Tuesday Afternoon

I am sure you are all waking up around now and wondering when I am going to confirm witness accounts that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have been seen galloping through the streets of Tokyo.
Some perspective. Outside of the immediate area - the Tohoku region - life is going on pretty much as normal. People are at work, schools are open, kids are outside playing in the local park and the workmen in front of my office are making a godawful racket jack-hammering the road open. Yes, there is an ever present awareness of how events are unfolding around Fukushima but thankfully pragmatic acceptance rather than blind panic tends to be the general attitude here.
As I said in a previous post the media are, being the media, obviously concentrating on the crowd-pleasing doomsday scenario. But for us up here in Muroran and for the majority of people throughout Japan, that right now is just that: something that is happening on the television in a distant place rather than in our immediate walking-talking here and now.
And the soba, by the way, was delicious.