Report from Tokyo

First, I want to make an excuse for not updating the blog for a few days.
This is a very person thing, but I had a graduation ceremony about 2 days ago and officially graduated from the college. I moved to Tokyo today, so I started a new life in Tokyo.
So, the last couple of days were very busy and didn't have time to write a new entry.


Anyways, I was in Kanazawa which isn't affected by the quakes, and now in Tokyo.
I found a big difference between those two cities.
In Kanazawa, everything seemed working fine and I felt like nothing serious happened in Japan even right after the quake. The city was filled with liveliness as usual.
Honestly, I was at a loss because of a huge gap between my mind and others'. I was actually very confused by it.

The news on TV and the Internet took me the motivation for any work.
I was not productive and really couldn't do anything other than to watch news and write a blog to let people feel the terrible situation in Japan at the time.
However, the environment in Kanazawa was very far apart from my sense then. Here, I don't blame or criticize that at all because we should be productive and get back the normal life we used to have as much as we can.
I just mention that I had a feeling which is that Kanazawa was too peaceful for me at that time.


Now in Tokyo, I think the atmosphere is a lot different from that of Kanazawa.
I feel something like worries from people. I think this is caused mainly from the information about the radioactive materials of nuclear plants and the planned blackouts.
People seem to be quiet and tired compared with before the quake.


We have faced a serious shortage of the power since the quake, especially in Tokyo area as you know.
Many people are now trying to reduce the use of electricity. Companies and household pull out plugs they don't use and turn off heaters in this cold day.
They cooperate each other in this situation and are doing what they can.
As a result so far, they haven't experienced blackout as many as first planned.


The below is a chart which shows today's consumption of electricity in Tokyo area, and I briefly explain it.

• The vertical axis is power supply (10,000 kW) and the cross axis is time shift.
• The top blue line shows the consumption of the same date of the last year.
• The pink line shows that of yesterday.
• The bar graph shows today's consumption.

As you can see from the chart above, the consumption of yesterday and today was greatly decreased compared with that of last year.
In addition, it was a cold day today but people didn't use heater with their effort.  So, it would exceed the consumption of last year if we hadn't done any efforts to handle this situation.
In my apartment also, heater is off and lights which we don't need.

It is good that people raise their awareness and take this power saving action.