Letter from Tokyo

After the Japan tragedy with the twin disasters of earthquake and Tsunami, we can only imagine through the pictures in newspapers what the people living there must have gone through. The losses, the tragedies are felt even deeper if you have a friend stuck there in such uncertain times. And what a relief it must be to receive his email after so long, to tell that he escaped the disaster unscathed. Here is a first hand account of the scenario post earthquake in Japan. My friend studies in Tokyo University, at the final stages of completing his Phd. This is his account of the present condition of Japan and what the people living there are facing.

from   Luke  to   Varnana Sarkar date  Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 9:18 PM subject   Re: How are you?

9:18 PM (12 hours ago)

Hey,

dont worry, all is fine with me and everyone else I know. Transportation has been pretty messed up which has caused a number of inconveniences in tokyo, but in the scheme of things they hardly matter. Things up north are absolutely terrible... its looking like 20k or more people died, despite all the preparations. We were incredibly lucky it didn't hit tokyo itself or the death toll would have been a much much higher. Well that has been one of the unusual things about the disaster, the majority of the victims have been elderly. Firstly because the more rural parts of japan have fewer young people and secondly because they were least likely to be able to escape from the tsunami. They still have no idea of the damage, but it looks like several cities were literally decimated.

At the moment though the city is in this incredibly sombre mood. In the last day or two we finally started getting proper deliveries of food to the stores, but the selection is way smaller than normal and more than half of the items at some stores are sold out. I still can't find milk... the blackouts havent been affecting the central city, but people are doing their best to save power so the city is a lot darker than normal (this really affects the mood). I almost hit someone when riding home tonight because all of the streetlights were turned off!

Anyway, I am fine, so no need to worry:)

Luke