Hello,

                I have left Tokyo and I’m in Utsunomiya visiting my friend, Heather, whom I haven’t seen for about 11 years. We were roommates in Madison, along with her black cat, Shaft, who played fetch. She now has an adorable three-year old daughter, and we’ve already become good friends.

Utsunomiya is only 150 kilometers from the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima Prefecture. The levels of radiation are suppose to be safe, but obviously it is a constant source of stress for everyone that lives here. Heather said that when the news of the plant disaster first broke everyone, that could leave, fled. She watched every foreigner who had friends and family in other countries book tickets in a mass exodus. Heather’s husband is Japanese, and they live next door to his parents, their daughter, Nina, has lived in Japan since she was born, they have a home and jobs here, the decision to leave is not a simple one, but obviously something they’ve considered. It’s clear to me how much stress this has created in their lives. Heather said she was actually deleted by people on facebook who told her she should get out of Japan, and if she wouldn’t they weren’t going to watch her die. Whoa.

My sister was telling me that the government was having problems evacuating people from their homes, up in Fukushima, where they know for a fact that eventually you will die if you stay there. You can’t see the radiation. How do you know the truth? What they do know is that they live in one of the most beautiful Prefectures in Japan, in homes that have belonged to their families for generations. Heather said that rather than put their money in the hands of unknown people, the bank, Japanese families invest it in their homes and land to pass onto their children. If that disappears they literally have nothing. You can see, in light of that, how walking away from a home that’s still standing, that has blankets and beds, and all the memories of a lifetime, and promise of a future for your children, because of invisible mist, would be hard to convince some to do.

People up there are still working at the plant non-stop, trying to keep it under control, and that is the really sad part. The people working to contain it will certainly not survive the levels of radiation they’re encountering on a daily basis. How do they cope with that knowledge? I suppose they just focus on the task at hand and move forward, maybe thinking of the lives they are saving rather than their own.

This morning there was a magnitude 6.7 quake to the north, and a subsequent tsunami alert, which has been lifted. Everything in Utsunomiya is OK. People are playing tennis outside the window, school kids are out at recess, screaming happily in the distance, and Shaft the cat is snoozing on the couch.