tuesday morning: quake wakeup

Everyone has been asking me to update them about our situation, and as not everyone is on facebook, I'm now using the blog (finally found a use for it!)
 Monday: the power cut that was announced for the afternoon and that spurred me and many people in the neighborhood to head to the supermarket before the cash registers switched off (long, long, queues!) never happened. Nor was it switched off later as people get home. We're all being good citizens about conserving energy.
There were long queues also for the drugstore, which was doing a roaring business in face masks, toilet paper and tissues.
We watched "Julie/Julia" in the afternoon for some distraction.
I spent a lot of time emailing other parents from school, answering concerned emails from friends, reading opinions of the various experts and trying to control keep myself from melting down (with the help of some "cooling" French wine). See, I can't help trying to crack jokes.

On Tuesday:

Woken at 5 am by the bed shaking, an immediate shot of adrenaline. Three seconds are a long time when you are lying there thinking "should I go get the kids?". Then it stopped.

The risk of a big aftershock has been downgraded to 40% today.

We are still in Tokyo, though the peer pressure is mounting as we hear of more and more gaijin families heading out. I just heard from a friend now in Singapore that Areva (a company that builds and operates nuclear power plants) has repatriated all the families. Principe de précaution. Not a vote of confidence from the engineers. But then on the other hand the French companies have all started moving their staff families out.

Service stations were shut this morning when Steve drove to work. Apparently there are problems getting supplies because of disruptions to traffic.  I haven't checked the shops yet but will do this soon.

I find it difficult to write in these circumstances with a high level of anxiety, the various opinions pinging around about the risks of a meltdown, and my own indecision.

There is a huge difference of attitude between the Japanese and gaijin regarding risk of radioactive contamination. One the one hand, this is "home", and it's an island, so there is no question of "repatriating".  On the other hand,  they lived through the two nuclear bombs being dropped on them, and by and large survived (we hear of many people who were exposed to high levels of radiation and are still alive, in their 90s).