Mashiko and Motegi Towns in Tochigi, 300 or so homes were damaged. Broken utility poles, debris strewn wildly about, broken glass, and crushed cars have figured prominently in the news since, along with human interest stories with interviews of people in homes with no walls or roof, waiting for power to be restored. I saw one particularly poignant interview with a fellow whose house was half-demolished...he'd moved there not long before after losing his home in the Tohoku disaster. 

The storms caused hail damage in Mito, Ibaraaki, too. One video clip I watched described and showed the first examples I've seen of roof tiles broken not by falling, but by being hit by hailstones.

Other prefectures were not entirely spared by the storms accompanying the twisters: long-suffering Fukushima had 20 greenhouses blown away and four homes damaged "by gusts", a farmer was electrocuted by lightning while on his tractor in Toyama, and a family walking their dog were struck by lightning in Okegawa, Saitama. The mother and her 11-year-old daughter were hospitalized; the mother has since recovered consciousness but the daughter still has not.

I may have seen that lightning strike, since I was standing outside not too many kilometers north of Okegawa at the time, watching the sudden and very violent lightning storm taking place around that area in the middle distance, glad that the storm had mostly moved away from me. 

By the standards of countries where tornadoes are more common and  often more severe, these were relatively mild. The Meteorological Agency is saying that they were probably F2 on the Fujita Scale. Tornadoes are unusual in Japan, however, although they seem to have been becoming more frequent in recent years. In a quick search, I could only find records of 16 since 1881; half of them have hit since 1964, three of those since 2006. 

It's possible that there have been more: in the last few years some reports of sudden, violent "gusts" were blamed for damage that looked very much as if it had been caused by a tornado, and I've heard a lot of news reports describing such phenomena as "strong gusts appearing like tornadoes". I assume that  the media--and probably the Meteorological Agency--are reluctant to pronounce them tornadoes without clear evidence that they're not downbursts or sudden really violent gusts but not exactly tornadoes. That's the reason for the quotation marks above, since I'd bet that was a tornado in Fukushima, too.

Yesterday, the tornadoes in Tochigi and Ibaraki were being called by that rather tentative term. Today's news stories, after all of the amateur video clips of them had been repeatedly aired, were calling them tornadoes unequivocally. The victims have, I'm sure, no doubt what they were.