Tag Archives: Embassy

Paradise Awaits

The sunken city of R’lyeh

The shinkansen arrived at Hiroshima station sometime after 11, and having checked the itinerary to the assigned location beforehand I chose to trek the remaining 2 kilometers instead of looking for the right train. With all my luggage, feeling like a heavy weapons guy was unavoidable.

My observations from two years ago were still valid; Hiroshima is a rare Japanese city where one can actually find something similar to espace verts, and in addition, the streets are wide and pleasantly organized. The initial joy I drew from the physical aspects of the city was quickly lost as I realized that the internet at my special outpost was non-functional. One conbini lunch and a lot of cursing later, I managed to get everything connected and was actually able to begin working. Besides the challenging start, the rest of the day at the empty office was dull and uneventful.

Wide Island

After checking in at ANA Crowne Plaza and checking out the gym thereof, I opted to try the casual dining buffet of the hotel. It was very reasonably priced at ¥3000. A well kept secret among westerners with a huge appetite is that the energy & micronutrient / yen ratio is always superior at a tabehoudai or buffet, given that the stomach capacity of the attendee exceeds a certain level. There is a very complicated mathematical formula for choosing the optimal place to eat, but tonight I clearly made the right choice.

Truth be told, since solving the internet issue at the makeshift embassy right after my arrival, I’ve been all smiles. Smiles, that, once again, I have utterly failed to conceal. I was grinning to the elevator mirror on the way to the restaurant before noticing the security camera watching me. Someone at the other end had probably already began suspecting that the Joker was still alive.

There's wild Pokémon in the tall grass!

Quand l’appétit va, tout va!

When in a hotel, do as the rich people do. Eat. And never stop. All things considered, the buffet was sublime. I began with several servings of different salads and cold entrees, after which I quickly discovered a huge bloc of parmesan cheese and a young chef grilling sasebo style steaks in a corner where nobody dared venture. Don’t ask me what a sasebo style steak is, I have no idea. But it was delicious. I didn’t initially believe my luck so I needed to confirm with the chef whether these really were part of the buffet menu. His nonchalant answer allowed all hell to break loose.

Relinquishing all sense of shame I returned to the steak counter 4 times and tried most of the other foods in between these cherished beef moments: hakata gyoza, crab korokke, beef tendon, shrimp sushi, roasted chicken, horse mackerel, mozzarella tomatoes. This is really beginning to resemble the diary of a hedonist, which it is. I felt like going on forever but decided to quit while I was ahead and chose one funny looking piece of green tea spongecake along with a dangerously large espresso to close the deal. My only cause of distress was that I left my phone and only camera in my room on purpose, thinking “I’m just gonna eat, no point to immortalize anything”. How wrong I was. I would label the whole evening as epic if it didn’t involve paying the jar. And tomorrow’s dinner venue calls the kimeta rule function.

-Obélix

What do you think the next happen now?

If I haven’t made any game-breaking mistakes in my personal study plan, I am now one mouse click and four months away from graduation. All I need is for my last essay to be graded, after which I’ll just have to wait for the summer vacation to be over to officially receive my degree. Also, the last essay, which I wrote today, was called a maturity exam, so if it actually measures maturity I may never pass it.

To make the situation even more hilarious, taking an exam abroad at a Finnish Embassy has a set fee of 100€, which I was told was a foreign ministry policy. For once I decided that I was not going to take any kind of arbitrary crap willingly, and took advantage of our foreign minister being one of the rare Finns on twitter by questioning the policies of the institution he’s responsible for. Considering he had replied to a friend’s earlier tweet about casting a vote for him in the parliamentary elections, it was not surprising that he answered me within the hour despite the sarcasm with which I had expressed my disdain for the system. I subsequently sent him a mail which he transferred to one of his assistants. It has now been two days with no further replies. I will resume spamming them on Monday until I receive an answer that satisfies me. That, or they cancel my passport.

Once I was done with proving my maturity by reproducing some of the main topics of my thesis on a couple of sheets of paper, I spent an hour chatting with other trainees at the embassy. The topics covered, among others, duties in Japan, the unenviable task of soothing relatives after a massive earthquake, and how to improve communication between trainees in the future. To make life even more interesting, my boss also offered me the possibility to go to Hiroshima for a week in the beginning of June to look after our emergency embassy facilities. Someone needs to go, and I’m not exactly the most critical human resource at the Tokyo office. Truth be told, my immediate answer was centered more on the efforts of trying to contain my grin than the words that came out of my mouth: something along the lines of  “surewhynot”.

-Antti

A Night at the Embassy

The Finnish Embassy in Tokyo organized a small event on the 9th of April to allow for Finnish citizens to get together and discuss the sphere of confusion in which Japan has been engulfed during the past month. By being in attendance, I was reminded of quite a few details I had managed to forget as well as able to get access to some novel data.

The event can be divided into three subjects and speakers:

-Finnish Ambassador Jari Gustafsson talked about general risks, communication, traveling, living in Tokyo and explained some of the mechanisms behind the decisions that the embassy had taken in the most hectic weeks after the main quake of March 11.

-Heikki Mäkipää, Head of the Finnish Institute in Tokyo, tapped into his knowledge in geology to give us in-depth information on the current situation concerning possible aftershocks, geological causes for the earthquake and where to turn to for further information.

-The Head of Tekes Japan, Reijo Munther, an engineer with a strong background in nuclear reactors (and cooling systems thereof), shared his views on the Fukushima plant, the imminent dangers it represents as well as put general radiation levels in a Finnish context.

Concerning the media

The ambassador was quick to point out that which has been repeated over and over on the internet for weeks, yet it was still nice to hear it from an official source:  the Japanese are more used to handling earthquake situations and have reacted to the situation very calmly, as opposed to foreign countries who… well… haven’t. In Finland in particular, where earthquakes never reach a magnitude a human being could perceive, merely the mention of an earthquake throws news outlets into scandal-seeking mode. A couple of questions directed at the ambassador today concerned the farce of Finns hoarding iodine pills and the notion that small local newspapers in Viitasaari supposedly knew more about the embassy’s crisis plans than the embassy itself.

Mr. Gustafsson had been in Finland when the quake first struck, and spent the whole day answering different media about the event. He had firsthand experience on how every medium that day was striving to discover the one word that would allow them to publish the most fear mongering story available. On the same morning, one expert source had inadvertently blurted out the term China Syndrome, which had soon been taken out of context and diffused everywhere by overly zealous news outlets who should be washed down the sink and shit-listed.

Concerning communications and traveling

The Finnish Embassy is still discouraging non-essential travel to the Tokyo area, but these limitations are likely to loosen within the following weeks or months.

When all else fails, obsolete technology is here to the rescue.

In the context of mobile phone networks, March 11 indicated that the loss of a mere 10% of network capacity renders mobile phone calls useless in the case of a disaster. If a strong aftershock were to strike Tokyo, this would certainly happen. As experienced during the main earthquake, however, mobile data was still widely available and for example Skype calls via mobile phones worked normally. Similarly, although normal home phone lines experienced issues and were sometimes cut, public phones were devoid of complications, leading to a suggestion for everyone to arm themselves with phone cards.

Finnair remains one of the very few European airlines offering direct flights to Narita airport without the need for crew changes. This means that 3 daily flights from Japan (Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka) to Helsinki are constantly rolling, so were the living conditions in Japan to take a turn for the worst, a way out would most likely remain available.

Concerning aftershocks (Kuaket pois!)

The danger and risks evoked by aftershocks were something I hadn’t properly grasped until now. The area affected by the shocks has been constantly reviewed as the epicenters of new aftershocks spread and now covers an area 600kms long practically covering all of Honshu. This means that devastating aftershocks are a possibility anywhere from Tokyo to Hokkaido. A possibility, not an eventuality.

Can you hear the cry of the planet?

Mr. Mäkipää introduced two scenarios prepared by international seismology experts; these scenarios were labeled the hopeful scenario and the negative scenario. In the first scenario, strong aftershocks come to a relatively quick end (obviously this scenario took a huge blow with the 7,1 magnitude aftershock on the 7th of April) and the situation soon calms down as the accumulated pressure in the lithosphere subsides.

The negative scenario concerned the possibility of a significant aftershock with a magnitude above 7, which in the worst-case scenario could hit directly south of the Tokyo area, causing massive damage. Regardless of location, a strong aftershock would definitely cause new problems to the already damaged infrastructure and dangerously stretched rescue and sheltering resources of Eastern Japan. Although there is a possibility for an occurrence of this nature, the probability was not discussed beyond the perspective that it will diminish with time. General guidelines urged us to keep this in mind until summer, asking for increased awareness and vigilance in the near future. While there is no imminent danger, the situation is by no means over.

Concerning radiation

Mr. Munther had a very relaxed approach towards all of the radiation concerns that have been presented up until now. He maintained that the major radiation risk still only concerns a very limited area near the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors while also admitting that no real breakthrough in cooling the reactors had been reached during the past 3 weeks. At the same time, the personnel working on repairing the plant is growing tired, which causes some concern.

He also admitted that until the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake he had been under the belief that the 7 meter-high anti-tsunami wall as well as having the emergency cooling pumps 20 meters above sea level would combine to be an adequate level of precaution at the Fukushima plant. History proved otherwise. The plant is now essentially future scrap metal, but precarious cooling and repairing efforts will need to go on for months, if not years.

Looks pretty good right now

Concerning the tap water scare in Tokyo at the moment, he made a couple of interesting comparisons. First of all, the limits for water radiation levels in Japan are really low compared to European standards. The limit for drinking water is 300 becquerels/kg in Japan while it is set far higher in Finland at 500 becquerels/kg. He demonstrated the disparity by stating that water from drill wells in Finland often reaches as high as 460 becquerels/kg. According to this analysis, when tap water in Tokyo exceeded 100 becquerels/kg (Japanese limit judged safe for children to drink) a couple of weeks back, it would have remained “very good drinking water.”

There is still good reason to keep a reasonable amount of water reserves at home, not due to radiation, but potential aftershocks. Mr. Mäkipää emphasized that in the event of a strong aftershock, it is crucial to stop drinking tap water immediately until a damage assessment has been made. This is due to the possibility of pipes breaking and sewage mixing with drinking water.

As an interesting anecdote, the scarcity of bottled water in Eastern Japan is reportedly not only related to the lack of water itself. One important bottle cap factory in Sendai was destroyed in the original quake, leading to a 30% loss of capacity in the entire Japanese bottle cap industry.

All of the statements in the post (with the exception of my media bashing) are direct translations of comments provided by Finnish government officials, although in a more relaxed, informal environment. I have no reason to doubt the veracity of any of the above.

-Antti