Battling a spiral of hysteria in Tokyo

By Nick Jones for Yahoo! SEA

It's been one of the longest weeks of my life. Days have dragged by since giant slabs of the Earth's crust violently collided far under the ocean off the northeast coast of Japan at 2:46pm on March 11.

I had taken a day off to enjoy a long weekend with my family, so was at home when seismic shockwaves tore through the Tohoku and Kanto regions of Japan's main island of Honshu. As the heaving and swaying of our five-storey apartment building rolled on and on, the sound of rattling and scraping of metal on concrete reverberating through the neighbourhood, a thought flashed through my mind: Is this it -- the long-overdue Big One so many experts have predicted?

Little did I know that those people living 400km to the north of my home in suburban Tokyo were feeling the full terrifying brunt of Mother Nature's power. And while I stood on the pavement among the throngs of dazed, ashen faces, the sea was already roaring towards the shore. Whole towns and villages in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures were just minutes away from being devoured by frothing torrents of black pacific sludge.

We watched the next series of tsunami waves live on television, the horror unfolding before our eyes as news network helicopters flew above the white-capped walls of water as they surged relentlessly further and further inland. From our bird's eye view, we watched transfixed as locals drove unknowingly along strips of road, oblivious to the fast-approaching sea that was now choked with debris, boats, cars and whole burning houses.

Another powerful aftershock sent us running for the door again. Watching and experiencing this display of seismic might made me realise how precarious our lives really are. The weekend took on a surreal routine. We shuffled between our dining table, sofa and computer. I tried to glean as much information as possible in between sending reassuring e-mails to friends and family.

As the first images of devastation began to emerge, it soon became clear that another more immediate crisis was beginning to take shape at a nuclear power plant on the Fukushima coast. It appeared that the tsunami had knocked out all sources of power at the plant meaning that the reactor cores couldn't be kept cool. The Internet was quickly awash with speculation and worse-case scenarios. Nuclear physicists and experts from various institutes gave their grave appraisals of the events unfolding from cities thousands of kilometres away. The situation worsened at Fukushima No. 1 power station as more reactors encountered problems.I tried to ward off doomsday thoughts, but then the first reports of foreigners heading for the airports appeared. We heard from some friends, a Frenchman, his Japanese wife and their two boys, who had left Tokyo and were with family in Nagoya. I thought the move was a little rash, but then the French Embassy advised its citizens in Tokyo and the surrounding area to leave.

All the while, the picture from the northeast looked increasingly grim. Whole communities had been decimated, but the official death toll hovered in the hundreds. I knew it would continue to grow as more relief teams reached the stricken areas. Yet the majority of the media remained focused on the Fukushima power plant. Over the ensuing days, my anxiety levels fluctuated according to the latest developments at Fukushima.

Mornings were the worst. After a fitful night's sleep, often punctuated by nerve-jangling aftershocks, I would head straight to my PC to find out how things had progressed overnight. But just as it seemed like workers at the crippled plant had got things under control at one reactor, problems would spring up at another one.

Since Japan, with few natural resources, relies so heavily on its nuclear power industry, it soon became clear that supplying electricity to the world's biggest city was going to become a huge challenge. Hastily, late on Sunday night, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), which also runs the Fukushima plant, announced a schedule of rolling blackouts until the end of April and a plea to conserve energy. In reply, the city's train companies slashed their timetables.

Since Friday, I had become absorbed with just one subject and the conversations with my wife had taken on a solemn tone. My daughter, just days away from her 5th birthday, could tell. Perhaps in an effort to lighten the heavy mood at home, she wanted to play, laugh and hug even more than she normally did.

The Internet became as much a blessing as a curse. The word "Chernobyl" started appearing in Western news reports as journalists began arriving from the major capitals of the world, carrying suitcases full of apocalyptic superlatives. Soon the news in some corners of the press and broadcast media looked like it had been written by sensationalist fiction writers. The stories were representative of what they wanted to see, rather than what was actually happening in Tokyo.

There was no panic in the streets, but we soon had one in the media. That then morphed into tales from a "city of ghosts." As the hacks pumped out the half-baked truth about clouds of radioactive doom heading towards the capital, Tokyoites continued to go to work each day. Although everybody soldiered on, the tension was palpable. Nobody was reading books, newspapers or manga on trains anymore. They peered anxiously at mobile phone screens (see slideshow). As the Japanese government tried desperately to allay fears of radiation spreading beyond the evacuation zone around the plant, whispers of a conspiracy began to appear on the Internet. What were officials hiding? The fact that Tepco had a less-than-glowing record for divulging the truth at its other nuclear plants before the crisis didn't reassure an already nervous public.

I was becoming weary of the constant monitoring of news feeds. I searched for balanced, rational interpretations of what was happening at Fukushima and what the real dangers were. It was difficult not to become sucked into a spiral of hysteria, particularly as more friends and acquaintances left the country, headed away from Tokyo or planned worse-case-scenario exits. The more the non-existent panic was reported by the Western media, the closer we edged to actually experiencing one. It became obvious that many journalists recognised the career-making prospects of the story and were completely ignorant of their responsibilities. Naturally, family and friends abroad grew more and more apprehensive.

As increasing numbers of foreign residents left, a trickle of Japanese families began to start boarding trains and planes out of Tokyo as well. Life was becoming more difficult. Trains were running sporadically and items like bread, milk, rice, eggs, candles, batteries and canned foods were disappearing from the shelves. But these were mere inconveniences compared with the sense of uncertainty that had enveloped our lives.On Wednesday, I read a transcript of an interview by the UK Embassy with the British government's chief scientific officer about the situation at Fukushima. It was a much-needed dose of sanity and level-headed analysis. But the next day I woke up to the news that the British Foreign Office was advising British nationals in Tokyo and to the north of the capital to leave the area over concerns about an "evolving" situation at Fukushima, as well as depleted supplies and power outages. More countries followed suit and some advised their citizens living within 80km of the plant to evacuate immediately. It was far from a vote of confidence in the government.

My mind was made up. I already had a day off booked for Friday from weeks before. Combined with Monday's national holiday, we could head to my wife's family in the west of Japan. I convinced myself it wasn't an alarmist reaction; it was a four-day spring holiday. And as our packed bullet train hurtled towards Fukuoka on Friday evening, I realised that it wasn't any pending meltdown and radioactive plume we were escaping, it was my perpetual need to scan the news and Internet for reasons not to worry.

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*The writer is a British national who lives and works in Tokyo as a magazine editor. He is married to Japanese and has a young daughter.