Sunday, March 20, 2011

I hope that Japan's crisis will help make the Chinese people aware of something important.

It's been a week since the nightmare. As time goes by, more details have been revealed. We have to face harsh reality. It has been said that there are still isolated places which some people have temporarily evacuated to but haven't yet been discovered. To make matters worse, some survivors at shelters died due to terrible conditions: lack of water, food, and the cold weather. Because the massive earthquake hit such a wide area of Japan (about 500 kilometers long), we've been having a very hard time transporting necessary goods to the disaster-stricken areas. On top of that, since refineries at many places, even near Tokyo, have been also damaged, we have been suffering from a serious shortage of gas.

As for the crippled nuclear power plant at Fukushima, I have no choice but to pray that the situation won't be worse, watching carefully to see whether or not our government discloses everything about the situation. So far, I don't plan on leaving Tokyo Chiba, but I try to get information from as many sources including those overseas.We are really sorry for making people scared worldwide.

I've heard that radiation leaks from the plant have caused panics in China. It's been reported that salt has disappeared from many supermarkets in China since a lot of people believe that salt will be effective when they are exposed to radiation.I really understand how much they are worried. However, I want to say something to the Chinese people.If you really care about your health, I strongly advise you to pay more attention to your environment. When I lived in Guangzhou, China a few years ago, to be honest, I felt that my heath was likely to be damaged due to air pollution and sick houses. I don't intend to rationalize our nuclear crisis. Needless to say, Tokyo Electric Power and our government deserve to be criticized. After the plant is under control, they will have an obligation to examine whether or not there were problems with risk management and to announce it.

On top of that, I hope that our crisis will inspire Chinese people to pay attention to contaminated areas in Xinjiang/新疆, China, although nobody knows exactly what is going on there. It has been said that the Chinese government carried out nuclear testing many times there and a large number of local people died due to exposure to radiation. It has been projected that since the Chinese government didn't announce anything about the situation of the contaminated areas, a lot of people there still suffer from cancers and congenital disorders.I've watched a documentary created by Channel 4 in the UK about that areas. The situation was serious.

I really hope that Japan will be able to deal with the nuclear problem well. In the past few days, the number of aftershocks has significantly reduced. However, it's expected that aftershocks will continue in the next six months.