Japan Rider: The Blog

I remember this phrase from my study of German years ago, and it really made an impression… it was contrasted to the alternative (but considered vulgar) Ich bin voll…

Until recently I had forgotten about these phrases and their distinction, especially as I didn’t really understand the difference, and filed away the distinction as just polite rather than technical.

I now completely understand the difference.

The short story is that I found myself living in an ever-tightening cycle of eating, and needing to eat. I would wake up hungry, eat, run or bike, eat again, go to work and endure an irritable itchiness that could only be satisfied with a sugary snack, eat a ‘healthful’ large lunch, snack again, and be starving again by dinnertime.

This continued for years, until the cycle tightened to me waking up twice a night to either eat, or drink, something and sleep again, or stay awake and suffer from fidgety dissatisfaction.

After eating, I could count on a one or two hours of focus and concentration, but that yielded to irritability if I couldn’t quickly get a cookie, rice-ball, can of cold beer or hot cocoa. Exhausting.

For the last eight weeks, I have eaten nothing but meats, fats, and vegetables, completely avoiding sugars, carbs and grains. Within 4 days I was in ketosis, and I haven’t faltered, or been tempted to falter, yet.

Ich bin satt..

Since then, after my meals of eggs, beef or pork and some veggies sauteed in butter or coconut oil, a sense of well-being… satiety,… washes over me. I can think. I can concentrate. Not only don’t I crave snacks, I can skip meals without even noticing. When I am ‘satisfied’, I am done eating.

Actual differences that I should have recorded are many, but I entered into this as a trial, not really a test, so I didn’t record or measure hard data. What I can report though, are these:

1) My body temperature is spot-on 36.6 deg now. It has always been a full 1 degree Centigrade lower unless in a fever state.

2) I can sleep through the night, and wake with a rested feeling. Previously I woke only to jump up in search of a sweet danish or coffee.

3) Now, no need to snack: I usually needed to eat sweets, or drink a beer, several times a day to maintain a calm disposition. If I couldn’t carry something sweet / carby with me, I’d do anything to get to a shop and buy something.

4) I wasn’t worried about my weight or skin, but once cutting carbs and sugar, I immediately lost all my belly fat (pants are loose) and my skin has cleared up completely.

I don’t plan on giving up on this regimen; it will become my lifestyle instead of just a temporary experiment. Here is a pic of my now usual breakfast (taken on a particularly sunny morning, so with good light!); bacon and eggs, with the pumpkin, string bean, asparagus and broccoli glistening with coconut oil. Satisfying!

The earthquakes and aftershocks (and ensuing public announcements) have been relentlessly constant. Yesterday, for example, Japan endured 23 earthquakes, releasing 537 Tera-Joules of energy. Some of those were quite noticeable here in Shizuoka, but many were felt as a swaying or rolling motion, just slightly dizzying.

Here is a snapshot of a graph of the energy release since the big one, March 11th. The interactive version is here.

Another interesting graphic depiction of the seismic events has been compiled, with the interactive version here.

My 10-minute commute to and from work under the cherry blossoms!

The media, government and industry here are quite cozy, and this reality is a tolerated aspect of Japanese society that is widely acknowledged and seldom criticized. There is wisdom in leaving big decisions to experts with a benevolent long view, and not loudly second-guessing with only arm-chair qualifications.

It may seem outrageous to Western minds, for the Japanese public to continue trusting these entities considering the continuous series of embarrassing missteps. However, this may be the very reason that Japan’s history is measured in 1000′s of years, even with limited and fragile resources, typhoons, earthquakes, tsunamis, and even atomic bombings.

I’m not an expert, but I would counter that the Japanese accept that there may be immediate hardship, but will endure rather than panic.

On the other hand, it is interesting to witness the variety of confusing, contrary, or just nonsensical information being released to the public. None of it is sufficient, accurate or whole enough to actually quantify the threat of the radiation leaking from the Fukushima reactors.

I’ve done the math, and based on official reports, my 30-minute jog tomorrow morning will be as dangerous as three ripe bananas, a Winston menthol, and a mammogram. Whew.

Outside sources of information are an interesting contrast. This projection from the German Meteorological Service isn’t something being shown here, for sure. (This is based on the weather conditions that would spread the radiation; the actual intensity can’t be certain as it is based only on the Japanese officially released measurements.):

Despite the incredible devastation, suffering and loss of the earthquake and resulting tsunami, Japan is in full-steam-ahead mode. People, families, companies and cities are cooperating to share the sacrifices and inconveniences, which are obvious but trivial at the same time when considering the scope of this disaster.

Immediate relief efforts and the anticipated recovery and rebuilding of the affected areas are underway, and there is serious progress in those areas, which is great news.

A frustrating complication, besides the unseasonably cold weather and continuing earthquakes, has everyone on edge: the uncontrolled reactors in Fukushima. The news media is reporting progress and setbacks in real time, creating a palpable emotional roller-coaster for the normally-reserved citizens. I am monitoring the situation as well, trying to make sense of the changing outlook. This isn’t a real-time resources, but here is an interesting graphic that shows what is on everyone’s mind:

Brian will be blogging soon, describing some of the ways that the earthquake, tsunami and reactor damage is affecting life for normal people even outside of the ‘at risk’ radius.

From watching CNN here in North America, I find many things frustrating. For example, the reporters always say, “Here in Japan, you can see tsunami washing over the car in this video provided by the driver…”. And “Here in Japan, the massive damage is devastating…” Here in Japan. Uh-Huh. I know Japan is a small country, but it’s not that small. Luckily, the clips being shown, often from NHK Broadcasting, contain the city name in kanji in the upper-right corner. I was able to better understand the tsunami, as the video was taken in Chiba.

Also, Brian says that CNN has too much hype but few facts. He sent me this link, and this is more real, Japanese reporting:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-world-tv

It contains live broadcasts from NHK World – Japanese news in English!

I have been spending time between being distracted by multi-tasking, job-searching and generally symptoms of cabin fever which I associate with being cooped up indoors. Thankfully, the weather here has warmed up considerably, and the snow finally seems to have stopped falling.

Still, the snowbound months were good for reading! And this is a post I’ve wanted to write for a while, ever since I received my new Amazon Kindle from Brian.

I first bought a Kindle last year, around May or so, and, despite my earlier misgivings about electronic vs. paper books, I fell in love with it instantly.

A couple of months ago, I was lucky enough to get the new Kindle as a birthday gift, and I noticed many improvements over the earlier (white only) model. For one thing, it is a little bit slimmer, and a little bit smaller, but the screen is just as big as the earlier model. Another thing I prefer – the buttons feel much less cheap and plasticky compared with the earlier version. Additionally, the new Kindle seems to turn pages noticeably faster.

This is not to say that I was ever unhappy with the older model – it was and is performing great. The screen is beautifully easy on the eyes, and I love the ability to carry around a hundred (and more!) books in one small package. I also love being able to log in to Amazon and buy something on the fly (like I did from the airport when returning to Canada and I had nothing I felt like reading!).

My old Kindle I kindly passed on to my mother, who surprised me by being so pleased with the device that she has been reading at least three books a week. For her, the best feature is the ability to make the text much bigger than in a regular book, so she doesn’t need her glasses or have to squint!

Here’s my old Kindle:

Kindle 2 (old Kindle)

And with the cover that I loved because it makes it feel more like a real book:

My (now my mother's) book cover

And my new Kindle:

New Kindle

And while I couldn’t find the ideal cover, this one is okay – it lets me prop up the book on a table so I can read hands-free:

Propped up

It is hard under these circumstances to be happy about much, but it is comforting to know that our own friends and acquaintances have not been harmed, even though so many others have, and many are still suffering.

My home-base in Susono is geographically 500km distant from the epicenter and the tragic results, and people around here have kept their ‘ganbatteiru’ (persevering) attitude in the face of the relatively minor sacrifices and local inconveniences. For example, it might be easy to complain about the train lines being inconsistent or even suspended, but instead people and companies are working together to assess priorities and find alternatives.

The foreign news reports I have seen (in English) don’t seem to appreciate the depth and breadth of effort the Japanese people and institutions have put into disaster preparation and response… within hours, my electric company implemented this plan for ‘rolling blackouts’ in blocks of 3 or so hours each, for 10 million households. I am in Group 2:

This week's scheduled blackouts

These blackouts are to apportion the electric power fairly and to minimize the obvious disruption, while allowing the power company to repair the grid safely and quickly. In addition, people are voluntary heeding the plea to avoid unnecessary usage as noted by dramatic drops in the demand for power. (This city has also turned off street lights, so the night sky is brilliant with stars, for a change.)

Closer to home, this area hosted a large earthquake last night. People are still a little nervous from the big earthquake last Friday and the dozens of quite noticeable aftershocks that have continued since, so the 6.0 really shook folks up. Again there were no injuries among my friends or co-workers, but this one did damage some of our office buildings and sounded alarms across town. The rest of the night included aftershocks strong enough to wake those who could sleep again at all.

10:40 pm Earthquake in Shizuoka, March 15

After an incredibly busy last few days and sleepless nights, I am actually looking forward to stable sleep tonight. Tomorrow morning I’ll again drive co-workers to their offices (trains through this town will not run again for weeks) before getting to my own desk, and then get as much done as possible before the planned daytime blackouts.

As I rest tonight, rescuers continue their search in the tsunami zones, and Tokyo Denryoku does their best to control the reactors in Fukushima. I am confident in the sincerity of their efforts.

Everyone by now has seen on the news the extensive damage caused by the massive earthquake that hit Japan on Friday afternoon (March 11th, 2011). Reports now say that the death toll just in Miyagi may exceed 10,000 people. Thankfully for us, though, our area and the region where most of our friends live, was not badly affected and nobody we know has been hurt.

Here is a photo that Brian took of the Numazu Harbor after the earthquake and tsunami. It is very calm – but of course, as he said, the city had closed the storm doors to protect against waves!

The bigger worry now is the overheating reactors at two nuclear power plants; again, neither is near our home base. However, our city is, indeed, scheduled for rolling blackouts in three-hour periods twice daily

I, however, was very, very far removed from the danger and inconvenience, as I have been snow and ice bound in Montreal since October…

Oddly enough, even with the earthquakes, tsunami, malfunctioning nuclear power plants, and rolling blackouts, I miss my Japan life….