Earthquake

Between 20 and 25 percent of the world's earthquakes take place in Japan, so you can say that they occur fairly often there. That doesn't mean that they were prepared for anything like what happened last Friday.

The purple bit shows areas badly affected by the tsunami and the grey circle around Fukushima is the 20km exclusion zone. The Foreign Commonwealth Office 80km exclusion zone did not reach as far as Tokyo. As you can see I was very lucky to be at the other end of the country and on a completely different island. I was also very lucky because everyone who I know in Japan was safe.

I didn't really know what to do other than to hang around in the south until things became safer. In the end it became clear that I should leave the country for a while until things settle down and Newcastle offered to pay for us to come home so I had my passport sent in the post from Tokyo down to Hiroshima (still a long long way from the power plant,) and then I could make plans to fly back home. I ended up flying from Osaka Kansai airport via Seoul so that I didn't need to return to Tokyo. The stories I was hearing were quite scary, with hardly any trains running, regulated blackouts and food shortages. That is why I have come home without my computer, phone or indeed anything useful, but I don't mind this as I managed to get home safely. As I intend on returning though, this shouldn't be a problem, and If I am unable to return, my Japanese uni has said it will forward my things home.

My heart goes out to all the people in Japan who are going through hell right now and I hope that as many people as possible are recovered from the wreckage. I also hope that the brave efforts of the teams working on the power plant pay off and everyone is safe again.

I have a huge backlog of blogging to do so that will hopefully take my mind off the situation.