revjp comments

400th post, wow

Utterly agree, we shouldn't be fighting amongst ourselves.

@Kaptankichigai - Thanks Dad lol. Seriously, it all depends on your culture and the way you sense people around you. Japanese do care about how other people see them, that's why we have a kind of "peaceful" society

Kaptankichigai - you are lucky then not to care about how people see you

I meant "living abroad"

I mean, 348 comments shows that we are here dealing with a little more... As already pointed out by tko, klein and others, we are touching to the idea of integration, community, one's country, etc. You see, we are expats in Japan and deep inside we all care about how people see us, judge us. Luckily, the Japanese can understand our choices better than some fellow gaijins. Still, leaving abroad is not so easy, we all have to make choices when things like this happen. I have often tried to explain that to my Japanese coworkers who too often think leaving abroad is really too kakkoii

Kaptankichigai - I guess most cudntleavejin are a little angry with the flyjin for several reasons (hurting their image of good gaijin is one). And then the flyjin feel a little bad because, well yes they left.

Yes, let's keep our fingers crossed and our eyes opened. We should be mostly worried about another big earthquake finishing the Fukushima plant.

Of course Cleo... How did you plan to "get out of Tokyo" if/when things get worse?

tkoind2 - I say you are right, as usual

hoserfella - exactly

Leaving as soon as possible was the best way to avoid being trapped in Tokyo. You saw what happened with minor releases of I and Cs. Now imagine the cores completely melting down, dispersing far more dangerous particles in the environment. It would have been complete panic and chaos with no more flights to/from Japan and thus no way to escape. I guess at least a few clever people realized the danger was real.

Let's take a deep breath, relax and enjoy the sunshine today. There will be more worries coming sooner or later so why not move on for now? We all expressed our deep feelings and we know this debate is endless. To all of you, have a nice lunch! :)

tkoind2 - I have been reading Japantoday for a while now and I must say I admire you. Your posts are always inspiring. I wish there were more people like you here in Japan...

GJD - I didn't mean you were an idiot. You were looking for solid information in order to decide what to do and that's good! As a scientist, I couldn't agree more with what you did. But it's just wrong to write "the situation has played out exactly as they said". During the first few days, nobody knew how it was going to end up. Trust me when I say that we were very very lucky. Having to worry about a little iodine and cesium pollution in the water of Tokyo was nothing...

Fukushima a very bad situation but no threat to Tokyo

You were very brave to base your "major decision" on MIT and science news sites...

Mittsu. Lucky because I could choose to leave. And I am not one of those who expected to avoid "oppprobium" or losing my job, avoiding nuclear risks was more important. My employer and fellow employees understand that. I think it all depends on what your top priorities are in life.

@Mittsu: for most of us foreigners who live here, work is not our life, Japan is not our country. It should be easy enough for you to understand why it was easy to leave, no? I don't feel any shame, I just feel lucky.

@Porter Nothing to add, you said it all

@GJDailleult: "Hey maybe, but if true then fat lot of good it is doing you sitting in Osaka." That's why it was best just to leave Japan lol

All this makes me smile. It's easy to parade now that the situation is almost under control in Fukushima. Truth is that the week following the earthquake even Kan didn't know "what the hell was going on". The nuclear plant was a mess and we can just consider ourselves lucky everything went well, with just small amounts of radioactive materials released in the atmosphere. Leaving was the right thing to do before a possible complete chaos, by that I mean Narita and Haneda stopped, all trains packed with people trying to escape, etc. Japanese had basically nowhere to go so they stayed in Japan, piling up packs of water at home.