Life in Tokyo: Interviews with Japanese friends in our community who have come back from Tokyo recently.

We heard from various sources that the radiation level in Tokyo is equivalent to the one in Belarus where it was severally affected by Chernobyl disaster.  The radiation stays for many years once it contaminated the environment.  We don’t want to be so nervous but we need to be cautious what to eat as it can be exposed to the radiation internally.  So no wonder that people in Tokyo are so concerned about the whole thing.   

Here are the interviews:

The experience and impression of both our friends are more or less the same in that;  Nothing seems to be done to alert visitors who arrive at the International Airports about the radiation, whether because tourism is suffering very badly and they don't want to turn them away, but anyway in general there isn't much public information readily available to the average Japanese who rely on newspapers and TV etc, though internet users do find information posted by private people who go out and measure various places with their own Geiger counters out of personal concern. Those who are concerned are mainly people with small children and some do move to safer areas to live but on the whole both our friends felt there is a psychological climate of denial, that it has become taboo to talk openly about the situation.

There is growing tiredness and hopelessness spreading among people. Most people seem to buy produce without checking its origin, and if you look for produce from safe areas you expect to pay triple, and there is no real guarantee that it comes from the safe area. Some people get their foodstuff delivered directly from sources in safe areas, so there are ways around, but it sounds like eating is generally stressful.  No one really believes what the government or TEPCO the electric company who owns the devastated nuclear reactors, it's slowly turning into anger and rage, and our friends have come to feel that denial is a necessity in a way to live in such a situation on a daily basis with no definite solution proposed for the future.  One of the friends commented that this may be the flip side of virtuous patience of Japanese people, to slowly slip into resignation and non-action.  And the other one told us that she strongly feels people have right to know the truth, but media has abused its role in the society. There is now strong resentment that people have been lied to by the authority who favors big corporations to lives of ordinary people. Truth is a rare commodity in such a climate, and sadly one has to be skeptical to sift through mountains of false-information.  
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 I understand what's going on in the most Japanese people's mind by being Japanese myself,  but I also think that it is difficult to act positively from being in the victim place.