It was 11 am in Tokyo when Prime Minister Naoto Kan finally admitted that damage to a nuclear reactor in Fukushima may represent a serious threat to human life. Nationwide panic spread.
For Taiji Yamomoto, 34, the father of 10-day-old baby Eijaro, it was a cue to drop all work and blaze a trail 12 hours north to the troubled city of Sendai to be with his wife Risa and newborn son.
"We are so afraid, but we don't know where it is best to be," Taiji explains, adding that their safety may be at the mercy of the direction of the wind.
The French embassy on Tuesday warned its nationals to leave Japan before the imminent arrival of a radiation cloud in Tokyo carried on yesterday’s southerly wind.
But now the wind is blowing north east and the millions of forlorn earthquake and tsunami survivors fear radiation exposure from the rain that is driving down along the coastline.
After deliberating on Tuesday, Taiji set off to Tokyo with his family, stopping overnight on the way in the city of Niigata on the west coast. The sea port is the halfway point on the road from Sendai to Tokyo now that two other more direct highways through Fukushima have been sealed due to the expanding exclusion area.
But the decision to return to the Japanese capital was not easy, says Taiji. Tokyo is far from the safe haven that it appeared on Friday when Japan was struck by its worst catastrophe since World War II.
Earthquakes measuring around 5 on the Richter scale have reverberated around the city, while reports have been released (and later contradicted) of raised radiation levels.
Each new statement about radiation threat contradicts the last, while skeptical locals point to the government and nuclear power company's patchy track record on transparency in close-run matters of public safety.
"I don't trust what the government is saying in the slightest,” says Risa, breastfeeding her baby in a small hotel room in Niigata on Wednesday. “I am really afraid for Eijaro. He is so young,"
The government may be playing down the threat of a meltdown to limit damage to Japan’s now battered economy and avoid sparking nationwide panic.
Risa worries too for her mother and father who she was staying with in Sendai, but who remain in their apartment, luckily untouched by the devastating walls of water that tore across Japan’s long north east coastline, leaving over at least half a million homeless and thousands dead.
Tremors are reverberating around Japan. The aftershock from a 6-magnitude earthquake to the south west of Tokyo was strong enough to judder apartment blocks in Niigata early this morning.
Fears of the radioactive threat are rising among journalists too. Two television crews from New Zealand yesterday raced from Sendai to Niigata across the snow-laden Japanese Alps after their editors took an executive decision to pull them out of Japan.
Unable to find flights at Niigata’s packed out airport before Friday, the crews took the bullet train down to Tokyo hoping for more luck there.
The thinly veiled calm on the streets cannot disguise the bubbling panic across the country. There are fewer cars on the roads, and hour-long lines at petrol pumps and major food stores.
Many who are unable to travel because of fuel shortages are trying to stockpile supplies in case the radiation threat means they have to stay indoors.
Strict limits have been placed on the amount of items available in shops.
But solidarity among locals and pity for the hundreds of thousands sleeping at night shelters for the sixth night tonight is immediately evident as Taiji hands me a plastic bag crammed with pot noodles that he says his family does not desperately need.
"Take what you need and give the rest to the people who need it in Sendai," he says.
NIIGATA, March 16 (RIA Novosti, Tom Balmforth)
