My family and I have been in Kobe city for two days.
Where we are is gorgeous. Kobe is far from Tokyo, work rented a great hotel and it feels positive to be contributing with others in my team in a "work environment". This may sound foreign or insincere to some people, but you are what you give to your customers, whether they be your children, audience, internal colleagues or paying clients and when that is taken away from you without it being a choice of your own it is tough to adjust. Maybe it is post-disaster relief but this is my current choice of bread-winning and I'm happy to have it back. Over the previous week we had been in Nagoya and while it was a massive relief to be away from Tokyo after everything which happened, it was very hard to to move forward on anything with NHK reporting what reactors were on fire in the background and my wife and child 10 feet away in the same room. Here we have space and a rhythm again.
Now the tough decision, when do we move back to Tokyo...
This morning at 10am my wife and two month old son boarded a train to Tokyo for an overnight trip, due back in Kobe tomorrow evening. She has worried staff to meet with and decide if business can be continued, and the mother of all charity events to work towards. At 3pm today the power plants have power again, cooling systems were coming online and the world is rosy. My work plans on reopening in Tokyo on Monday and we'll be laughing about all this by Wednesday. At 4:15pm I read a report in Japanese that radioactive iodine had been found in the local water supply at 2 times the maximum recommended level for infants. At 4:45 pm I am agreeing on the phone with my wife that neither her baby are to have a shower in Tokyo, she is not to drink water or wash the baby's bottle, nor is she to prepare any food washed in tap water. Her mother has already made dinner, how? What with? Can she eat it and feed the baby?
Apologies to the impartial scientists among us, but to have a conversation with your wife about whether or not it is safe to give your baby a bath, or for your wife to to eat and then breast feed the baby is something I never want to have to do again.
Please excuse me for being melodramatic here. I buy into and admire the Japanese stoicism in the face of this crisis, it's one of the reasons I love this country. The thing is, my baby's total weeks on earth measure in the single figures whilst the result of our decisions will play out over tens of years.
What I wold like to see is someone from Tokyo University honestly say "here is what the risks are but if I had a 3 month old child she would be in Sydney by now", because that is what I'm sure they are thinking. What does "no real harm" mean? Is it some kind of half-danger? Will your kid only get half-cancer in 30 years if he drinks the water today? We are trying to make emotional decisions based on objective facts with no historical precedent. This is hard.
So sorry work, and sorry folk back in Tokyo. We love Japan as much as you do, we feel the same hurt when we see the scenes from Tohoku, and we will do whatever it takes to put this country back on it's feet. We feel awful that our respective clients are doing business in Tokyo while we are 500km away. However Nanako and I cannot and will not place Joseph in any kind of risk when we have the means to do otherwise. We will stay in Japan, do our best, and return to Tokyo as soon as we are convinced it is safe. Please don't ask any more yet.
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