10:30am. “We need to believe that water works.” NHK World, referring to the water being dropped onto damaged reactor 3 at the Fukushima Dai Ichi Complex. NOTE: Yesterday I wrote about misinformation. I said that the radiation levels were reported to be dropping while at the same time the UK (and New Zealand, and France and the U.S.) suggested that people should leave Tokyo. Although the nuclear situation was part of that decision, ostensibly the suggestion was made only due to the deteriorating situation with Tokyo’s infrastructure (rolling blackouts, food and water shortages). I just talked with some friends in Tokyo, seems there is no toilet paper or tissue paper now. There are stockpiles of toilet paper in Shikoku but trucks and not readily available and even if they can get TP to Tokyo the lack of fuel there would make it very difficult to get back. Today i’m going to Western Union to see if some backup funds have arrived. We will then buy another pair of underpants. We don’t really know how long we will be down here.

12:57pm. Just received the image above from Vicente, a friend and writer who is staying in the mountains near Nara. Like he said, this is a perfect example of the misinfo we are getting; Japan says radiation levels falling while the UK (and New Zealand) are telling people to get out of Tokyo. This is from Reuters.

12:09pm. News is causing a lot of problems for us mentally. Because the media outside Japan is tending on the side of a “worst-case-scenario” for the nuclear reactors, our families and friends back home are becoming hysterical that we leave Japan. Trending topic: Apocalypse. Navigating the information rationally and calmly is necessary to ensure we get can make good decisions about what to do. For the first time, news has become highly functional. We read it to be informed but more often we are reading it to make concrete decisions about our lives. The highly fluctuating state of the nuclear reactors is not just abstract information, for us it will determine how soon we can go home and see our friends, it will determine how soon we are forced to fly out of the country, it has already determined how much we can trust the Japanese officials. Increasingly we are talking as much about the reliability of news sources as we are about the reality of what is going up north. Sensationalism was something I understood, but now I feel it is abhorrent. It is enemy. It has left people stricken with panic, or left people so afraid that they simple unplug their televisions and computers, many friends who are still in Tokyo are refusing to watch any news, trying to carry on. Better the normal life you know than a cloud of gamma radiation you don’t.

1:01am. Can’t sleep. Lying in futon next to Hannah, she’s in a state of unconsciousness; so exhausted from the past five days (five days? it feels like weeks since the quake hit). Last night we met other escapees from Tokyo at a new-half bar in downtown Osaka and we talked about what we are going to do with our lives. Most of our conversation revolved around how much we wanted to go back to Tokyo. It might be hard for people outside Japan to understand but none of us want to leave Tokyo or Japan; this is our home, our past pre-disaster lives are still up there; amongst the food shortages, water shortages, threat of large earthquake, and threat of nuclear fallout (enough of a threat to send the Western media into a spiral of sensationalist panic). But the longer time goes on the harder it will be to start from where we all left off. There is a rising feeling that everything we valued in Tokyo – all the people and rituals and customs and habits of daily life – are about to disappear into the ether or be changed irrevocably. The keys on this keyboard are making a clicking sound which just woke Hannah up: “are you going to be typing much longer?” No.

4:05pm. It snowed this morning in Osaka. Travel from Tamade station to Namba station, downtown. We meet other people who have left Tokyo. Mark has just arrived with a friend, they left on the spur of the moment fearing the cloud of radiation (and other things) and have nowhere to stay. He shows us a photo from the Shinkansen ride to Osaka from Tokyo; extremely packed train, standing room only. He rode down leaning against a door for almost three hours. I call another friend in Tokyo — “maybe you should think about leaving.” He has found cheese at a Tokyo supermarket, “i’m ok, everything will be fine, if the cloud of radiation hits Tokyo I’ll just tape up the windows and eat like a king.”

3:20am. Hours ago three big earthquakes hit Shizuoka where two friends are staying in a 120 year old family house. They are ok, but near the genkan of the house tonight in case more come and they have to run outside. I think that 120 house years in Japan is roughly equal to 700 house years in Europe, structures in Japan seem ready made to be destroyed every couple of decades. Tonight i’m worried about friends in Tokyo, Shizuoka and Nagoya. I’m staying awake hitting the “latest information” button on the Japan Meteorological Agency’s map of new earthquakes. Each refresh brings up a map of Japan with colored dots showing the location of the quakes and aftershocks and their power. Every red dot (Shindo 6) makes me uncomfortable. I have only ever seen one purple dot (Shindo 7); the day of the tsunami. No image because i’m not showing any more images on the here for a while. There are enough already on TV and YouTube to last a lifetime.

All the supermarkets near us are sold out of rice, instant noodles, chocolate, breakfast cereals, milk and bottled water. Beautiful day though. Heading to the park again.